Is slavery inevitable in the Caribbean?

Maoistic

Banned
You seem to have also completely misunderstood that part about William the Conqueror.

No, I didn't. The guy talked as if William the Conqueror would have arrived in empty Caribbean islands and as if the natives were a complete non-variable in the 11th century.
 
No, I didn't. The guy talked as if William the Conqueror would have arrived in empty Caribbean islands and as if the natives were a complete non-variable in the 11th century.

Yes. You did. I know this, as I wrote the words.

...If you want a PoD - have it so that when Britain starts colonising it continues the law on No Slave Trading that was brought forth by William the Conquer back in 1066. Suddenly buying a mess of slaves for use on cheap land isn't possible.

To assist your reading comprehension. The PoD is WHEN BRITAIN STARTS COLONISING. 1066 is a reference to roughly when the anti-slave trade law was introduced in England. The PoD is NOT that Britain colonises earlier, because... how could it? It doesn't have the boats, or the money, or the foreknowledge of the Americas.

Your interpretation isn't just odd, it is utterly absurd.

Sidenote : I have a name. @RogueTraderEnthusiast . Use it, I'm not a smegging cat.
 
The Europeans brought the natives from their mainland American colonies to replace the natives of the Caribbean that were being killed from overworking. More probably but still extremely unlikely since the Europeans also wanted to exploit their mainland colonies just as much, which was impossible if they redirected the natives working there to the Caribbean.

Incidentally, this did happen to some degree between English colonies. The trouble was, people from the American continent were just as susceptible to dying quickly as the Caribbeans they were supposed to replace.
 

Maoistic

Banned
Yes. You did. I know this, as I wrote the words.



To assist your reading comprehension. The PoD is WHEN BRITAIN STARTS COLONISING. 1066 is a reference to roughly when the anti-slave trade law was introduced in England. The PoD is NOT that Britain colonises earlier, because... how could it? It doesn't have the boats, or the money, or the foreknowledge of the Americas.

Your interpretation isn't just odd, it is utterly absurd.

Sidenote : I have a name. @RogueTraderEnthusiast . Use it, I'm not a smegging cat.


Yes, I know that, and that's why I wrote a separate post actually addressing the thread. I simply was taking an exception to you talking as if William the Conqueror could have settled and colonised the Caribbean just like that.
 
Basically at the time the Caribbean was settled, the most profitable crop was sugarcane. Once slavery went away, sugar had comeptition from sugar beets and production elsewhere, the islands basically became a backwater. Most of the current agricultural production on the smaller islands (excluding Cuba, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico) is for local/regional consumption - not major export crops. Some spices, Jamaican coffee, and so forth are export earners but agriculture is way behind things like oil production, some minerals, and tourism. If you don't grow sugarcane, the islands remain backwaters with colonial fortifications and much smaller populations.
 
Should we classify the areas differently? Greater Antilles from Lesser Antilles and such. Unsure if there would be a need to split up the Windward and Leeward Islands. Anyways, there were cannibals in the Caribbean, correct? I feel there were somewhere, though given how quickly the populatoin of the Caribbean died off I don't know if there was a lot of records on them that would be considered scholarly or whatever. Anyways, Europeans would likely go after and slaughter them if their are raids against Europeans, and other tribes will look to the Spaniards for protection, so long as they are not used as forced labor or don't die too quickly from disease, before some can build an immunity, possibly allowing there to be a reasonably sized local workforce. Maybe it gets to be like the Canaries. Ahhh, and buccaneers... named after roasting pigs. I imagine that pigs and goats will be dropped on various islands so sailors can land for meat, as they did in many Pacific Islands. Might allow some settlers are each island.
 
Yes, I know that, and that's why I wrote a separate post actually addressing the thread. I simply was taking an exception to you talking as if William the Conqueror could have settled and colonised the Caribbean just like that.

But I didn't. That is the point.

But whatever, you don't care to listen.
 
Cheap land suitable for labor intensive, highly profitable crops with a disease decimated native population. Sadly it looks inevitable.
 
People tend to forget this: Sugar plantation economy went from Brazil to the Caribbean with the Dutch and Iberians Jews as the Portuguese reconquered Northeastern Brazil.

If you manage to keep the Dutch in Brazil and if they ~somehow~ manage to monopolize sugar trade in a way that the other powers wouldn't be able to even try to emulate the same business model elsewhere... Then, yes, it's possible that slave labor wouldn't be so predominant in the Caribbean. However, it would require a serious Dutch-wank.
 
People tend to forget this: Sugar plantation economy went from Brazil to the Caribbean with the Dutch and Iberians Jews as the Portuguese reconquered Northeastern Brazil.

If you manage to keep the Dutch in Brazil and if they ~somehow~ manage to monopolize sugar trade in a way that the other powers wouldn't be able to even try to emulate the same business model elsewhere... Then, yes, it's possible that slave labor wouldn't be so predominant in the Caribbean. However, it would require a serious Dutch-wank.
This is a good starting point. Dutch Brazil is okay by me, to be honest.

Would other crops, such as tea or coffee in the Caribbean butterfly the need for African saves though?
 
This is a good starting point. Dutch Brazil is okay by me, to be honest.

Would other crops, such as tea or coffee in the Caribbean butterfly the need for African saves though?

I'm not convinced that ending Sugar Plantations in the Caribbean would matter. Plantations of any crop would equally benefit from slave labour, creating the same incentives to import slave labour.

The basic problem is replacing Slave Labour with Free Labour. Be it through immigration, or local reproduction. Unless you stimulate Free Labour, or make it the only option, you aren't going to solve the problem.

An approach I think I'd find interesting in a TL, if we go with my Free British Caribbean PoD, is have the Free British Caribbean welcome anti-slavery privateers/pirates. Go capture slave ships, get paid a bounty for the ship and its slaves, and release the slaves as Free Men. You get the same population increases as slavery (with greater survival rates). (Note : You have to include the ship, otherwise you're basically buying and freeing slaves, which defeats the point).

The additional ships are a boon too, as they allow more mercantile activity than shipyards could otherwise afford.

The biggest risk is all out war between the FBC and the rest of the Caribbean. But if the FBC is strong enough, that could further the end of slavery in the Caribbean rather than reverse it.
 
Slaves are expensive. During the three first centuries only three crops used an imense amount of slave labor: sugar, tobacco and cotton. The others, such as rice and indigo, were only minor products in the larger colonial scheme. Certainly, you can have an earlier introduction of tea and coffee plantations in the Americas but it will require a somewhat big POD that disrupts Asian production of tea and an earlier appreciation of coffee in Europe.

IMHO without the proper economic impulse slavery wouldn't be so predominant in the Caribbean.
 
Last edited:
Top