History of the Caribbean Parts 1,2,3: History | Music | Geography

the Caribbeans history is as richly colored as its geography from its birth and earliest inhabitants to the arrival of the Europeans through its stormy battles and struggles riddled with ancient gods and mysterious people's ravaged by pirates and adventurers missionaries and noblemen this is a land of colliding cultures and fiery passions it's the magic of the Caribbean and it is captivated for centuries crystal blue waters sun-drenched white beaches emerald mountains rising out of the sea this is the Caribbean of vacation brochures and travel guides but there's far more to the region than postcard views the Caribbeans beauty lies in its diversity from the tropical rainforest to Savannah from thorny woodlands and cactus scrub to mangrove swamps it's hard to find in so small an area a greater range of tropical natural beauty the Caribbean islands form a long narrow chain almost 2,500 miles long and up to 160 miles wide connecting North and South America geographically the islands fall into three major groups the Bahamas the Greater Antilles and the Lesser Antilles including the leeward and windward islands there's a growing number of people who who believe now that the Caribbean islands actually originated in the Pacific in excess of 150 160 million years ago at that point in time there was no Caribbean North America and South America were essentially pushed up against one another a piece of the Pacific moved into the area between North America and South America prying the two two continents apart if you look at the the islands from going from Cuba to Hispaniola to Puerto Rico to the Virgin Islands and then further on down you'll notice that they get progressively smaller and the general thinking is that these are parts of the Caribbean plate that essentially get caught up against the other side were ripped off in that tension and left behind then you get into the the windward islands the Lesser Antilles essentially east of east of st. Thomas and we have primarily volcanic islands and these are related to the eastern edge of the Caribbean where it pushes against the the North Atlantic islands such as Barbados and the Bahamas have coral origins their blocks of rock covered by limestone they include more than 700 small islands innumerable Kay's and hundreds of reefs lying only a few feet below the surface in the warm clear waters over 50 types of hard corals form the foundations of the reefs soft corals such as sea fans grow on top of them adding color and variety on land plant and animal life is just as diverse the primary reason is the trade winds when coming across the ocean which is obviously picking up moisture going up onto the high into the higher elevations up into the mountains you get into cooler area and because when it's cool it tends to make that moisture precipitate and so you tend to pick up moisture off of the east end of islands and dump it on the west ends and that's again as a function of the trade winds over 290 kinds of butterflies inhabit the Caribbean Trinidad and Tobago alone support 400 species of birds native plants have been used in Bush medicines and herbal remedies for generations curing anything from tooth aches to migraines iiep you have a terrible headache you know some people have headache they got a headache head to the front and the headache drop down there a sinus headache and then my Luxor we had a well if you have a terrible headache you get five of these leaves and you crush them when you finish crush them you heat them over the stove but don't burn them up and when it is hot you tie it on your forehead and tie one across here for the frontal headache Wendy Bush to Bush is cool you'll renew them with two heated Bush until you use up the oil five of them and when you use up the last five of them you come back and tell me where the headache is gone the Caribbean natives have always been resourceful living in harmony with their environment the most intriguing with a Maya of Mexico and Central America the ancient Maya created one of the most fascinating civilizations of pre-columbian America it rose flourished and then vanished deep in the tropical rainforest leaving nothing but silent ruins an extremely advanced society the Maya understood astronomy and positioned their pyramids to indicate the spring and fall equinoxes human sacrifice was an important part of their religion often to appease the god Chuck moon the Maya also played a primitive form of basketball two teams competed on a court attempting to knock a heavy rubber ball through an elevated stone hoop the winners received a sacrificial victim sometimes the opposing teams captain Mayan culture also influenced other Indians who migrated throughout South America the first peopling of the whole American continent including Canada and North America and South America began twenty to thirty thousand years ago and they went through the Bering Strait when there was it was covered with ice so they could go by foot and cross the channel at that time and they then inhabited North America and then South America so they are related by the religious thoughts and some of the symbols that are found either on petroglyphs done by the Mayans or on their ceramics some of the designs the decorations the animals that were considered as deities in the Caribbean and by the Mayans in Central America are alike so they had the influences from Central America from the Mayans they had the ball game they the many style of decorations that are really alike with Central America on the islands recorded history begins with the arrival of Columbus all that we know about the native inhabitant of acts' and the observations of the Europeans some of which were more fanciful than factual era wax inhabited most of the islands moving about in canoes big enough to carry 50 people Columbus marveled at their length the Indians introduced the Explorers to pineapple tobacco hammocks and rubber balls which the Europeans had never seen before when we are excavating when the Occulus are digging in the ground we are creating artificial walls as you see here that we call a profile in which you can see the different layers of deposits made by different Indians at different time we find also broken pieces of pottery and different artifacts that helps us to identify the way the Indians lived and the kind of material and tools they had to live the Arawak Indians were Agriculture's and they needed stone tools to cut down the big trees before planting their crops so this is a stone axe that was polished it's basaltic a stone that is found in the Caribbean and they polished it by grinding it on another stone like that and as you can see it is a shiny beautiful axe that we found on San Martin and it was stuck with the natural or glue into a big stick and use like this to cut down the trees before planting the crops only about 200 years before Columbus came and a new group of Indians entered the Caribbean we call them war like people because they did indeed Concord arrow the arrow backs and they were the caps they came from South America by the way just like the para wax and the their culture was based on war waging and domination of under cutter groups the Carib Society was a male-dominated society in which warfare for the purpose of obtaining captives and booty was considered a preeminent and through the history of the Caribbean both in the terms of prehistory and colonial history you have a recurring theme of enslavement and resistance certainly slavery was not introduced by Europeans there is very clear evidence that Native American cultures and engage in war fair with one another and enslaved each other before the arrival of Columbus the perhaps most probably went all over the Caribbean but they didn't settle and the their most northerly settlement still in the Caribbean is in Dominica because the Caribbean islands lie so close to each other it was easy for the native people to migrate between them exploring from island to island but it would take until the 15th century before the first white man ever set foot in the Caribbean and even then it was my accident stay tuned we'll be right back with part 2 of the history of the Caribbean it took Columbus eight years to secure the backing to make his trip several royal committees and monarchs considered his proposal before Spain fun it took Columbus eight years to secure the backing to make his trip several royal committees and monarchs considered his proposal before Spain finally committed in return for making the voyage Columbus was supposed to receive 10% of the revenues his trip generated Spain never delivered but then again neither did Columbus he never found the westerly route to the Indies Columbus had a rough chart that described for him a place called sip Pangu which is the contemporary Japan being some three thousand leagues to the west of Spain a veteran sailor Columbus knew to head south first to catch the prevailing winds he couldn't be sure that when he launched out backed by what we call the trade winds today that when he got over there he was going to be able to find a way back Columbus said his bearings in direction by dead reckoning he used a magnetic compass and guessed his speed by watching objects float by and by reckoning the distance by time he was then able to plot his course across the ocean and what's interesting of course is that he upon desiring to return doesn't go back this way doesn't even go back the way that he came but beats north goes north until he finds the winds that he apparently expected to be there he first landed in the Bahamas on what is believed to be Watling Island and there encountered some Lucayan Indians Columbus reported them to be gentle to be unselfish to be giving he rewarded all of that by kidnapping them and eventually of course their policies of Spain led to their destruction on the second trip he was commissioned to set up a trading post in Hispaniola this time instead of three small vessels he commanded an armada of 17 and founded La Isabela on the northern coast of the Dominican Republic situated on swampy low-lying land the city was abandoned for better locations among them Santo Domingo a city of many firsts including the first Church word of his discovery travelled quickly other European powers sent their own explorers in the four years following Columbus's discovery more than 80 voyages were made maps and logs from each voyage were not shared but became national secrets he so called old world that is this a Europe and Africa and the new world both North and South America's that have come to be called were linked permanently and in exchange both in terms of culture in terms of biodiversity flowed both ways almost immediately the Spanish began to impose their beliefs missionaries accompanied Columbus on his second voyage and soon taught the Indians to read write and quote observe good customs as well as play musical instruments for church services but the education and conversion of the Indians came at a cost their potential equality in the sight of God was a threat the Spanish insisted on the natural inferiority of Indians so they could justify the Indians enslavement there was great debate in not only among religious circles but in secular non-religious circles about whether Indians were indeed truly human beings and that debates centered on the issue of whether Indians had souls it was said by the queen of Spain that they should leave the Indians in peace accept the candy bars and the Indians that were had not a Christian way of living so this is why most of the Indians in the West Indies were called cannibals so that it gives them the right to kill them or to bring them to slavery a scenario destined to repeat itself began on a number of islands first an expeditionary force explored the island and searched for gold any rebellious Indians were enslaved or killed and a brief Gold Rush followed a few years later with the mines exhausted the settlers moved on hundreds of thousands of Indians died some from overwork some from collective suicide what really conquered this part of the world of smallpox yeah you see the Spaniards brought smallpox to this part of the world Columbus an active el Amur a man ego and all the rest of them and this part of the world especially the Amerindians had no resistance to support for smallpox at all they were totally virgin people and of course when smallpox hit them they died like flies islands that had gold became Spanish settlements those without gold were raided to supply more Indian slaves for instance the Bahamas were completely depopulated well the Spanish for the most part were not interested in agriculture they were only interested in acquiring or exploiting ready mineral wealth that is to say silver and gold none of the Lesser Antilles from st. Croix to Trinidad had that type of mineral wealth to exploit there were some silver and gold mines in Puerto Rico some in Hispaniola and the course much more in Central and South America as a consequence the Spanish focused their efforts there and in those regions we're ready mineral wealth could be exploited ultimately the Caribbean became a Waystation for riches shipped from the mainland settlements on the main trade route were fortified if you see a Spanish fort assume this was a stop on the main trade route the Pope formerly you could say gave the Americas to Spain so once you sailed up to the Caribbean you first of all already entered Spanish territory but once you slip through the islands into the Caribbean Sea then you were in Spanish lake so to say Spanish inland sea in their eyes so you had absolutely no rights to be there as a non Spanish boat Spain controlled the Caribbean to break their monopoly of trade European adventurers began to attack Spanish shipping no one did more to hasten the decline of the Spanish Empire and Sir Francis Drake the greatest episode in the history of piracy was Drake's overland attack on Cartagena a Drake actually captured the city and sacked it before having to withdraw having quote-unquote singed the king of Spain's beard certainly signal to other European powers the French the Dutch who were also engaged in piracy and privateering activities the signal that the Spanish were no longer immune from this sort of attack even in their strongholds for the next 100 years a rogue's gallery of pirates sailed the Spanish mane the pirate Blackbeard was as eccentric as he was notorious he braided his beard with colorful ribbons then accented the look with cords of slow-burning hemp his favorite drink was a mixture of rum and gunpowder and he was married to no less than 14 women money fought with a ferocity that could match any man she sailed with another woman and together they became known as the bloody sisters when their ship was attacked her drunken husband and his men hid below leaving the women to fight alone and was captured but escaped being hung by pleading she was pregnant as for her husband he went to the gallows with Ann's benediction had you fought like a man you need not have been hanged like a dog during the 16 60s and 70s Port Royal was one of the world's richest and wickedest cities located near Kingston Jamaica the Pirates openly flourished there for two decades attacking Spanish treasure ships that sailed past their coast Port Royal was destroyed by an earthquake in the late 17th century and slid beneath the sea port Royals most famous citizen Sir Henry Morgan plundered ships throughout the Caribbean but he didn't confine his activities to the high seas he sacked whole settlements in Cuba Venezuela and Panama the british eventually arrested him but in a surprising stroke of luck he gained the favor of the king was knighted and returned to Jamaica as lieutenant governor Morgan is interesting also in that he used his the wealth acquired in his years of piracy to establish a legitimate political base or power structure on the island of Jamaica and paradoxically in his later years actually was in the position to have to prosecute pirates while gold put the Caribbean on the map it was sugar that built the economy the climate was perfect for growing sugarcane for the next 250 years the Caribbeans fortunes rose and fell with the price of sugar the great sugar plantations were established in the early days of English colonization the late 1600s a cheap workforce was needed and African slaves were imported to meet the demand when the slave trade finally ended over four million Africans had come to the Caribbean changing the islands forever growers produced two products Muscovado a coarse sugar and molasses which was used in the making of rum the potential profits from successful trading voyages were enormous sugar became virtually as good as gold and the islands economies flourished well you must remember that in the 17th and 18th century sugar was a very expensive commodity and a great luxury and the planters in Jamaica the sugar planters made a great deal of money they didn't make very much sugar they make it by the hogshead rather than by the ton but they made enormous amount of money nonetheless the planters and their wives instead lived a life of luxury especially in terms of social life entertainment glittering dinners and soirees and balls great houses filled with exquisite mahogany furniture crafted in Europe or in North America the West Indies were considered so economically valuable because of their produce of sugar molasses rum cotton tropical hardwoods that for example at the end of the Seven Years War France as the loser of that war was willing to cede all of French Canada to the British to retain one island in the West Indies they considered one sugar producing island of the West Indies to be more valuable than all of French Canada the richest colony of them all was France's Haiti it alone provided more profit to its mother country than all of England's 13 American colonies but changes occurred and the prosperity ended the Americans freed themselves from the British the French overthrew their own monarchy liberty equality and fraternity reigned but nothing changed for the slaves in Haiti slavery in Haiti was more brutal than most and it was as a result of that long-standing repression and brutality that caused slaves in Haiti to plan an insurrection which by its magnitude caught the French in Haiti completely unprepared and under the leadership of Toussaint L'Ouverture feeted French forces Toussaint L'Ouverture even governed Haiti for a while before Napoleon sent thousands of battle-tested troops to retake the island Toussaint's Army was overwhelmed although he didn't live to see it the rebellion Toussaint L'Ouverture led became the first slave uprising in history to achieve freedom and Haiti became the first nation in the Caribbean over the next 50 years slaves were freed throughout the Caribbean sugar production declined and when German scientists found a way to extract sugar from sugar beets profits fell sugar could now be produced more cheaply on the continent and consumed without shipping with its gold reserves exhausted and sugar less profitable the Caribbean dwindled in importance at one time the region had produced the most prized colonies on the planet now only Cuba still contributed to its mother country's Treasury colonialism was ending and a new era was about to begin stay with us history of the Caribbean will continue one event sparked American interest in the Caribbean the building of the Panama Canal suddenly the islands became important to the canals defense and as the military focused on the region business soon followed American capitalists rebuilt the sugar banana and coffee industries their commercial interests however led to intervention in Cuba Haiti and the Dominican Republic an explosion on the main a u.s. ship anchored in havana harbor ignited the spanish-american war Teddy Roosevelt having served as the secretary of the Navy resigned to form his own volunteer militant Alysha group of cavalry men consisting I believe mostly of cowboys from his days when he served as a cowboy in the Badlands of the Dakotas and recruited them to form his military group which was known as the Rough Riders the United States blockaded Cuba and soon trapped Spain's Caribbean fleet in Santiago Harbor then the Rough Riders closed in from the hills surrounding Santiago the Spanish Admiral tried to run the American blockade and his squadron was destroyed the war marked the end of Spain's colonial empire and the beginning of the American when the u.s. received Puerto Rico as a war reparation from Spain the United States acquired its second Caribbean territory during World War one President Wilson convinced Congress the Germans were going to receive the Virgin Islands in a swap with Denmark the United States was especially concerned that the Germans if they were to acquire the Danish West Indies would then convert st. Thomas Harbor into a large naval and especially u-boat base and cut off the Caribbean approaches to the Panama Canal which had just been open in 1914 in order to preempt the Germans the United States made the Danes and economic offer they could not refuse and acquired the islands by purchase the transfer going through on March 31st 1917 less than two weeks before the United States formal entry into World War one on the side of the Allies st. Thomas was originally established as a free port by the Danish crown and the United States had to maintain the islands duty-free status as part of the purchase agreement that's why travelers from st. Thomas still have to pass through customs before entering the US mainland one of the first ports of call in the Caribbean was the Bahamas which were visited by steam passenger ships at the end of the 19th century combination cruise and cargo ships were the only contact with the outside world for many of the islands people came on to the Virgin Islands in big steam cruise ships steam liners that they even had a coal Depot at West Indian docks that when these steamboats came in you had women and men actually carrying coals that was stored down there in West Indian company warehouses to fuel refuel these ships for weeks would often pass before the next ship arrived the Islanders would put on their finest clothing and row out to the ships to dance share drinks and be photographed in the early 20th century banana boats began bringing passengers into Jamaica it was the United Fruit Company has really started tourism when they started banana trading they ran boats very nice boats both to England and to America in fact when I was young the only way to get to England or America was by a banana boat they were very well run and they built the first tourist hotels here in fact several hotels sprang up to accommodate the ever-increasing number of visitors the luxury ones became trendy vacation spots for luminaries such as Clara Bow and Errol Flynn World War two's greatest effect in the Caribbean was on tourism the US had taken control of military bases of old British West Indies Islands in exchange for fifty American naval destroyers military engineers had constructed barracks fortified harbors and extended airport runways returning American soldiers told wonderful stories of the islands beauty what is significant about the world war two in the Caribbean was that those very same American lend-lease bases from the British especially the air bases and the naval ports formed the basis in the early 50s for the flood route fledgling tourist industry to the West Indies Airlines began making use of the military runways ships began to specialize in cruises alone and the islands began to promote tourism ultimately Jets made travel faster and less expensive enabling the industry to develop further from the US mainland explorers still come to the Caribbean only now they're armed with cameras and their interest is recreational the islands they discover already have names and nationalities all their own the Caribbean region now consists of independent states associated States and colonial dependencies whatever their current status the islands early influences remain the modern Caribbean is a dynamic collision of cultures African Asian European Native American and American Creole the blending of old traditions on new soil is standard practice in every islands culture and Creole languages are found on most of the Caribbean islands English was a dominated language at the time here and then of course you had the Africans being brought in from West Africa and they spoke their own tongues and then they incorporated some of their words and French words English words and they came up with this language was called a Dutch Creole the planters themselves and the owners of the estates and their overseers could not understand this language the creole languages are used for informal communication and served to bond each island's populace together accents and inflections differ the English you hear on Barbados sounds different from the English in Jamaica and the music you'll hear will be just as different the sheer musical diversity of the Caribbean is unequaled virtually every country or island has its own song and dance style ska Zook Cotton's merengue calypso soca or the most popular Caribbean music in the world reggae to name just a few the thing that makes Caribbean music fascinating is the combination of the Western influences the European influences and the African influences these things found their way to the Caribbean and got blended somewhat differently on each Island and come up with this wonderful mix that we refer to is as Latin or Caribbean music but the music is based not from the bottom up like western music you don't have a bass part that is embellished with chords and a melody but it's embellished from the top down from the river first when everybody thinks of African music they think of the drums this drum here is is from Ghana and notice the similarities between this Ghanaian drum and this drum which of course commonly referred to as a conga drum and many people feel that conga came from the Congo of course the one thing that makes the music distinctive from straight African music are the harmonic and melodic influences of the western music that came from Europe just about any music from any Island will have that klav a influence Lobby sounds like this calypso music for instance is just the three without the two and you have to understand something about calypso music as well being that they could not play drums the Africans living here in the Danish West Indies at time drumming was outlawed because I was a form of communication so that would make him song say something happened on the plantation today seda mastered master Jan were right in the heart of highest ROI mova and he landed and pick a pear cactus or soccer cactus and these soccer cactus they penetrate your skin okay so you know master John was in a lot of pain today so when they will lose their makeup a Calypso a song and then I'll sing the song to you so you can take the sound with you and there's a form of communication spread it like a newspaper that's hope missile was formed the steel pan or a steel drum produces the sound most closely associated with calypso the festival most closely associated with calypso is carnival the streets fill with ritual dancers and stick Fighters traditional costumes and characters since I'm a retired former Mukul Juba dancer where I danced on stilts but that art form came from West Africa and muku means seeker a seeker of good and a seeker of evil as well but you would outcast evil and bring in the good Trinidad has the largest and best-known of the carnivals in the Caribbean the Protestant islands tend to have a Christmas Festival commonly called Junkanoo it combines West African characters with traditional English masked dancers or mummers over the centuries the Caribbean has captivated millions of travelers its beauty is timeless these are the waters that Indians crossed Columbus sailed and Drake fought for and now you are part of that continuing tradition the Caribbeans of place of part where vestiges of the past resonate into the future you'll hear it in the African rhythms and the English accents see it in the Spanish churches and the new england-style houses tasted in the French sauces and Irish liqueurs immensely diverse constantly changing the Caribbeans a mixture of new ideas and new combinations here people are free to adapt an experiment and you are now part of the rhythm and influence a participant you don't just visit the Caribbean you become part of it and it becomes part of you look around and take it in the memories await you

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Keywords: Caribbean (Region), Caribbean Sea (Body Of Water), caribbean islands, travel, Cruise Ship (Transit Vehicle Type), vacation, history of caribbean, music, island, St. Thomas, St. Croix, Cayman, Cozumel, St Martin, ship, sail, cruise, Ocean, Sailing, Islands, Documentary

Id: 0gms3_CQ2sU

Length: 39min 14sec (2354 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 15 2015