East Indies

“ In the days of the early explorers, after the islands discovered by Columbus were called the West Indies, some people began to call the Indian continent the East Indies, to distinguish it; and some of the papers about India drawn up for the information of Parliament about Indian affairs still use this name, but it is not a familiar use to most people. ”

“ That the day of the British is over—that is the idea that is spread now through the Dutch East Indies—purposely spread—and which has extended to our own priceless possessions of Singapore and Hong-Kong, that is spreading throughout the whole East, and is it the East alone? The natives of all sorts believe it. We only hold India, Ceylon, and our Eastern possessions through prestige— that gone, they go too. ”

“ Culturally, the East Indies are the most diverse of the Oceanic regions, in that the various islands, and within the larger islands adjacent districts, sometimes contain populations heavily tinctured with Asiatic civilization, sometimes tribes whose customs are far more aboriginal. However, there is no people in the East Indies that has wholly escaped the influence of Asiatic culture: the difference is always one of degree, although ranging from what is currently called semi-civilization to savagery. The profoundest influence has been exerted by India. ”

“ The patronage of the East Indies will be a dangerous weapon, in whatever hands. I have no prospect of deliverance for this country, but the same that I have of a possibility that we may one day be disencumbered of our ruinous possessions in the East. ”

“ The fruits of the East Indies are in general so much cryd up by those who have eat of them, and so much prefer'd to our European ones, that I shall give a full list of all the sorts which were in Season during our stay, and afterwards my judgement of Each, which I must confess is not so much in their favour as that of the generality of Europeans after their return home, tho while here I did not find that they were more fond of them or spoke more in their praise when compard with European fruits than I did. ”

“ This was the last we saw of Java, which, though but one-sixth of the area of Borneo, and one-third that of Sumatra, is by far the most important island in the archipelago. It is to the East Indies what Cuba is to the West Indies. In each there is a great central chain of mountains. Both shores of Cuba are opposite small bodies of water, and are continuously low and swampy for miles, but in Java only the north coast borders on a small sea. ”

“ Soon after the Portuguese had discovered the way to the East Indies, some French merchants, invited by a prospect of sharing the gains of this trade, fitted out a ship, which, in its route to the Indies, being driven from the straight course by a tempest, was thrown upon this great southern land. The natives of this region received the French with the most cordial hospitality, and, during an abode of six months, did them every good office in their power. ”

“ Europe, however, has hitherto derived much less advantage from its commerce with the East Indies, than from that with America. The Portuguese monopolised the East India trade to themselves for about a century ”

“ It cannot, however, admit of a doubt that all the rich and valuable productions both of the East and West Indies might easily be naturalised and brought to the utmost perfection in the tropical parts of this immense continent. ”

“ Though the Europeans possess many considerable settlements both upon the coast of Africa and in the East Indies, they have not yet established, in either of those countries, such numerous and thriving colonies as those in the islands and continent of America. Africa, however, as well as several of the countries comprehended under the general name of the East Indies, is inhabited by barbarous nations. ”

“ At the close of the fifteenth century, the impelling motive of discovery among the Old-World nations, and their adventurous mariners, was the hope of finding a short western passage to the riches of the East Indies. ”

“ French influence is in no danger of dying out in Martinique and Guadaloupe. [Pg 108] The Spanish race is not dying in Cuba and Puerto Rico. England will soon be no more than a name in Barbadoes and the Antilles. Having acquitted our conscience by emancipation, we have left our West Indian interest to sink or swim. Our principle has been to leave each part of our empire (except the East Indies) to take care of itself: we give the various inhabitants liberty, and what we understand by fair play ”

“ One may 442conceive that the entire ice-trade to the West Indies, South America, China, the Malay Archipelago, and the East Indies is in the hands of the keen North Americans, who evince a capacity for making a genial use of a natural phenomenon, which a less speculative race of men associate with the idea of cold, discomfort, and stagnation of intercourse. ”

“ These islands lie, as it were, on the confines of the southern continent, and the East Indies, so that the inhabitants enjoy all the advantages resulting from their own happy climate, and from their traffic with their neighbours, especially with those of Ternate and Amboyna, who come thither yearly to purchase their commodities, and who are likewise visited at certain seasons by the people of these islands in their turn. ”

“ How the maritime nations of the world vied with each other to possess the trade of the East Indies and fought over concessions in the Empire of the mighty Moghuls is a matter of common knowledge to all students of history. ”

“ To suppose that it does not concern us is childish, for the ultimate prosperity and fate of the British West Indies is involved with Panama—and there is British South America and British Central America —for they exist—and it therefore lies with the British Government to look far ahead and guard our interests. ”

“ About three hundred sail were employed in the trade with these islands, and some 4,500 sailors; the value of British manufactures exported thither being nearly £240,000 annually, but our imports from Jamaica alone averaged at that time £539,492. Besides rum, sugar, and molasses, we received from the West Indies cotton, indigo, ginger, pimento, cocoa, coffee, etc.
During this period a vast empire was beginning to unfold itself in the East Indies, destined to produce a vast trade, and pour a perfect mine of wealth into Great Britain. ”

“ A True Relation of certain English persons, who in Queen Elizabeths time, making a Voyage to the East Indies were cast away, and wracked near to the Coast of Terra Australis, Incognita, and all drowned, except one Man and four Women. And now lately Anno Dom. 1667. a Dutch Ship making a Voyage to the East Indies, driven by foul weather there, by chance have found their Posterity, (speaking good English) to amount (as they suppose) to ten or twelve thousand persons. ”

“ The difference between the genius of the British constitution, which protects and governs North America, and that of the mercantile company which oppresses and domineers in the East Indies, cannot, perhaps, be better illustrated than by the different state of those countries. ”

“ In the West Indies, from the sea-breeze, or trade-winds, always blowing from the east, objects or places are universally indicated, even during a temporary calm, as being situated to windward or to leeward, according as they are to the eastward or westward of the speaker. ”

“ Notwithstanding the
operations of educational institutions and of large numbers of missionaries of various religious denominations, the percentage of illegitimate births among the population of the British West Indian islands remains very high—in Barbados about 54, in Jamaica, 63; in Trinidad, 59% of the general births; and 79% of the East Indian. The population of the West Indies represents many original stocks, the descendants of which have developed variations of habits and customs in their New World environment. ”

“ The natives of New Guinea are Papuans, Polynesians, and Malays. You can trace a connection from Northern Australia right up to Japan, the races having had some commingling, no doubt, for centuries. These Straits are eighty miles wide and full of islands, therefore some of the natives must have found their way across. ”

“ We're in these here Northern Trades, close-hauled, and heading, according to my reckoning, due east, and any man who has stood his trick at the wheel of a ship, knows that such a course steered from the West Indies will, if well followed, run down the Cape Verds ”

“ Except for the transportation of sugar and rum, there is practically no communication by sea between the west and the north-east coast—the sea is too dangerous—and thus the populations on either side of the island are more or less isolated from each other, besides being further subdivided and segregated by the lesser mountain chains crossing their respective territories.... ”

“ Large numbers of Chinese workmen were imported in the middle of the last century; Hindu coolies, indentured for five years, were introduced in 1839, and though the Government of India has recently forbidden this species of servitude, fully one third of the inhabitants are East Indians or their more or less full-blooded descendants. Toward the end of the eighteenth century large numbers of French refugees took up their residence in Trinidad, and the island to-day has more inhabitants of this race than any of the West Indies not under French rule. ”

“ That it shall not be lawful for any Person or Persons, save only the said United .Company or such as shall obtain their special Leave and Licence in Writing, or a special Leave and Licence in Writing under their Authority, for that Purpose, to ship, carry, or put on board any Ship in the East Indies or other Parts within the Limits aforesaid, or to import into the said United Kingdom from any Port or Place whatsoever, any Tea; any Thing in this Act contained to the contrary notwithstanding. ”

“ W. 3. c. 44. as requires that Goods of Private Traders imported into England or Wales, should be sold by Inch of Candle, repealed.XXII. And be it further enacted, That so much of the said Act of the Ninth Year of the Reign of King William the Third, or of any other Act or Acts, as requires that all Goods-and Merchandize belonging to any Private Trader to the East Indies, which shall be imported into England or Wales, shall be sold openly and publickly by Inch of Candle, shall be and the same is hereby repealed. ”

“ The Dutch East India Company was clothed with extraordinary powers and privileges and became very wealthy; not alone in the pursuit of the East India trade, but by capturing in the West Indies galleons containing great quantities of gold and silver, which the Spaniards, by the most cruel methods, had taken in Mexico and Peru. ”

“ Round you spread the tropics. Shorewards the palm bends languidly as it feels the breath of the sea’s vigour; the sun, seen through an ocean breeze, is dulled into purple haze; the moving boats and rocking masts give life and motion to a dead world. At midday the West Indies present the picture of death. There is no movement, no life current. It is as though the island of Jamaica were scorched dead. The birds float like ragged strips of paper on the edge of the breeze which dies on its journey inland. ”

“ What a race, of mingled Spaniard and Indian, might have grown up throughout the West Indies. What a life, what a society, what an art, what a science it might have developed ere now, equalling, even surpassing, that of Ionia, Athens, and Sicily, till the famed isles and coasts of Greece should have been almost forgotten in the new fame of the isles and coasts of the Caribbean Sea. ”

“ Acres of the most fertile country in the world lie fallow within the confines of this island, whose name is written large in Britain’s naval history. Virgin forests of wild fruit trees still cover vast tracts of a country which one day will be claimed by English husbandmen. Like Jamaica, Dominica cries out for men—new men, new energy, new enterprise. In England we associate our West Indian islands with only a dead prosperity. In the West Indies one encounters ample evidence of present wealth and great promise of future riches. ”

“ SOME little interest having again been awakened in the outside world concerning the West Indian Islands, the question is occasionally asked, Had those islands any aborigines when discovered by Europeans? If there were natives, do any of them remain? Both questions may be answered in the affirmative. The West Indies, or Antilles, consist of many hundreds, or even—reckoning keys or very small islands—several thousand islands varying in area from those which, like Cuba and Jamaica, number their square acres by the million, to the tiny key of half an acre or less. ”

“ The history of the West Indies has been written by various men at different times, and little now remains to be told of those wonderful islands around which the naval heroes of England, France, Spain, and Portugal had many fierce fights and exciting adventures. ”

“ 3 I would not change my native land
For rich Peru, with all her gold:
A nobler prize lies in my hand
Than East or Western Indies hold. ”

“ With the seventeenth century began a new era in the history of the West Indies. If in the sixteenth the {46} English, French and Dutch came to tropical America as piratical intruders into seas and countries which belonged to others, in the following century they came as permanent colonisers and settlers. The Spaniards, who had explored the whole ring of the West Indian islands before 1500, from the beginning neglected the lesser for the larger Antilles—Cuba, Hispaniola, Porto Rico and Jamaica—and for those islands like Trinidad, which lie close to the mainland. ”

“ We have yet to learn, it seems, that we can indulge in that pursuit best on our own continent. There is no winter climate elsewhere to compare with that found in our extreme Southwest or in Mexico, and the sooner we put this fact into poetry and literature, and begin to make a tradition of it, the better will it be for our peace of mind and for our children. And if the continent does not satisfy us, there lie the West Indies within a few hours' sail, with all the luxuriance and geniality of the tropics. ”