Charleston, A Good Life

Having spent a good part of my life travelling, living and occasionally working throughout the Caribbean, I am often asked, “How did so-and-so island come under control of a particular western European country?” The simple answer for the most part is threefold: first, largely during the 17th century, the opportunity to acquire resources and wealth attracted adventurous men and investors to pursue those Caribbean islands and lands; second, if a nation possessed a powerful navy, and could participate financially in the new wealth, the government would support the entrepreneurs’ efforts; and finally by the mid-17th century, when Oliver Cromwell controlled England politically and militarily, and had King Charles I executed, he wanted to expand the British Empire’s footprint in the Caribbean and North America.

The Spaniards were the first in the region during the 16th century, largely precipitated by Christopher Columbus’ voyages to the new world, primarily to seek gold in Mexico, present day Central America, and the Incas in the areas of Peru and Colombia. For the most part of the 16th century, the only semi-valuable commodity was salt in the marshes along the coast of Venezuela, and various Caribbean islands.

The first major British incursion in the Caribbean took place in 1625 with the arrival of Captain John Powell on Barbados. Barbados is situated east and south of the lower Windward Islands. It is also the farthest east from the Spanish Caribbean capital of Cartagena. The second major port for the Spanish was the fort in Santo Domingo (present day Dominican Republic), six hundred miles northwest of Barbados. The Spanish attitude over the seizure of Barbados was, “Let the British rot on their tiny, barren island.”

For the first fifteen or so years, the English colony, now under the control of the King’s first appointed Lord’s Proprietor, the first Earl of Carlisle, James Hay, struggled on Barbados. They did not fare well. To start, they dressed and ate unsuitably for the climate. Proper Englishmen would wear heavy silk brocade jackets with pantaloons and silk stockings. Women, even during the warmest weather, wore fifteen pounds of clothing, including corsets, full undergarments, petticoats, and ankle covering dresses. The English tried to maintain dietary customs of their home country eating substantial amounts of beef, pork, and heavy sauces. It was no wonder that the average life expectancy of an English person on Barbados during the mid-1600s was not much beyond their mid-thirties.

At first, the English sought to produce a lucrative cash crop of tobacco, but quickly learned that it takes a huge nutrient toll on the soil; and the indigenous Caribe Indians were too small physically to handle the crop work. And then, the fortunes of the English on Barbados changed much for the better: In 1640, a group of Sephardic Jews, expelled from Recife, Brazil, arrived in Barbados, bringing sugarcane plants, and the knowledge of how to turn it into molasses, sugar, and rum.

As Jews were still banned from England at this time, the English on Barbados quickly found a way to circumvent this practice to accommodate the new arrivals. Barbados is just 166 square miles, and within fifteen years, the English had laid out the island into parishes, and much of the land was spoken for. Indentured servants also received land grants on Barbados once they had fulfilled their contractual work requirement. The niche in the local economy for the Sephardic Jews was to become the merchant class, much as they had previously been in the eastern Mediterranean, Italy, Spain, and Portugal.

The Portuguese-Brazilian Jews in Barbados also transported the practice of slavery, which was essential to the difficult, arduous and dangerous task of sugarcane production, cane grinding, and molasses production. The Sephardic Jews in the Caribbean also introduced African slave factoring, or financing. After the captured Africans were purchased from slave traders in western Africa (Guinea, Ghana, Sierra Leone et al), the Africans had to endure many weeks in chains, spread a few feet apart in the ship’s hold, under horrific conditions during the Southern Passage to the Caribbean. Upwards of twenty percent perished during the crossing, and most were in poor health and malnourished upon their arrival in the Caribbean. To a ship captain and owner, time was money; the longer the ship stayed at sea, the more the crew had to be paid. In many cases, the slave factors would purchase the sickly human cargo at deeply discounted rates, and resell healthier slaves, who would later be resold in the markets to the north.

Until now, we’ve only discussed the Spanish and British in the Caribbean, but in the 1630’s the French started to get into the “act” by taking the tiny island of St. Christopher, or St. Kitts. In 1635 French King Louis XIII ordered the Lord de Ossonville to capture any or all of the islands of Dominica, Guadeloupe, or Martinique. The expeditionary group quickly ascertained that Dominica was covered with too much mountainous jungle, Martinique was too inhospitable; so they settled on Guadeloupe. The French quickly set to sugarcane production, and quickly rivalled the British in production. And for over a century, the French coexisted with the Spanish on Hispaniola, but eventually lost it to a slave revolt.

In one of the more unintended outcomes of Caribbean history is how the British came to Jamaica in 1655. It was during this period that Oliver Cromwell became the absolute ruler of England and the Parliament by declaring himself Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Cromwell possessed grand, expansionist visions of how he wanted to challenge the Spanish on their foreign turfs. However, he had one glaring deficiency: his Treasury and the English economy were in poor shape. Cromwell, while being a ruthless military leader, was also pragmatic. England’s major trade competitor was the Netherlands, and the Sephardic Jews in Amsterdam were the dominant merchants. Cromwell quietly reached out to the Dutch Jewish community, and struck a mutually beneficial arrangement: The Jews could return to England if they practiced their religion sub-rosa, and would help England become an economic super-power.

In 1655, Cromwell dispatched two of the most incompetent and hapless British military leaders to seize the Spanish fort of Santo Domingo on Hispaniola: William Penn, Admiral of the Navy, and Robert Venables, General of the Army. On April 13, 1655, with more than 13,000 British troops on thirty-four British warships, Venables and Penn led the attack on the Spanish fort. With just 2,400 troops, the Spaniards repulsed the British. The final tally was 600 British dead and just 30 Spanish.

What happened next is subject to some historical debate, but one fact is certain: Venables and Penn could not return to England after the Santo Domingo defeat for fear that Cromwell would put them to death. It is alleged that one of the senior British crew members was a Sephardic Jew with ties to the small and clandestine Jewish community on Jamaica. At the time, the Spanish controlled the island with a small fort in Spanish Town. On May 19th, the British fleet rounded the eastern tip of Jamaica at Point Morant. On May 21st, Penn (Venables was sick on his ship) began his “invasion of Jamaica” with 7,000 remaining troops. The Spanish Governor, Juan Ramirez de Arrellano, basically sent a message to Penn, “Ok, it’s yours; I’m leaving”, and retreated to the northwestern part of the island, and eventually to nearby Spanish controlled Cuba.

Venables and Penn decided to leave the 7,000 troops in Jamaica, and head back to England for what they thought was a heroes’ welcome by Cromwell; instead, he threw them both into the Tower of London. The troops left on Jamaica did not fare well either. Of the 7,000, only 2,500 made it to the next year. The Spanish and British fought a few skirmishes for Jamaica over the next decade, and Spain finally “threw in the towel”, and ceded Jamaica and the Cayman Islands to the British at the Treaty of Madrid in 1670. One beneficial outcome of the British siege of Jamaica was that they acquired nearly 4,300 square miles of excellent land to grow sugar-cane and other crops.

What happened in England during the 1660’s would have a significant impact on the British West Indies and the about-to-be-formed colonies in the Carolinas in North America. First, Charles II came to power succeeding his father, and after Cromwell died in 1658. Once again, the British Treasury was in poor shape. Charles appointed a bright young man, Anthony Ashley-Cooper, to be his new Chancellor of the Exchequer. Ashley-Cooper, over the next decade, improved the Crown’s fortunes much for the better, and by doing so, earned two rewards from the King: he was named the first Earl of Shaftesbury, and Lord’s Proprietor for all the British West Indies, the Bahamas, and the Carolinas. Politically astute, Ashley-Cooper did not overstep his authority with either the Earl of Carlisle, Lord’s Proprietor on Barbados, or the governing and landowning powers on Jamaica. Instead, he established the Bahamas Adventurer’s Company, which also included the Carolinas. After an early Carolina settlement in 1664, which did not do well, Shaftesbury established Charles Town (present day Charleston) in 1670, which is today bordered by the Ashley and Cooper rivers before emptying into the Atlantic.

The Earl of Shaftesbury took another step that dramatically improved the fortunes of the British West Indies, the Carolinas, and England. Up until the 1670’s, there had only been a triangular trade route for the English, French, and Spanish: The mother country to western Africa for slaves, the Southern Passage from Africa to the West Indies, and then back to the mother country. Ashley-Cooper used his position as primus inter pares with the other Lord’s Proprietors to divert the ships in the West Indies to Charleston, and northward to New York, Boston, and Marblehead. In Charleston, the British ships would offload molasses, slaves, Caribbean fruits (including pineapples, Charleston’s symbol for hospitality), and load indigo (for dye), rice, timber, and salted beef. It is estimated that over forty percent of the slaves that came to America originally were sold by the vendue (public auction) at slave markets in Charleston. Northward, the ships stopping in New York would pick up fur pelts, and in Boston, hardwoods and shoes. A good deal of the molasses was dropped off in Marblehead to make lower quality Navy rum. From there, the ships would follow the Gulf stream back to England. The entire sailing loop from England and back took about one year.

We have not discussed the Dutch, and their role in the West Indies — primarily in the Lesser Antilles. The Dutch were essentially there for economic reasons (not military) with the formation of the Dutch West India Company in 1621. Along the north coast of Venezuela, the Dutch got Aruba, Curacao, and Bonaire. To the north, they took half of the island where Sint Maarten is located, plus Saba and Sint Eustatius (or Statia, as it is commonly known). The Dutch basically came late to the West Indies party in the 18th century. Curacao became the centre for the Dutch West Indies as early as 1634. Because of its natural harbour in Willemstad, it became a trade centre. By 1662, Curacao was a centre for Atlantic slave trade.

The presence of the Dutch on Sint Maarten, shared with the French on the northern half (St. Martin), has an interesting North American connection: It was Peter Stuyvesant, who later became the Governor of New Amsterdam (now New York) for the Dutch West India Company. Stuyvesant first came to Curacao and Bonaire, and secured Sint Maarten as a midway point between the company’s holdings in Brazil and New Amsterdam.