28 - The “Discovery” of the New World

The first land that Columbus, or at least one of his crew, sighted on his famous voyage was one of the Bahama Islands; the details of the incident gives some insight into the Grand Admiral’s character. The King and Queen of Spain, who had sponsored the voyage, had promised a lifetime pension to the first person to sight land in the journey west. That person was a lookout on the Pinta, one of the three vessels under Columbus’s command. It was the middle of the night, and the Captain of the Pinta fired a cannon to signal Columbus, who was on the Santa Maria. When the event was reported later, however, Columbus asserted that he had seen a light coming from the island two hours earlier and thus he claimed the pension for himself.

During that first voyage, he then proceeded south and east along the north coast of Cuba, and onto Hispaniola (now shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti). He claimed all of these lands for Spain, under the mistaken impression that Cuba was the mainland of Asia and that Hispaniola was Japan.

As the exploration of the New World continued, the Spanish retained control of the larger islands of the Caribbean but ignored the smaller ones as they turned their attention to conquering what is now Central and South America.

The remainder of the islands were fought over and divided between other European powers. The Dutch took control of some (now the Netherlands Antilles) but France and England took control of most of the others.

When Columbus arrived, these islands were populated by the Arawak and Carib peoples; the Taino on Hispaniola were part of the Arawak language group. There were as many as 5 million people on Hispaniola alone, but within 100 years, almost the entire indigenous population of the Caribbean was eradicated. This was due in large part to disease.

The islands were valuable to their European masters because of their agricultural productivity. Both bananas and coffee, neither of which are native to the region, grew well on the islands. Then in the 17th century, the Dutch introduced another non-native crop: sugar. With the development of sugar plantations, the islands became even more valuable. Sugar was a luxury item in the 1600’s. It was so rare that European pharmacies sold it by the gram. When it was discovered that sugar cane flourished in what were now known as the West Indies, there was a flourish of European interest in sugar cultivation. Following the Dutch example, the British established plantations in Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad, St. Kitts, and the other small islands.

These plantations required large amounts of labor, and because the native populations of the islands had been eliminated, Europe had to seek that labor elsewhere. They found it in Africa. Slaves from the West Coast of Africa were transported to the sugar islands. The slave plantations of the West Indies soon became the most valuable possessions of the British Empire. Before the end of the 17th century, tiny St. Kitt’s, with a total area of 67 square miles, was valued more than all of British North America, because it produced sugar.