![]() ![]() 1 Certainly the groups living in the islands in 1492 exceeded in number and complexity the reductionist dichotomy between friendly Taínos and hostile, possibly cannibalistic Caribs that quickly came to shape Europeans’ treatment of and attitude toward the peoples they encountered, even though at least some Europeans understood that the Caribbean’s ethnolinguistic situation was more complicated than the simple categorization of groups as friends and enemies. Beginning around 6000 years ago, over the course of several thousand years people arrived in parts of the archipelago in waves, with the earliest migrants probably coming from Central America and subsequent ones from the South American mainland. Some islands of the southern Caribbean were closely tied to the neighboring mainland by ethnicity and mobility, and all the islands and their peoples were shaped by the maritime milieu that brought migrants, raiders, and traders to their shores and fostered an ease of movement that allowed for the creation and maintenance of kinship ties and the dispersion of cultural elements across the porous borders formed by the surrounding seas.Īlthough debate among archaeologists and other scholars over the ethnic and linguistic composition of island populations is ongoing, strong consensus has emerged that at the time of contact the Caribbean was home to several groups speaking languages that probably were related but not necessarily mutually intelligible. Others were sparsely populated indeed the land mass of what are known today as the Greater Antilles (Hispaniola, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica) constitutes 80 percent of that of the islands as a whole. Some of them, above all the large ones of the northern Caribbean, were home to substantial populations, characterized by complex forms of sociopolitical organization and intensive agriculture. The islands varied considerably in size, topography, climate, history, ethnicity, and resources. They found themselves among peoples previously unknown to them who lived in and moved around an archipelago of islands that formed a crescent some 2,000 miles long. In October 1492, a group of Europeans, mostly originating in the southern part of the Spanish kingdom of Castile and led by an Italian, Christopher Columbus, arrived in the Caribbean. Although the islands became the launching grounds for subsequent Spanish moves to the nearby mainland, throughout the 16th century and beyond they played a crucial role in sustaining Spain’s overseas empire and integrating it into the larger Atlantic system. Spaniards in the islands soon sought to supplement indigenous labor by importing African slaves who, in the early 16th century, became a significant if not always easily controlled presence in the region.įrom the earliest years the Spanish Caribbean was a complex, dynamic, and volatile region characterized by extensive interaction and conflict among diverse groups of people and by rapid economic and institutional development. ![]() ![]() The imposition of the Spanish encomienda system, which required indigenous communities to provide labor for mining and commercial agriculture, and the large-scale capture and transportation of Native Americans from one locale to another wrought havoc among the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean, resulting in high mortality and flight. Gold mining in the northern islands and pearl fishing in the islands off the coast of Tierra Firme (present-day Venezuela) for some years proved enormously profitable but depended on Spaniards’ ability to exploit indigenous labor on a large scale. Failing to encounter the wealthy trading societies that Columbus had hoped to find by reaching Asia, Europeans in the Caribbean soon realized that they would have to involve themselves directly in organizing profitable enterprises. With his second voyage of 1493 permanent European occupation of the Caribbean began, with enormous consequences for the peoples and ecology of the region. The arrival of Christopher Columbus in the northern Caribbean with three Spanish ships in October 1492 marked the beginning of continuing European contact with the Americas. ![]()
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