Slavery and Emancipation Columbus in the Caribbean, Slavery and Slaughter
In 1506, regarding the Indians of the West Indies, Columbus wrote, “They were, and are, the wealth of that country. It is they who dig and produce bread and food for the Christians. It is they who extract gold from the mines; and perform all other services, not only of men, but of beasts of burden.”[513]
When Columbus arrived, there were between 70 and 100 million people living in the Americas, more than the population of Europe, which had only 60 or 65 million inhabitants. A century later, the settlers and explorers had catastrophically reduced the population of the Americas to a mere 12 to 15 million and by the end of the seventeenth century to eleven to thirteen million. This descending curve began to move upward in the eighteenth century, when the white populations began increasing.[514]
Slavery is obviously an appalling violation of natural law, as most people understand and view natural law, or the law of nature. Slavery is involuntary and without the consent of those compelled to labor for the financial benefit of others. Because nature itself established moral standards, therefore, it is applicable to everyone and everywhere. As used by the founders, natural law employs logic to examine human nature to determine requisite rules of ethical behavior. Many of the founders claimed to recognize and even publicly and formally advocate natural law as a regulatory monitor for human relationships, yet many of them were slave owners who retained their slaves for the duration of their lives. George Washington magnanimously freed his slaves in his will.[515] Hypocritically, the elite established the parameters of natural law but failed to apply it to people they considered below their cultural and social status and they certainly did not regard the indigenous population or African captives worthy of such considerations. Even then, as now, there existed an enormous, but apparently unheeded, discrepancy between political rhetoric and political behavior.
In Europe, land was the primary source for producing revenue so land ownership was understandably a necessity. Alternatively, private land ownership was non-existent in the African cultural and legal system, which has a lengthy history of slavery. In Africa, the upper classes owned and used slaves as the primary source of revenue-producing property. Inheritable, taxable wealth production exists in both cultures – whether it is products from the land or products from someone else’s labor. African slave trading was widespread prior to the European’s acceptance and participation in the institution. Britain’s elite and their slave trading partners utilized the existing slave delivery system to their benefit.
Central African slaves, indicative of the owner’s wealth, were dependent, loyal and valuable to their owners. They managed administrative tasks, functioned in the military and could acquire wealth and power as well as producing wealth for their masters. People outside of the Central African culture consistently viewed the slaves as not particularly valuable other than for revenue production. Traders and their agents kidnapped a majority of them. Therefore, they were expendable, especially in high volume commercial ventures. Early labor-intensive commercial crops like cotton, indigo, tobacco, and sugar generated the evolution of the plantation system. It required a very large labor force to maximize profits. In 1419, the Portuguese, who had a large naval fleet, “discovered” Madeira, an archipelago in the mid- Atlantic Ocean. They soon colonized it and planted sugar cane, which became the leading cash crop. In 1448, the Portuguese, in need of more labor, kidnapped more than 1,000 Africans to work on their plantations. Each year they seized an additional 800 to 900 Africans for slave labor.
In 1484, Columbus proposed his plan, the “Enterprise of the Indies,” to John II, “John the Perfect,” the King of Portugal. He wanted the king to equip three ships to search for a western route to the Orient. Unfortunately, the king was preoccupied with the potential civil war and disputes with Spain to consider
Portuguese sea exploration. Columbus also wanted the king to designate him as the “Great Admiral of the Ocean Sea” (the Atlantic Ocean), the appointment as governor of all lands that he discovered, and one- tenth of all the revenue from those lands. The king, his experts, and his scientific council rejected his proposals.[516]
The king may have been indignant over Columbus’s demands and his “overbearing manner.” However, he did consider his requests, even presenting the adventurer’s ideas to a scientific council who apparently decided that Columbus failed to convince them that there was a westward route to the Indies. Even after the council’s negative response, the king apparently remained interested in the project. He even secretly directed some navigators to take two vessels and sail west to determine if Columbus’s objectives were realistic. The ships returned as they had encountered strong head winds. The king abandoned the project, as he had no choice, due to the economic circumstances in his country. Columbus, still intent on the project, simply had to find the financial and political support elsewhere.[517]
Politicians, educators and some historians have all but canonized the son of mapmaker, Domingo Colón – Cristóbal Colón, now known as Christopher Columbus (1451-1506), a Genoese mapmaker, who received training in the Madeira sugar trade, which undoubtedly involved an affiliation with slavery. Those same people refer to him as the “great navigator,” as America’s first great hero. Numerous individuals, including many in the Jewish community, claim that his family was a Spanish-Jewish family that settled in Genoa, Italy. His Spanish-Jewish friends arranged for him to meet with the Spanish Monarchs in 1486.[518] Authors, Tina Levitan, Harry L. Golden and Martin Rywell claim that Columbus was a Jew. Golden and Rywell base their assertion on the statement of Ferdinand Columbus, Christopher’s son. He wrote that his father’s “progenitors were of the royal blood of Jerusalem.” Whether he was or was not a Jew, the Jews financed his exploration.[519] Columbus’ plan of sailing west from Iberia in order to find a faster route to the Indies proved incorrect. He wanted to establish a faster and more efficient course than traveling the overland trade route through Arabia. If his idea proved correct, Spanish traders could engage in the lucrative spice trade, which the Arabs and Italians had always dominated.
Luis de Santángel, a baptized Jew, functioned as the finance minister to Ferdinand II. Santángel’s grandfather had converted to Christianity because of the pervasive Spanish persecutions, but many members of his family and other Jewish families remained secret Jews (Marranos, Sephardic Jews). In 1486, through Santángel’s influence, Columbus presented his plan to Ferdinand and Isabella and following a consultation with others, they rejected it. Meanwhile, many European countries were expelling the Jews from their country. On January 13, 1489, Rabbi Chemor of Arles in Provence, France wrote the Grand Sanhedrin because the local population of Arles threatened the synagogues. On November 21, 1489, the Grand Satraps and Rabbis responded: “As for what you say that the King of France obliges you to become Christians: do it, since you cannot do otherwise, but let the law (Talmud) be kept in your hearts.” He advised the Jews to adopt the strategy of the “Trojan Horse.” He urged them to encourage their sons to become Christians, lawyers, doctors, and other professions in order to work within the society to destroy the cultural structure.[520]
In 1491, Columbus met privately with Queen Isabella and persuaded her to reconsider the possibilities of such a voyage. Luis de Santángel and Gabriel Sanchez provided almost five million maravedis (Iberian coins) to finance the voyage. In recognition of his financial assistance, on February 15, 1493, Columbus wrote a lengthy personal letter to Santángel to describe his discoveries.[521] Alfonso de la Caballeria and Diego de Deza also financially assisted Columbus.[522] On May 30, 1497, Ferdinand issued a royal decree that protected Santángel and his current and future family from the inquisition.
Abraham Zacuto, the Court Astronomer and Royal Mathematician to the Portuguese, prepared Columbus’ astronomical tables. Zacuto’s calculated that there would be a solar eclipse. Columbus, with this
knowledge, told the Jamaican natives that he would make the sun disappear if they harmed him or his crew. Don Isaac Abravanel, a biblical scholar, loaned Ferdinand and Isabella the money to finance their war with Granada. He also helped finance Columbus’ voyage. Despite his assistance and status, Spanish officials expelled him and his family along with 300,000 other Jews. He went to Italy, the refuge of other expellees, perhaps even the family of Christopher Columbus.[523] He wrote Ha-Hibur ha-Gadol, a major astronomical work.[524] Many of the Jews immigrated to Holland, where they established the Dutch West Indies Company to exploit the New World.
Abraham Zacuto, after his expulsion from his native Spain, became the Royal Mathematician to the Portuguese royal court. In Portugal, he perfected the astrolabe (navigational instrument), created astronomical tables, and significantly improved navigational precision on the high seas. Columbus used Zacuto’s tables for his journeys. Individuals have preserved these artifacts, along with Columbus’ annotations, in Seville.[525]
Columbus, the fleet commander and navigator of three ships, the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, set sail on August 3, 1492, the day after Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain expelled the last Jews from their lands through a decree they issued on March 31, 1492.[526] [527] The Jews had accumulated fortunes in slave trading and had moved up in Spain’s hierarchy, acquired influential government positions, in the counting houses, and dominated regional trade. Thus, many concluded that they had too much power over the regional economy so the rulers told the Jews to convert to Christianity or leave.[528]
On the night of October 11, 1492, Columbus, on board the Santa Maria in the Atlantic Ocean and proceeding west, believed he saw a flicker of light in the distance. A while later, Rodrigo de Triana, a lookout on the Pinta sighted land.[529] On October 12, 1492, at two hours after midnight, de Triana fired the cannon to indicate the sighting of land. Just after dawn, Columbus set foot on a sandy atoll. He claimed the land for Queen Isabella and her husband King Ferdinand.[530] Instead of arriving in the Indies, he landed within the Bahamas Archipelago, off the coast of Guanaham, the name the natives gave to their island.
When the native Arawaks saw the three strange ships, they initially “fled to the hills.” However, within a short time, curiosity overruled wisdom and they left the safety of the forests.[531] The Bahamas composed of twenty-nine islands, 661 cays, and 2,387 islets, are located in the Atlantic Ocean north of Cuba and Hispaniola (Dominican Republic and Haiti), northwest of the Turks and Caicos Islands. Columbus named the island after the Holy Saviour, San Salvador. Assuming that he had encountered Asia, he referred to the largest island as Hispaniola and its inhabitants as “los indios.”
In his letter to Santángel, on February 15, 1493, Columbus wrote, “I have taken possession for their Highnesses by proclamation and display of the Royal Standard without opposition. To the first island, I discovered I gave the name of San Salvador, in commemoration of His Divine Majesty, who has wonderfully granted all this. The Indians call it Guanaham. The second I named the Island of Santa Maria de Concepcion; the third, Fernandina; the fourth, Isabella; the fifth, Juana; and thus to each one I gave a newname.”[532] HewroteasimilarlettertoGabrielSanchez,treasurerofAragon,datedMarch14,1493.
According to his diaries and letters, in addition to finding a new route, he also expected to find and confiscate wealth belonging to others. Ship captains merely planted a flag, like the Royal Standard that Columbus placed, or a cross and claimed whatever land they happened to “discover.” Columbus was obviously aware of the Doctrine of Discovery and operated under its authority. He returned to the Caribbean by November 3, 1493 with a “force of seventeen ships” supplied by Isabella of Castile. Author James W. Loewen updated the traditional childhood verse to read, “In fourteen hundred and ninety-three, Columbus stole all (that) he could see.”[533]
Seeing the profitable possibilities and a native work force and understanding profitable sugar cultivation,
he introduced sugar cane plantings in the Caribbean Islands on his second voyage and immediately installed himself as viceroy and governor of the islands and America’s mainland, a position he held until 1500. By the sixteenth century, colonists on Santo Domingo, and then Cuba and Puerto Rico grew sugar cane using forced labor. Santo Domingo was the largest city in the Dominican Republic.
Columbus, in his journal, wrote about the characteristics of the natives in Cuba, “Naked innocence and quick response to the influences of kindness rather than acts of force... Their hair, thick as a horse’s mane, falls in long locks upon their shoulders. They are shapely of body and handsome of face. So ignorant of arms are they that they grasp swords by the blade! They are very gentle, without knowing what evil is, without killing, without stealing.”[534]
Columbus wrote to his Spanish sponsors, Ferdinand and Isabella, wherein he boasted that he could supply them with “slaves, as many of these idolatrous Indians as your highnesses can command to be shipped, along with as much gold as you need. Gold is most excellent. Gold is treasure and he who possesses it does all he wishes to do in this world.”[535] In 1494, Michele de Cuneo wrote about his trip with Columbus into the interior of Haiti. “After we had rested for several days in our settlement, it seemed to the Lord Admiral that it was time to put into execution his desire to search for gold, which was the main reason he had started on so great a voyage full of so many dangers.”[536]
In his letter to Santángel, on February 15, 1493, Columbus wrote, “Hispaniola is a marvel. Its hills and mountains, fine plains and open country, are rich and fertile for planting and for pasturage, and for building towns and villages. The seaports there are incredibly fine, as also the magnificent rivers, most of which bear gold. The trees, fruits and grasses differ widely from those in Juana. There are many spices and vast mines of gold and other metals in this island. They have no iron, nor steel, nor weapons, nor are they fit for them, because although they are well-made men of commanding stature, they appear extraordinarily timid.”[537]
The European conquerors combined victory with proselytizing their version of Christianity, under the jurisdiction of the Doctrine of Discovery. After encountering inhabitants on “their” new land acquisition, the Spaniards read what they referred to as requerimiento (the requirement). In Spanish, a language foreign to the natives, an official would read, “I implore you to recognize the Church as a lady and in the name of the Pope take the King as lord of this land and obey his mandates. If you do not do it, I tell you that with the help of God I will enter powerfully against you all. I will make war everywhere and every way that I can. I will subject you to the yoke and obedience to the Church and to his majesty. I will take your women and children and make them slaves... . The deaths and injuries that you will receive from here on will be your own fault and not that of his majesty nor of the gentlemen that accompany me.” Of course, the natives did not understand and therefore could not possibly comply by converting to a religion unfamiliar to their experience. However, having satisfied their obligation of giving the Indians an opportunity to become Christian, the Spaniards were then at liberty to exploit the naïve natives and seize their resources.[538]
Columbus’ headquarters were on the large island he called Española, currently the two countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. He initiated slavery in conjunction with a systematic extermination policy against the indigenous Taino-Arawak population whose numbers were reduced, in four short years, from about 8,000,000 to about 3,000,000 by 1496. Taino is an Arawak word meaning peace. In 1498, Columbus, after an expedition with five ships, brought back 600 Indian slaves to Spain.[539] By 1500, when Columbus left the area, there were only 100,000 surviving natives. The Spaniards who remained as overlords retained his brutal policies.[540]
The Spanish colonists, under Columbus, engaged in vicious physical genocide. The Spaniards cut off hands, gouged out eyes, and ripped unborn babies from their mother’s wombs.[541] The Spaniards also
engaged in the mass roasting of the Taino-Arawaks by hanging a dozen of them in a row over a blazing fire or in burning them individually at the stake. The “colonists” also participated in live burials. They brutally, apparently without conscience, hacked children into pieces to feed to their dogs, to the horror and incalculable anguish of their parents. These brutes wagered on who could slice a man’s abdomen open or cut off a head with one sword slash. They also dashed out infant’s brains by swinging the baby by its legs against the rocks or they would run these children through with a sword. They staged group kills where 100 or more soldiers slashed the unarmed Taino-Arawaks – men, women and children. The Spaniards methodically exterminated the terrified Taino-Arawaks to instill in them “a proper attitude of respect” toward their “superiors.”[542] The “colonists” worked other natives to death in the local gold mines, the mines that the invaders had summarily seized from the indigenous population. After the colonists had slaughtered most of the native populace, they resorted to kidnapping and transporting Africans to work in the mines and plantations.
The Spaniards systematically exterminated whole villages, people they viewed as subhuman animals, without a soul. They viewed it as a holy obligation to enslave and destroy them wherever they existed. Genocide apparently functioned as an early eugenics program based on survival, not of the fittest, but the morally unfit that just happened to possess superior weapons. Mass genocide is Columbus’ horrific legacy in Española, an example perpetuated by the conquistadors when they later invaded Mexico, Peru and La Florida.[543] Establishment historians, the mythmakers of the earthly nineteenth century, have whitewashed, concealed and otherwise concocted a foundation of deceptions regarding this monstrous, genocidal villain, only one of two individuals with his own holiday.[544] In 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared Columbus Day a federal holiday. Writers characterize his brutal military invasion of a populated island as a discovery (for Spain), which implies that the land was uninhabited, commentary on how the elites view “insignificant” natives. Elite imperialists habitually use this tactic to justify their seizures of resource-rich lands.
On December 27, 1512, officials in Burgos, Kingdom of Castile, instituted the Laws of Burgos, a set of codified guidelines governing the Spaniard’s treatment of the indigenous population in the Americas, initially on the island of Hispaniola and later extended to Puerto Rico and Jamaica. The laws forbade the mistreatment of the natives while advocating their conversion to Catholicism. They created the laws, obviously too late for millions of people, to avoid any legal problems that might arise as a result of the Spanish conquest and colonization of the Americas and the West Indies, where officials were supposed to apply the common law of Castile. This law provided “plausible deniability” for their continued contemptuous treatment of the indigenous population. Naturally, the Spanish overlords never enforced the Laws of Burgos.[545]
The Spaniards instituted a labor system, Encomienda, during their colonization of the Americas and the Philippines. The Spanish crown allotted individuals, usually conquistadors or soldiers, the right to extract tribute, such as gold or silver and other products, and labor from the natives who still technically owned the land. The recipient was responsible for the protection of his specified allocation of natives from warring neighboring tribes. He also instructed them in the Spanish language and the Catholic faith.
By 1514, the indigenous population totaled only 22,000 natives. By 1542, according to some records, only 200 natives survived. However, the Taino-Arawaks did not become extinct, as some have reported because many Taino-Arawaks had relocated to Cuba and managed to survive. When Columbus arrived, the whole Caribbean Basin Indian population numbered about 15,000,000.[546] The extermination of the Taino-Arawak population is certainly not an isolated incident but rather a precedent. The elite established a pattern of genocide against several indigenous populations in numerous countries throughout the world.
Other Spaniards invaded the Americas and following Columbus’ example, replicated the same horrific
behaviors. These include Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar who conquered Cuba in 1511. Others included Hernando Cortéz, who heard about the immense wealth of the Aztec Empire in Mexico, who with 600 men “gained favor” with Montezuma II and soon subdued the ancient city of Tenochtitlán and the Aztecs in 1519.[547] Others included Francisco Pizarro who assaulted the Inca Empire in South America, Ponce de León as governor of Puerto Rico (1509-1512, 1515-1519), Francisco Vásquez de Coronado y Luján in Mexico in 1540, and Hernando De Soto who explored the southwestern part of the United States.
These conquistadors met with opposition in the person of Hatuey, the Cacique (a combination of a tribal chief and a feudal prince). He had fled from the Spaniards after they had captured the island of Española (Haiti) to Cuba. He told the local natives that the white man’s god was gold. He tried to persuade the natives to dispose of their gold by throwing it into the river so that the white men “would leave them in peace.”[548] In 1542, Bartolomé de las Casas, a Spanish priest and “Protector of the Indians” wrote A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies in which he described the “massacres, butcheries, and all manner of cruelties, that Hell and Malice could invent, committed by the Popish Spanish.”[549] The Spanish killed millions of people for the sake of gold.
Hatuey, now a native chieftain in Cuba, valiantly resisted the invaders. For his courageous efforts, Velázquez, governor of Cuba (1514-1515) sentenced him to death by burning at the stake. Hatuey told his people, as recorded by the Spanish priest, Bartolomé de la Casa, “These tyrants tell us they adore a God of peace and equality, yet they usurp our land and enslave us. They speak of an immortal soul and of eternal rewards and punishments. They rob us, seduce our women and violate our daughters. Unable to match us in valour, these cowards cover themselves in iron that our spears cannot pierce.”[550] Hatuey showed the Cubans a basket full of gold and jewels and reportedly said, “Here is the God the Spaniards worship, for these they fight and kill; for these, they persecute us and that is why we have to throw them intothesea.”[551] WhenhiscaptorsurgedHatueyatthestaketoembraceChristianity,sothathissoul“might find admission into heaven,” he asked if the white men also went there after death. His captors responded in the affirmative and he exclaimed, “Then I will not be a Christian; for I would not go again to a place where I must find men so cruel!”[552]
Not only did the Spaniards kill Hatuey, they slaughtered all of the residents in a village of about 2,500 people. Bartolomé de la Casa described the event, “They (the Spaniards) set upon the Indians, slashing, disemboweling and slaughtering them until their blood ran like a river. And of those Tainos they kept alive they sent to the mines, harnessing them to loads they could scarcely drag and with fiendish sport and mockery hacking off their hands and feet and mutilating them in ways that will not bear description.” Today, miraculously, there are thousands of Taino descendants in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Florida, New York, California, Hawaii and even Spain.[553]
On August 31, 1532, on Guanaham, the Spaniards had cornered, captured and were preparing to execute Jiqui, just a poor boy who had responded to one of the oppressors, Carrasco. People would now refer to someone like Jiqui an insurgent. A witness to the brutality wrote, “I write now by candlelight, at the end of a horrible day. This is the Heaven the Castilla have brought us.” The witness continues, “He was tied chest and face to the thick post, his arms hugging around it, but I could see his face. His eyes scanned the crowd. The post itself was of the Xiki tree, a tough wood that will not burn once charred and hardened. Many poor Taínos have hugged that post before, but Jiqui was actually named after his death tree.”[554]
“Two men carried his chair to the back of the prisoner and the marshal gave him a short, razor sharp dagger. Carrasco, a thin, small man with a goat’s beard, held up the dagger and offered the Ave Maria. Then he thanked the marshal and the principal oidor (judge) for the privilege. Leaning over, he then poked the boy, Jiqui, in one buttock, getting a piece of the skin and slipping the dagger in a half inch. Jiqui groaned, then Carrasco’s dagger scraped bone and he yelled a loud, ‘Aiiii!’ The crowd gasped and the
soldiers and sailors laughed. Among the guards, several laughed loudly. One yelled to the lined-up Indians, ‘Hear the devil yelp, you dogs!’”[555]
“Carrasco looked up proudly. I could tell he was a nobody among the guards before this. Smiling, he raised the dagger to the guards, then put the point at Jiqui’s anus... Jiqui gasped and the guards began to titter loudly, but the marshal barked at Carrasco to, ‘stay with the sentence.’ Dutifully, Carrasco cut the calves then, two deep slits across each, just under the knees. Blood began to flow. Finished with the calves, Carrasco took a stab at the thick of one calf and Jiqui yelled again.”[556]
“Carrasco was carried away in his chair as two men with dogs on short leashes approached. Mastiffs of war, they sniffed blood excitedly and lunged for Jiqui’s bloody calves. The handlers held the dogs up on hind legs inches away from the calves. I wished to yell my love to the boy, but was silent. Next to me, I could tell the good friar was praying. At a signal from the marshal, the mastiffs were allowed close enough to lick the blood with their extended tongues, snarling up on hind feet. At a second signal, they tore in, one on each calf, tearing flesh in sharp bites as Jiqui yelled and yelled and yelled.”[557]
“The dogs were yanked away when they bit into bone. The two balls of the calves were gone. Two men with hot irons burned into the cavities left by the mastiffs and Jiqui slumped as if dead, but his eyes stayed open. Jiqui was untied and lashed by wrist and ankles to a thick iron bar, which was propped between two Y poles with dry brush gathered underneath. He was washed with water and, as he did move his head, he was made to drink copious amounts of it. Then the fire was started.”[558]
“All watched intently. Jiqui dangled by hands and feet six feet over the fire. His back blackened slowly, his hair singed and the horrible smell hung like a mist throughout the square. The sun grew intensely hot and you could feel the heat of the fire itself. He groaned for two hours before he expired, but no one left the square. Many Indians, including myself, cried quietly for Jiqui as he burned, and among the women in the slave group, I did hear the hummed refrains of our areito song of death, to accompany the separation of the goeiç from the body and the birth of the opia. Poor boy, I felt, how happy he might have been but for the existence of the Castilla on our lands!”[559]
According to three popular books, The American Tradition, Land of Promise, and The American Way, the Islamic Turks cut off the trade route the Europeans used to obtain spices. However, the Turks, who made money from trading in spices, had nothing to do with developing different routes to India. Since 1915, U.S. textbooks perpetuate the error that the Muslim Turks, per the West’s perception of them, are to blame instead of the Portuguese who blocked the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf in 1507. In fact, the Turks and the Moors allowed freedom of religion for the Jews and the Christians during the same time that European Christians persecuted and deported Jews and Muslims. In 1963, U.S. Representative Roland Libonati from Illinois proposed that Congress proclaim a national holiday for Columbus. Libonati said, “His Christian faith gave to him a religious incentive to thwart the piratical activities of the Turkish marauders preying upon the trading ships of the Christian world.”[560] J. J. Barry, M. D. in his pre-1892 book, Life of Columbus wrote, “The first object of the discovery, disengaged from every human consideration, was the glorification of the Redeemer and the extension of His Church.”[561]
By the end of the sixteenth century, slave traders shackled, chained about 9,500 slaves and crowded them into the unventilated cargo holds of ships bound for the Caribbean Islands or the Americas. In addition to the psychological suffering, food and water were inadequate and inferior, resulting in persistent diarrhea, seasickness, severe malnutrition, epidemics of typhoid fever, smallpox, and other diseases. Their captors regularly sexually molested female captives. The mortality rate for short voyages was between 5% and 10% and as high as 30% on longer voyages. Thereafter, survivors suffered wretched abuse and wore out their lives in the plantation system. Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, in The Gulag Archipelago used the phrase “liquidation by labor,” a phrase that is applicable to millions of victims who have been forced into slave
labor by the elite.
In the eighteenth century, there were about 800 American-owned sugar and cotton plantations on the French island of Santo Domingo, the western part of the island of Hispaniola, now known as Haiti. About 30,000 white planters managed the profitable plantations while their soldiers controlled a half million black workers. Santo Domingo accounted for two thirds of all of France’s overseas trade and surpassed the combined amount of all agricultural exports of the Spanish Indies. This commerce employed 15,000 sailors on approximately 1,000 ships. Cotton from Santo Domingo kept France’s textile mills in business. [562] Thousands of slaves labored on sugar plantations on Santo Domingo, one of the busiest slave ports in the triangle trade. Traders brought enslaved individuals to Haiti to work on the sugar plantations and sugar became the return cargo. Traders, who typically dealt in slaves and sugar, sold their products in the American colonies. Port-au-Prince was one of the capitals of the triangle trade.[563]
Obviously, intimidation, brute force or superior indoctrination is essential for a small group of men to control a large slave population. Infractions by slaves brought violent repercussions – whippings, sexual mutilations, rape, branding and even death. Disobedience might result in the guards nailing someone to a tree, or spraying a slave with hot wax, or a guard would slather a poor victim with molasses and position him/her in the path of swarming meat-eating ants. A guard could burn a slave alive, or cut off a body part with a machete and then force the victim to consume it. Death was often a blessing and the suicide rate was understandably high.[564]
Debt slavery in the U.S. and elsewhere works on those same basic principles. A select group creates and imposes the laws, then uses authority, the ABC bureaucratic agencies, to enforce them, with threats of heavy fines or incarceration for even the smallest infractions. The privileged elite, by design, are not subject to those same laws. The system usually works quite well unless a rebellious subordinate questions a lawmaker’s activities. The media regularly disseminates the infractions, manufactured or real, which keeps the majority of the lower-level bureaucrats obedient to the system. Officials soon learn to acquiesce, shield each other, vote the right way and remain silent just to get along in the corrupt system.
By 1789, of the 1,000,000 slaves in the Caribbean, the slave population of Santo Domingo totaled 500,000 mostly African-born slaves, supervised by about 40,000 white colonials. They produced almost 40% of the world’s sugar. On August 26, 1789, France’s National Assembly published the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, drafted by the Illuminist, Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, also known as the Abbé Sieyès, declaring all men free and equal. On August 22, 1791, the slaves on Santo Domingo courageously revolted and in the next two months killed 2,000 whites and burned or destroyed 180 sugar plantations and hundreds of coffee and indigo plantations. New Englanders, James and Samuel Perkins survived and returned home in 1792 where they organized a partnership with a couple of relatives and then they began trading in slaves, opium and other profitable goods.
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen certainly did not end the deplorable institution of slavery. However, Santo Domingo’s slave uprisings instigated the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804), inspired by the words of the document. The revolt established Haiti as the first republic that blacks ruled. At that time, Haiti, a French colony, was the world’s most profitable slave colony. Thousands of slaves lived in appalling conditions. The revolt, the first in the New World, led to the abolishment of slavery in 1794. However, Napoleon reinstated slavery by 1802. However, Santo Domingo declared its independence in 1804.
In 1938, Cyril Lionel Robert James, a Trinidad native, wrote The Black Jacobins. He was a socialist who had studied Marxism in England. It is the story of the Haitian revolution and describes the actions of the former slave Toussaint L’Ouverture (1743-1803) during the revolution. He attempted to rebuild Haiti’s economy but the French killed him while he was in exile. A succession of well-paid despots
gradually crushed the resident’s hard-fought freedom. Despite the alleged success of various revolutions, populations invariably become enslaved within a relatively short period. James wrote, “The transformation of slaves, trembling in hundreds before a single white man, into a powerful people able to organize themselves and defeat the most powerful European nations of their day, is one of the great epics of revolutionary struggle and achievement.”[565]
Emancipation of the Jews
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