SCIENCE, MERCANTILISM, EMPIRE:

CONQUERING NATURE AND COLONIAL DEVELOPMENT ON BARBADOS,

1627-1700

A thesis submitted to the Department of History,Miami University, in partial fulfillment of the

Requirements for Honors in History

By

Michael Putz

May 2014Oxford, Ohio

ABSTRACT

The goal of this thesis is to argue that natural philosophy, man’s understanding of his relationship with nature, and mercantilism, ideas concerning the extraction of natural resources, worked in tandem to create and consolidate the emerging English empire in the Caribbean during the seventeenth century. Environmental-mercantile philosophy is what I will call when natural philosophy and mercantilism are viewed in unison to explain the establishment of empire. When Europeans arrived in the New World, they were forced to come to terms with a strange, foreign environment and, as a result, were forced to rethink natural philosophy in order to convince themselves they could survive in a hot, humid, tropical environment. It is on the small tropical island of Barbados that this thesis will illustrate and argue that environmental-mercantile philosophy in a lens through which historians can understand the creation of slave/plantation societies and the foundation of empire.

Though many works concerning colonial development on Barbados acknowledge that nature and mercantilism played a role in Barbados’s development, many, however, tend to place a larger emphasis on the plantation owners, social structures, or only delve into how these plantations shaped the modern world and capitalism. This work will purpose that natural philosophy and mercantilism working in tandem in a new lens through which one can understand how slave/plantation societies emerged in the Caribbean and thus the creation of empire. A number of primary sources will be used in order to support and prove this proposal including Richard Ligons A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbados (1673), Griffith Hughes The Natural History of Barbados, and John Evelyns A Philosophical Discourse of Earth just to name a few. In sum, this work will examine and suggest the importance of nature in the development of Barbados as an English colony during the seventeenth century.

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Science, Mercantilism, Empire:

Conquering Nature and Colonial Development on Barbados, 1627-1700

By

Michael Putz

Approved by:

AdvisorDr. José Amador

ReaderDr. Andrew Cayton

M Dr. Erik Jensen, History Honors Director

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would first like to thank my advisor, Dr. José Amador, for all that he has for me

this past year and a half. Without him this work would have never been completed.

Thank you to Dr. Andrew Cayton for being my secondary reader. I’d also like to thank

Dr. Renée Baernstein and Dr. Tatiana Seijas for teaching the history honors courses.

Thank you to Dr. Erik Jensen as well for directing the History Honors Program and for

inviting me to take part in it. Finally, I would like to thank everyone who supported me

throughout this long process. It has been a very long, and at times very difficult, ride but I

can say I am grateful for the experience.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract… ii

Approval page… iii

Acknowledgements… iv

Table of Contents… v

Illustrations… vi

Introduction… 1

Chapter 1: Europeans Contemplating New World Nature… 12

Chapter 2: Nature and Colonial Development on Barbados: A Case Study… 35

Conclusion… 61

Bibliography… 66

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ILLUSTRATIONS

Richard Ligon’s Map of Barbados… 15

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INTRODUCTION

The chemical and mechanical transformations by which substances are bent to

human use and become unrecognizable to those who know them in nature have

marked our relationship to nature for as long as we have been human. Indeed,

some would say that is those very transformations that define our humanity.1

– Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power

Scholars that examine the environmental history of the Caribbean have typically

focused on three main categories: colonialism, capitalism, and conservation.2 Of these

categories, the one that has received the most attention is colonialism since the conquest,

colonization, and transformation of the Americas began a process of environmental

degradation that dramatically changed the New World, especially in the Caribbean

region. In the last few decades, however, historians have expanded earlier accounts of

colonialism, capitalism, and conservation to illustrate how Europeans had used scientific

understanding not only to comprehend nature but also to define their own identity in

relation to the New World. From the moment Europeans first landed in the New World,

they attempted to comprehend and understand this new landscape in relation to

themselves. Who are these strange people living here? How long is life sustained in the

tropics? What will happen to me if I stay here? Will I still be European in these new

environments? These could have been just some of the questions racing through the

minds of the first explorers and colonists entering the New World. The Caribbean, in

particular proved to be a trick region for Europeans to comprehend. It was unlike

anything in Europe. The weather was hot and humid with unimaginable storms that could

1 Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York, Viking Penguin Inc., 1985), xxiii 2 Mark Carey, “Latin American Environmental History: Current Trends, Interdisciplinary Insights, and Future Trends” Environmental History (2009): 221, accessed 11/19/2014

easily destroy entire towns in a day. Europeans died there in startling numbers due to

diseases such as malaria and yellow fever, both of which they had no defense against and

no idea how to prevent them.3 Europeans also feared that the environment could change

their fundamental constitution (for example, what makes an Englishman English), a

process known as creolization. Despite the fear of the unknown, deadly diseases, Indians

(who also appeared extremely susceptible to New World (Old World) diseases despite

residing there from the European perspective), and volatile weather conditions such as

hurricanes and tropical storms (in respect to what Europeans had previously known),

Europeans continued to colonize throughout the New World due to the economic

incentives presented. Throughout the Caribbean and the Americas, they would wage war

and establish empires. As Europeans colonized, conquered, and fought for the creation of

empire, particularly during the seventeenth century, they were forced to understand how

the natural environment, an environment still unknown and strange to them, could be

used to their economic advantage. At the same time, Europeans were forced to rework

scientific understanding in order to determine how the New World effected their physical

and mental ability to establish and develop colonies throughout the New World.

The Spanish and Portuguese were the first to explore and establish their empires

in the New World. By the beginning of the seventeenth century the English had followed

suit and begun colonization and imperial efforts with the establishment of Jamestown in

1607. Twenty years later, the English would establish a colony on the small Caribbean

island of Barbados. Barbados is only 432 kilometers squared (Rhode Island is 3,140

kilometers squared), and is the eastern most island of the Lesser Antilles in the

3 J. R. McNeil, Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620-1914 (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2010), 37

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Caribbean. It was there that the English established their first slave/plantation society in

the Americas. They first experimented with sugar cane as a plantation crop and began

importing African slave labor for the production of sugar as a valuable, profitable

commodity throughout Caribbean colonies.4 This thesis examines how English colonists

comprehended nature in relation to themselves and in relation to an Empire that was

determined to reap the benefits of the plantation economy. It is through ideas concerning

mans relation to the natural world around him and ideas revolving around the extraction

of natural resources for economic working in tandem that modern historians can

understand the creation and consolidation of empire in the seventeenth century through a

new lens.

A great deal of scholarship has been done on the development of Barbados as a

colony and the Caribbean as a whole throughout the years, however, this thesis will focus

on texts that illustrate the importance of the natural environment, economic incentives,

human-nature relations, and colonialism in the development of European colonies

throughout the Caribbean. When historians look at the history of Barbados as a colony,

often times the most important aspect they examine is the role of sugar in developing the

colony economically and socially. Sugar, during the seventeenth and eighteenth

centuries, was the most important commodity produced on Barbados and is often times

blamed for the mass relocation of Africans, as slaves, to the New World. In the 1970s,

historian Richard Dunn’s Sugar and Slaves examined why sugar, slavery, and large

plantations became defining the elements of Barbadian, the Leeward Islands, and

Jamaican society during the seventeenth century. Dunn argued that the “shadowy and

4 Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York, Viking Penguin Inc., 1985), 43

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half-forgotten men”, or the large plantation owners on Barbados and other so called

Sugar Islands, who came to the Caribbean instead of the North American mainland were

the primary force behind transforming Barbados into a sugar producing, plantation

colony.5 These men, he demonstrated, were looked down upon by mainland colonists and

Englishmen back home, but would ultimately become the elite planter class on Barbados

and other Sugar Islands, called this because of their primary export. Ultimately, Dunn

examines how the planters reacted to life in the Caribbean, the use of African slave labor,

the large-scale sugar production, and how they created an extremely hierarchal social

system (small, white ruling class with many African laborers) that lasted for nearly three

centuries.6 Though Dunn mentions the environment and how the English “tried their best

to transfer English modes of diet, dress, and housing” to Barbados, this is done, in

Dunn’s opinion to define themselves as the ruling class and as English in the face of an

extremely foreign environment.7 The hot, humid, tropical environment of Barbados made

this transfer extremely difficult and uncomfortable for the English. Dunn informs this

thesis by illustrating that the English wished to maintain and protect their Englishness,

the characteristics that seventeenth century Englishmen believe define themselves as

English, as the developed Barbados into a slave-plantation society. However, this work

will differ from Dunn’s by investigating the reasons why the English, in particular, feared

nature would reduce their capabilities to establish colonies and expand their empire in the

Caribbean and how economic incentives inspired by sugar persuaded the English to look

5 Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1972), xv 6 Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1972), xvi 7 Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1972), 263

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past the dangers of Caribbean life rather than how the environment made English life

difficult.

In the 1980s, Gary Puckrein published Little England (1984) to examine the effect

of sugar and the slavery-plantation system on social aspects on Barbadian society and

political behavior of Barbados’s ruling elite.8 Particularly, he wants to examine how the

plantation system came into existence due to political events and economic incentives in

Barbados. Focusing almost exclusively on the social and political history of Barbados,

Puckrein investigates relations between master and slave on individual plantations and

the threat of slave revolts to conclude that Anglo-Barbadians came to rely on England as

a source of political stability in order to resolve problems that arose directly from the

island’s slave-plantation system.9 Though Puckrein is mainly concerned with the between

the English and African slaves, he also analyzes why the large plantation owners turned

towards African slaves as the primary source of labor rather than a free white population,

ultimately concluding that it was a “conscious decision (informed by classical medicine

and economics)” made by planters to use slave labor.10 Furthermore, Puckrein analyzes

how environmental disasters, such as droughts and hurricanes, influenced the ruling elite

to rely on slave labor rather than free workers because free workers could no longer

economically support themselves after environmental disasters and elected to leave the

island all together.11 Puckrein understanding of the emergence of African slave labor

informs this work because it delves into the economic incentives that influenced English 8 Gary Puckrein, Little England: Plantation Society and Anglo-Barbadian Politics, 1627-1700 (New York, New York University Press, 1984), xvi9 Gary Puckrein, Little England: Plantation Society and Anglo-Barbadian Politics, 1627-1700 (New York, New York University Press, 1984), xvi10 Gary Puckrein, Little England: Plantation Society and Anglo-Barbadian Politics, 1627-1700 (New York, New York University Press, 1984), 19411 Gary Puckrein, Little England: Plantation Society and Anglo-Barbadian Politics, 1627-1700 (New York, New York University Press, 1984), 184

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planters to continually expand sugar production. He also illustrates how the English

thought of African slavery in economic terms. Drawing on important contributions of

Puckrein’s work, this thesis can better illustrate the economic incentives that inspired the

English to reside on Barbados despite English anxieties concerning their bodies in

relation to the Barbadian natural environment.

There is another important way in which scholars have examined the role of

nature in shaping plantation societies and European economies. In the pathbreaking book

Sweetness and Power, historian and anthropologist Sidney Mintz examines the role of

sugar in developing world capitalism.12 Mintz examines transformation in the production

and consumption of sugar since the seveneteenth century to examine its relation to the

growth of capitalism as a worldwide economic system. Specifically, Mintz claims that

sugar resulted in the “transformation of…[English] society, a total remaking of its

economic and social basis.”13 Sugar plantations, Mintz argues, were amongst the first

signs of industrialization due to the “industrial processing” the cane underwent on the

plantation. For Mintz, plantations were “a synthesis of field and factory.”14 Though Mintz

has a strong interest in the production and importance of sugar as a commodity to society,

he does not examine the role of the planters and slaves who produced sugar. As a result,

the actual colonization process and attitudes of those who resided throughout the

Caribbean remain understudied. Mintz understands nature as the means through which

sugar cane is cultivated and the defining characteristic in the human-nature relationship is

12 Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York, Viking Penguin Inc., 1985), xxix 13 Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York, Viking Penguin Inc., 1985), 21414 Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York, Viking Penguin Inc., 1985), 46-47

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man’s transformation and manufacturing of nature into useful products for man’s use.15

This thesis will utilize Mintz’s examination in the importance of sugar, however, it will

investigate how English colonists comprehended nature as they colonized Barbados,

produced sugar, imported African slaves, and ultimately grew rich.

Though all of these works include some aspect of the environment in their

analysis, none are focused on human-nature interactions and nature’s role in the

development of colonies in the Caribbean. In the last decade or so however, there has

been more scholarship regarding the role of the environment in developing colonies such

as Barbados. For Instance, Matthew Mulcahy’s Hurricanes and Society in the British

Greater Caribbean, 1624-1783 argues that tropical storms, especially hurricanes, played

an essential role in the development of colonies throughout the Caribbean. For instance,

when explaining how some colonists became political elite, Mulcahy claims that making

sugar was an extremely expensive process because of the amount of labor, land, and

capital that a plantation owner needed to make it profitable. If a hurricane, for example,

ever hit an island and destroyed the necessary infrastructure to produce sugar, then only

the rich could survive such a catastrophe to plant again. These storms also came to define

life for those who lived in the Caribbean and the costal mainland because of the constant

threat they posed, every year “each summer brought a renewed threat from hurricanes.”16

Hurricanes, to Mulcahy, represent encounter and accommodation; as Europeans

encountered these devastating storms, they were forced to accept hurricanes as a part of

Caribbean life and even “tested colonists’ notions of improvement and their faith that

15 Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York, Viking Penguin Inc., 1985), xxiii16 Matthew Mulcahy, Hurricanes and Society in the British Greater Caribbean, 1624-1783 (Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 2006), 194

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they could transform the American ‘wilderness.’”17 Hurricanes, needless to say,

devastated Barbados and thus came to help define how English colonists comprehended

nature on Barbados. By understanding how the English understood hurricanes, one can

better contemplate English ideas concerning the relationship between man and nature.

In his book From Rainforest to Cane Field in Cuba (2008), Reinaldo Funes

Monzote examines the exploitation of Cuba’s natural resources in order to expand the

production of sugar under Spanish colonial rule. Funes recalls the relationship between

Cuba’s forests, colonists, and arrival of the sugar industry from 1492 to the onset of the

industrial era and ending at the twentieth century. After the Haitian Revolution since the

nineteenth century are what make Cuba’s case particularly interesting and unique to

Funes.18 Funes also examines how attempts were made to conserve the rainforests by the

Spanish colonial government, but sugar’s economic incentives and demand lead to the

destruction of the rainforest. Through industrialization and the profitability of sugar,

sugar became the “most potent factor in the savannization of Cuban territory” both

directly and indirectly.19 The rainforests, to Funes, are an important natural resource to

Cuba and one that cannot be overlooked or disregarded and cut down.20 Though Funes

and this thesis focus on different islands, cultures, and time periods Funes still informs

this work by providing framework through which man, nature, and empire interact and

influence each other.

Creatures of Empire (2006) by Virginia DeJohn Anderson is a book that 17 Matthew Mulcahy, Hurricanes and Society in the British Greater Caribbean, 1624-1783 (Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 2006), 418 Reinaldo Funes Monzote, From Rainforest to Cane Field in Cuba: An Environmental History since 1492 (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 219 Reinaldo Funes Monzote, From Rainforest to Cane Field in Cuba: An Environmental History since 1492 (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 26620 Reinaldo Funes Monzote, From Rainforest to Cane Field in Cuba: An Environmental History since 1492 (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 5

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examines the importance of livestock in settling and expansion of the American colonies.

In this book, Anderson reveals that livestock played a crucial role in the relationship

between Indians and colonists due to differing ideas concerning property ownership,

farming, and how man should interact with the natural world.21 Furthermore, livestock

not only shaped the land through grazing and the clearing of land but also in “the hearts

and minds and behavior of the peoples who dealt with them” which was essentially

everyone according to Anderson.22 Both Indians and colonists sought to shape the

environment to suit their particular needs, with the inclusion of livestock, who cannot be

completely controlled by their owner, nature was under the influence of three separate

groups. These three actors thus inform modern understanding of the colonization process

and expansion of empire in colonial America. However, since Anderson focuses on the

mainland colonies there is no cash crop that the English are seeking to cultivate

zealously. Also, environmental degradation is less of an issue on the mainland than on

small Caribbean islands and there were no Indians residing on Barbados for the English

settlers to compete and interact with. This thesis, however, is influenced by Anderson

because wherever the English settled, they inevitably brought livestock with them

especially to locations were they cultivated crops. By understanding that livestock

contributed to the “improvement” of land, one can then examine how English colonists

understood the natural environment and how they could change it to suit their needs

throughout the New World.

21 Virginia DeJohn Anderson, Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America (New York, Oxford University Press, 2004), 622 Virginia DeJohn Anderson, Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America (New York, Oxford University Press, 2004), 5

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Finally, another important work that points that colonists throughout the New

World were forced to examine and understand nature in relation to themselves is Susan

Scott Parrish’s American Curiosity. In this book, Parrish argues that the New World was

a great curiosity amongst those who settled there and Old World intellectuals. As such,

the New World provided a forum through which individuals contested each other’s

knowledge and, thus, was essential to “modern European ways of knowing.”23 Also, the

constant topic of conversation concerning nature and its curiosities in the New World and

Old World were not exclusive to any one demographic group; Africans, Indians, colonists

(men and women), and intellectuals in Europe were all involved in understanding nature.

These different groups, she concludes, were assumed to have differing expertise on

different aspects of nature throughout the natural environment. Indians were assumed to

know the ways of animals, Africans allegedly possessed knowledge of plants and

poisons, and it the expected duty of the colonial white man to collect and catalogue all

aspects of nature.24 Parrish is ultimately concerned with European understandings of

nature, though several demographics were involved in shaping this understanding.

Science and comprehending nature became avenues through which colonists could

expand colonization, define themselves against European metropolitan centers (London

in particular), and defined “modern European ways of knowing.”25 Though Parrish

examines how knowledge concerning nature and its depiction were made and

contradictions they made concerning this knowledge, Parrish informs this thesis by

23 Susan Scott Parrish, American Curiosity: Cultures of Natural History in the Colonial British Atlantic World (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 7 24 Susan Scott Parrish, American Curiosity: Cultures of Natural History in the Colonial British Atlantic World (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 314-31525 Susan Scott Parrish, American Curiosity: Cultures of Natural History in the Colonial British Atlantic World (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 7

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presenting how Europeans came to understand nature. By using Parrish’s work, this

thesis can better examine how English colonists determined their relationship to the

natural world.

Focusing on the English, this thesis will begin with two primary ways in which

Europeans comprehended and thought of the environment: natural philosophy, natures

relationship and effects on the body; and mercantilism, the economic method through

which Europeans sought to use transform nature into economic commodities and tame it.

After examining how Europeans comprehended the environment, this thesis will illustrate

how these ideas concerning nature influenced the development of Barbados as a colony.

This will include reasons for why colonists decided to solely cultivate sugar cane, from

which sugar is made, and import African slaves as a primary source of labor for their

emerging plantations as well as how colonists adapted to their new environment in some

respects while denying the “realities of tropical life” in others.26 Man and nature were

intertwined in the Barbados, both affecting each other resulting in a reshaping of nature

to man’s needs and the adaptation of man to his new environment. In the end, this thesis

will argue that natural philosophy, man’s understanding of his relationship with nature,

and mercantilism, ideas concerning the extraction of natural resources, worked in tandem

to create and consolidate empire during the seventeenth century. What I will refer to as

environmental-mercantile philosophy is when the natural philosophy and mercantilism

are viewed in unison to explain the creations of empire.

26 Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1972), 286

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CHAPTER 1: EUROPEANS CONTEMPLATING NEW WORLD NATURE

From the moment Europeans began colonization in the New World, Europeans

found themselves in a land starkly different from the landscape they once knew. In fact,

European explorers never anticipated finding two new continents to the west of Europe,

rather they expected to land in Asia. The New World was a complete novelty, unknown

flora and fauna intrigued European colonists, naturalists, and explorers. Discoveries of

new, strange animals, such as the opossum (marsupials were like nothing the European

explorers had ever seen before leading them to describe the animal as chimera-like),

beavers, and deer, and a variety plants of which “there are fuch infinite varieties” one

could loose themselves in the woods trying to identify them all.27 Interactions with local

Indians added to the foreignness and sense of wonder that Europeans were forced to

understand and make sense of.

By the time the English began to settle North America in the late 1500s, they were

already conditioned to believe in the wonder of monsters and cannibals that populated the

New World and the strangeness of the New World itself.28 For instance, fifty years after

Columbus first landed, pictures depicting “dog-headed man, a headless man with his face

in his chest, Siamese twins, and a one-legged man with a giant foot” were all depicted in

volume discussing the New World written by Sebastian Münster, a Franciscan monk born

in 1498.29 In the early 1600s, these beliefs were depicted in the Dutch artist Crispijn van

de Passe’s work America.30 In it Passe presents Indians as half naked and holding severed

27 Richard Ligon, A true & exact history of the island of Barbadoes (London, Frank Cass & Co., 1970), 6628 Susan Scott Parrish, American Curiosity: Cultures of Natural History in the Colonial British Atlantic World (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 25-2729 Clarence J. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the end of the Eigthteenth Century (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1967), 363-364 30 Passe, Crispijn van de. America, early seventeenth century, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

heads while in the background the audience can see heads on spikes. Also surrounding

the two central Indians/savages, are a number of strange animals, such as a winged snake

and a demonic looking dog, that further support the belief that monsters lurk about in the

New World. Images such as this served to entice interest in the New World amongst

Europeans. However, it also represents European concerns over what these strange lands

could produce amongst its inhabitants and what they will find if they venture there. Even

by the mid 1600s monsters still lurked in the English minds as illustrated by Richard

Ligons map of Barbados, which included several sea monsters just off the coast of the

island.31 These unusual iconography representations sent a message that the New World

was completely composed of “virgin lands unchanged since the creation” though it also

contained clear and present dangers such as cannibals, monsters, and the unknown.32

Eventually sightings of monsters in the New World ceased to be shocking news, but “did

not…cease to be compelling.”33 Despite imagined real and imagined dangers, the New

World still held opportunity for those who braved the sea monsters and cannibals.

31 Richard Ligon, A true & exact history of the island of Barbadoes (London, Frank Cass & Co., 1970)32 Clarence J. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the end of the Eighteenth Century (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1967), 358 33 Susan Scott Parrish, American Curiosity: Cultures of Natural History in the Colonial British Atlantic World (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 34

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Map 3. Richard Ligon. “A topographical description and admeasurement of the island of Barbados in the West Indies.” 1657. Retrieved from http://www.lloydlibrary.org/exhibits/sugar/lloydsugar.html

As the English established settlements, they were forced to examine and

understand their relationship to the New World. This included possible effects the

tropical, foreign environment could have on their bodies. Any perceived negative effects

on their body could reduce their ability to survive in the tropics. This would in turn effect

their ability to extract natural resources from nature. These concerns were central for

empire building. Though colonial relations with indigenous populations were important

in understanding colonization and balances of power, this chapter will not focus on

interactions with the Indian population. European understanding of the affects of the

environment on their bodies will be however. The colonists came to understand the

environment in two primary ways. One way was through natural philosophy, or humoral

theory, which seeks to explain how an environment effects an individuals health and

culture. The second is through mercantilism, the dominant economic theory from the

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sixteenth to the nineteenth century. When natural philosophy and mercantilism are

understood and examined in tandem, they can inform modern scholars how the English

reacted to nature and the creation of empire. Mercantilism and the prospect of wealth in

supposedly untouched lands persuaded the English, and Europeans in general, to cross

the Atlantic in the search of fortunes for themselves. In regards to nations, untapped

wealth in a world of finite wealth and resources countries, such as England and France, to

establish oversea empires. Also, as the English continued to settle and expand throughout

North America and the Caribbean natural philosophy still illustrated informed European

fears concerning the New World, but it was reformulated and challenged to alleviate

those anxieties by scholars and those inhabiting ever growing colonies in order to further

promote the expansion of empire. Natural philosophy and mercantilism, or

environmental-mercantile philosophy as I call it, worked in tandem to develop Barbados

into a slave/plantation society. In order to understand how they worked in unison, first

natural philosophy and mercantilism must be understood individually.

Natural Philosophy

As the English entered the New World, especially the Caribbean islands, they

found everything to be unfamiliar and different compared to their island. Monsters and

cannibals seem to still lurked farther west to them. The only thing that was truly known

about the Caribbean in particular was that “Europeans died there with considerably

greater frequency than they did in Europe.”34 This, modern scholars now know, was due

to deadly diseases such as malaria and yellow fever (which though originating in Africa it

was most likely accidently brought to the Americas through the importation of African

34 Philip D. Curtin, “The Promise and the Terror of a Tropical Environment” in The Image of Africa: British Ideas and Action, 1780-1850, Volume 1 (University of Wisconsin Press, 1964), 58

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slaves) resulting in epidemics that were “raign’d fo extreamly, as the living could hardly

bury the dead.”35 These epidemics were so fatal that “some accounts suggest 85 percent

or more” people succumbed to the diseases.36 Scholars in the seventeenth century,

however, had no notion that these and other diseases were caused by mosquitos and

germs, instead they drew upon natural philosophy. Also, many writers attribute sickness

in the Caribbean to bad vapors in the air. Asthmatic theories concerning sickness

revolved around the idea that foul air, brought about by bogs and lack of wind, caused

Europeans to get sick.37

Natural philosophy finds its roots in classical thinkers and philosophers such as

Hippocrates, Galen, Herodotus, and Aristotle. Essentially, natural philosophy explained

disease by through the relationship between different humors found within a body.

Classical thinkers based these humors upon the universes four elements: water/wet,

fire/hot, earth/cold, air/dry. These combined into four basic environments, which were

“melanchonic (cold and dry), choleric (hot and dry), phlegmatic (cold and moist), and the

sanguine (hot and moist). Sanguine was considered the most desirable temperament

because it most closely reflected life-producing conditions whereas melanchonic was the

least desirable because of its resemblance to death. Early modern scholars believed that

the human body mirrored sanguine conditions thus resulting in life and as one aged and

died the body would become cold and dry resembling melanchonic conditions.38

Scientific understanding informed by natural philosophy further suggested that the body

35 Richard Ligon, A true & exact history of the island of Barbadoes (London, Frank Cass & Co., 1970), 2536 J. R. McNeil, Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620-1914 (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2010), 3637 Griffith Hughes, The Natural History of Barbados: In Ten Books (London, printed for the author, 1750), 3 38 Joyce E. Chaplin, Subject Matter: Technology, the Body, and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500-1676 (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2001), 121

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was extremely vulnerable to outside influences. The environment, in particular, played a

key role in determining humoral balance within an individual. Though the humorals

could be brought back into equilibrium through what are called unnaturals (food, sleep,

immediate environment, exercise, excretion, and blood) the environment was still

believed to be the primary determinant in humoral balance because the environment

determines the foods one eats as well as the quality of water. Furthermore, natural

philosophy was used to explain national character. To the ancients, it was assumed that

“peoples of very cold or very hot climates were uncivil, dull of wit, and deformed of

body” meaning that a temperate climate was the ideal environment for civilization.39 This

aspect of natural philosophy was never truly challenged though it was often argued what

was a temperate climate. The English, for instance, argued that they lived within a

temperate zone as well but their colder surroundings gave them a natural resistance and

fortitude that those living in warmer, southern climates lacked.40 This belief was strong

throughout the seventeenth century, leading John Josselyn to remark in 1672 that there’s

a “certain agreement of nature that is between the place and the thing bred in that

place.”41

Because the English were from a northern, colder temperate, they were primarily

concerned over the effects that their tropical possessions would have on the their bodies

rather than the mainland colonies (excluding southern ones such as Georgia and the

Carolinas). The English were concered about the effects of tropical environments on their

39 Joyce E. Chaplin, Subject Matter: Technology, the Body, and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500-1676 (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2001), 12240 Joyce E. Chaplin, Subject Matter: Technology, the Body, and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500-1676 (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2001), 12241 Quoted in Susan Scott Parrish, American Curiosity: Cultures of Natural History in the Colonial British Atlantic World (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 77

17

bodies because the Caribbean and England were not in the same latitude. It was generally

assumed by the English that climate remained constant in any latitude around the world.42

Thus colonists residing in New England were living in the same latitude as England and

experienced similar climates. They did not believe they could cope with the Caribbean

the way the Spanish had previously done because “Inhabitants of hot Countries are of a

more volatile and lively Difspofition, and more irafcible in general, than the Inhabitants

of the Northern Part of the World.”43 In other words, they believed that their humoral

balance, as determined by their residence in northern climates, would be thrown off

balance by entering a southern climate zone. English scholars assumed, the Spanish could

thrive in hotter, southern climates since Spain possessed a hot climate. Furthermore,

Spain shared a similar latitude with the Caribbean and southern parts of the North

American mainland such as Florida further supporting claims that the Spanish could

thrive in the Caribbean. The Spanish could survive because they were already

predisposed to the Caribbean climate. To the English, the Spanish possessed a fortitude

and resilience to the humidity and heat that the English believed they lacked due to their

residence in a colder, northern climate.

In order to promote colonization to the Caribbean, writers and scholars had to

develop a method in which to combat the glaring negative effects of the climate such as a

humoral imbalance and subsequent susceptibility diseases particular o the tropics.

Europeans were so concerned over the medical effects of the environment/nature on their

bodies that to promote colonization, writers would continue to attempt to dispel these

42 Karen Ordahl Kupperman “The Puzzle of the American Climate in the Early Colonial Period.” The American Historical Review 87, no.5 (1982): 1262. doi: unknown43 Griffith Hughes, The Natural History of Barbados: In Ten Books (London, printed for the author, 1750), 9

18

concerns well into the eighteenth century. Griffith Hughes in 1750, for example,

challenged aspects of natural philosophy, such as that the environment causes humoral

imbalances resulting in illness, and attempted to describe their islands as healthy due to

“Regularity of the Trade-Winds” which cool down any European settlers residing there,

allowing them to thrive.44 Some, such as Edward Long of Jamaica, gave their own

personal recommendations as to being healthy such as only drinking alcohol moderately,

wear light clothing, and to eat more vegetables than meat.45 Still others placed emphasis

on the immediate environment. For example, Richard Ligon, upon his arrival to Barbados

in 1647, noted that Bridgetown should be relocated on the hill overlooking the bay rather

than next to the shoreline because “[the immediate environment] cannot but breed ill

blood” due the harmful vapors released from the bog.46 Still others, such as Thomas

Tyron, an English merchant, wrote in the 1600s that the various diseases are caused by a

combination of the six unnaturals but “the Intemperance of the Stock or Parents” were a

prime determinate in fighting disease and the most “dangerous and deepeft rooted of all

others.”47 To gain a resistance to diseases, however, meant that the parents had to go

through seasoning which refers to the “adaptation [of] American air, sustenance, and

diseases.”48 To become seasoned, however, does not necessarily mean one’s parents had

to survive and adapt, it just means that an individual colonist must survive and adapt

44 Griffith Hughes, The Natural History of Barbados: In Ten Books (London, printed for the author, 1750), 345 Philip D. Curtin, “The Promise and the Terror of a Tropical Environment” in The Image of Africa: British Ideas and Action, 1780-1850, Volume 1 (University of Wisconsin Press, 1964), 7946 Richard Ligon, A true & exact history of the island of Barbadoes (London, Frank Cass & Co., 1970), 2547 Thomas Tryon, Tryons Letters Domestick and Foreign (London: Printed for Geo. Conyers, at the Ring; and Eliz Harris, at the Harrow, 1700), 10548 Joyce E. Chaplin “Natural Philosophy and an Early Racial Idiom in North America: Comparing English and Indian Bodies.” The William and Mary Quarterly 54, no.1 (1997): 241. doi: unknown

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resulting in a changed person with a different constitution better suited to the New

World.49 Seasoning often was associated with high mortality rates due to diseases

especially in the Caribbean colonies. Some colonists came to believe that through proper

behavior and morals the impact of nature on an individual’s constitution could be

mitigated.50 In the end however, it was humors that were “poorly balanced, making

[Europeans] vulnerable” and authorities meant to bring humors back into balance through

their recommendations.51 Specific recommendations varied from writer to writer but all

“agreed in stressing the importance of perspiration, exercise, temperature change, and

diet.”52

There was more to natural philosophy than just a healthfulness and medical aspect

in relation to nature. Natural philosophy, and the climate of different locations, had

implications for the “national complexions” of a people just as individuals could have

characteristic constitutions influenced by the environment.53 The beginnings of this belief

can be traced back to Aristotle and other ancient philosophers who stressed the

Mediterranean climate of Greece was the ideal condition for man and civilization to

develop. Herodotus, in particular, uses the environment to explain the constituents and

characteristics of different groups throughout the ancient world. It was this reasoning that

led Ligon to claim that the Indians on Barbados were naturally “much craftier, and

fubtiler…and in their nature fafler” than the enslaved Africans because the environment 49 Joyce E. Chaplin “Natural Philosophy and an Early Racial Idiom in North America: Comparing English and Indian Bodies.” The William and Mary Quarterly 54, no.1 (1997): 241. doi: unknown50 Joyce E. Chaplin, Subject Matter: Technology, the Body, and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500-1676 (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2001), 12451 J. R. McNeil, Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620-1914 (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2010), 7152 Philip D. Curtin, “The Promise and the Terror of a Tropical Environment” in The Image of Africa: British Ideas and Action, 1780-1850, Volume 1 (University of Wisconsin Press, 1964), 7953 Joyce E. Chaplin, Subject Matter: Technology, the Body, and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500-1676 (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2001), 122

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of the Caribbean and Americas influenced Indian culture to take on these

characteristics.54 Natural philosophy suggests that, due to the effects of residing in a

foreign environment, a humoral imbalance can change the constitution of individuals

resulting in a changed person. This implies a fundamental change in the culture of that

individual, or more specifically the values, constitutions, and characteristics, which

previously defined that person. To English settlers, this process resulting in a change in

culture was known as creolization.

As colonization continued, English scholars were concerned about the changes

these new, unfamiliar environments might have on their bodies in a medical and cultural

sense. Selectively drawing upon classical natural philosophy, early modern scholars

thought that the environment determined the physical and mental characteristics of a

people. As a result, scholars “suspected that climates very different from their own were

unlikely to prove hospitable.”55 Some English scholars hypnotized that the environment

would change colonists from good Englishmen into Indians. The most important

indicator for this transformation was change in skin color though other changes such as

“a redefined stomach [eating of indigenous foods], clothing, comportment, tradable

commodities, and a healthy temperature” were also symptoms.56 Many literate colonials

negatively viewed this cultural metamorphosis because, influenced by natural

philosophy, they believed that creolization would transform them into something “less

than English.”57 In the Caribbean, this meant that they would lose the their “great abilities

54 Richard Ligon, A true & exact history of the island of Barbadoes (London, Frank Cass & Co., 1970), 5455 Joyce E. Chaplin, “Natural Philosophy and an Early Racial Idiom in North America: Comparing English and Indian Bodies” The William and Mary Quarterly (1997): 236, Accessed October 10, 201456 Susan Scott Parrish, American Curiosity: Cultures of Natural History in the Colonial British Atlantic World (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 9357 Susan Scott Parrish, American Curiosity: Cultures of Natural History in the Colonial British Atlantic World (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 16

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and parts…[that are required for] fuch great works as they undertake.”58 Maintaining and

protecting these abilities were essential for the successful management of a plantation

“that feeds daily two hundred mouths and keeps [the slaves] in fuch order, as there are no

mutinies amongft them; and yet [the slaves are] of feveral nations.”59 This fear of losing

their Englishness was partly due to the fact the colonists were far away from the

metropolitan center of the English empire (London). However, natural philosophy greatly

influenced this notion as well because it was believed the English body could change in

relation to the environment.

In order to better understand what the environment of the New World might do to

colonists, the English took an interest in understanding how the Indians came to be the

way they were. Drawing from natural philosophy, Europeans came to believe they were

superior to their Indian counterparts. The perceived superiority caused Europeans to fear

that the environment could possibly revert to the same cultural and technology level as

Indians. Europeans believed that the New World represented earlier stages of progress in

human history. They also came to believe that Indians weren’t indigenous and actually

migrated to the New World long ago most likely from a land bridge connecting the Old

and New Worlds.60 The Jesuit missionary Joseph de Acosta, who arrived in the New

World in 1570, developed this idea by contemplating how similar animals, such as foxes

and wolves, could be found in the Old and New Worlds.61 Europeans could thus

concluded that they were superior to Indians because Indians had migrated to the New

58 Richard Ligon, A true & exact history of the island of Barbadoes (London, Frank Cass & Co., 1970), 55 59 Richard Ligon, A true & exact history of the island of Barbadoes (London, Frank Cass & Co., 1970), 55 60 Joyce E. Chaplin “Natural Philosophy and an Early Racial Idiom in North America: Comparing English and Indian Bodies.” The William and Mary Quarterly 54, no.1 (1997): 250. doi: unknown 61 Lee Eldrigde Huddleston, Origins of the America Indians: European Concepts, 1492-1729 (Austin, University of Texas Press, 1967), 50

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World yet, despite the notion of seasoning, “were still unable to thrive in the Americas

[and] did not survive when transplanted to other places” as the European colonists were

currently doing.62 Whereas Indians seemed to be a roaming people, the English and other

Europeans were settling, clearing forests, planting crops, trading, and overall improving

both the earth and themselves allowing them to better thrive in the New World.63 The fact

that the English were able to transform the environment for their benefit suggested

English superiority over Indians. Furthermore, the Indians seemed to be frozen in time,

whereas Europeans believed that they had made massive strides forward in technology

and human progress. In the European mind, “every Fruit is better or wofre, according to

the temperance, equality or inequality of the original Forms of that Thing or Creature…

for the Fruit of each thing is the compleat Son or Image of all the Principles, Qualities,

and Powers of the Father” invoking a belief that Europeans, English in this particular

case, were inherently better than Indians because they have always been better due to

their ancestors.64 In order to explain why Indians seemed to lag behind European

development, Europeans thought “the lag in tropical social development came from the

environment.”65 Laziness was also seen as a result from tropical life and as an indirect

cause of the misinterpreted social development lag.66 The English feared the tropical

environment of the Caribbean could have the same effect on them. In the worst-case

62 Joyce E. Chaplin “Natural Philosophy and an Early Racial Idiom in North America: Comparing English and Indian Bodies.” The William and Mary Quarterly 54, no.1 (1997): 250. doi: unknown 63 Clarence J. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the end of the Eighteenth Century (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1967), 49564 Thomas Tryon, Tryons Letters Domestick and Foreign (London: Printed for Geo. Conyers, at the Ring; and Eliz Harris, at the Harrow, 1700), 10565 Philip D. Curtin, “The Promise and the Terror of a Tropical Environment” in The Image of Africa: British Ideas and Action, 1780-1850, Volume 1 (University of Wisconsin Press, 1964), 6566 Philip D. Curtin, “The Promise and the Terror of a Tropical Environment” in The Image of Africa: British Ideas and Action, 1780-1850, Volume 1 (University of Wisconsin Press, 1964), 65

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scenario, they feared that prolonged residence in the Caribbean would degenerate them

into the Indians developmental level. Either way, they would lose their Englishness,

culture, and identity due to the environmental effects of natural philosophy.67

Even if the English did not physically become Indian-like, the environment, they

feared, still degraded their Englishness. Many authors warn of laziness that overtakes

English colonists after living in the Caribbean. This was thought to be “the curse of a fat

soil” rather than humoral imbalance though.68 The rise of plantations throughout the

Caribbean produced cash crops, particularly sugar cane, and utilized African slave labor

in the production process. The success of sugar cane made large plantation owners

extremely wealthy. Since these plantations almost exclusively used African slaves,

plantation owners never had to actually work the land. Along with not having to work,

the hot climates in the south were seen as the number one threat to labor, industry, and

progress.69 Some writers sought to warn colonists that the naturally “voluptuous man…

nor the sleepie man” are fit for the Barbadian environment.70 They claim that to be

successful on Barbados one had to work hard and the environment is “utterly

inconfisftent to the humours and dispofitions of thefe men.”71 The English came to

believe the fertility of Caribbean soil was of a greater quality than the soil in England.

The “maruaylous swiftness” with which plants grew suggested to Europeans that laziness

67 Philip D. Curtin, “The Promise and the Terror of a Tropical Environment” in The Image of Africa: British Ideas and Action, 1780-1850, Volume 1 (University of Wisconsin Press, 1964), 63-6568 Susan Scott Parrish, American Curiosity: Cultures of Natural History in the Colonial British Atlantic World (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 9569 Philip D. Curtin, “The Promise and the Terror of a Tropical Environment” in The Image of Africa: British Ideas and Action, 1780-1850, Volume 1 (University of Wisconsin Press, 1964), 6270 Richard Ligon, A true & exact history of the island of Barbadoes (London, Frank Cass & Co., 1970), 10871 Richard Ligon, A true & exact history of the island of Barbadoes (London, Frank Cass & Co., 1970), 108

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was a result of the environment.72 They, thus, theorized that the Indians were so far

behind because the richness of the soil. The soil provided plenty of crops so the Indians

never had to develop more efficient agricultural techniques and “caused his savagery” in

the European mind.73 The problem of foreign environments and fertile soil continued to

trouble the English into the 18th century because they were concerned “how to

incorporate warmer latitudes into their mercantile and political realm without debauching

the character of their citizenry.”74

Mercantilism

Along with natural philosophy, mercantilism played a crucial role in how

Europeans contemplated the environment. From the beginning of European colonization

of the New World “nature was inextricably linked to interest in its commercial

exploitation.”75 Mercantilism was the method through which Europeans exploited nature

commercially. Mercantilism, though first coined by Adam Smith in his influential work

The Wealth of Nations (1776), is an economic theory that dominated European economic

policy from the sixteenth to nineteenth century. The central goal of this political

philosophy was articulated in the 1600s by Thomas Mun, an English writer on

economics, who observed that the principal rule nations need to follow in order “increase

our wealth and treasure…[is] to sell more to strangers yearly than wee consume of theirs

in value.”76 Previously the English and other northern Europeans had “argued that only 72 Henry Colt, The Voyage of Sir Henry Colt to the Islands of Barbados and St. Christopher: May-August 1631, edit. J Edward Hudson (Barbados: Cole’s Printery LTD., 1635), 14 73 Philip D. Curtin, “The Promise and the Terror of a Tropical Environment” in The Image of Africa: British Ideas and Action, 1780-1850, Volume 1 (University of Wisconsin Press, 1964), 6274 Susan Scott Parrish, American Curiosity: Cultures of Natural History in the Colonial British Atlantic World (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 9575 Daniela Bleichmar, “Books, Bodies, and Fields: Sixteenth-Century Transatlantic Encounters with New World Materia Medica” in Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World, edited by Londa Schiebinger and Claudia Swan (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 8376 Thomas Mun, England’s Treasure by Forraign (London, Printed by J.G. for Thomas Clark, 1664), 11

25

countries with adverse weather or terrain produced the hardiness of temper to achieve the

liberty and hence moral probity that comes with economic self sufficiency.”77 This meant

that the English were fully prepared to establish an empire and for economic success due

to the natural environment of the British Isles. Mercantilism, however, promotes the

establishment of colonies even in places with drastically different environments from the

mother country. These colonies would then extract raw materials or produce raw goods to

be sent back to the mother nation in or to be processed into a finished good.

The problem, however, was extracting the raw materials from nature because the

English, in particular, came to the conclusion that they were “ill suited to the Caribbean

environment.”78 This required a source of labor that could toil in the humid heat. Both

Indian and indentured European labor were experimented with, some Europeans even

experimented with using Africa as the location for plantations to cut back on

transportation costs.79 In the end, however, the importation of African slave labor was

utilized in order to produce the raw materials needed by the mother country, or England,

since it seemed that Africans “apparently worked better and lived longer in ‘climate’ of

tropical America.”80 Europeans suffered through the transportation costs of importing

African slaves to the Caribbean in order to easily coerce African slaves to work. Keeping

Africans in hereditary bondage was the cheapest source of labor available to Europeans.81

Furthermore, by transplanting Africans into a foreign land with various cultural group 77 Susan Scott Parrish, American Curiosity: Cultures of Natural History in the Colonial British Atlantic World (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 9578 Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1972), 264 79 Philip D. Curtin “Epidemiology and the Slave Trade.” Political Science Quarterly 83, no. 2 (1968): 193. doi: unknown80 Philip D. Curtin “Epidemiology and the Slave Trade.” Political Science Quarterly 83, no. 2 (1968): 194. doi: unknown81 Paul E. Lovejoy et al, “Slavery and Race” in Encycolpedia of Race and Racism, ed. John H. Moore. (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA/Thomson Gale, 2008), 65

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speaking various languages, Europeans could more easily control African slaves than if

the plantations were located in Africa.82

An implication of mercantilism is the success and prosperity of a country “rested

ultimately on the size and ability of its working population.”83 The success of colonies

was determined by population growth essentially. With a larger work force, more raw

materials would be extracted and then processed into finished goods resulting in wealth

creation. Furthermore, the ideal worker under the mercantilism system was that the work

force should be “industrious, obedient, and [content] with low wages.”84 The problem

was that populations were fairly small in the Americas meaning labor was expensive.

Also many English were hesitant about emigrating to New World colonies such as

Barbados because of concerns brought about by natural philosophy such as susceptibility

to disease. In order to find a cheap source of labor that was obedient and worked for next

to nothing, the English looked to the importation of African slaves. Unfortunately, slaves

fit the ideal worker in a mercantilist economy. They can be forced to work, be disciplined

when necessary, and work for no wages other than food, shelter, and clothing. They

argued that Africans were perfectly suited for work in the Caribbean because “Africans

were supposed to thrive on the same parallel as their native land.”85 Also, Europeans had

determined they were already ill suited to labor in hot climates such as the Caribbean

whereas Africans were well suited to any labor in the European mind. Africa’s natural

82 Paul E. Lovejoy et al, “Slavery and Race” in Encycolpedia of Race and Racism, ed. John H. Moore. (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA/Thomson Gale, 2008), 60, 6583 C. Robert Haywood “ Mercantilism and Colonial Slave Labor, 1700-1763.” The Journal of Southern History 23, no.4 (1957): 454. doi: unknown 84 C. Robert Haywood “ Mercantilism and Colonial Slave Labor, 1700-1763.” The Journal of Southern History 23, no.4 (1957): 455. doi: unknown 85 Joyce E. Chaplin, Subject Matter: Technology, the Body, and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500-1676 (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2001), 123

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environment produced a condition where Africans were supposed to be “insensible of

pain and deprivation.”86 African slaves seemed to be the answer from viewpoints of both

mercantilism and natural philosophy. They could be forced to work for nothing and

increase the labor force and they seemed to survive and work better in the tropical

climate than the English could. Once the raw materials were produced and shipped, the

final goods would be produced and then be exported back to the colonies, which provide

a market as well as a source of raw materials. Colonies are also required to import

finished goods from the mother country in order to keep the maximum amount of wealth

within the nation because mercantilism suggests that there is only a finite amount of

wealth available in the world.87

In a sense, mercantilism is built on mechanical philosophy, or the idea that

everything can be broken down into individual components, understood, and controlled.

Mechanical philosophy was first conjured in the writings of scientists and philosophers

such as Galileo, Descartes, Hobbes, and Newton in that they all attempt to break down a

subject into basic components.88 Through these individual components anything could be

examined, understood, and controlled. In regards to nature, mechanical philosophy

promoted the idea that “nature was…a machine or artifact.”89 The idea that man could

bend nature to his will was supported by the “changes…that they could make with fire

86 Joyce E. Chaplin, Subject Matter: Technology, the Body, and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500-1676 (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2001), 12387 Steve Picus “Rethinking Mercantilism: Political Economy, the British Empire, and the Atlantic World in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.” The William and Mary Quarterly 69, no.1 (2012): 4. doi: unknown 88 Richard H. Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens, and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600-1800 (New York, Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1995), 5089 Susan Scott Parrish, American Curiosity: Cultures of Natural History in the Colonial British Atlantic World (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 43

28

and clearing in what many considered virgin lands” in the New World.90 Man had already

transformed Europe through the clearing of forests, draining of swamps, and agriculture

so why could he not do so in the New World? Changing and controlling nature was

“expected function of his position in the scale of being and…his unique ability through

his intelligence.”91 These changes were further stressed to improve the land and earth as a

whole, ultimately resulting in the earth being “cultivated like a garden.”92 Mechanical or

reductionist philosophy could be applied to more than nature.

Economic writers such as Mun, perhaps unknowingly, turned this idea of being

able to understand and control something on the economy. Mun, in England’s Treasure

by Forraign Trade, delves into the components that make up trade. Some of these include

the proper characteristics of an ideal merchant such as commodities found in each

country, exchange rates, prices of various goods, and that he should be a scholar.93

Furthermore, Mun suggests that though England was “already exceeding rich by nature

yet might it be much increased by laying the waste grounds (which are infinite) into…

employments” thus utilizing all available land for the production of raw materials that

could be traded to foreign nations and benefit England.94 Though referring to England,

Mun’s idea applied to the Caribbean as well because the islands were seen as containing

unused land that could be transformed and put to use for the benefit of England. This idea

90 Clarence J. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the end of the Eighteenth Century (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1967), 35891 Clarence J. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the end of the Eighteenth Century (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1967), 46292 Clarence J. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the end of the Eighteenth Century (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1967), 47893 Thomas Mun, England’s Treasure by Forraign (London, Printed by J.G. for Thomas Clark, 1664), 4-894 Thomas Mun, England’s Treasure by Forraign (London, Printed by J.G. for Thomas Clark, 1664), 16-17

29

that utilizing unused land could increase wealth illustrates the reason why many islands

in the Caribbean were devoid of natural trees by the mid 1700s. By breaking down the

economy into individual components and seeking to control those components, Mun was

utilizing mechanical philosophy ideals. By understanding the economy, governments

could influence individuals to behave in certain ways because “economic matters were

too serious to be left to their natural course.”95 Through controlling nature, the English

were able to turn nature into “the servant of man…that ensured his status as master.”96

The first step in following mercantilist theory is to establish colonies, which

require land. Land, or the environment, is thus the key in this process. By “clearing and

settlement of land” a nation could lay the soundest claim of ownership to a given area.97

As a nation acquires more land, it can establish more colonies or at least expand existing

colonies. Indeed, in the mid 1650s, Oliver Cromwells “clear goal of divesting America’s

wealth to England”, or transferring New World wealth back to England rather than Spain,

by conquering Spanish colonies followed this line of logic.98 This would also break

Spanish control of the Caribbean allowing England to gain more territory and thus

wealth. Land was the basic component that brought all of mercantilist theory to fruition

and Cromwell recognized this despite depicting these attacks as a struggle between

Protestantism and Catholicism.

Even on a local level, plantations on so-called sugar islands were expanded in

order to make more money. As sugar became more and more profitable, large-scale

95 William Doyle, The Old European Order, 1660-1800 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1992), 6496 Susan Scott Parrish, American Curiosity: Cultures of Natural History in the Colonial British Atlantic World (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 4397 Richard H. Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens, and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600-1800 (New York, Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1995), 6598 Kristen Block, Ordinary Lives in the Early Caribbean: Religion, Colonial Competition, and the Politics of Profit (Athens, University of Georgia Press, 2012), 110

30

plantation owners throughout the Caribbean expanded to encompass more land. More

land allowed planters to produce more commodities such as sugar, and other New World

cash crops such as tobacco and indigo, had “entered the European repertoire as natural

commodities” due to trade between the New World and Europe.99 This land would then

immediately be cleared, often times to environmental degradation levels especially on

small islands. This was acceptable to settlers, however, because they were concerned

with how to “beft improve [land/nature] to the Ufes of” those utilizing the land.100 Also,

by clearing the land trade winds would clear the air of any bad vapors that resulted in

sickness. By clearing land colonists were simultaneously creating a healthier

environment, as informed by natural philsopohy, and fully extracting natural resources

from nature, as informed by mercantilism. For instance, on Barbados there are no sources

that “make no mention of forest after 1665 and by 1666 Barbados imported timber and

firewood.”101

All this land was cleared and acquired by a small number of large plantation

owners and converted to sugar-cane fields because “no one wanted to waste valuable

cane land on provision crops.”102 Converting land in cane fields was looked upon

favorable to the English because they believed that clearing and tilling land improved it

because it gave beauty to the land as well as economic benefits to the planters.103

99 Daniela Bleichmar, “Books, Bodies, and Fields: Sixteenth-Century Transatlantic Encounters with New World Materia Medica” in Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World, edited by Londa Schiebinger and Claudia Swan (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 83100 John Evelyn, A Philosophical Discourse of Earth Relating to the Culture and Improvement of it for Vegetation, and the Propagation of Plants, &c. as it was presented to the Royal Society, April 29, 1675 (London, Printed for John Martyn printer for the Royal Society, 1676), 10 101 J. R. McNeil, Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620-1914 (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2010), 27102 Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1972), 67103 Richard H. Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens, and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600-1800 (New York, Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1995), 64-65

31

Furthermore, cut down trees used in the sugar making process, which required that the

cane liquids to be boiled in furnaces. Planters, following mercantilist theory, believed that

in order to gain the maximum amount of finite wealth Barbados offered, they must clear

the land and produce only sugar. This follows the mercantilist philosophy that “land and

the raw material derived from it were the ultimate measure of wealth.”104 Essentially, land

had to be “restored by the Plow, the Spade and the Rake” in order for planters to make a

maximum profit from nature.105 The environmental destruction on Barbados was done all

in the name of profits and health. Expansion of sugar, and by extension the development

of more land, is described by Sidney Mintz as a representation of an “extension of empire

outward.”106 This suggests, then, that land was the key component in all European

empires throughout North America and that Europeans viewed the land as a wealth

producing, asset that was subservient to them.

Conclusion

Natural philosophy and mercantilism were the two main pillars that informed

European fears and ambitions concerning North America and the Caribbean. The English

had entered the New World conditioned to believe that “mermen, two-headed snakes, and

devouring…giants” and cannibals stalked the unknown landscape and waters.107 In this

context, English settlers had to comprehend their relationship to these new environments

compared to England. How will the climate effect my body? Will my culture transform 104 Steve Picus “Rethinking Mercantilism: Political Economy, the British Empire, and the Atlantic World in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.” The William and Mary Quarterly 69, no.1 (2012): 4. doi: unknown 105 John Evelyn, A Philosophical Discourse of Earth Relating to the Culture and Improvement of it for Vegetation, and the Propagation of Plants, &c. as it was presented to the Royal Society, April 29, 1675 (London, Printed for John Martyn printer for the Royal Society, 1676), 91-95 106 Sidney Wilfred Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York, Viking, 1985), 39107 Susan Scott Parrish, American Curiosity: Cultures of Natural History in the Colonial British Atlantic World (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 39

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into something less than English? How can nature be used for profit and empire building?

These were just some of the questions that colonists and scholars throughout the

seventeenth century thought about. Despite their fear North American and Caribbean

climates would transform them, English colonists settled throughout the New World.

Fears informed by natural philosophy were alleviated to an extent while economic

incentives inspire them to risk any remaining fears. They also recognized that the New

World was a source of wealth, a fact they knew from the Spanish in the sixteenth century

who had profited from gold and silver mines in New Spain and Peru.108 Mercanilism and

natural philosophy worked in unison to inform Europeans about the New World.

Mercantilism taught Europeans the potential economic benefits the New World possessed

while natural philosophy informed them of the risks of residing in foreign environments.

Natural philosophy, however, was reworked in order to alleviate any fears. The next

chapter will focus on the development of Barbados as a slave/plantation colony. It will

also more closely examine how environmental-mercantile philosophy resulted in the first

English slave/plantation society and the foundations of the emerging English empire.

108 Philip D. Curtin, “The Promise and the Terror of a Tropical Environment” in The Image of Africa: British Ideas and Action, 1780-1850, Volume 1 (University of Wisconsin Press, 1964), 60

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CHAPTER 2: NATURE AND COLONIAL DEVELOPMENT ON BARBADOS:A CASE STUDY

In 1627, Sir William Courteen, a wealthy Anglo-Dutch merchant, organized the

first English settlement of Barbados, a low lying island that is only 116 squared miles.

Courteen was influenced to establish a colony there after one of his ships, captained by

John Powell, landed on Barbados during Powells voyage from Brazil, the first place

where the first sugar plantations were established by the Portugese, to England in 1625.

As he and his party explored the island, he found Barbados to be devoid of man, yet

“there was life on the island.”109 At the time of Powells landing, Barbados was “fo

overgrown with Wood, as there could be found no Champions, or Savannas for men to

dwell in.”110 The tropical forest provided an abundance of tropical fruits such as oranges,

pineapples, watermelons, and figs. Also, wild hogs ran wild on Barbados, having been

introduced and allowed to thrive there by the Portuguese who would stop at Barbados

“should at any time [they] be driven by foul weather, to be caft upon the Ifland.”111

Powell was so impressed by the fertility of Barbados that when he returned to England,

he sought to “form a company to undertake its settlement” so he and others might take

advantage of the untapped natural resources Barbados possessed.112 Barbados continued

to be considered an extremely fertile island into the eighteenth century despite

environmental degradation caused by sugar plantations. For instance, in 1750 Griffith

Hughes wrote in his Natural History of Barbados that if the island was cultivated with

crops to provide for just the island that “this fmall Ifland alone, without any foreign

109 Gary Puckrein, Little England: Plantation Society and Anglo-Barbadian Politics, 1627-1700 (New York, New York University Press, 1984), 5110 Richard Ligon, A true & exact history of the island of Barbadoes (London, Frank Cass & Co., 1970), 23111 Richard Ligon, A true & exact history of the island of Barbadoes (London, Frank Cass & Co., 1970), 23112 Gary Puckrein, Little England: Plantation Society and Anglo-Barbadian Politics, 1627-1700 (New York, New York University Press, 1984), 6

Affiftance, would…produce a Sufficiency of fuch Food to maintain more than Number of

its prefent Inhabitants.”113 Even after a hundred years of transforming land to mans will,

nature was still described as abundant on Barbados. It was with the goal of amassing

wealth in mind that in 1627 Powell influenced William Courteen and several others to

join him in colonizing Barbados by emphasizing the “sizable profits [Barbados offered] if

it were properly cultivated.”114 Thus, Barbados was colonized by the English.

From the very beginnings of colonization, Barbados developed along a unique

path. Barbados was the first of the so called Sugar Islands to establish a plantation society

that embraced the use of African slave labor on sugar plantations. The English, through

their understanding of natural philosophy and mercantilism, simultaneously sought to

exploit Barbados economically and develop the island to protect themselves from the

volatile, tropical environment. Even as they developed Barbados to suit their needs, the

English refused to accept some of the realities of tropical living and argued about ways in

which they could protect and maintain their Englishness, which they believed was under

constant threat from living on tropical Barbados.

This chapter will first examine how the English reformulated natural philosophy

in order to entice colonists to settle in the Caribbean. Reformulating natural philosophy

was also meant to illustrate to potential colonists that the English could in fact survive in

the New World and maintain their Englishness despite previous scientific understanding

informed by natural philosophy. Despite reformulating natural philosophy, English

colonists still had reservations concerning nature and their bodies. As a result, they took

113 Griffith Hughes, The Natural History of Barbados: In Ten Books (London, printed for the author, 1750), 22114 Gary Puckrein, Little England: Plantation Society and Anglo-Barbadian Politics, 1627-1700 (New York, New York University Press, 1984), 7

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steps to help ensure that their Englishness was protected and maintained. Though the

English attempted to protect their Englishness the best they could, they were still forced

to adapt to Barbados. These adaptations, however, were seen as a way to transform

Barbados into an environment in which the English could survive and fully extract

natural resources from Barbados. The means through which the English extracted

resources and acquired wealth was through plantations. Plantations, according to this

thesis, came to represent the culmination of environmental-mercantile philosophy.

Misconceptions concerning African bodies compared to European bodies lead the

English to utilize African slave labor as a fully productive and utilized labor force that

could, in their minds, survive in the extreme humidity and heat of Barbados.

Furthermore, plantations became one of the basic units that allowed the creation and

consolidation of empire during the seventeenth century. As such, environmental-

mercantile philosophy can be viewed as the means through which empire was established

and consolidated.

1) Natural Philosophy Reformulated

As discussed in the previous chapter, the English had anxieties over the effect of

settling, cultivating, and living in warm, tropical environments. Their understanding of

natural philosophy brought about these concerns. By settling on Barbados, or anywhere

in the Caribbean, the English believed they were more susceptible to disease, weaken

their constitutions, and degrade their English culture into something less than English. In

order to alleviate these fears and concerns, writers and settlers had to rethink their

understanding of nature’s effect on man by selectively applying or transforming the

tenants of natural philosophy. This goal could be achieved through a number of ways

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from citing English resistance to extremely harsh and different climates, thereby proving

English bodies can survive and thrive in the Caribbean, to giving recommendations on

how to protect one’s constitution in the tropical environment and, finally, illustrating that

the “New World…is fo happy a Climate.”115

In the summer of 1631, Sir Henry Colt, a devote Roman Catholic and

Englishman, left Dorset, England to sail to the Antilles to settle in St. Christopher and

establish his own plantation on the island. Before he reached his final destination, the

ship he found passage with stopped at Barbados during the early years of the colony.

During his transatlantic voyage, Colt kept a detailed personal journal that happened to

contain a letter for his son. In this letter, Colt gave his son “some rules for your diet [and]

health” should his son ever wish to travel to the Caribbean and establish his own

plantation.116 These rules, Colt warns, are important to follow because the journey is

“dangerous bycause of the change of Climates, especially about the Tropick [of

Cancer].”117

Clearly Colt was aware of natural philosophy and the dangers of settling in a

tropical climate. As a result, he felt it necessary to pass on his knowledge of persevering

ones health during all aspects of the transatlantic journey on to his son. He explains that

the portion of the journey around between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn are

“temperate enough, with an ayre fresh [and] coole, butt the sunn only hot.”118 To Colt, the

“most dangerous place is the Tropick…[because of] pestilent feavours” and a disease

115 Nathaniel Crouch, The English Empire in America (London: Printed for Nathaniel Crouch, 1685), 2 116 Henry Colt, The Voyage of Sir Henry Colt to the Islands of Barbados and St. Christopher: May-August 1631, edit. J Edward Hudson (Barbados: Cole’s Printery LTD., 1635), 42117 Henry Colt, The Voyage of Sir Henry Colt to the Islands of Barbados and St. Christopher: May-August 1631, edit. J Edward Hudson (Barbados: Cole’s Printery LTD., 1635), 42118 Henry Colt, The Voyage of Sir Henry Colt to the Islands of Barbados and St. Christopher: May-August 1631, edit. J Edward Hudson (Barbados: Cole’s Printery LTD., 1635), 42

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which led sailors to believe the ocean was a green field, desire to leap into it, and

subsequently drown.119 In order to safeguard oneself, Colt advises that “your stomack is

ever to be kept warm…For digestion, [and] to avoyd the flux” in addition to using

“pepper in all your brothes; [and eating] raysens of the sunn.”120 Colt provides additional

advice ranging from what foods to eat and how much, to staying away from crowed

portions of the ship in order to stay away from “sick men…least they dye [and] infect

others”, to proper attire for living in the Caribbean.121 Everything from the air of a place

to the foods one eats could cause an imbalance in an individual’s humors. Once the

humors became unbalanced, according to natural philosophy, that person would be more

susceptible to disease or, even worse, creolization thus leaving them less than in English

in the colonists mind. As a result, Colt’s recommendations revolve around protecting

one’s body from humoral imbalances by noting that the air is fresh and cool to the proper

foods to eat in the Caribbean. All of Colt’s measures are thus aimed at protecting

European bodies from the dangers inspired by natural philosophy and remaining healthy.

Nathaniel Crouch also wrote about the climate of the New World. Crouch, a

bookseller and author, intentionally wrote for a much wider audience. In his English

Empire in North America (1685), Crouch gives an overview of the people, government,

life, climate, and history of all of England’s colonial possessions in the New World. To

begin his work, Crouch describes the tropics as a “happy Climate” where “nature spreads

her fruitful sweetness” and “The Sun no Climate does fo gladly fee / When forc’d from

119 Henry Colt, The Voyage of Sir Henry Colt to the Islands of Barbados and St. Christopher: May-August 1631, edit. J Edward Hudson (Barbados: Cole’s Printery LTD., 1635), 42 120 Henry Colt, The Voyage of Sir Henry Colt to the Islands of Barbados and St. Christopher: May-August 1631, edit. J Edward Hudson (Barbados: Cole’s Printery LTD., 1635), 42 121 Henry Colt, The Voyage of Sir Henry Colt to the Islands of Barbados and St. Christopher: May-August 1631, edit. J Edward Hudson (Barbados: Cole’s Printery LTD., 1635), 43-44

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hence, to view our parts, he mourns.”122 This is meant to tempt and persuade readers to

journey to the all parts of the New World to take advantage of the abundant wealth nature

provides there.

Still, Crouch needs to alleviate any fears brought about by natural philosophy. To

accomplish this, Crouch takes a different approach from Colt. He lists the “Adventurous

Voyages, and extream dangers fome of our brave Englifh Spirits have furmounted in their

Difcoveries of this New World.”123 These brave English range from Sir Sebastion Cabot,

who explored both the frigid north of Canada and the coast of Florida, to Sir Francis

Drake, an infamous privateer who raided Spanish ships throughout the Caribbean. Sir

Francis Drake, along with other Englishmen who explored the Caribbean, are far more

interesting than those who ventured to the far north however. Crouch describes Drake as

“moft defervedly honoured of all men” and a “brave Seaman” upon his account of

Drake’s exploits.124 Crouch details all of Drakes exploits with a sort of reverence.

Everything from his raids against the Spanish and plundering treasure to being the “firft

Commander of note that incompaffed this Globe of Earth” and being knighted are all

recalled by Crouch.125 Drake in his travels, sailed the throughout the Caribbean, through

the Straits of Magellan, to the Philippines and the Cape of Good Hope before finally

ending his voyage in England. Crouch never notes that claims Drake ever had any fears

concerning natural philosophy. Drake’s exploits and battles against the Spanish in the

Caribbean, in particular, are meant to convey English colonists that they are more than

capable of thriving in the Caribbean despite the foreign climate and threat of Spanish

122 Nathaniel Crouch, The English Empire in America (London: Printed for Nathaniel Crouch, 1685), 2123 Nathaniel Crouch, The English Empire in America (London: Printed for Nathaniel Crouch, 1685), 27124 Nathaniel Crouch, The English Empire in America (London: Printed for Nathaniel Crouch, 1685), 41125 Nathaniel Crouch, The English Empire in America (London: Printed for Nathaniel Crouch, 1685), 44

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attack. In all these adventures, the English braved both the foreign climates of the New

World as well as “Savage Inhabitants… [that] eat or rather devour raw Flefh and Fifh.”126

By listing the achievements and adventurers of past Englishmen, Crouch suggests that the

English could thus brave and survive in any climate no matter how foreign from England.

In addition to citing past exploits of English explorers, Crouch along with other

writers such as Charles de Rochefort, a French Protestant pastor who’s History of the

Caribby-Islands was translated to English during the mid 1600s, often compared the

Caribbean climate with climates Europeans might be more familiar with. By taking this

approach, potential colonist would have a better idea of what tropical, island climates are

like rather than imagining them as beds of disease, pestilence, monsters, and death as

previously thought by Europeans. For instance, Crouch compares the climate and

temperature of Carolina, another colonial with a warm climate thought dangerous to the

English constitution, to “Antioch, Judea, and the Province of Nanking, the richeft in

China, [and] will produce any thing which thofe Countrys do.”127 When Crouch comes to

discuss the climate of Barbados, he describes the air “like the air of England about the

middle of May” and when it is hot, a consistent “cool breeze which rife with the Sun”

keeps the colonists cool even on the hottest days.128 Rochefort also contends that the “Air

of all these Iflands is temperate, and healthy enough, efpecially to fuch as have lived in

any time in them.”129 Rochefort also claimed that “the heats are not greater in these parts

than they are in France during the Months of July and Auguft.”130 Furthermore, the

126 Nathaniel Crouch, The English Empire in America (London: Printed for Nathaniel Crouch, 1685), 28127 Nathaniel Crouch, The English Empire in America (London: Printed for Nathaniel Crouch, 1685), 148128 Nathaniel Crouch, The English Empire in America (London: Printed for Nathaniel Crouch, 1685), 200129 Charles de Rochefort, The History of the Carriby-Iflands (London: Printed by J.M. for Thomas Dring and John Starky, 1666), 3130 Charles de Rochefort, The History of the Carriby-Iflands (London: Printed by J.M. for Thomas Dring and John Starky, 1666), 3

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rampant diseases that took the lives of so many settlers in the Caribbean was not native to

the Caribbean, but was brought there from African slaves and since “that corruption of

the Air…there is no talk of any fuch Difeafes.”131

2) Protecting Englishness

Though natural philosophy was being reformulated during the seventeenth

century, English colonists were still wary of Barbados’s tropical climate and its effect on

their bodies. As a result of this suspicion, the English took measurements to protect their

Englishness, the characteristics, constitution, and principals that make them English. The

idea that nature could transform them into something less than English frightened them

because they believed there were no “better Workmen than we, for certainty there are no

better Artificers or Improvers of curious Arts in the World than the English.”132 The

English scorned and refused to imitate “the Spaniards, the Indians, or the Negroes, who

were all experienced at living in hot countries” and clung to their Northern European

styles and ways.133 It was, in the English mind, the cooler environment of England that

made the English into a tougher people those residing in warmer climates allowing them

to establish colonies and survive in the New World.134 Consuming indigenous foods and

abandoning English ways of life was seen as both a physically and psychologically

change, causing drastic changes in individuals and turning them into something other

131 Charles de Rochefort, The History of the Carriby-Iflands (London: Printed by J.M. for Thomas Dring and John Starky, 1666), 3 132 Thomas Tryon, Tryons Letters Domestick and Foreign (London: Printed for Geo. Conyers, at the Ring; and Eliz Harris, at the Harrow, 1700), 211 133 Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1972), 263 134 Joyce E. Chaplin “Natural Philosophy and an Early Racial Idiom in North America: Comparing English and Indian Bodies.” The William and Mary Quarterly 54, no.1 (1997): 236. doi: unknown

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than English (this process was known as creolization).135 Even remaining in Barbados’s

hot, humid climate for too long could result in this transformation. Being English, thus,

was something to take pride in and protect to the English. So, in order to maintain their

Englishness, they attempted to transfer English “modes of diet, dress, and housing to the

tropics.”136 This fear of bodily change, and the resulting fear of creolization, was the

reason why the English on Barbados maintained their English style of living despite

defying obvious tropical realities of tropical life.

One way they did this was through their refusal to “accept tropical realities” such

as the fact Barbados is a hot, humid place.137 Many of the colonists, especially the

wealthier ones, overdressed for the heat in order to distinguish themselves as being

English. Overdressing was meant to show the social hierarchy that had been previously

been established in England. This social system was transferred and made even more

prominent on an island that was “divided into three forts of men.”138 In order to remain

with the current fashion trend in England and to further distinguish class, Barbados

imported all the “Hats [they] wear; and of Shoes thoufands of Dozens yearly” along with

shirts, pants, socks, leather gloves, and long cloaks just to name a few.139 By dressing in

certain styles, the wealthy plantation owners could easily distinguish themselves from the

small plantation owners and the African slaves. While the wealthy would dress in lavish,

135 Karen Ordahl Kupperan, “Fear of Hot Climates in the Anglo-American Experience.” The William and Mary Quarterly 41, no. 2 (1984): 214. doi: unknown136 Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1972), 263 137 Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1972), 286 138 Richard Ligon, A true & exact history of the island of Barbadoes (London, Frank Cass & Co., 1970), 43 139 Edward Littleton, The Groans of the Plantations (London, Printed by M. Clark, 1698), 24

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hot clothing, the poor and slaves were “expected to dress poorly.”140 Clothing was thus a

means to transfer English traditions to Barbados in an attempt to reinforce social

hierarchies as well as maintain the English culture in the face of a tropical environment.

Another way the English attempted to defy nature was through the construction of

their homes. Colonists had arrived to Barbados, and throughout the New World,

believing they could transform the environment into an orderly, productive landscape.

This included the construction of homes. Twenty-five years after Ligon had left

Barbados, the island had “Received the most Improvement it was Capable of” according

to an anonymous source in 1676.141 The author claimed that Ligon was at Barbados at a

time when people sweated more about “bare neceffitities of life” rather than the heat.142

Furthermore, there were no “Houfes which could boaft a Granduer” during Ligons

time.143 The planter had gained enough wealth from sugar at this point to imitate “English

designs and styles” in the construction of their homes and buildings.144 The days when

Ligon found “timber houfes with low roofs, fo low…[he] could hardly stand upright with

[his] hat on” were over according to this anonymous writer.145 The houses the English

built, however, were extremely susceptible to the weather due to the tendency to make

them three to four stories tall.146

140 Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1972), 282 141 Anonymous, Great newes from the Barbadoes (London, Printed for L. Curtis in Goast-Court upon Ludgate-Hill, 1676), 4142 Anonymous, Great newes from the Barbadoes (London, Printed for L. Curtis in Goast-Court upon Ludgate-Hill, 1676), 4143 Anonymous, Great newes from the Barbadoes (London, Printed for L. Curtis in Goast-Court upon Ludgate-Hill, 1676), 4144 Matthew Mulcahy, Hurricanes and Society in the British Greater Caribbean, 1624-1783 (Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 2006), 120 145 Richard Ligon, A true & exact history of the island of Barbadoes (London, Frank Cass & Co., 1970), 40 146 Matthew Mulcahy, Hurricanes and Society in the British Greater Caribbean, 1624-1783 (Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 2006), 120

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Hurricanes, in particular, possessed the ability, as they still do, to completely

destroy and level entire towns. Hurricanes leave a lasting impact wherever that strike and

have “characterized [the Caribbean], and they have shaped its socieites and histories…in

many ways.”147 The power and influence of these storms cannot be understanted. For

instance, Griffith Hughes tells us that in 1675 a hurricane hit Barbados which “left either

Houfe nor Tree standing.”148 He further likens the scene on Barbados after the storm

subsided to that of the “Tenth Egyptian Plague of old.”149 Nothing could protect the

English from the fierceness of this storm and several families were entirely buried when

their home collapsed on them.150 Despite the destruction of their homes and towns, the

colonists just a year later rebuilt their grand, large, English homes though it is quite

possible that the pamphlet recalling the grand homes was published without knowledge

of the hurricane. The English refused to imitate Indian or Spnaish style buildings, which

were smaller and lower to the ground than the English style, because they appeared to be

“primitive, and…too small or too ugly” respectively.151 Eventually, however, after

continued destruction at the hands of weather disasters, the Barbadians would be forced

to lower their homes in order to survive hurricanes and other tropical storms.152 Even with

the threat of hurricanes and the devastation they wrought, they could not “completely

147 Stuart B. Schwartz, “Hurricanes and the Shpaing of Circum-Caribbean Societies.” The Florida Historical Quarterly 83, no. 4 (2005): 384. doi: unknown148 Griffith Hughes, The Natural History of Barbados: In Ten Books (London, printed for the author, 1750), 25 149 Griffith Hughes, The Natural History of Barbados: In Ten Books (London, printed for the author, 1750), 26 150 Griffith Hughes, The Natural History of Barbados: In Ten Books (London, printed for the author, 1750), 26 151 Matthew Mulcahy, Hurricanes and Society in the British Greater Caribbean, 1624-1783 (Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 2006), 122152 Matthew Mulcahy, Hurricanes and Society in the British Greater Caribbean, 1624-1783 (Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 2006), 123

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transform building practices” and many English continued to “continued to model

dwellings on metropolitan designs and “English styles.””153

3) Adapting to the New World

Though the English were taking precautions to ensure they remained English,

they had to adapt to nature to survive in the tropics. Barbados was, and still is, an

environment completely different from England. Its location in the tropics makes it

extremely hot in the summer months and warm in the winter ones. Tropical diseases also

ran rampant. The English came to realize that these condition made life very difficult for

them causing many to shy away from extreme physical labor. This became a problem for

the English especially as sugar plantations, which require a large, productive workforce

to produce sugar, on Barbados became increasingly profitable. This forced the English to

develop new means of production of sugar along with adaptations that ensure their

survival and continual success on Barbados.

A glaring issue that the English were forced to adapt to was the lack of fresh

water on Barbados. Richard Ligon notes that there was “nothing in this Ifland fo much

wanting” as fresh water to cool ones thirst.154 Barbados only had a few small springs and

rivers which were considered “very small and inconfiderable” amongst the colonists.155

According to Ligon, there was only one true river, and that river was more like a lake

than anything else. Also the lake was briny because the tides would bring in the sea and

there it would remain. In order to have a supply of drinking water, the English built water

retention ponds on their property. These ponds required a clay bottom and if they

153 Matthew Mulcahy, Hurricanes and Society in the British Greater Caribbean, 1624-1783 (Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 2006), 132154 Richard Ligon, A true & exact history of the island of Barbadoes (London, Frank Cass & Co., 1970), 28 155 Richard Ligon, A true & exact history of the island of Barbadoes (London, Frank Cass & Co., 1970), 28

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weren’t, they “muft be made fo” otherwise the water will between any cracks and “finks

in an inftant.”156 This pond water then serves the owners every need. These ponds,

however, were stagnant pools of water. This meant they provided the perfect habitat for

mosquitoes to flourish that could then spread tropical diseases such as malaria and yellow

fever. Mosquitoes, as a result, were numerous and were known to “[bite] and ftring worfe

then Gnats” according to Samuel Clarke, who wrote an account of the most successful

plantations within the English empire in 1670.157 Despite the mosquitos and threat of

tropical diseases, Barbados had a “reputation as a healthy island” at least by the standards

of the time.158

Another way in which the English adapted to Barbados was through the

importation of beasts of burden. Utilizing animals brought from Europe was seen as an

essential to “successful colonization schemes.”159 Animals brought to Barbados,

particularly grazing animals such as cattle, “assisted in the transformation of forest into

farmland.”160 By helping to clear away the land of local fauna, animals helped to make

Barbados healthier for the English because it allowed for “Regularity of the Trade-

Winds” which served to purify the air.161 Furthermore, the importation of animals helped

to reaffirm the place of the English as dominating over other aspects of life such as nature

156 Richard Ligon, A true & exact history of the island of Barbadoes (London, Frank Cass & Co., 1970), 28157 Samuel Clarke, A True and Faithful Account of the Four Cheifest Plantations of the English America (London, Printed for Robert Clavel, Thomas Passenger, William Cadman, William Whitwood, Thomas Sawbridge, and William Birch, 1670), 70158 J. R. McNeil, Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620-1914 (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2010), 28 159 Virginia DeJohn Anderson, Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America (New York, Oxford University Press, 2004), 76 160 Virginia DeJohn Anderson, Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America (New York, Oxford University Press, 2004), 4 161 Griffith Hughes, The Natural History of Barbados: In Ten Books (London, printed for the author, 1750), 3

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and other human beings.162 By having animals brought to Barbados, the English were

simultaneously creating a healthier environment and reaffirming their own Englishness

by imitating the country landscape found back in England.

When the English arrived, the only large animals living on Barbados were the

wild hogs. To the English, livestock was irreplaceable “for all sorts of human endeavors”

including the establishment and success of colonies.163 Beasts of burden were brought to

Barbados to help colonists develop the island. Animals were essential to the survival of

the colony. They helped to clear the land, transport goods throughout Barbados, and

transform sugar cane into sugar during the exhausting sugar-making process. One of the

animals brought to Barbados was the camel. These were described by Ligon as “very

ufeful beafts” but very few lived on the island because amongst the colonists were “few

[who knew] how to dyet them.”164 Though camels could not adapt to the cuisine of

Barbados other animals such as horses, oxen, and cows, all animals that thrive and are

common in Europe, were brought to the island and adapted. Animals common to Europe,

and seen by colonists adapting to the tropics, could have reaffirmed that nature was being

transformed into a climate more suitable to the English and other Europeans. This would

have been accomplished and interpreted by the English who used beasts of burden to

“improve the land” and “realize America’s potential.”165 Livestock would be used in the

sugar mills to squeeze the juice out of the cane and to transport goods to and from the

port towns. The most useful animal brought by the English was the affinigo or donkey

162 Virginia DeJohn Anderson, Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America (New York, Oxford University Press, 2004), 8 163 Virginia DeJohn Anderson, Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America (New York, Oxford University Press, 2004), 84 164 Richard Ligon, A true & exact history of the island of Barbadoes (London, Frank Cass & Co., 1970), 58 165 Virginia DeJohn Anderson, Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America (New York, Oxford University Press, 2004), 8

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however. These animals were extremely useful in that they could easily “pick and choofe

their way” through the gullies in the roads and roots that often trapped a horses leg in the

mud.166 In addition, they could easily be picked up by only a couple of slaves if they ever

fell down in the mud.167 Manure produced by livestock would also be used in order to

fertilize the rapidly depleted Barbadian soil, which by the late seventeenth century had

“loft its natural Virtue and Strength.”168 As more and more beasts of burden were

brought and breed in Barbados, they helped the English transform Barbados into an

image that supports the idea of a habitable, productive island.

4) Taming Nature

From the very beginnings of colonization on Barbados, the island was settled with

the goal of getting rich, despite the fears of possible “Spanish hostility, worries about the

unwholesomeness of the weather, and a host of other fears and phobias”169 The possibility

of growing rich enticed and influenced the first settlers to join Powell in establishing the

first colony on Barbados. It is because settlers came to Barbados with the goal of

becoming rich that an “unchecked materialism…pervaded the colony.”170 English

planters and capitalists who invested in this colonization project, sought to control and

harness all the elements of nature in order to obtain the wealth they desired.171 Once the

English could control nature, the English would then be able to better survive on

166 Richard Ligon, A true & exact history of the island of Barbadoes (London, Frank Cass & Co., 1970), 58 167 Richard Ligon, A true & exact history of the island of Barbadoes (London, Frank Cass & Co., 1970), 58 168 Thomas Tryon, Tryons Letters Domestick and Foreign (London: Printed for Geo. Conyers, at the Ring; and Eliz Harris, at the Harrow, 1700), 203169 Gary Puckrein, Little England: Plantation Society and Anglo-Barbadian Politics, 1627-1700 (New York, New York University Press, 1984), 7 170 Gary Puckrein, Little England: Plantation Society and Anglo-Barbadian Politics, 1627-1700 (New York, New York University Press, 1984), 13 171 Laura Hollsten "Controlling Nature and Transforming Landscapes in the Early Modern Caribbean." Global Environment 1 (2008): 94

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Barbados, take advantage of the wealth nature can provide, and ultimately “refine”

Barbados for the better.172 Before anyone could think of making a profit, the early

colonists first had to “adapt to the environment and grow enough food” in order to

survive.173 However, once the English could establish themselves and understand the

nature of the colony then the English “overrules [nature], and is her Master.”174

After arriving on Barbados, the English immediately set to planting crops such as

potatoes, maize, and plantains in order to sustain themselves along with hunting the local

wild hogs. Despite cultivating their own crops, the colonists were reliant upon supplies

from England, which came “fo flow, and fo uncertaintly, they were often driven to great

extremities.”175 In order to establish themselves further and to establish trade, the English

sought to strike it rich through the cultivation of tobacco. From he initial colonization of

Barbados in 1627 to the 1640s tobacco was the primary cash crop cultivated. During this

tobacco era Barbados could be considered little more than a backwater colony with little

to no importance. The Barbadians had attempted to imitate their North American

counterparts by cultivating tobacco as a cash crop to export back to England. However,

the tobacco they grew was “fo earthy and fo worthlefs, as it could give them little or no

return from England.”176 Tobacco’s failure on Barbados left planters seeking a substitute

that grew well in the tropics and was profitable, ultimately leading them to exclusively

cultivate sugar cane and produce sugar as a commodity.

172 John Evelyn, Sylva, or, a Discourse of Forest Trees (London: Printed by Jo. Martyn and Ja. Allestry, 1670) 1173 Laura Hollsten "Controlling Nature and Transforming Landscapes in the Early Modern Caribbean." Global Environment 1 (2008): 84 174 John Evelyn, Sylva, or, a Discourse of Forest Trees (London: Printed by Jo. Martyn and Ja. Allestry, 1670) 1175 Richard Ligon, A true & exact history of the island of Barbadoes (London, Frank Cass & Co., 1970), 24176 Richard Ligon, A true & exact history of the island of Barbadoes (London, Frank Cass & Co., 1970), 24

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Furthermore, the early colonists were fairly unsuccessful in taming the nature and

bending it to their will. During Colts short visit to Barbados in 1631, he writes that the

“grownd and plantations…lye like the ruines of some village lately burned.”177 Too few

English risked the trip to Barbados. Consequentially, there were not enough men to cut

down the massive trees. Colt also writes that during his stay in Barbados, he did not see

“any man at work” despite the fact the plantations were in an overall deplorable state.178

Even when one was cut down, the limbs were so “thick and boyfterous” it required more

men to remove the limbs and transport them elsewhere.179 Even by the time Ligon arrived

on Barbados in 1647, massive trees could be found and crops such as potatoes and maize

were grown between the boughs of felled trees “fo far fhort was the ground then of being

cleared.”180 According to these accounts, Barbados was in a deplorable state during the

early years of colonization. Barbados would not be able to stabilize itself until it began

cultivating indigo and cotton and harvesting fustic, a type of tropical wood used in

making yellow dyes and in building. These commodities managed to sell well in England

and ships began to arrive for trade.

Despite the rough beginning years, Barbados was gaining trade and some profit.

The English were making a fraction of the profits they would acquire once they began to

plant sugar cane however. In many ways, the story of sugar on Barbados can be a story

describing the domination of nature by man in the pursuit of material gains. It was

quickly discovered that sugar cane grew extremely well on Barbados. Also, the amount

177 Henry Colt, The Voyage of Sir Henry Colt to the Islands of Barbados and St. Christopher: May-August 1631, edit. J Edward Hudson (Barbados: Cole’s Printery LTD., 1635) 14.178 Henry Colt, The Voyage of Sir Henry Colt to the Islands of Barbados and St. Christopher: May-August 1631, edit. J Edward Hudson (Barbados: Cole’s Printery LTD., 1635) 14. 179 Richard Ligon, A true & exact history of the island of Barbadoes (London, Frank Cass & Co., 1970), 24180 Richard Ligon, A true & exact history of the island of Barbadoes (London, Frank Cass & Co., 1970), 24

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of profit resulting from its cultivation and subsequent transformation into sugar made

sugar cane a very attractive cash crop. Ligon explains that sugar cane and the wealth it

generated caused the planters of Barbados “bent all their endeavors to advance their

knowledge in the planting and making of Sugar.”181 From an economic perspective, it is

clear why the English quickly transitioned into producing sugar as the primary cash crop;

it sold extremely well amongst the English and European markets. Furthermore, it sold at

high price due to its status as a deluxe commodity “rather than a common commodity or

necessity.”182 Environmental factors, however, had a heavy influence in making sugar

cane the primary cash crop grown not just on Barbados, but throughout the Caribbean.

Sugar cane is a type of grass thought to be native to New Guinea originally where

it was first domesticated before 8000 B.C.183 Sugar cane gradually spread to Indonesia,

India, the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and ultimately it was brought to the New

World by Christopher Columbus in 1493.184 Sugar cane naturally grew well in the

Caribbean environment since it originated in a warm, tropical environment with the

optimal conditions being a warm, moist environment and an optimal temperature between

25-33° Celsius.185 Even when growing at optimal conditions, however, sugar cane still

took over a year to ripen before the cane could be harvested and manufactured into sugar.

Furthermore, producing sugar was still a slow and laborious process that required careful

planning and close attention at every step. Planter had to face a number of obstacles

181 Richard Ligon, A true & exact history of the island of Barbadoes (London, Frank Cass & Co., 1970), 24182 Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York, Viking Penguin Inc., 1985), 31183 Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York, Viking Penguin Inc., 1985), 19184 Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York, Viking Penguin Inc., 1985), 32185 Laura Hollsten "Controlling Nature and Transforming Landscapes in the Early Modern Caribbean." Global Environment 1 (2008): 84

52

before they could experience returns from sugar cane. According to Ligon, the initial

costs of establishing a plantation is 14,000 pounds.186 A planter also required a large,

productive labor force in order to harvest the cane. Finally, planters needed the capital

required to process the cane. This included presses to squeeze the cane, boiling houses,

and mill houses. Planters also had to hope no hurricanes struck the island before the

planter fully established himself or he would “be forced to sell [his] lands to wealthier

and more secure planters” if he found his plantation, and thus investment, destroyed.187 If

the planter could pass all these obstacles, he could expect to make 8,866 pounds per year

in the mid 1600s.188 In the end, though, sugar simply grew better and was of a higher

quality than tobacco and other cash crops on Barbados as seen by its success in European

markets.

Soon large plantation owners set about to dedicate as much of the island to

producing sugar as much as possible. They were committed to cutting down the

remaining forests on Barbados. Planters cut down the forests in order to meet with the

increasing demand of European markets.189 This demand, however, wasn’t meet because

sugar making was made more efficient (or more yield per acre) but by “a steady

expansion of production.”190 By 1665, no surviving source makes no mention of the

forest on Barbados.191 Even in Richard Fords map from 1675 shows little to no forest, but 186 Richard Ligon, A true & exact history of the island of Barbadoes (London, Frank Cass & Co., 1970), 108,187 Matthew Mulcahy, Hurricanes and Society in the British Greater Caribbean, 1624-1783 (Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 2006), 86188 Richard Ligon, A true & exact history of the island of Barbadoes (London, Frank Cass & Co., 1970), 112189 Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York, Viking Penguin Inc., 1985), 36190 Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York, Viking Penguin Inc., 1985), 36 191 J. R. McNeil, Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620-1914 (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2010), 27

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it does depict the entire island being covered in sugar mills and plantations.192 This wasn’t

seen as a problem to the colonists though because they felt that “clearing of the forests

was…beneficial for economical, cultural and health reasons.”193 By converting the island

into cultivated land rather than having it remain tropical forest, the Barbadians were

protecting themselves from diseases that are “fo common to the Inhabitants of

uncultivated Iflands.”194 Trade winds could blow away foul vapors, keeping the air pure

and people healthy.195 These “cool breezes of wind” also keep the colonists cool and

comfortable during the hot and sticky summer months thereby reducing humoral

imbalances.196 The cultivation of sugar cane, subsequent clearing of forests, and resulting

rise of plantations is where natural philosophy and mercantilism are linked to form

environmental-mercantile philosophy. Enthusiasm for sugar soon resulted in

deforestation on Barbados.

Deforestation became such a problem on the tiny island that planters were forced

to import timber from neighboring colonies. Importing timber was only acquired at “great

and dear Rates” and was not reasonably affordable even to the wealthy plantation owners

of Barbados.197 Instead of using sugar cane husks or coal to heat the furnaces required to

make sugar, Barbadian planters were forced to use the dried, discarded portions of the

cane, which produced a fire that was “but a poor weak Fire in comparifon, either of 192 Richard Ford, A New Map of the Island of Barbadoes. Map. London: British Library. http://www.bl.uk/learning/artimages/maphist/deception/barbadoshome/barbados.html (accessed November 5, 2014)193 Laura Hollsten "Controlling Nature and Transforming Landscapes in the Early Modern Caribbean." Global Environment 1 (2008): 105194 Griffith Hughes, The Natural History of Barbados: In Ten Books (London, printed for the author, 1750), 3 195 Griffith Hughes, The Natural History of Barbados: In Ten Books (London, printed for the author, 1750), 3 196 Richard Ligon, A true & exact history of the island of Barbadoes (London, Frank Cass & Co., 1970), 27 197 Thomas Tryon, Tryons Letters Domestick and Foreign (London: Printed for Geo. Conyers, at the Ring; and Eliz Harris, at the Harrow, 1700), 193

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Wood or Coals.”198 Furthermore, the lack of trees caused by planting cane sometimes

cause “large Pieces of Ground planted with Canes…[to] flid down to the Valleys from

the sides of the Hills” or erosion.199 Timber wasn’t the only thing sacrificed in the

planters pursuit of profit. The planters were so committed to sugar production that not

wanting to “waste valuable cane land on provision crops to feed the island’s growing

population” they converted nearly all fields into sugar cane fields.200 This resulted in

Barbados becoming dependent on food supplies from England and the North American

colonies.

Despite being dependent on imported supplies, Barbadians came to control nature.

Clearing Barbados of its forests may have made the island healthier and more habitable in

the English mind, but the resulting consequences created a degraded environment. With

this degradation, Barbados became exclusively an extractive economy. Sugar was king

on Barbados. The English bent all their endeavors towards the expansion and production

of sugar. As the colonists became dependent on an extractive economy, the plantation,

the prime means of extraction, came to dominate all aspects of life on Barbados.

5) Plantations

Sugar plantation came to dominate all aspects of life on Barbados. As plantations

expanded to encompass nearly the whole island, planters were forced to find a new

source of labor. Previously, white indentured servants were the primary labor source.

These people, typical young males, would be in a sense bought and transported to

198 Thomas Tryon, Tryons Letters Domestick and Foreign (London: Printed for Geo. Conyers, at the Ring; and Eliz Harris, at the Harrow, 1700), 193199 Griffith Hughes, The Natural History of Barbados: In Ten Books (London, printed for the author, 1750), 21 200 Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1972), 67

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Barbados by a plantation owner. These servants are then essentially their masters “for

five years, according to the law of the Ifland.”201 In 1634, 790 men and 49 femal servants

traveled to Barbados and take advantage of the opportunity there.202 At the completion of

their servitude, the individual was to be “given tracts of land of their own” and it was

through this process, it was assumed, that colonies would expand and develop.203 Despite

the large number of indentured servants coming to Barbados, Colt notes that it seemed as

though they did not work enough. He discusses how the servants “continually pestred our

ship…lingringe sometimes 24 howres with us…to avoyde labour” even though no man

travelling with Colt spoke to them.204 This lack of industry amongst indentured servants

was believed by Colt to be the prime reason why the plantations of Barbados were

comparable to recently burned villages.205 As large plantation holders expanded, there

was less land to give to the indentured servants. Over time, fewer indentured servants

came to Barbados after planters shifted to sugar production.

With the planters new financial ability, due to the success of sugar, and the

demand for labor, planters could now afford to buy large numbers of African slaves to

work the fields and sugar mills. With natural philosophy, many misconceptions

concerning African bodies influenced the planter’s decision to import an unheard of

number of Africans to Barbados. By the late 1680s, slaves came to dominate the labor

201 Richard Ligon, A true & exact history of the island of Barbadoes (London, Frank Cass & Co., 1970), 43 202 Hilary McD. Beckles, White Servitude and Black Slavery in Barbados, 1627-1715 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989) 34203 Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York, Viking Penguin Inc., 1985), 52 204 Henry Colt, The Voyage of Sir Henry Colt to the Islands of Barbados and St. Christopher: May-August 1631, edit. J Edward Hudson (Barbados: Cole’s Printery LTD., 1635) 14. 205 Henry Colt, The Voyage of Sir Henry Colt to the Islands of Barbados and St. Christopher: May-August 1631, edit. J Edward Hudson (Barbados: Cole’s Printery LTD., 1635) 14.

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force of Barbados.206 Planters had come to the conclusion that they were “not designed by

providence for physical toil in the tropics.”207 The planter thus needed a labor force they

believed could toil in the heat of Barbados. Due to natural philosophy, it was incorrectly

believed that Africans were “naturally fitted to heavy labor, torrid climate, and low social

status” making them a perfect labor source for the planters.208 Soon, using African slave

labor encompassed the whole island because the planters “discovered this sort of labor

system worked very well.”209 Africans simultaneously solved a labor problem, allowed

the English to avoid manual labor, and allowed increased production of sugar. Even if a

slave died, thousands upon thousands of Africans were being brought to Barbados. On

average, planters bought 7,000 slaves per year.210 By the end of seventeenth century, it is

estimated that over 130,000 Africans were imported to Barbados since 1640.211 Though

colonists bought slaves at an ever-increasing rate, it was believed by Europeans that slave

populations would increase “from time to time by the Children that are born of them”

keeping a constant population on the island.212 Due to sugar money and the large number

of slaves, the use of slaves as a coerced labor force came to dominate Barbados and

fundamental to the success of sugar plantations.

206 Hilary McD. Beckles, White Servitude and Black Slavery in Barbados, 1627-1715 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989) 126 207 Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1972), 264 208 Joyce E. Chaplin, Subject Matter: Technology, the Body, and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500-1676 (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2001), 122209 Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1972), 225 210 Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1972), 230211 Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1972), 230 212 Charles de Rochefort, The History of the Carriby-Iflands (London: Printed by J.M. for Thomas Dring and John Starky, 1666) 203.

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African slaves were only seen and used as tools to further the planters domination

of nature. Upon a slave ships arrival, the slaves would be filed out naked and the planters

would “choofe them as they do Horfes in a market.”213 Rochefort further supports this

depiction, stating that any Africans who arrive in the Caribbean “are bought and fold

after the fame manner as Cattle in other places.”214 Thomas Tyron describes African

slaves as merely one of many “Utenfils belonging to Sugar-making.”215 IIn addition to

being seen as tools, African slaves allowed the English to avoid strenuous manual labor

involved in the sugar making process. Natural philosophy had informed the English that

toiling in the tropics could result in imbalanced humors within their bodies. This

imbalance could, in turn, cause the English to become sick or lose their Englishness. By

nearly exclusively using Africans as a coerced labor force colonists could avoid both.

Slaves were, thus, used to protect the colonists from nature.

Sugar plantations are where environmental-mercantile philosophy is most

prominent. Mercantilism required a fully productive labor force to extract natural

resources. These resources would then increase the wealth of individual planters and the

whole English empire. However, the English had inaccurately concluded that they were

not fit for labor in the tropics. Through misconceptions drawn from natural philosophy,

the English concluded that Africans were an ideal labor source. African slaves could, in

the English mind, survive and thrive in the tropics and be “disciplined and intimidated” to

work.216 Mercantilism and natural philosophy worked in tandem to create sugar

213 Richard Ligon, A true & exact history of the island of Barbadoes (London, Frank Cass & Co., 1970), 46 214 Charles de Rochefort, The History of the Carriby-Iflands (London: Printed by J.M. for Thomas Dring and John Starky, 1666) 200.215 Thomas Tryon, Tryons Letters Domestick and Foreign (London: Printed for Geo. Conyers, at the Ring; and Eliz Harris, at the Harrow, 1700), 201216 Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1972), 238

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plantations. As a result, plantations can then be understood as the culmination of

environmental-mercantile philosophy.

Conclusion

Nature and its role in how a colony develops in often overlooked. In the case of

Barbados, natural philosophy and mercantilism came together in the formation of slave

plantations. The English, with their understanding of natural philosophy, and economic

goals driven by mercantilism ideals “developed their own life-style.”217 Through slavery

and industry, they managed to control nature to an extent. Nature, however, determined

what crops grew best on Barbados, not the colonists as illustrated by the success of sugar

and worthless tobacco. With the success of sugar, large plantation owners sought to

dominate and bend the environment of Barbados to their will. Slavery was just another

tool, along with imported work animals such as camels and donkeys, in the process of

dominating Barbados and creating wealth. As the English changed and adapted in some

ways to the island, they refused to adapt in ways that would compromise their

Englishness because they were afraid once they did, they would lose all that it meant to

be English and revert to a perceived savage state the that Indians were stuck in.

217 Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1972), 46

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CONCLUSION

As the English colonized throughout North America and the Caribbean, colonists

had to make sense of the new landscape they found themselves in. Everything from the

animals to the land itself was and peculiar to them. The Caribbean, in particular, was

extremely foreign to the arriving colonists. Tropical rainforests, animals, diseases, plants,

and native peoples all influenced how the English understood their new surroundings.

Most importantly, when rationalizing this new environment, they needed to understand

and reformulate natural philosophy in order to understand how the New World could

effect their bodies and health. Intellectuals eventually came to the conclusion, drawing

supporting evidence from the death of fellow Europeans and the seemingly frozen-in-

time Indians, led them to believe the New World was a volatile, dangerous world unfit

for Europeans.218 On the other hand, it was incorrectly concluded that African slaves were

an ideal labor source in the tropics because they were came from a hot, tropical climate

and could be coerced to work.

The New World, however, possessed a number of natural resources and

opportunities for the English and other Europeans to take advantage. Under the dominant

economic philosophy of mercantilism the English Empire would expand throughout the

North American mainland and the Caribbean and become more powerful despite fears

stemming from natural philosophy. Seventeenth century writers such as Richard Ligon

wrote about Barbados in a propagandistic manner in the attempt to persuade more

English to settle on Barbados.219 He wrote about the “Pleafures and Profits, Commodities

218 Philip D. Curtin, “The Promise and the Terror of a Tropical Environment” in The Image of Africa: British Ideas and Action, 1780-1850, Volume 1 (University of Wisconsin Press, 1964)219 Keith Albert Sandiford, The Cultural Politics of Sugar: Caribbean Slavery and Narratives of Colonialism (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000)

and Incommodities, Sickneffes and Healthfulnefs” of Barbados, particularly highlighting

the wealth one could obtain from producing sugar.220 Furthermore, he combated the idea

that colonists will die if they settle on Barbados by pointing out the island possesses the

means to cure a person. One such substance being a black tar-like substance found

flowing out of a rock in one part of Barbados that is “excellent good to ftop a flux, by

drinking it” and when applied directly to skin directly, it will alleviate “all aches and

bruises.”221 In the writings of Nathaniel Crouch, he recalls the adventures of sixteenth

century Englishmen who braved both the frozen north and the tropical Caribbean. In both

cases he illustrated the ability of the English to resist nature and survive in harsh, foreign

conditions. Nearly a century later, Griffith Hughes would comment on the healthfulness

of Barbados in his The Natural History of Barbados by noting that the trade winds that

swept across the island took away any volatile vapors. He claims the reason the wind is

able to take away the sickening vapors is because there are no great trees. The trees that

were present in Ligon’s time kept the island unhealthy and dangerous for European

habitation. To Hughes, the cultivation of sugar cane and subsequent clearing of forests on

Barbados resulted in “Inhabitants [being] free from the Fever and Ague, fo common to

the Inhabitants of uncultivated Iflands.”222 Even before all the writers asserted that the

English could survive in the Caribbean, Sir Henry Colt shared his own secrets to

remaining healthy in Caribbean, which ranged from what to eat to how to properly dress.

220 Richard Ligon, A true & exact history of the island of Barbadoes (London, Frank Cass & Co., 1970), 104221 Richard Ligon, A true & exact history of the island of Barbadoes (London, Frank Cass & Co., 1970), 101 222 Griffith Hughes, The Natural History of Barbados: In Ten Books (London, printed for the author, 1750), 3

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Still, many colonists had reservations on whether the Caribbean was a healthy

environment for Europeans.

As writers from the New World and Europe continued to establish that Europeans

from a northern temperate could survive and thrive in a hot, humid southern temperate,

the prospect of wealth persuaded some to settle in the Caribbean. Establishing colonies to

provide raw goods as well as markets was the foundation of mercantilism. Colonies thus

determined the success of an empire. In the colonies, transforming the land and taming

nature for the benefit of colonists was a way to establish empire, maintain Englishness,

and make money. Furthermore, by transforming and controlling nature on Barbados, the

English could impose their worldviews on “how humans ought to interact with… the

natural world in general.”223 The use of African slave labor in cultivating sugar cane

connected empire and nature. Through the use of African slave labor mercantilist needs

were met and the English were able to protect themselves from toiling and putting

themselves at risk in tropical environments. The English quickly came to the conclusion

that they “were not designed by providence for physical toil in the tropics.”224 With this

understanding and in this context, slavery simply fit well. The English believed they

could not work in the tropics. They did, however, believe Africans could. The English

demanded a steady source of labor for their growing plantations, and Africa supplied the

necessary labor.225 African slaves also “apparently worked better and lived longer” in the

tropical environment than Indians or Europeans, making them ideal workers in these

223 Virginia DeJohn Anderson, Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America (New York, Oxford University Press, 2004), 6 224 Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1972), 264 225 Philip D. Curtin, “ Epidemiology and the Slave Trade” Political Science Quarterly (Volume 83, No. 2, 1968): 192, Accessed October 10, 2014

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harsh conditions.226 This was supported by the fact that large numbers of Europeans died

every year from tropical diseases and, as Rochefort claims, whenever Indians were

enslaved and forced to work “they many times die out of pure grief” making them

unsuitable to the demanding work of sugar plantations.227 By utilizing African slave

labor, the English were able to protect themselves from the environment, transform the

nature to suit their needs, generate wealth through the production of sugar, and establish

the English empire on Barbados.

Combined, natural philosophy and mercantilism determined how Caribbean

colonies, such as Barbados, developed. This combination is what I call environmental-

mercantile philosophy. When historians seek to understand how these Caribbean colonies

developed, they often look at a number of aspects of colonial life. Dunn examined the

role of the wealthy, elite planter class that came to dominate Barbados and other Sugar

Islands with the rise of sugar. Mintz’s Sweetness and Power looked at the role of sugar in

the development of the modern society, a far broader subject than examining its role on

just the Sugar Islands. Puckerein sought to understand social relations in the context of

political turmoil with the Glorious Revolution in England. McNeill expressed that it was

disease and gradual, built up immunities that determined the success of empire

throughout the Caribbean as empires vied for control. Though some of these historians

take into account the role of the environment in colonial life, they do not suggest that the

environment was a major factor in the determining how a colony develops. That is where

this thesis differs. By taking into account seventeenth century scientific understanding

226 Philip D. Curtin, “ Epidemiology and the Slave Trade” Political Science Quarterly (Volume 83, No. 2, 1968): 194, Accessed October 10, 2014227 Charles de Rochefort, The History of the Carriby-Iflands (London: Printed by J.M. for Thomas Dring and John Starky, 1666) 266

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and its influence in economic decisions, colonization and the creation of empire can be

examined in a new lens. Nature and economics are not independent of each other. Wealth

is drawn from nature. The history of man’s understanding of the natural work and ideas

concerning the extraction of natural resources have worked in tandem to create empire in

the past. Different environments require different means of extraction. The New World

meant new natural environments, weather, and climates that colonists had to deal with

and adapt to nature through various methods. Also, nature provided different

opportunities for various colonies. The New England colonies could not produce sugar

cane like Barbados just as Barbados couldn’t supply beaver pelts, other furs, and large

amounts of lumber like the New England colonies. In the end, when establishing and

creating empire one has to play with the cards they are dealt and nature is one of those

cards that can determine ones entire hand.

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