Spanish East Indies

“ 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. ”

“ Possibly if the Panama or Nicaragua Canal is ever finished things may be a little better, but at present the outlook is very dismal.
In attempting to compress the story of the West Indies and Spanish Main within the covers of one volume we have undertaken a task by no means easy. Every island and every province has its own tale, and to do them all justice would require a hundred books. [Pg xiv] Every West Indian will find something missing—some event unmentioned which is of the greatest importance to his particular community. ”

“ Intruding colonies in the West Indies.—In the early years of the conquest Spain had occupied the larger West Indian islands—Cuba, Española, Porto Rico, and Jamaica—but had neglected the lesser islands. They thus became a field for colonization by Spain's enemies. In the seventeenth century the subjects of Holland, France, and England began to establish settlements in the West Indies, in the heart of the Spanish sea, while England intruded in the northern mainland. ”

“ Why should Spain claim the whole of the New World? England, Holland, and France began to dispute her supremacy and determined to get a share of the good things. The "invincible domination" of Spain led her to declare war against England, with the result that the hardy sea-dogs of that time began to worry the fat galleons at sea, and to pillage the treasure depôts on the Main.
And here we must mention that there were two important places in the Indies where Spain was most vulnerable—the Mona Passage between Hispaniola and Porto Rico and the Isthmus of Darien. ”

“ But the love of country, the unknown but magnified perils of a sea voyage, and stories of cruel Spaniards and man-eating Caribs, prevented many from going to the Indies, notwithstanding the great inducements offered. The English planters found it difficult to get negroes, as their enemy controlled the trade. As for the Indians, they had to deal with cannibals whose women cultivated small clearings, but resented anything like coercion, while no labour [Pg 146] whatever could be got from the men. ”

“ As the Indies were the scene of struggles between great nations and the raids of buccaneers, so also was the Mediterranean a battlefield for Christian and Turk, and a centre for piracy.
Reports of golden cities, pearls and emeralds in profusion, and wealth that passed all description, led the Spaniards to explore every island and river, until the cannibals became less alarming. Yet their sufferings were terrible. Hurricanes sunk their frail craft on the sea and earthquakes wrung their very souls on land. ”

“ He who casts his eye on the East Indies will there see quite a different state of things. The conquered districts have merely changed one European master for another; and I believe there is no instance of any portion of the East Indies throwing off the yoke of the Europeans and establishing a Government of their own. ”

“ The Spaniards and the Portuguese were in deadly enmity and slaughtered each other with impunity. Nor was that all. For much more than a century the East Indies supplied a hunting ground for bloodthirsty Europeans, who constantly preyed upon the weaker and ignorant natives. In their greed for wealth, and in their brute love for slaughter, they thought nothing of devastating towns and murdering the inhabitants. ”

“ This island became a veritable pandemonium—the sink of the West Indies. It was the place of call for rovers of all nations, the market for their booty, and the storehouse for everything in the way of supplies. The merchants pandered to the tastes of their customers, and drinking and gambling went on continually. But in 1638 it was surprised by the Spaniards, who began to be alarmed at this nest of pirates at their very doors. They chose a time when most of the rovers were away on a cruise, and the buccaneers gone hunting in Hispaniola. ”

“ However much we may deprecate the treatment of the Indians by the conquistadores, we must not forget that the greater part of the population of Spanish America to-day is still Indian, and that no other colonizing people have succeeded like the Spaniards in assimilating and civilizing the natives. The code of laws which the Spaniards gradually evolved for the rule of their transmarine provinces, was, in spite of defects which are visible only to the larger experience of the present day, one of the wisest, most humane and best co-ordinated of any to this day published for any colony. ”

“ The planters were never sure of being able to reap their crops, and often had literally to superintend the estate work, armed with sword and arquebuse, while their black and white slaves cultivated the soil.
Now the West Indies became the great training ground for three maritime nations—England, France, and Holland. Spain lost her prestige, and the struggle lay among her enemies for over a century. At first the three disputants for her place were equally matched; then Holland dropped behind, leaving England and France to fight it out. ”

“ English privateers began to extend their operations westward, and to sap the very sources of Spanish wealth and power, while the wars which absorbed the attention of the Spaniards in Europe, from the revolt of the Low Countries to the Treaty of Westphalia, left the field clear for these ubiquitous sea-rovers. The maritime powers, although obliged by the theory of colonial exclusion to pretend to acquiesce in the Spaniard's claim to tropical America, secretly protected and supported their mariners who coursed those western seas. ”

“ The English must be free to trade everywhere—in fact the old claim of Spain to the whole of America must be finally abandoned.
The Spanish ambassador replied that the inquisition and trade to the West Indies were his master's two eyes, and that nothing different from the practice of former times could be permitted. On hearing this Cromwell, seeing that neither indemnity for the past nor promises of amendment in the future could be obtained, prepared for war, and commenced by fitting out an expedition to conquer Hispaniola. ”

“ There happened about this time a very singular and melancholy event, which I find recorded in many Spanish historians, which shews to what a height corruption had grown in so short a time among the Spanish settlements in the West Indies. Reports had reached Spain of the harsh and cruel manner in which the natives were treated by the Spaniards, being distributed among the proprietors of land as if they had been cattle. This moved some religious men of the Dominican order to go over to the new world, to try what progress they could make in converting the Indians by spiritual means only. ”

“ Since the discovery of America the world's commerce had enormously increased, and its control brought with it national power. America had become the treasure-house of Europe. If England was to be set at the head of the world's commerce and navigation, she must break through Spain's monopoly of the Indies and gain a control in Spanish America. ”

“ Latterly the West Indies have sunk into neglect by Europe. Except for the difficulties of the planters their history is almost a blank sheet. Few know .anything about the beautiful islands or the grand forests of the mainland. Even the discovery of gold in Guiana, which goes to confirm the reports of Ralegh, three centuries ago, is only known to a few. Ruin and desolation have fallen upon them since the peace of 1815 and the emancipation. Even the negro—the protégé of the benevolent—is no longer the object of interest he once was. ”

“ By the middle of the eighteenth century Spain had fallen behind, and even Holland had lost her prestige. It followed, therefore, that the only Power that could rival Great Britain was France, and she was an enemy that could never be despised. The struggle in the West Indies between these two Powers now became, if possible, more intense ”

“ The Spanish ambassador in London presented a memorial of protest to the English king,351 and in Spain the Council of War blossomed into fresh activity to secure the defence of the West Indies and the coasts of the South Sea.352 Ever since 1672, indeed, the Spaniards moved by some strange infatuation, had persisted in a course of active hostility to the English in the West Indies. ”

“ But when that is done; when civilization, commerce, and education shall have been spread; when sufficient of our blood shall have been infused into the veins of those children of the sun; then, I think, we may be ready, without stain to our patriotism, to take off our hats and bid farewell to the West Indies. ”

“ The reason that is commonly given in the West Indies for the Spaniards not caring to eat of them is the fear they have lest, being usually foul-bodied and many of them poxed (lying, as they do, so promiscuously with their negrines and other she-slaves) they should break out loathsomely like lepers ”

“ To the Spanish all Europeans in the West Indies other than themselves were foes and outlaws. The buccaneers were not all the riffraff of the Old World, despite their occupation of butchering cattle. Many were men of good family and education, cadets of fortune. ”

“ In the colonies the most striking feature of Spanish economic policy was its wastefulness. After the conquest of the New World, it was to the interest of the Spaniards to gradually wean the native Indians from barbarism by teaching them the arts and sciences of Europe, to encourage such industries as were favoured by the soil, and to furnish the growing colonies with those articles which they could not produce themselves, and of which they stood in need. Only thus could they justify their monopoly of the markets of Spanish America. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And in 1637 the Conde de Linhares, recently appointed governor of Brazil, told the English ambassador, Lord Aston, that he was very anxious that English ships should do the carrying between Lisbon and Brazilian ports.
The settlement of the Windward and Leeward Islands and the conquest of Jamaica had given a new impetus to contraband trade. The commercial nations were setting up shop, as it were, at the very doors of the Spanish Indies. ”

“ From this point of view political problems, and the West Indian among them, present unusual aspects. Looking to the West Indies only, we took possession of those islands when they were of supreme importance in our great wrestle with Spain and France. We were fighting then for the liberties of the human race. The Spaniards had destroyed the original Carib and Indian inhabitants. We induced thousands of our own fellow-countrymen to venture life and fortune in the occupation of our then vital conquests. ”

“ There are five booksellers houses, and the fashions are well displayed in other shops. The French colonists, whether Creoles* or French, consider the West Indies as their country. They cast no wistful looks towards France. They marry, educate, and build in and for the West Indies, and for the West Indies alone. In our colonies it is different. They are considered more as temporary lodging-places, to be deserted as soon as the occupiers have made money enough by molasses and sugar to return home. ”

“ But left to himself, and without the white man to lead him, he can never reach it, and if we are not to lose the islands altogether, or if they are not to remain with us to discredit our capacity to rule them, it is left to us only to take the same course which we have taken in the East Indies with such magnificent success, and to govern whites and blacks alike on the Indian system. The circumstances are precisely analogous. We have a population to deal with, the enormous majority of whom are of an inferior race. ”

“ There is not an Indian in these islands who has not a remarkable inclination for the sea; nor is there at present in all the world a people more agile in manœuvers on shipboard, or who learn so quickly nautical terms and whatever a good mariner ought to know. Their disposition is most humble in the presence of a Spaniard, and they show him great respect; but they can teach many of the Spanish mariners who sail in these seas. In the ships of España there are sure to be some Indians from these islands, and investigation can be made to ascertain what they are. ”

“ French and English West Indian towns—such, for instance, as Port Royal, in Jamaica—grew fabulously rich with an unbelievable quickness. In ten or twelve years Spain had lost millions upon millions of dollars, which vast treasure was poured in a golden flood into those hot fever-holes of towns, where Jews and merchants and prostitutes battened on the burning lusts of the wild hunters whose blood was already set aflame with plunder and rapine. At last the risks of Spanish West Indian commerce became so great that no vessel dared venture out of port, excepting under escort of men-of-war. ”

“ Now that Guiana was made known, vessels of other nationalities went trading along the coast, everywhere meeting with a hearty welcome from the Indians as long as the visitors were not Spanish. They were only so many additions to their friends—their enemies were confined to Trinidad and the Orinoco, leaving the whole coast of Guiana to its rightful owners. In fact, the Spaniards could no more subdue the Caribs of the Main than they could those of the islands. Only in Trinidad, where the Arawak was employed against the cannibal, was a settlement made possible. ”