Eastern West Indies (1684–1827 CE): Sugar Frontiers, Revolt, and Revolutionary Shockwaves

Geographic & Environmental Context

The subregion of Eastern West Indies includes Trinidad, Saint Lucia, Barbados, most of Haiti, most of the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. Anchors include the Orinoco–Trinidad seaway, the Cordillera Central (Hispaniola), the karst valleys of Puerto Rico, and the volcanic arc from Saint Lucia through the Virgin Islands. Deep channels and steady trades funneled fleets, while fertile valleys and limestone plains supported plantation cores.

Climate & Environmental Shifts

The late Little Ice Age persisted, with devastating hurricanes—especially the Great Hurricane of 1780—and multi-year droughts alternating with flood seasons on Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. Volcanic soils on windward islands buffered rainfall shocks; leeward cays suffered salinization and erosion after major storms.

Subsistence & Settlement

• Hispaniola: The Treaty of Ryswick (1697) formalized a split between French Saint-Domingue (west) and Spanish Santo Domingo (east). Saint-Domingue became the hemisphere’s premier sugar/coffee colony, powered by massive imports of enslaved Africans; the Spanish east emphasized cattle, small farms, and provisioning ports.

• Puerto Rico: Spain expanded towns, forts, and mixed agriculture (sugar, coffee, tobacco), relying on enslaved labor alongside free smallholders.

• Barbados: A mature British sugar colony dominated by estates; enslaved Africans formed the vast majority.

• Saint Lucia: A contested French/British battleground; sugar estates expanded under shifting flags.

• Trinidad: Spanish until 1797, then British; late but rapid plantation growth under the Cedula of Population (1783) attracted French planters and enslaved labor.

• Virgin Islands: Danish St. Thomas and St. John (and St. Croix after 1733) developed plantation complexes; neighboring British islands mixed small estates with maritime trades.

Technology & Material Culture

Wind- and later steam-powered mills, boiling houses, and curing ranges defined sugar landscapes. Fortified harbors (San Juan, Santo Domingo) mounted new artillery. African knowledge shaped cane field practices, provision plots, and foodways; maroon strongholds adapted mountain house forms. On Saint-Domingue, coffee terraces and aqueducts climbed steep slopes.

Movement & Interaction Corridors

• Atlantic slave trade funneled captives to Saint-Domingue, Barbados, Trinidad, and the Danish/British Virgin Islands.

• Convoy routes threaded the Windward Passage and Mona Passage, while inter-island smuggling tied Spanish east Hispaniola to French markets.

• Runaway corridors led into Hispaniola’s ranges and Puerto Rico’s cordilleras, feeding marronnage and maroon communities.

Cultural & Symbolic Expressions

Catholic and Protestant establishments framed public ritual, yet Afro-Caribbean lifeways dominated plantation quarters: vodou (Saint-Domingue), cabildos and cofradías (Hispaniola, Puerto Rico), drumming and ring-shout traditions across British and Danish islands. Maroon treaties in Jamaica (contextual neighbors) resonated with mountain communities in Saint-Domingue and eastern Hispaniola. Revolutionary slogans and catechisms later fused with African ritual speech.

Environmental Adaptation & Resilience

Provision grounds (cassava, plantains, yams) stabilized diets; inter-island provisioning cushioned hurricane losses. Coffee diversified steep lands; cattle in eastern Hispaniola buffered drought. Coastal towns rebuilt with thicker masonry, wind-smart roofs, and raised cisterns after great storms.

Transition

By 1827 CE, the subregion had been remade by revolution. The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) shattered Saint-Domingue and birthed Haiti, catalyzing regional slave resistance and planter flight (some to Trinidad and Puerto Rico). Santo Domingo oscillated between Spanish rule and local movements, heading toward the Haitian unification (1822–1844) just beyond this span. British islands tightened plantation order yet faced rising emancipation debates. The Eastern West Indies stood at a pivot between the age of sugar/slavery and an era of abolition and post-plantation change.

Eastern West Indies (1816–1827 CE): Rebellions, Division, and Diplomatic Recognition

Post-Napoleonic Territorial Changes

In the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, the political landscape of the Eastern West Indies shifted dramatically. Britain assumed control of the Dutch and French territories in the Guianas and several Caribbean islands, prompting demographic changes such as the increased importation of indentured servants from India to Trinidad and the Guianas, soon outnumbering enslaved West Africans.

Bussa's Rebellion and the Path to Emancipation

Although Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807, slavery itself persisted. In 1816, the largest slave rebellion in Barbadian history, known as "Bussa's Rebellion," involved approximately 20,000 enslaved people from over seventy plantations. Led by the enslaved ranger Bussa, rebels sought peaceful negotiations for freedom but eventually drove whites from plantations without widespread killings. The rebellion was suppressed, resulting in 120 immediate deaths, 144 executions after trials, and the exile of many remaining rebels. The Barbados legislature responded in 1826 with the Consolidated Slave Law, granting limited concessions to slaves but reassuring slave owners. Slavery would ultimately be abolished across the British Empire in 1834, preceded by a four-year apprenticeship period.

Haitian Political Divisions and Reunification

Following the death of Alexandre Pétion in 1818, Haiti remained politically divided. Pétion, who had ruled as president from 1807 and then president for life, was succeeded by Jean-Pierre Boyer, a mulatto revolutionary and former secretary to Pétion. Boyer's ascendancy ended the benevolent regime of Pétion, known as "Papa Bon Coeur."

Henri Christophe sought reunification after Pétion’s death, but the south resisted black leadership from the north. In October 1820, following a debilitating stroke and loss of army control, Christophe committed suicide. Boyer swiftly seized the opportunity, entering Cap-Haïtien with 20,000 troops on October 26, 1820, reuniting Haiti.

Boyer's Administration and the Rural Code

Boyer inherited a Haiti struggling economically due to Pétion's land redistribution policies. Attempting to revive plantation agriculture, Boyer enacted the Rural Code, which mandated forced labor for export crops, enforced by rural police. The code failed due to governmental neglect and resistance from landowners, resulting in the decline of sugar production and an increase in subsistence farming. Coffee remained Haiti's main export throughout the 19th century.

Haitian Occupation of Santo Domingo

Fearing foreign invasion, Boyer occupied the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo in 1822, abolishing slavery across Hispaniola but exacerbating tensions between the Haitian and Dominican populations. Haitian rule caused Dominicans to emigrate in large numbers, while Haitian soldiers lived off Dominican resources, leading to mutual racial resentment. Haitian authorities further alienated Dominicans by confiscating church property, deporting clergy, and severing ecclesiastical ties to the Vatican, deepening cultural and religious divides and fueling scattered unrest.

Diplomatic Recognition and Economic Indemnity

To safeguard against foreign invasion and enhance international commerce, Boyer negotiated diplomatic recognition by agreeing in 1825 to pay France a 150-million-franc indemnity and halve customs duties for French trade. This agreement broke Haiti’s diplomatic isolation and gained recognition from Britain the following year. Although reduced to 60 million francs in 1838, the indemnity severely damaged Haiti’s economy, resulting in prolonged French financial influence.

Conclusion

The era 1816–1827 in the Eastern West Indies witnessed significant territorial adjustments, slave rebellions, Haitian reunification efforts, and complex international diplomacy. Economic and social struggles persisted, shaped by plantation economies, forced labor policies, racial tensions, and diplomatic negotiations that left enduring legacies of financial dependency and regional discord.

The British had abolished the slave trade in 1807, but not the institution itself.

In 1816, enslaved people in Barbados rise up in the largest major slave rebellion in the island's history, of twenty thousand slaves from over seventy plantations.

They drive whites off the plantations, but widespread killings do not take place.

This is later termed "Bussa's Rebellion" after the slave ranger, Bussa, who with his assistants hate slavery, find the treatment of slaves on Barbados to be "intolerable", and believe the political climate in Britain makes the time ripe to peacefully negotiate with planters for freedom.

Bussa's Rebellion fails.

One hundred and twenty slaves die in combat or are immediately executed, and another one hundred and forty-four are brought to trial and executed.

The remaining rebels are shipped off the island.

In 1826 the Barbados legislature passes the Consolidated Slave Law, which simultaneously grants concessions to the slaves while providing reassurances to the slave owners.

Slavery will finally be abolished in the British Empire eighteen years later, in 1834.

In Barbados and the rest of the British West Indian colonies, full emancipation from slavery will be preceded by an apprenticeship period that lasts four years.

The West Indies (1828–1971 CE)

Emancipation, Empire, and the Quest for Unity

Geography & Environmental Context

The West Indies comprises three fixed subregions:

• Northern West Indies — Bermuda, the Turks and Caicos, northern Hispaniola, and the Outer Bahamas(Grand Bahama, Abaco, Eleuthera, Cat Island, San Salvador, Long Island, Crooked Island, Mayaguana, Little Inagua, and eastern Great Inagua). Anchors include the Bahama Banks, Bermuda’s naval dockyards, the Caicos salt pans, and the northern valleys of Hispaniola.

• Eastern West Indies — Trinidad, Saint Lucia, Barbados, most of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. Anchors include the Kingston–San Juan sea lanes, the Hispaniolan cordilleras, the Caroni and Naparima plains of Trinidad, and the Windward–Leeward channels that structured trade, migration, and naval passage.

• Western West Indies — Cuba, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, and the Inner Bahamas (Andros, New Providence, Great Exuma, and neighboring islands). Anchors include Havana Harbor, the Blue Mountains of Jamaica, the Andros Barrier Reef, and the Cayman Trench.

Fertile volcanic soils, limestone valleys, and strategic sea lanes made these islands central to Atlantic commerce and imperial rivalry from the age of sugar through decolonization.

Climate & Environmental Shifts

The tropical climate brought seasonal hurricanes and variable rainfall. Deforestation and plantation monoculture caused erosion and flooding, while earthquakes periodically struck Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. By the 20th century, hurricanes became a recurring test of infrastructure and governance. Marine resources, from coral reefs to fisheries, sustained local economies even as tourism and oil refining reshaped coasts.

Subsistence & Settlement

• Plantation economies dominated the 19th century, producing sugar, coffee, cocoa, and bananas under systems of wage labor that replaced slavery after emancipation (1834–38 in the British colonies, 1848 in the French, 1863 in the Dutch, 1886 in Cuba, and 1898 in Puerto Rico).

• Peasant freeholds emerged across Jamaica, Barbados, and Trinidad, where former slaves cultivated provisions and cash crops. In Hispaniola, smallholder coffee and cacao farming thrived.

• Urban growth accelerated: Havana, San Juan, Port of Spain, and Kingston became centers of trade, education, and politics.

• Migration shaped the region: Indian indentured laborers arrived in Trinidad, Guyana, and Saint Lucia after 1838; inter-island migration filled estates and urban jobs; transatlantic migration linked the islands to New York and London.

Technology & Material Culture

Steamships, railways, and telegraphs integrated the Caribbean into global networks by the late 19th century. Sugar mills, rum distilleries, and port warehouses dominated industrial landscapes. Oil refining began in Trinidad (early 20th century) and later in Curaçao and Aruba. After WWII, airports, cruise terminals, and tourism infrastructure redefined economies. Architecture ranged from Georgian and Spanish colonial to modernist hotels and government buildings, while vernacular crafts—baskets, pottery, steelpan drums, and carnival costumes—remained cultural hallmarks.

Movement & Interaction Corridors

• Sea lanes: The Windward Passage, Mona Passage, and Florida Straits were arteries for trade, migration, and naval power.

• Diaspora routes: Caribbean laborers moved to Panama for canal construction, to Cuba and the U.S. for seasonal harvests, and to Britain after WWII (the “Windrush Generation,” 1948 onward).

• Regional travel: Steamers and later airlines linked colonial capitals—Kingston, Port of Spain, Havana, San Juan, and Bridgetown—into circuits of commerce, religion, and politics.

• Military and naval routes: U.S. expansion after 1898 established bases in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Bermuda; naval stations in the Bahamas and British bases in Bermuda remained strategic through WWII and the Cold War.

Cultural & Symbolic Expressions

Caribbean identity fused African, European, and Asian elements.

• Religion: Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Islam, and Afro-syncretic faiths such as Obeah, Vodou, and Orisha coexisted and intertwined.

• Language and literature: Creoles flourished beside English, Spanish, and French; writers such as Aimé Césaire, Claude McKay, and Derek Walcott articulated decolonizing consciousness.

• Music: Calypso, mento, ska, steelband, salsa, and reggae emerged from island streets and festivals, broadcasting Caribbean rhythms worldwide.

• National festivals: Carnival, Junkanoo, and independence parades turned the streets into theaters of memory and resistance.

Environmental Adaptation & Resilience

Smallholders diversified crops and maintained intercropping traditions to buffer hurricanes and price shocks. Coastal communities rebuilt with coral stone and timber after storms. Water catchment, terrace farming, and fishing cooperatives sustained rural livelihoods. Postwar conservation and marine parks (e.g., in the Bahamas and Virgin Islands) began to protect reefs and mangroves as tourism expanded.

Political & Military Shocks

• Emancipation and post-slavery transitions: Freed populations negotiated wages and land rights amid planter resistance.

• Imperial changeovers: The Spanish–American War (1898) transferred Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Guam to the United States; the U.S. Virgin Islands were purchased from Denmark (1917).

• Nationalism and federation: The early 20th century saw labor uprisings and the rise of Caribbean socialism—Butler, Bustamante, Manley, Williams, and Castro among key figures. The West Indies Federation (1958–62) sought unity but collapsed amid national rivalries.

• Independence waves:

  • Cuba (1902, revolution 1959), Dominican Republic (sovereignty restored 1844, renewed independence 1865), Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago (1962), Barbados (1966), Bahamas (1973, beyond our span).

  • U.S. territories—Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, and Guam—retained commonwealth or dependency status.

• Cold War and revolutions: The Cuban Revolution (1959) redefined regional politics; U.S. interventions in the Dominican Republic (1965) and elsewhere revealed hemispheric tensions.

Transition

Between 1828 and 1971, the West Indies transitioned from plantation colonies to a constellation of independent and semi-autonomous nations. Slavery’s abolition gave rise to peasantries, diasporas, and new cultural syntheses; oil and tourism replaced sugar as economic engines. The region’s music, literature, and politics voiced both emancipation and aspiration. By 1971, the Caribbean stood as a microcosm of decolonization—its seas crossed by cruise ships and memory, its islands bound by shared histories of survival, creativity, and unbroken connection to the wider Atlantic world.

Eastern West Indies (1828–1971 CE): Emancipation, Nation-Making, and New Economies

Geographic & Environmental Context

The subregion of Eastern West Indies includes Trinidad, Saint Lucia, Barbados, most of Haiti, most of the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. Anchors include Kingston-to-San Juan sea lanes, the Hispaniolan cordilleras, the Caroni and Naparima plains (Trinidad), and the Windward–Leeward channels that structured trade, migration, and navies.

Climate & Environmental Shifts

Recurring major hurricanes (e.g., 1899 in Puerto Rico; 1930 in the Dominican Republic; 1955/1963 across the arc) and periodic droughts tested smallholders and towns. Deforestation for cane and charcoal reduced watershed resilience; mid-20th-century reforestation and conservation began piecemeal.

Subsistence & Settlement

• Haiti: Independent since 1804; rural peasantry consolidated smallholdings (lakou systems) in coffee/food crops. Political instability, debt, and later the U.S. occupation (1915–1934) constrained growth.

• Dominican Republic: Independence from Haiti in 1844; annexation to Spain (1861–1865) and restoration followed. Coffee, cacao, tobacco, and cattle underpinned regional economies; the U.S. occupation (1916–1924) reshaped customs and finance.

• Puerto Rico: Spanish colony until 1898, then under U.S. sovereignty; sugar corporations expanded, later giving way to industrialization and migration under Operation Bootstrap (1947–1950s).

• Barbados & Saint Lucia: Emancipation (1834–1838) reconfigured labor; sharecropping and peasantries grew alongside estates. 20th-century diversification moved toward tourism and services; Barbados achieved independence (1966).

• Trinidad: Emancipation (1834–1838); post-emancipation estates imported indentured labor (primarily from India, from 1845). Oil and asphalt (Pitch Lake) shifted the economy; independence (1962) arrived mid-century.

• Virgin Islands: The Danish West Indies (St. Thomas, St. John, St. Croix) abolished slavery in 1848; sold to the United States (1917) as the U.S. Virgin Islands. British Virgin Islands remained a small, agrarian colony moving toward financial/tourism niches.

Technology & Material Culture

Railways, centrals, and company towns modernized cane zones; oil refineries and ports transformed Trinidad. Concrete sea defenses, lighthouses, and breakwaters hardened coasts. Urban fabrics—Havana-style arcades in San Juan’s old quarter, gingerbread houses in Cap-Haïtien, Georgian stone in Bridgetown, cast-iron galleries in Castries—signaled layered colonial inheritances. Afro-Indo-Creole cuisines, steelpan (Trinidad), and carnival costuming flourished.

Movement & Interaction Corridors

• Steamship and later air routes knit Port of Spain, Bridgetown, San Juan, and St. Thomas to New York, London, and Caracas.

• Labor migrations: post-1838 indenture to Trinidad; 20th-century movements from Barbados and St. Lucia to Panama, Britain’s Windrush era, and the U.S. mainland; circular migration within Hispaniola.

• Naval corridors shifted with U.S. ascendancy (Guantánamo nearby; U.S. bases in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands).

Cultural & Symbolic Expressions

• Afro-Caribbean faiths—vodou (Haiti), orisha/Ifá strands in Trinidad, Shango and Spiritual Baptist practices—coexisted with Catholic and Protestant establishments.

• Mass festivals—Carnival (Trinidad/Barbados), Jounen Kwéyòl strands in Saint Lucia, Fête Dieu processions—encoded memory and resilience.

• Literary and musical renaissances (calypso, son, merengue, steelpan) articulated post-emancipation identities; nationalist symbols crystallized in independence movements.

Environmental Adaptation & Resilience

Peasant mosaics (cacao/coffee/intercropping) stabilized hillsides; terrace and contour farming limited erosion. Coastal towns rebuilt repeatedly after cyclones with concrete and hurricane-strapped roofs. Oil and tourism diversified beyond sugar; cooperative credit, diaspora remittances, and mutual-aid lodges buffered shocks.

Transition

By 1971 CE, the Eastern West Indies spanned independent states (Trinidad and Barbados), U.S. territories (Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands), British colonies on paths toward autonomy (Saint Lucia, British Virgin Islands), and Hispaniolan republics wrestling with debt, dictatorship, and development. Across the arc, the legacies of slavery, emancipation, indenture, and revolution had yielded a distinctly Caribbean modernity—maritime, migratory, and culturally incandescent.

Roughly seven hundred thousand enslaved workers in the British West Indies immediately become free when the Slavery Abolition Act comes into force in 1834; others will be freed several years later after a period of forced apprenticeship.

Slavery had been abolished in the Dutch Empire in 1814, and in the Spanish Empire in 1811, with the exceptions of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Santo Domingo; Spain had ended the slave trade to these colonies in 1817, after being paid four hundred thousand pounds by Britain.

Slavery itself will not be not abolished in Cuba until 1886.

France will abolish slavery in its colonies in 1848.

The sugar plantations that dominate the economy of Trinidad begin gradually to give ground to the cultivation of cacao.

Trinidadian chocolate becomes a high-priced, much sought-after commodity and the Colonial government opens land to settlers interested in establishing cacao estates.

This provides a fresh avenue of economic development to French Creoles (white Trinidadian elites descended from the original French settlers), who are being marginalized economically by large English business concerns who are buying up sugar plantations.

Venezuelan farmers with experience in cacao cultivation are also encouraged to settle in Trinidad, where they provide much of the early labor in these estates. (Many of the former cocoa-producing areas of Trinidad retain a distinctly Spanish flavor and many of the descendants of the Cocoa Panyols—from espagnol—remain in these areas including Trinidad's most famous cricketer, Brian Lara.)

Whitehall in England had announced in 1833 that slaves would be totally freed by 1840.

In the meantime, the government informed slaves that they must remain on their owners’ plantations and would have the status of "apprentices" for the next six years.

In the new British colony of Trinidad, on the 1st of August 1834, an unarmed group of mainly elderly Negroes being addressed by the Governor at Government House about the new laws, began chanting: "Pas de six ans. Point de six ans" ("Not six years. No six years"), shouting down the Governor.

Peaceful protests had continued until a resolution to abolish apprenticeship was passed and de facto freedom was achieved.

Full emancipation for all is legally granted ahead of schedule on August 1, 1838, making Trinidad the first British colony with slaves to completely abolish slavery.

1838 also sees the abolition of the "apprenticeship" system in Jamaica, Barbados, and the Leeward and Windward Islands.

The British West Indies plantations, which have imported almost four million enslaved Africans over the past few centuries, are left with only four hundred thousand blacks, now free.

The local Caribbean assemblies are encouraged to import nominally free laborers from India, China, and Africa under contracts of indenture to mitigate labor difficulties here.

Apart from the condition that they have a legally defined term of service and are guaranteed a set wage, the Asian indentured laborers are treated like the African slaves they partially replace in the fields and factories.

Between 1838 and 1917, nearly five hundred thousand East Indians (from British India) will come to work on the British West Indian sugar plantations, the majority going to the new sugar producers with fertile lands.

Trinidad imports one hundred and forty-five thousand; Jamaica, twenty-one thousand five hundred; Grenada, two thousand five hundred and seventy; St. Vincent, eighteen hundred and twenty; and St. Lucia, fifteen hundred and fifty.

Samuel Jackman Prescod of Barbados becomes on June 6, 1843, the first non-white person elected to the House of Assembly.