The Torrid Zone

Caribbean Colonization and Cultural Interaction in the Long Seventeenth Century

L. H. Roper

• Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781611178913
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia de Latinoamérica y el Caribe

The first comparative history of European settlers' trading, pirating, and colonizing activities in the Caribbean. Brimming with new perspectives and cutting-edge research, the essays collected in The Torrid Zone explore colonization and cultural interaction in the Caribbean from the late 1600s to the early 1800s—a period known as the "long" seventeenth century—a time when these encounters varied widely and the diverse actors were not yet fully enmeshed in the culture and power dynamics of master-slave relations. The events of this era would profoundly affect the social and political development both of the colonies that Europeans established in the Caribbean and the wider world. This book is the first to offer comparative treatments of Danish, Dutch, English, and French trading, pirating, and colonizing activities in the Caribbean and analysis of the corresponding interactions among people of African, European, and Native origin. The contributions range from an investigation of the indigenous colonization of the Lesser Antilles by the Kalinago to a look at how the Anglo-Dutch wars in Europe affected relations between the English inhabitants and the Dutch government of Suriname. Among the other essays are incisive examinations of the often-neglected history of Danish settlement in the Virgin Islands, attempts to establish French colonial authority over the pirates of Saint-Domingue, and how the Caribbean blueprint for colonization manifested itself in South Carolina through enslavement of Amerindians and the establishment of plantation agriculture. The extensive geographic, demographic, and thematic concerns of this collection shed a clear light on the socioeconomic character of the "Torrid Zone" before and during the emergence and extension of the sugar-and-slaves complex that came to define this region. The book is an invaluable contribution to our understanding of the social, political, and economic sensibilities to which the operators around the Caribbean subscribed as well as to our understanding of what they did, offering in turn a better comprehension of the consequences of their behavior. "Covering a variety of undertakings, especially English but also Dutch, Danish, French and indigenous, this collection makes a welcome contribution to our understanding of a pivotal period in the history of the West Indies." —Carla Gardina Pestana, University of California, Los Angeles "This illuminating collection of essays brings the Caribbean squarely into the frame of analysis strongly making the case that the experiences and developments of the Caribbean colonies remained crucial to the history of colonial America. The contributions cover the centrality of enslaved people's labor and the actions of Indigenous and peoples of African descent who shaped the history of the region through their resistance, accommodation, and engagement." —Ignacio Gallup-Diaz, Bryn Mawr College

Part I

Indigenous and Other Caribbeans

Kalinago Colonizers

Indigenous People and the Settlement of the Lesser Antilles

Tessa Murphy

In 1674 Jean-Charles de Baas Castelmore, governor-general of France’s Caribbean colonies, sent a panicked letter to his superiors in the Ministère de la Marine, the branch of the French Navy responsible for overseeing colonial ventures. “The war that we have against the Dutch, against the Emperor, and against the Spanish causes a great deal of chagrin to the inhabitants of the islands,” de Baas reported, “but they fear these three powers less than they do a war against the Caribs.” The governor’s letter sheds light on a lengthy contest that shaped the colonization of the seventeenth-century southern Caribbean, yet has remained largely overlooked by historians. Settlers in Guadeloupe, Martinique, and particularly Grenada were alert to the possibility of war with European rivals, the governor explained. But they were even more apprehensive of the prospect that their decades-long conflict with the islands’ Amerindian populations, which originated soon after the arrival of French settlers in the region in the 1620s, would be reignited. War with the southern Caribbean’s indigenous inhabitants “is of such a difficult nature that it is impossible for us to resist,” observed de Baas, and the small number of French settlers in Grenada were “therefore obliged to be continually in arms.” If peace could not be reached in Grenada, the governor warned, the French “must resign themselves to abandon” the infant colony.¹

A close reading of accounts like that of Governor de Baas suggests that little-studied contests between European and Amerindian polities—not just between rival Europeans—continued to shape the colonization of the southern Caribbean throughout the seventeenth century. Narratives of the European destruction of the Caribbean’s indigenous populations, beginning with the famously vivid sixteenth-century account of Bartolomé de las Casas, continue to color historical analyses of the region.² Moreover, demographic studies of the devastating effects of disease and enslavement on the indigenous inhabitants of Hispaniola are often extrapolated to the wider Caribbean, leading historians to conclude that Native peoples did not pose a significant challenge to European colonization elsewhere in the region.³

Yet recent research by archaeologists and historians suggests that the indigenous peoples of the smaller southern Caribbean islands, or Lesser Antilles, were not affected by Europeans in the same way as their counterparts to the north.⁴ While the indigenous population of the Lesser Antilles was greatly reduced by epidemics, warfare, and Spanish slaving missions throughout the sixteenth century, surviving texts reveal that Amerindian residents of the region engaged settlers in lengthy diplomatic and military contests over territory, trade, and the expansion of slavery and plantation production throughout the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.⁵

Challenging characterizations of near-total indigenous extinction, this chapter focuses on the “island Caribs” of the Lesser Antilles—referred to here as Kalinago—as a polity that actively affected and even participated in the colonization of the region.⁶ Recognizing the extent to which the Kalinago shaped European prospects for settlement, dominion, and the expansion of the plantation complex in the seventeenth-century Lesser Antilles affords new insight on the day-to-day realities of colonization and highlights the necessity of integrating indigenous peoples into studies of the colonial Caribbean to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the region’s history.

European contemporaries almost never referred to the people they encountered in the Lesser Antilles as “Kalinago.” Missionaries, colonial officials, and settlers instead used the generic term “Indian” or signaled what they perceived to be inherent differences between themselves and their Amerindian neighbors by labeling them “sauvage”—wild, untamed, or savage beings. “Carib/Caribee”—a term Europeans used to distinguish the allegedly bellicose indigenous inhabitants of the Lesser Antilles from their purportedly peaceful Arawak neighbors in the Greater Antilles—originated during the voyages of Columbus and came into increasingly popular usage by the eighteenth century.⁷ Yet, as Peter Hulme has noted, “the two names, Carib and Arawak, mark an internal division within European perceptions of the native Caribbean”; it is unclear whether the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the region would have actually recognized or espoused the group identities Europeans assigned to them.⁸

In eschewing these European labels in favor of a term by which the indigenous inhabitants of the Lesser Antilles described themselves, the use here of “Kalinago” seeks to privilege an Amerindian perspective on seventeenth-century Caribbean colonization.⁹ Thus, rather than exploring European responses to the peoples they encountered in the Lesser Antilles, this chapter focuses on how the region’s indigenous inhabitants drew on and experimented with a range of approaches to the arrival of new peoples. Referring to the Native peoples of the Lesser Antilles by terms they originated rather than those ascribed them by Europeans also seeks to place the Kalinago on an equal analytical footing with the French, English, and other Europeans with whom they engaged in trade, diplomacy, and war.¹⁰

An absence of primary sources by Kalinago authors naturally complicates the task of privileging their perspective on seventeenth-century Caribbean colonization but does not render it impossible. Firsthand accounts by Europeans who participated in initial attempts to colonize the Lesser Antilles primarily focus on the experiences and assumptions of their respective authors.¹¹ Yet surviving texts by missionaries Jean-Baptiste Du Tertre and Raymond Breton, as well as by an anonymous colonist in Grenada, can be mined for what they reveal about Kalinago impressions of and responses to these early interactions.¹² European correspondence offers another important and underutilized window on the role of Caribbean Amerindians in shaping the colonization of the Lesser Antilles: the letters of colonial officials are rife with complaints of attack by Kalinago forces, while frequent mention of attempts to broker peace with Kalinago representatives from different islands reveals that both Europeans and Amerindians deployed a variety of military and diplomatic tactics in an effort to achieve their respective goals.

One of the clearest illustrations of the extent to which indigenous people shaped the colonization of the seventeenth-century Caribbean can be found in the earliest extant written treaty between the Kalinago and Europeans. Signed in the French colony of Guadeloupe in March 1660 by Kalinago delegates from a number of islands and by representatives of the English and French Crowns, the treaty formally recognized Kalinago dominion over the islands of Dominica and St. Vincent. In exchange, the Kalinago agreed to allow European settlement in the nearby colonies of Guadeloupe, Martinique, and the Leeward Islands.

By engaging in a close reading of contemporary accounts and colonial correspondence, particularly the 1660 treaty, then, this chapter sheds light on how the Kalinago actively shaped and delimited the colonization of the Lesser Antilles. The decision to draw primarily on French accounts and correspondence reflects the particularly pronounced challenges that the Kalinago posed to French settlement of Guadeloupe, Martinique, and especially the southernmost colony of Grenada. In addition to counting thousands of Kalinago inhabitants when the French first claimed the islands in the first half of the seventeenth century, these colonies were in close proximity to Dominica, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent, all islands in which Kalinago driven from neighboring colonies had settled.¹³ Highlighting the range of tactics that Kalinago adopted in an effort to retain their influence in the Lesser Antilles, this essay analyzes Caribbean Amerindians not as passive victims of relentless European expansion but as a polity that sought to counter foreign incursion through a combination of diplomacy and force. The treaty of 1660 provides particularly strong evidence that colonial officials recognized the necessity of sharing territory with the indigenous inhabitants of the Lesser Antilles and highlights the role of the Kalinago in shaping settlement, trade, and the expansion of the plantation complex in the southern Caribbean.

Early Kalinago-European Interactions

A number of works analyze European colonization of the Lesser Antilles.¹⁴ Historians largely agree on the general course of events: although Spanish colonizing activity largely centered on the Greater Antilles and the American mainland, in the sixteenth century sailors made landfall in Lesser Antillean islands to take on water, provisions, and wood. As in the Greater Antilles, these corsairs, freebooters, and buccaneers sowed the seeds for subsequent colonization; their knowledge of the islands, as well as their trade with indigenous peoples, provided a basis for European settlement.¹⁵

Following Charles I’s ascension to the throne of England in 1625 and the appointment of Cardinal Richelieu as Louis XIII’s chief minister in 1624, England and France began to devote greater resources to Atlantic commerce and colonization. Thomas Warner successfully led an English colonizing mission to St. Christopher’s in 1624, and French settlers arrived in the same island soon after. English colonies were established in Antigua, Barbados, and Nevis in the subsequent decade, and in 1635 France’s Compagnie des Iles de l’Amérique sponsored the establishment of new settlements slightly farther south, in Guadeloupe and Martinique. French colonization of Grenada began fifteen years later, in 1650.¹⁶

Kalinago-European Military Contests

While histories of European expansion in the Caribbean chronicle territorial struggles between competing monarchies, they usually elide similar negotiations and contestations between European and indigenous polities. Events in St. Christopher’s foreshadowed interactions on other islands throughout the region. Although St. Christopher’s Amerindian inhabitants reportedly tolerated initial European settlement of the island, relations soon soured. As the number of settlers increased, competition for land and trade heightened tensions. In 1627 French and English colonists joined forces to launch what they described as a preemptive attack against the Kalinago, driving them from the island and dividing the land between the two European nations.

Despite these hostile beginnings in St. Christopher’s, the earliest French subjects to settle in Martinique and Guadeloupe in 1635 did not seem to fear the Kalinago presence in the new colonies. Du Tertre, who participated in initial French colonization of these islands, credited the Kalinago with rescuing the first settlers from famine, writing that “the Savages never came to see the French empty handed, and as they saw them in need, they always brought them some provisions.”¹⁷ The missionary claimed that it was only when the French, “no longer content with areas abandoned by the Caribs, [made] new settlements, cut down the woods, and planted provisions and tobacco,” that these initially promising relations gave way to rising tensions and reciprocal violence.¹⁸

Du Tertre might be thought of as a defender of the Lesser Antilles’ indigenous inhabitants. His depiction of the Kalinago, whom he calls Carib, evolved significantly between the 1654 publication of his Histoire générale des Isles and his subsequent four-volume history of French colonization of the Caribbean, Histoire générale des Antilles Habitées par les François, first published in 1667. In the earlier work Kalinago people are not discussed in detail for the first four hundred pages. When they do appear, they are characterized as “the leftovers of the innumerable barbarians that the Spanish Christians exterminated”; Du Tertre hypothesizes that Kalinago reluctance to accept the presence of European settlers was due in part to the fact that “some of the oldest among them were eyewitnesses to the extreme cruelty that the Christians visited on them and on their fathers” during Spanish colonization of the Greater Antilles.¹⁹ In addition to condemning Spanish barbarity, in his later publication Du Tertre also passes judgment on the French, whom he accuses of seeking “any occasion to commit acts of hostility against the Savages.”²⁰ In both of Du Tertre’s accounts, Kalinago attacks against French settlers were prompted by the latter’s increasingly intrusive presence, as well as by French designs to incite violence in order to “have a pretext to seize” Kalinago territory and provisions.²¹

By assigning blame for the outbreak of violence to Europeans, Du Tertre depicts the indigenous inhabitants as peaceable people ripe for religious conversion. As an agent of evangelism, Du Tertre had ample motivation to portray the Kalinago as potential Christians, and the missionary sought to assure his readers that “the good treatment … that our missionaries give [the Kalinago] … could with time soften their barbarous nature.”²²

Du Tertre, though, was not the only seventeenth-century eyewitness to suggest that Kalinago violence against Europeans was a direct response to the newcomers’ infringement on their increasingly circumscribed territory. The account of Breton, who spent several years attempting to convert the indigenous inhabitants of the island of Dominica to Christianity, confirms that the Kalinago turned to violence as a means of limiting the European presence in their territory.

Rather than directly narrating his experiences as one of the only Europeans to live in Dominica in the 1640s and 1650s, Breton sprinkles revealing anecdotes and explanations into his bilingual dictionary of the Kalinago language, which was first published in France in 1665.²³ Along with serving as a tool of translation intended to aid in the conversion of the indigenous population, the dictionary therefore acts as a detailed ethnographic source. For example, the entry for canáoa, the Kalina...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: Indigenous and Other Caribbeans
• Part II: Empire, Settlement, and War in the Torrid Zone: The Cases of Suriname, Jamaica, Danish West Indies, and Saint-Domingue
• Part III: Extending the Torrid Zone
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Contributors
• Index