In: Economics
what specific economic resource emerge in the 18th century , led other European nations/ interlopers to commit so much military and other resources to create colonies in the Caribbean, and explain explain why so many Caribbean countries changed metropolitan ownership frequently during the 18th century ?
Agriculture was developed in the Caribbean as a result of the slave trade, wherein a large workforce of Africans were forced into manual labour. The Atlantic slave trade brought enslaved African to British, Dutch, French, Portuguese, and Spanish colonies in the Americas, including the Caribbean. Enslaved people were brought to the Caribbean from the early 16th century until the end of the 19th century. The majority of enslaved people were brought to the Caribbean colonies between 1701 and 1810. From 1791 - 1804, formerly enslaved Black people from around the Caribbean went to Haiti to fight in the Haitian Revolution. Haiti's independence, gained in 1804, became a catalyst for the abolition movement in Europe. Also in 1816 there was a Black revolution in the colony of Barbados.
Abolitionists in the Americas and in Europe became vocal opponents of the slave trade throughout the 19th century, following the Haitian Revolution. The importation of African people to the colonies was often outlawed years before the end of the institution of slavery itself. It was well into the 19th century before many Black people in the Caribbean were legally free. The trade in people was abolished in the British Empire through the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act in 1807. Men, women and children who were already enslaved in the British Empire remained enslaved, however, until Britain passed the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833. When the Slavery Abolition Act came into force in 1834, roughly 700,000 people in the British West Indies immediately became free; other enslaved workers were freed several years later after a period of forced apprenticeship.Slavery was abolished in the Dutch Empire in 1814. Spain abolished slavery in its empire in 1811, with the exceptions of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Santo Domingo; Spain ended the slave trade to these colonies in 1817, after being paid £400,000 by Britain. Slavery itself was not abolished in Cuba until 1886. France abolished slavery in its colonies in 1848.
The exploitation of the Caribbean landscape dates back to the Spanish conquistadors starting in the 1490s, who forced indigenous peoples held by Spanish settlers in encomienda to mine for gold. The more significant development came when Christopher Columbus wrote back to Spain that the islands were made for sugar development. The history of Caribbean agricultural dependency is closely linked with European colonialism which altered the financial potential of the region by introducing a plantation system. Much like the Spanish exploited indigenous labor to mine gold, the 17th century brought a new series of oppressors in the form of the Dutch, the English, and the French. By the middle of the 18th century sugar was Britain's largest import which made the Caribbean that much more important as a colony.
Sugar was a luxury in Europe prior to the 18th century. It became widely popular in the 18th century, then graduated to becoming a necessity in the 19th century. This evolution of taste and demand for sugar as an essential food ingredient unleashed major economic and social changes. Caribbean islands with plentiful sunshine, abundant rainfalls and no extended frosts were well suited for sugarcane agriculture and sugar factories.
Following the emancipation of slaves in 1833 in the United Kingdom, many liberated Africans left their former masters. This created an economic chaos for British owners of Caribbean sugar cane plantations. The hard work in hot, humid farms required a regular, docile and low-waged labour force. The British looked for cheap labour. This they found initially in China and then mostly in India. The British crafted a new legal system of forced labour, which in many ways resembled enslavement. Instead of calling them slaves, they were called indentured labour. Indians and southeast Asians began to replace Africans previously brought as slaves, under this indentured labour scheme to serve on sugarcane plantations across the British empire. The first ships carrying indentured labourers for sugarcane plantations left India in 1836. Over the next 70 years, numerous more ships brought indentured labourers to the Caribbean, as cheap and docile labor for harsh inhumane work. The slave labor and indentured labor - both in millions of people - were brought into Caribbean, as in other European colonies throughout the world.
The New World plantations were established in order to fulfill the growing needs of the Old World. The sugar plantations were built with the intention of exporting the sugar back to Britain which is why the British did not need to stimulate local demand for the sugar with wages.[dubious – discuss][further explanation needed] A system of slavery was adapted since it allowed the colonizer to have an abundant work force with little worry about declining demands for sugar.In the 19th century wages were finally introduced with the abolition of slavery. The new system in place however was similar to the previous as it was based on white capital and colored labor. Large numbers of unskilled workers were hired to perform repeated tasks, which made if very difficult for these workers to ever leave and pursue any non farming employment. Unlike other countries, where there was an urban option for finding work, the Caribbean countries had money invested in agriculture and lacked any core industrial base. The cities that did exist offered limited opportunities to citizens and almost none for the unskilled masses who had worked in agriculture their entire lives. The products produced brought in no profits for the countries since they were sold to the colonial occupant buyer who controlled the price the products were sold at. This resulted in extremely low wages with no potential for growth since the occupant nations had no intention of selling the products at a higher price to themselves.
The result of this economic exploitation was a plantation dependence which saw the Caribbean nations possessing a large quantity of unskilled workers capable of performing agricultural tasks and not much else. After many years of colonial rule the nations also saw no profits brought into their country since the sugar production was controlled by the colonial rulers. This left the Caribbean nations with little capital to invest towards enhancing any future industries unlike European nations which were developing rapidly and separating themselves technologically and economically from most impoverished nations of the world.
The plantation system and the slave trade that enabled its growth led to regular slave resistance in many Caribbean islands throughout the colonial era. Resistance was made by escaping from the plantations altogether, and seeking refuge in the areas free of European settlement. Communities of escaped slaves, who were known as Maroons, banded together in heavily forested and mountainous areas of the Greater Antilles and some of the islands of the Lesser Antilles. The spread of the plantations and European settlement often meant the end of many Maroon communities, although they survived on Saint Vincent and Dominica, and in the more remote mountainous areas of Jamaica, Hispaniola, Guadeloupe and Cuba.
Violent resistance broke out periodically on the larger Caribbean islands. Many more conspiracies intended to create rebellions were discovered and ended by Europeans before they could materialize. Actual violent uprisings, involving anywhere from dozens to thousands of slaves, were regular events, however. Jamaica and Cuba in particular had many slave uprisings. Such uprisings were brutally crushed by European forces.