Cuba (Spanish Colony)
Years: 1519 - 1898
Prior to Spanish colonization in the late fifteenth century, Cuba was inhabited by Amerindian tribes.
It remains a colony of Spain until the Spanish–American War of 1898, which leads to nominal independence as a de facto U.S. protectorate in 1902.
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Portuguese mariners are opening a route around Africa to the East in the fifteenth century.
At the same time as the Castilians, they have planted colonies in the Azores and in the Canary Islands (also Canaries; Spanish, Canarias), the latter of which have been assigned to Spain by papal decree.
The conquest of Granada allows the Catholic Kings to divert their attention to exploration, although Christopher Columbus's first voyage in 1492 is financed by foreign bankers.
In 1493 Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia, a Catalan) formally approves the division of the unexplored world between Spain and Portugal.
The Treaty of Tordesillas, which Spain and Portugal sign one year later, moves the line of division westward and allows Portugal to claim Brazil.
New discoveries and conquests come in quick succession.
Vasco Núñez de Balboa reaches the Pacific in 1513, and the survivors of Ferdinand Magellan's expedition complete the circumnavigation of the globe in 1522.
In 1519 the conquistador Hernán Cortes subdues the Aztecs in Mexico with a handful of followers, and between 1531 and 1533 Francisco Pizarro overthrows the empire of the Incas and establishes Spanish dominion over Peru.
In 1493, when Columbus brought fifteen hundred colonists with him on his second voyage, a royal administrator had already been appointed for the Indies.
The Council of the Indies (Consejo de Indias), established in 1524, acts as an advisory board to the crown on colonial affairs, and the House of Trade (Casa de Contratacion) regulates trade with the colonies.
The newly established colonies are not Spanish but Castilian.
They are administered as appendages of Castile, and the Aragonese are prohibited from trading or settling there.
The Ciboney and Taino leave only a mild imprint on Cuba's later culture; the Guanahatabey leave almost none.
There is little mingling of races between Spaniards and natives.
A new society, first of Spaniards and then of Spaniards and blacks, supplants the indigenous society.
New institutions, new values, and a new culture replace the old ones.
Some native words, foods, and habits, as well as agricultural techniques, however, will be retained by later generations.
Retained also is the bohio, the typical and picturesque dwelling of many Cuban farmers, which still can be seen today and remains perhaps the most visible legacy of the native society.
For the most part, however, the Cuban native peoples' contribution to the development of a Cuban nationality must be considered minor.
Nevertheless, for generations after the conquest, Native American warriors such as Hatuey, who fights the Spanish conquest in eastern Cuba, will be glorified in the pages of Cuban history books and raised to the status of folk heroes.
They will represent for Cuban children a symbol of native resistance against the oppressive Spanish conquistador.
The natives' innocence and kindness are contrasted with the cruelty of the Spanish invaders, but for those present-day Cubans in search of the roots of a uniquely Cuban national identity, this native heritage is not enough of a foundation.
Unlike for the Mexicans, the glory of the Aztec past is not there for the future Cubans to turn to.
Instead, Cuban writers in search of the roots of Cuban nationality will later look to Spanish or Negro contributions and try to find in them the missing link with the past, but with little luck.
The Spanish heritage will be dismissed as part of the rejection of colonialism, and Negro contributions will never be totally recognized, particularly by white Cuban society.
He induces groups of natives to lay down their weapons and work near the several new towns that he establishes throughout the island.
Among these are Baracoa, Bayamo, Trinidad, Sancti Spiritus, La Habana (hereafter, Havana), Puerto Principe, and Santiago de Cuba.
In this task, Velasquez is decisively aided by the work of Bartolome de Las Casas.
The Dominican friar precede the Spaniards into native villages on many occasions and succeeds in persuading the indigenous peoples to cooperate with the conquistadors.
Las Casas, however, is horrified by the massacre of the natives and becomes an outspoken critic of the conquest of Cuba.
He writes extensively, condemning the Spaniards' cruelty and claiming that the natives are rational and free and therefore entitled to retain their lands.
It is transferred in 1515 to Santiago, and finally in 1538 to Havana because of Havana's geographic location and excellent port.
The crown uses the encomienda concept as a political instrument to consolidate its control over the indigenous population.
Many encomenderos, however, interested only in exploiting the resources of the island, disregard their moral, religious, and legal obligations to the natives.
A conflict soon develops between the crown and the Spanish settlers over the control and utilization of the labor by the exploitative encomenderos, and also over the crown's stated objective to Christianize the natives and the crown's own economic motivations.
In the reality of the New World, the sixteenth-century Christian ideal of converting souls is many times sacrificed for a profit.
Christianization is reduced to mass baptism; and despite the crown's insistence that natives are not slaves, many are bought and sold as chattels.
As soon as the conquest is completed and the natives subjugated, the crown begins introducing to the island the institutional apparatus necessary to govern the colony.
Spanish navigator and geographer Juan de la Cosa, having sailed with Christopher Columbus on his second voyage and with Alonso de Ojeda to the northeastern coast of South America in 1499-1500, produces a world map showing the discoveries in the New World.
A line of text on the map says it was made by the Cantabrian cartographer and sailor Juan de la Cosa in 1500 in the Andalusian port city of Puerto de Santa María.
Its rich decoration hints that it was ordered by some powerful member of the court of the Catholic Monarchs, who rules the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon at this time.
This map is the earliest undisputed representation of the Americas.
Some historians have claimed that some of the Antilles appear on earlier maps such as the Pizzigano map of 1424 but there is no consensus about it.
Furthermore, the Vinland map shows part of North America but it is most probably fake.
The La Cosa map shows the lands discovered up to the end of the fifteenth century by Castilian, Portuguese and English expeditions to America.
It also depicts a large fraction of the Old World, according to the style of medieval portolan charts and including news of the arrival of Vasco de Gama to India in 1498.
The map of Juan de la Cosa is the only cartographic work made by an eyewitness of the first voyages of Christopher Columbus to the Indies that has been preserved Possibly as an allusion to Columbus, it contains a large image of Saint Christopher that covers the region where Central America should have appeared.
On the other hand, Cuba is drawn as an island, which contradicts Columbus' opinion that it was a peninsula of Asia.
The map (the earliest such that survives) includes the Caribbean Sea and records John Cabot's voyage to Canada and Vasco da Gama's route to India.
Christopher Columbus and his men had remained stranded on Jamaica for one year.
A Spaniard, Diego Méndez, and some natives had paddled a canoe to get help from Hispaniola.
The governor, Nicolás de Ovando y Cáceres, detested Columbus and obstructed all efforts to rescue him and his men.
In the meantime, Columbus, in a desperate effort to induce the natives to continue provisioning him and his hungry men, successfully won their favor by predicting a lunar eclipse for February 29, 1504, using Abraham Zacuto's astronomical charts.
Help finally arrived, no thanks to the governor, on June 29, 1504, and Columbus and his men arrive in Sanlúcar, Spain, on November 7.
The island of Jamaica had been colonized around CE 650 by the people of the Ostionoid culture, who had likely come from South America.
Alligator Pond in Manchester Parish and …
…Little River in St. James Parish are among the earliest known sites of this Ostionoid people, who livde near the coast and extensively hunted turtles and fish.
Around 950, the people of the Meillacan culture settled on both the coast and the interior of Jamaica, either absorbing the Ostionoid people or co-inhabiting the island with them.
The Taíno culture, which had begun to developed on Jamaica around 1200, had brought from South America a system of raising yuca known as "conuco."
To add nutrients to the soil, the Taíno burn local bushes and trees and heap the ash into large mounds, into which they then plant yuca cuttings.
Most Taíno live in large circular buildings (bohios), constructed with wooden poles, woven straw, and palm leaves.
The Taino speak an Arawakan language and do not have writing.
Some of the words used by them, such as barbacoa ("barbecue"), hamaca ("hammock"), kanoa ("canoe"), tabaco ("tobacco"), yuca, batata ("sweet potato"), and juracán ("hurricane"), will be incorporated into Spanish and English.
The Taíno are historically enemies of the neighboring Carib tribes, another group with origins in South America, who lived principally in the Lesser Antilles but had also colonized Jamaica.
For much of the fifteenth century, the Taíno tribe was being driven to the northeast in the Caribbean (out of what is now South America) because of raids by the Carib.
The Spanish Empire begins its official governance of Jamaica in 1509, with formal occupation of the island by conquistador Juan de Esquivel and his men.
Esquivel had accompanied Columbus in his second trip to the Americas in 1493 and participated in the invasion of Hispaniola.
A decade later, Friar Bartolomé de las Casas wrote Spanish authorities about Esquivel's conduct during the Higüey massacre of 1503.
The first Spanish settlement is founded in 1509 near St Ann's Bay and named Seville.