The Sugar Barons

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Book: The Sugar Barons Read Online Free PDF
Author: Matthew Parker
Tags: #genre
part of the landscape, rather than the owners of it.
These intoxicating stories were complemented by a new English knowledge of the region. Drake watered and rested his crews at various of the Leeward Islands, burying his dead and sometimes trading with the native Caribs. Between 1584 and 1602 all Raleigh’s Virginia fleets passed through the Antilles on the way. Hundreds more mariners had brought back information about where was dangerous and where looked promising. Thus,although plundering and smuggling would continue unabated, a new impulse emerged alongside: settlement.
However much imperial strength had ebbed, the first settlements were concentrated nonetheless around the peripheries of Spanish power, probing at weak spots.
North of Florida, Spanish potency was negligible. Colonies still failed, but in May 1607, a lasting English settlement was established in Jamestown, Virginia. After early setbacks, it prospered, thanks to its cultivation of tobacco. In 1620 the Plymouth colony was started, and further north the Dutch were settling around New Amsterdam by 1624.
Partly inspired by Raleigh’s El Dorado fantasy, 1604 saw the first of many doomed English attempts to settle around the Waiapoco River, situated in a semi-no-man’s-land between the Amazon, controlled by Portugal, and the Orinoco, held by Spain. The first British effort to settle in the Caribbean came the following year, when a relief ship for the Guiana colony lost its bearings and ended up depositing a group of 67 settlers at St Lucia. The small but mountainous island had not been occupied by the Spanish, partly because it was home to a tribe of Caribs, whose warlike and supposedly cannibalistic nature was fast becoming legendary. The Caribs were at first friendly with the English, but then fell out over a sword sold to them against the rules and then reclaimed without compensation. After a sharp exchange, the surviving 19 settlers fled the island. An attempt at nearby Grenada four years later met with a similar fate, though fewer escaped.
The experience of St Lucia and Grenada did not bode well for further colonising attempts in the Carib-dominated Antilles. Furthermore, the islands, although not occupied by Spain, were on the imperial shipping routes, and the policy of the Emperor was to expel any European found trespassing on his American domain.
Nonetheless, on 28 January 1623, Englishman Thomas Warner landed a small group of settlers on the island of St Christopher, better known as St Kitts, a mountainous island of 65 square miles, situated in the northern Antilles. Warner, described as ‘a man of extraordinary agility of body and a good witt’, was a younger son of gentleman-yeoman stock. He had been involved in one of the many failed English settlements in Guiana. There, he had been advised to look at St Kitts, seemingly fertile, well watered and neglected by the Spaniards. Warner had returned home and gained the support of London merchant and his Suffolk neighbour Charles Jeaffreson. His party was at first welcomed by the local Carib chief Tegreeman, and allowed to make a settlement at Old Road. The purpose of the colony, like Barbados four years later, was tobacco. By September, Warner had raisedhis first crop, only to see it destroyed by a hurricane. Undaunted and, frankly, with no other option, Warner’s men set to planting again, but in the meantime, relations with the Caribs had deteriorated. The English were building a fort, something that seems to have displeased the Carib chief, and rumours started circulating that the Caribs were planning a surprise attack. Warner reacted quickly and ruthlessly. Having invited the Caribs to a lavish, drink-fuelled feast, he then had them massacred as they lay dozing in their hammocks. Only a few were able to escape across the water in their canoes.
This was not the end of the Carib threat, because there were other settlements on neighbouring islands within sight of St Kitts. Warner realised his appalling
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