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Course: World History Project - Origins to the Present > Unit 5
Lesson 3: Old World Webs | 5.2- READ: Archipelago of Trade
- BEFORE YOU WATCH: Guilds, Wool, and Trade — Medieval England in a Global Economy
- WATCH: Guilds, Wool, and Trade — Medieval England in a Global Economy
- BEFORE YOU WATCH: Silk and the Song Dynasty
- WATCH: Silk and the Song Dynasty
- READ: Zheng He (Graphic Biography)
- READ: New World Networks, 1200–1490s
- BEFORE YOU WATCH: Pre-colonial Caribbean
- WATCH: Pre-Colonial Caribbean
- BEFORE YOU WATCH: Aztec Empire
- WATCH: Aztec Empire
- READ: Macuilxochitl (Graphic Biography)
- BEFORE YOU WATCH: Inca Empire Overview
- WATCH: Inca Empire Overview
- READ: Trade Networks and the Black Death
- READ: The Renaissance
- BEFORE YOU WATCH: Disease!
- WATCH: Disease!
- Old World Webs
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WATCH: Pre-Colonial Caribbean
Migrations from the Central and South American mainland to the Caribbean islands began c. 5000 BCE. Over the course of thousands of years, indigenous peoples created communities and established networks of exchange between islands and with the mainland. Trade goods such as jade, ceramics, shells, and teeth moved across aquatic highways. However, these highways would change dramatically after 1492 with the arrival of the Spanish and the sustained connections between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres.
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Video transcript
Here at the World History Project, we talk a lot
about the networks that connected communities across both land and sea. We've highlighted some
of these networks such as those in the New World, the Silk Roads, and the Indian Ocean trade routes.
In fact, we've metaphorically described the Silk Roads and Indian Ocean networks as an archipelago
of trade, comparing trading spots to a group of islands. But there's an important network that
existed in the Caribbean Sea that included multiple literal archipelagos. First, we should
define what we mean by the pre-colonial Caribbean. We'll start with the geographical scale of the
Caribbean. This includes more than 7,000 islands in the Caribbean Sea as well as the other
landforms that touch this body of water. The larger islands in the Caribbean are
grouped together as the Greater Antilles. The group of smaller islands to the
south of these are the Lesser Antilles. In terms of time, pre-colonial
refers to the history of the region from the earliest migrations starting about
15,000 years ago and up to the late 15th century. Caribbean history spans thousands of years in a
large geographical area with a lot of diversity. For example, the size of the islands ranges from
Cuba, which is as large as the state of Tennessee, to Islas Mujeres, which if you rode your bike
around the whole thing would take less than an hour. Some islands have dry desert-like
environments, while others have rain forest. Some have high mountain ranges, while others are at
or below sea level. Then there's the wide variety of plant and animal species, but the region's
people also share a lot of characteristics. Why? Well partly, this is because the region was
connected through a series of overlapping networks much like Afro-Eurasia's interconnected networks
of the 13th and 14th centuries. So what do we know about the people in the societies that
lived in this region for thousands of years and how did they build networks of exchange
across the aquatic highway of the Caribbean Sea and wider Atlantic Ocean? Hi, I'm Sharika
Crawford, a professor of Latin American history at the U.S. Naval Academy, and in order to answer
these questions, I turned to two experts, Dr. Corinne Hofman and Dr. Jorge Ulloa Hung who
will help us answer these questions. I'll start with the basics. When
were the Caribbean islands settled and where did these early communities
migrate from? It is important to understand the possible connection of two different moments of the migrations to the Caribbean islands. For example, in the early moments in the
5000 BC, you have really important connection, not only with South America, you have an important
connection now with Yucatan or Central America. And for example, the early communities enter for
two ways of migration to Central America to the directly to, especially to Cuba, Puerto Rico,
and another big islands, and you have another corridor of migration from South America for this
first moment of migration. And then the second one which is to be dated more like 2500 years ago, and
until now we see in fact the major movement coming from South America and probably eastern South
America, so we'll have to think about indeed Venezuela or the Guyanas maybe. So we know that
there were at least two major migrations from the mainland of Central and South America, and we
also have evidence of these migrations from the archaeological record such as the similarities of
tools used by people living on different islands. What else can the archaeological record tell us
about how these pre-colonial societies lived? Well as an archaeologist, we are learning more and more
on how the indigenous people lived in the islands, and also with the the advancement of techniques
of course we can get inside into their food ways, into their diet, into how they interacted
with their environment, how they were fishing, how they were trading, how they were transporting
materials, and that is the wonderful thing about archaeology. That it is not a written history, but
it is a history which is in the soil, and the soil has to be opened like a book and that is how we
discovered that people were building, for example, how they were building their houses with wooden
posts. Sometimes they were round. Sometimes they were oval. They were sometimes-they were five
to eight meters in diameters, but we also found much larger houses up to 90 meters in diameter.
People were burying their deceased kins or family members in the houses, sometimes outside
the houses. These burial practices you describe make me curious about belief systems in the
Caribbean. Jorge, can you tell us more about how these beliefs changed from the early migrations to
the later ones? It's not homogeneous. For example, belief system at the beginning of this community entered in the Caribbean island, this belief system is more related with the mainland
society, with this more equalitarian society. They believe more in ancestors, and they offers-
many offerings to their ancestors in the burials, and you have a special space to bury on his
ancestor in the middle of the community especially in the early moment of this society. And in the
late moments, you have more conceptualized and more symbolized belief system. You have a
kind of mythology. You have a belief in icons or beans. This kind of beans is like a god,
and this god has a different powers, and this power is related with the owner of the icons.
This is a reason if you have a powerful god, a powerful icon, you have at the same time a power.
You have at the same time social power. You have at the same time social influence over your community. So
the archaeological record can help us understand how these communities shared beliefs, how they
acquired food, and how they built their homes. Another thing that archaeology can tell us
is how indigenous Caribbean peoples got the other things they needed. Trade goods such
as jade and ceramics were transported from island to island on dugout canoes, and
these items crisscross the Caribbean Sea. Can you tell us what other items were traded
between the islands and also between the mainland and the islands? So yeah and then
there's also, for example, another trade item which we have been finding is for example teeth
from dogs that were made into pendants and that were traded across the islands. We have also found
teeth coming from mammals like jaguars or tapirs for example, and we've seen that they were coming
from the South American mainland. So all in all, there has been an enormous trade, an exchange
going on between the islands, between the Greater Antilles and the Lesser Antilles but also between
the islands and the mainland of South America, so there was a continuous flow of mobility and
exchange between these islands going on from the first colonizations till really 1492. The
archaeological evidence tells us a lot about the networks of exchange and interaction between these
islands in the pre-colonial period. What about interactions after 1492 when Columbus and the
Spanish arrived? I think that the Spanish really tapped into the networks that were existing in among the indigenous peoples in the Caribbean and that is one of the reasons why they could expand
so fast and into the other islands but also into other parts of the Americas. First, the indigenous
peoples clearly had a role towards the Spanish as translators, as guides. exchanging their knowledge
and that rapidly changed into a situation where the indigenous peoples were enslaved, were
put into work, into gold mines, into pearl fishery, and were put into the encomienda system where
whole indigenous villages in fact were put under the rule of the Spanish leaders. Some indigenous
Caribbean societies voluntarily helped the Spanish, while others were forced to labor for them.
There were also some indigenous groups like the Kalinago who resisted Spanish control.
Can you tell us more about this resistance? Yes. In the Lesser Antilles, we see the Kalinago
persistence against the Spanish colonization for about 150 years. The coast of South and
Central America were already colonized and settled really by the Spanish. The Lesser Antilles
were still sort of stronghold for the Kalinago people, which were people probably composed also
of the indigenous peoples who were fleeing from the Spanish in the Greater Antilles and on the
other hand also from the South American mainland. A final question, in your opinion how do the
colonial interactions with indigenous peoples in the Caribbean contribute to a new global history?
So from on the first years of colonization, we see what has later been labeled the Columbian Exchange,
where we see foodstuffs and other products going back and forth from the Americas to Europe
and to other parts of the world. So I think that is really one of the major changes. In fact, it
was the beginning of a true globalizing world, connecting all the continents with each other. You
can really label it as the beginning of the true globalizing world. Of course, globalization is a
term that it has been used in many other contexts, but if we are looking really at opening
of all the continents to each other and exchanging goods and people and diseases
and everything else yet, then it is really 1492. The arrival of European colonizers after 1492
disrupted a maritime system of migration trade and cultural exchange that had existed for millennia.
The societies of the Caribbean developed diverse beliefs and technologies, and they interacted
across extensive sea networks connecting the islands of the Caribbean with the two
mainlands of Central America and South America. The violence of the Spanish conquest destroyed
so much and killed so many that historians and archaeologists today must rely on techniques like
isotope analysis to reveal who these people were, how they lived, what they believed,
and how they connected with each other. However, indigenous culture did not disappear
with colonization. The Caribbean people and their culture have persisted. We can find it in
Caribbean foods that were shared around the world and in the fusion of cultures and beliefs that
continue to shape our world long after 1492.