History of colnialism in the caribbean
...ain put together a colonial system of which was part economic and part political. With gold entering the spotlight of the Caribbean’s main commodity, it caused Spain to want to keep the profitable trade flow to other countries, along with keeping the King and his subject’s happy. This shows how connected politics and economics were to a European country such as Spain. As far as colonization goes, the way a country monopolizes means a lot towards their success. French and Britain were Spain’s rivals in colonization since they not only monopolized trade and navigation, but production as well (Williams, 51). The production of sugar was first introduced by Christopher Columbus when he stopped at the Canary Islands on route for the New World, only to find sugar cane. Repercussions thus followed and Hispaniola became the “cradle of the sugar economy” (Williams, 25). With the sugar economy starting to boom, and mills sprouting about the Caribbean, there was one small problem, and that was labor. Labor came from three main groups: indigenous people, those from West Africa, and indentured servants. It didn’t matter to the European countries which they were using, considering no matter what; they were helping build up their country through the labor systems on their colonies. It all seemed to be a never ending circle, as the countries attempted to build up their colonies and nation, they had to break another man’s back with hard labor. If it weren’t for colonialism in the Caribbean, the development of Europe would be comprised of much less power, considering they would not be exporting or importing goods from there. Power and wealth are such profound words when speaking of colonization that some countries went to far depths just to get their country ahead. England, France and Holland included piracy into one of their three commerce policies. English, French and Dutch governments would back the pirates to take over cities or attack ships in hopes of weakening Spain. With so much need for power and wealth and not a sufficient amount of land in the Caribbean to cover every countries needs, hostility was inevitable. War is always going to happen when multiple countries are trying to colonize an area in hopes of making their country stronger. For three small words: slaves, gold and sugar amounted to a very large sum of economic and political power for the European nations. The triangular trade which encompassed these things among many other hot commodities, was the major commercial trade route from the 1500-1900 (Lecture, 10/7/04). The triangular trade took place in Europe, Africa and the Americas, with each location being able to offer special resources unique to that land. For example, Africa provided the young fit slaves which were then brought over to the Americas to work on the plantations that produced many things such as sugar, cotton, and rum. The products were then sent to Europe where sugar refineries were established, along with iron bars and guns being manufactured to be sent down to Africa. The triangle was a continuous route that kept profits and power at it’s most, along with the European countries very economically stable. In Europe, slaves, gold and sugar were used for different things, but all definitely served a very important purpose. The amount of income they directly or indirectly caused was very significant to the development of the European countries in how they earned power and their economic stability. For example, when sugar is selling well, the profits were used to buy more slaves which would then be shipped over to the Caribbean to make more sugar. The more sugar, the more iron bars...