Spices to Sugar to Silver to Pirates: A Brief History of the Caribbean

Map of America by Arnoldo di Arnoldi, 1602. Reproduced from an original in the collection of the Geography & Map Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3290.ct001452. Note: the vertical line was added to indicate the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) that divided the non-Christian world between Spain and Portugal.

Our story begins in ancient times when the Eastern and the Western worlds were isolated. Those in the East were harvesting, trading, and enjoying exotic spices such as cardamom, cassia, cinnamon, clove, ginger, nutmeg, pepper, star anise, and turmeric. Many had medicinal as well as culinary uses. At the same time, those in the West had no knowledge of the East or their spices.

            In the second century BCE, the Han dynasty in China opened its borders to trade and a network of routes began to radiate westward. The Silk Road, as it became known, started as a series of land paths and evolved into land and sea routes covering the East and extending westward to the Mediterranean. It was long, four thousand miles, the paths ill-maintained, the terrain arduous, crossing deserts and mountains, and personally dangerous. Traders did not travel its length but rather passed their goods to others as trading centers emerged.

            The Silk Road offered an opportunity to exchange more than spices. Merchants from the East carried silk, jade, porcelain, and tea westward, and traders from the West brought horses, glassware, textiles, and manufactured goods eastward.

            The Silk Road contributed to the dissemination of religions (Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity), philosophies, scientific discoveries, and technologies (such as paper and black powder). Diseases, especially the bubonic plague and smallpox, were passed along as well.

            Spices generated immense wealth for those who controlled their trade. As spices traveled the Silk Road into the Middle East and toward the Mediterranean, spice merchants created a monopoly that drove up the demand and the price for these “luxury” items.

The control over the Middle East changed from one empire to the next and so did the control of the monopoly. When the Byzantine Empire fell to the Ottoman Empire in the mid-fifteenth century, trade with the West was closed.

            The fifteenth century, however, was when Western Europe transitioned into the Renaissance and the Age of Exploration (Age of Discovery). In Portugal, Prince Henry the Navigator organized a navigation school that led to the improvement of navigation tools and vessels, and he arranged for a number of ocean voyages where new lands were found.

 In 1415, the Portuguese captured Ceuta, the Moorish port on the North African coast across the Straits of Gibraltar. The Mediterranean was now open to the Atlantic Ocean. After Ceuta, the Portuguese sailed to Madeira and the Azores and then began exploring the coast of West Africa.

            Portuguese navigators picked up the clockwise trade winds that took them south down the West African coast. As the Portuguese ships crossed the equator, the trade winds changed direction, now blowing counterclockwise. By sailing away for the African coast, they avoided being blown back toward the equator and Portugal.

            In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias sailed around the southern tip of Africa, thereby demonstrating that the East could be reached by sea by sailing south.

            While the Portuguese were seeking a route to the East by exploring south down the West African coast, Christopher Columbus was proposing to the king of Portugal to sail west across the Atlantic Ocean to the “East Indies.” The king, preoccupied with sailing south, rejected Columbus’ proposal.

            Columbus then approached Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon. The king was focused on the Mediterranean, but the Queen was interested in the Atlantic and funded Columbus’ expedition.

            Columbus followed the trade winds south to the Canary Islands and then west, landing on Guanahani in the Bahamas, an island he renamed San Salvador. The “East Indies” was rather the “West Indies.” Columbus was impressed with the gold jewelry worn by natives, but try as he might, he was unable to discover the location of their mines. They simply did not exist on the islands. On his next voyage, he brought sugar cane plants and found the climate ideal for their cultivation.
            Shortly after Columbus returned from his second of four voyages, Spain and Portugal divided the New World. In the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), a line was drawn from pole to pole down through the Atlantic Ocean. Land east of the line would belong to Portugal and land west of the line would belong to Spain. As a result, Portugal received Africa and Brazil while Spain received the Americas with the exception of Brazil. England, France, and the Dutch Republic were not signatories so they ignored the treaty.

            Spain claimed the larger islands surrounding the Caribbean Sea—Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica—and began to enslave the native population. They were put to work on the sugar plantations. As the plantations flourished, so did the demand for labor. The natives died from European diseases, brutal working conditions, and armed conflict. Spain turned to the African slave trade for a renewed work force. The Treaty of Tordesillas, however, had placed West Africa off-limits to Spain. 

            Spain created the “asiento de negros,” a monopoly contract, whereby the Spanish crown would award a foreign entity the right to provide African slaves to Spanish America markets for a set period of years. African slave traders would round up Africans from the interior of Africa and bring them to the coast, where they were kept until a ship with the asiento contract could transport them to a Spanish port on the Caribbean. Those enslaved who survived the voyage were auctioned for work on the sugar plantations.

            The importation of slaves created a triangular trading system. On the first leg, a ship would sail from its home port in Europe to a port in West Africa carrying a cargo of copper, cloth, guns, and ammunition that would be sold or bartered for slaves. On the second leg, “the Middle Passage,” the ship sailed across the Atlantic to a port in the Caribbean where the slaves would be auctioned. The ship then returned to her home port with a cargo of sugar, rum, molasses, or other New World goods.

            In 1497, Vasco de Gama sailed around the Cape of Good Hope and across the Indian Ocean to India, thereby opening a direct trade route around Africa to Asia. Portugal now had access to the riches, including the spices, of the East.

            As the Portuguese sailed down the West African coast and across the Indian Ocean, they established permanent trading forts. They were interested in developing trading partners in Africa and the East rather than in colonizing.

            At the time the Spanish were developing the sugar plantations on their Caribbean islands, the Portuguese were taking advantage of the Treaty of Tordesillas by harvesting the brazilwood trees located in the coastal forests of Brazil. The dense, orange-red heartwood of these trees produce a marketable red dye. The forests, once cleared, were replaced by sugar plantations. After decimating the indigenous population, the Portuguese imported enslaved people from West Africa. Because they had access to the slave trading ports of West Africa under the Treaty of Tordesillas, they had a direct route from West Africa to Brazil.

            Vasco Nunez de Balboa, a Spanish explorer, crossed the Isthmus of Panama to reach the Pacific Ocean. Across the Pacific was the eastern world and all of its riches, including spices.

            As the Spanish and Portuguese were developing their sugar plantations, the Caribbean Islands were becoming the staging grounds for Spain’s conquest of Central and South America. Cortez sailed from Cuba and landed in the Yucatan where he established a port at Vera Cruz in what is now Mexico. After conquering the Aztec Empire, an alliance of three city-states that ruled in and around the Valley of Mexico, he sent a force south to conquer what remained of the Mayan Empire. Neither the Aztecs nor the Mayans had mines. Their gold came from panning riverbeds or from trade with distant sources.

            Ferdinand Magellan approached the king of Portugal with a proposal to sail west around the world by traveling around the tip of South America. The king refused to finance Magellan’s voyage, so Magellan received funding from the king of Spain. After sailing around the tip of South America and west across the Pacific Ocean, Magellan reached the Philippine Islands and claimed them for Spain.

            Francisco Pizarro, on behalf of Spain, began the conquest of the Inca Empire that covered a large portion of western South America, centered in the Andean mountains. As Pizarro learned, the Incas also had no mines. Their silver and gold came entirely from surface sources found as nuggets or panned from riverbeds. The year after Pizarro began his conquest, Spain established Cartagena as a port on the northern coast of Columbia on the Caribbean.

            In 1545, the Spanish discovered silver mines at Potosi in modern Bolivia. This region, high in the Andes, was rich in mineral ore. Cartagena became a main port for exporting silver and importing enslaved people under the asiento system.

            The next year, silver was found in Zacatecas, Mexico. Over the next few years, other sources of silver were found in Mexico. At the same time, sources of gold were being discovered, although in lesser quantities. Vera Cruz became a main port for shipping Mexican silver and gold.

            Around 1560, the Spanish discovered silver mines in Peru. In 1565, the Spanish inaugurated the Manila galleon trade route. One or two Spanish galleons a year would bring spices, porcelain, ivory, lacquerware, and processed silk cloth from the East through the Philippines to Acapulco, Mexico, and return with silver from the Mexican and the Potosi mines. When a ship arrived in Acapulco, its cargo was transported across Mexico by mule train to Vera Cruz where it would be loaded onto ships bound for Spain.

            In 1597, Porto Bello on the Isthmus of Panama (now Colon) was founded to serve, along with Vera Cruz, as a port to ship silver from Bolivian and Peruvian mines to Havana and Spain.       

            These huge shipments of silver from Cartagena, Porto Bello, and Vera Cruz drew pirates to the Caribbean. Spanish vessels would sail from Spain on the trade winds south to the Canary Islands and then west across the Atlantic and around some of the islands of the Lesser Antilles and into the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. To return to Spain from Cartagena or Porto Bello, these vessels would follow the trade winds north through the Yucatan Channel between the Yucatan Peninsula and the western tip of Cuba, and then around the Florida Peninsula through the Florida Straits and north before turning east across the Atlantic. To return to Spain from Vera Cruz, the fleet would still need to pass through the Florida Straits. These trade routes and their narrow channels and straits provided pirates with the opportunity for easy plunder. They had no need to scour the Caribbean Sea for prey. To combat this danger, the Spanish adopted a convoy system. Instead of sending individual ships laden with silver across the Atlantic, a fleet would sail annually from Spain carrying European manufactured goods, passengers, and troops and return with a year’s worth of silver. Pirates would not attack a well-armed convoy but would wait for stragglers and then attack. When a fleet was not sailing, pirates would seize coastal traders or other vessels that needed to navigate the Florida Straits between Florida and Cuba, the Windward Passage between Cuba and Hispaniola, or the Mona Passage between Hispaniola and Puerto Rico.

            In the Pacific, the trade route between the Philippines and Mexico also presented an opportunity for pirates to capture goods from the East or silver from Mexico.

            As Spain’s military power in Europe weakened, so did its dominance in the Caribbean. England and France became powers on the rise. 

            In the early 1600s, England started settling Bermuda, a group of islands in the western North Atlantic Ocean, roughly eight hundred miles north-northeast of the West Indies and less than sixteen hundred miles from England.

            England, France, and the Dutch Republic began to settle the smaller Caribbean islands. England and France partitioned Saint Kitts into English and French sectors. England established a colony on Barbados in the Lesser Antilles. This island, the most easterly in the West Indies, became England’s sugar capital in the Caribbean. The English on Saint Kitts settled the nearby island of Nevis and then the islands of Antigua, Montserrat, Anguilla, and Tortola.

From Saint Kitts, the French settled Martinique, the Guadeloupe archipelago, and Saint Barthelemy (St. Barts). French Huguenots claimed the island of Tortuga off the northwest coast of Hispaniola. They also established the settlement of Petit-Goave on Hispaniola. Tortuga became a pirate and privateer haven and was used by smugglers of all nations.

By the mid-1600s, the Dutch Republic had become Europe’s economic powerhouse. The Dutch Republic settled Curaçao, an island off the northern coast of Venezuela. Curaçao would become a major maritime crossroads.

            In 1655, England captured Jamaica, the third-largest island of the Caribbean, from Spain. Jamaica is strategically located, ninety miles south of Cuba and one hundred twenty miles west of Hispaniola. Jamaica became a leading sugar exporter and the center for English activity in the Caribbean.

            Port Royal, on Jamaica’s southeastern coast, became an English trading center and openly welcomed privateers and pirates from around the world. Port Royal, until it was partially destroyed by an earthquake and tsunami in 1692, was known for its wealth and loose morals. Although some activity remained in Port Royal after the major destruction, it was ultimately replaced by neighboring Kingston as the capital city of Jamaica.

            In 1700, King Charles II of Spain died without heirs. His closest heirs were members of the competing Austrian Habsburg and French Bourbon families. The next year the War of the Spanish Succession began between Bourbon Spain and France, whose candidate was Philip, the grandson of King Louis XIV of France, and the Grand Alliance (Habsburg Spain, England, the Dutch Republic, and the Holy Roman Empire), whose candidate was Archduke Charles, the younger son of Leopold I, the Holy Roman Emperor. If Philip became king of Spain, he could ultimately become the king of both Spain and France. The balance of power in Europe was at stake.

            In North America, another war, the Queen Anne’s War, also known as the Second French and Indian War, broke out. This was a territorial war fought on three fronts: Newfoundland, New England, and the Spanish Florida/Eastern Province of Carolina. Although the West Indies was not within one of these three fronts, the silver being shipped from the Caribbean ports did finance the Spanish war effort both in Europe and America. The presence of the Royal Navy in the Caribbean was very limited, so the involvement of privateers to harass Spanish and French shipping was welcome and effective.

            As both wars were winding down in 1713, the letters of marque (the commissions) that legitimized the privateers, were expiring. The Royal Navy was reducing its fleet and dismissing its sailors. The West Indies, especially Jamaica, was being overrun with out-of-work sailors. Some privateers continued to attack Spanish and French shipping but without legal authority. Privateers were becoming pirates.           

            In 1713, pirates began migrating to Nassau on New Providence Island in the Bahamas. Nassau Harbor provided a pirate haven and convenient access to the Florida Straits (Florida and Cuba), the Windward Passage (Cuba and Hispaniola), and the Mona Passage (Hispaniola and Puerto Rico). These bottlenecks created danger points for Spanish shipping sailing the trade routes to and from Cartagena, Porto Bello, and Vera Cruz.

            On July 31, 1715, a Spanish plate fleet, which had sailed from Havana a week earlier, wrecked off the coast of Florida near San Sebastian Inlet. All eleven of the Spanish fleet were lost. Millions of pesos, bars of silver, jewels, and personal items of several thousand passengers were spread in the sand along a four mile stretch of coast line.

Pirates as well as others were drawn to the area to “fish” the many wrecks for the silver, gold, jewels, and other cargo laying in the sand near shore just waiting for a diver to pick up.

The evolution has been complete: spices to sugar to silver to pirates.