History of the Caribbean
The history of the Caribbean reveals the region's significant role in the colonial struggles of the European powers since the 15th century. In the modern era, it remains strategically and economically important. In 1492, Christopher Columbus landed in the Caribbean and claimed the region for Spain. The following year, the first Spanish settlements were established in the Caribbean. Although the Spanish conquests of the Aztec Empire and the Inca Empire in the early sixteenth century made Mexico and Peru more desirable places for Spanish exploration and settlement, the Caribbean remained strategically important.
From the 1620s and 1630s onwards, non-Hispanic privateers, traders, and settlers established permanent colonies and trading posts on the Caribbean islands neglected by Spain. Such colonies spread throughout the Caribbean, from the Bahamas in the northwest to Tobago in the southeast. Furthermore, during this period, French, Dutch, and English buccaneers settled on the island of Tortuga, the northern and western coasts of Hispaniola, and later in Jamaica as well as the island of Martinica.
After the Spanish–American War in 1898, the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico were no longer part of the Spanish Empire in the Western Hemisphere. In the 20th century, the Caribbean was again important during World War II, in the decolonization wave after the war, and in the tension between Communist Cuba and the United States. The exploitation of the labor of Indigenous peoples and the demographic collapse of that population, forced migration of enslaved Africans, immigration of Europeans, Chinese, South Asians, and others, and rivalry amongst world powers since the sixteenth century have given Caribbean history an impact disproportionate to its size. Many islands have attained independence from colonial powers and sovereignty; others have formal political ties with major powers, including the United States. The early economic structure integrating the Caribbean into the Atlantic world and world economic system continues to impact the modern Caribbean region.
Before European contact
During European contact in 1492, Caribbean islands were densely populated by different indigenous groups. Recent scholarly research has investigated the origins and evolution of the islands' populations over the entire period. At the beginning of the current geological epoch, the Holocene era, the northern part of South America was occupied by groups of small-game hunters, fishers, and foragers. These groups occasionally resided in semi-permanent campsites while mostly being mobile to use a wide range of plant and animal resources in various habitats.Archaeological evidence suggests that Trinidad was the first Caribbean island settled as early as 9000/8000 BCE. However, the first settlers most likely arrived in Trinidad when it was still attached to South America by land bridges. It was not until about 7000/6000 BCE, during the early Holocene that Trinidad became an island rather than part of the mainland due to a significant jump in sea level by about 60 m., which may be attributable to climate change. The conclusion is that Trinidad was the only Caribbean Island that could have been colonized by Indigenous people from the South American mainland by not traversing hundreds or thousands of kilometers of the open sea. The earliest major habitation sites discovered in Trinidad are the shell midden deposits of Banwari Trace and St. John, which have been dated between 6000 and 5100 BCE. Both shell middens represent extended deposits of shells discarded by human populations utilizing the crustaceans as a food source and stone and bone tools. They are considered to belong to the Ortoiroid archaeological tradition, named after the similar but much more recent Ortoire site in Mayaro, Trinidad.
Scholars have attempted to classify Caribbean prehistory into different "ages," a difficult and controversial task. In the 1970s archaeologist Irving Rouse defined three "ages" to classify Caribbean prehistory: the Lithic, Archaic and Ceramic Age, based on archaeological evidence. Current literature on Caribbean prehistory still uses these three terms, but, there is much dispute regarding their usefulness and definition. In general, the Lithic Age is considered the first era of human development in the Americas and the period where stone chipping was first practiced. The ensuing Archaic age is often defined by specialized subsistence adaptions, combining hunting, fishing, collecting and the managing of wild food plants. Ceramic Age communities manufactured ceramic and made use of small-scale agriculture.
Except for Trinidad, the first Caribbean islands were settled during the Archaic Age between 3500 and 3000 BCE. Archaeological sites of this period have been located in Barbados, Cuba, Curaçao and St. Martin, followed closely by Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. This settlement phase is often attributed to the Ortoiroid culture. However, in the southern Lesser Antilles, particularly Grenada and St. Vincent, evidence for Archaic occupation is ephemeral and consists mainly of isolated shell finds rather than established settlements, suggesting these islands may have been largely bypassed by early foragers.
Between 800 and 200 BCE a new migratory group expanded through the Caribbean island: the Saladoid. This group is named after the Saladero site in Venezuela, where their distinctive pottery was first identified. The introduction of pottery and plant domestication to the Caribbean is often attributed to Saladoid groups and is considered the beginning of the Ceramic Age. However, recent studies have revealed that crops and pottery were already present in some Archaic Caribbean populations before the arrival of the Saladoid. Although a large number of Caribbean Islands were settled during the Archaic and Ceramic Ages, some islands were presumably visited much later. Jamaica has no known settlements until around 600 CE while the Cayman Islands show no evidence of settlement before European arrival.
Following the colonization of Trinidad, it was originally proposed that Saladoid groups island-hopped their way to Puerto Rico, but current research tends to move away from this stepping-stone model in favor of the "southward route hypothesis." This hypothesis proposes that the northern Antilles were settled directly from South America followed by progressively southward movements into the Lesser Antilles. This hypothesis has been supported by both radiocarbon dates and seafaring simulations. For example, radiocarbon evidence from Grenada indicates no permanent Ceramic Age settlements until roughly AD 200, centuries later than islands to the north. Modeling based on the Ideal Free Distribution further supports this, showing settlement timing in the region correlates with latitude, with northern islands settled earlier. One initial impetus of movement from the mainland to the northern Antilles may have been the search for high quality materials such as flint. Flinty Bay on Antigua is one of the best-known sources of high-quality flint in the Lesser Antilles. The presence of flint from Antigua on many other Caribbean Islands highlights the importance of this material during the Pre-Contact period.
The period from 650 to 800 CE saw major cultural, socio-political and ritual reformulations, which took place both on the mainland and in many Caribbean islands. The Saladoid interaction sphere disintegrated rapidly. This period is characterized with a change in climate. Centuries of abundant rainfall were replaced by prolonged droughts and increased frequency of hurricanes. In general, the Caribbean population increased, with communities changing from scattered single villages to the creation of settlement clusters. Agricultural activity increased. In the southern Windward Islands, research utilizing Resilience Theory suggests this population expansion amid drought was driven by an influx of Arauquinoid migrants from the mainland around AD 750. This acted as a "release" mechanism, breaking earlier cultural rigidity and leading to the "Troumassan Troumassoid" period, characterized by settlement in diverse environments and a reorganized society capable of coping with aridity. Settlement choices during this time were heavily influenced by proximity to freshwater wetlands and, later, large coral reefs. Analysis of cultural material has also shown the development of tighter networks between islands during the post-Saladoid period.
The period after 800 CE can be seen as a period of transition in which status differentiation and hierarchically ranked society evolved, identified by a shift from achieved to ascribed leadership. After about 1200 CE this process was interrupted by the absorption of many Caribbean settlements into the evolving socio-political structure of the Greater Antillean society. This process disrupted more-or-less independent lines of development of local communities and marked the beginnings of sociopolitical changes on a much larger scale.
At the time of the European arrival, three major groups of indigenous peoples lived on the islands: the Taíno in the Greater Antilles, the Bahamas and the Leeward Islands; the Kalinago and Galibi in the Windward Islands; and the Ciboney in western Cuba. Scholars have divided Taínos into Classic Taínos, who occupied Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, Western Taínos, who occupied Cuba, Jamaica, and the Bahamian archipelago, and the Eastern Taínos, who occupied the Leeward Islands. Trinidad was inhabited by both Carib speaking and Arawak-speaking groups. Recent archaeological evidence from Grenada suggests that the group historically identified as "Caribs" were likely long-term, Arawakan-speaking inhabitants producing Suazan Troumassoid pottery, who co-existed and allied with a separate "Galibi" group, likely recent arrivals from the mainland associated with Cayo pottery. This challenges the traditional narrative of a total "Carib invasion" replacing the Arawak population, arguing for a more complex mosaic of interaction.
DNA studies changed some of the traditional understandings of pre-Contact indigenous history. In 2003, a geneticist from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez, Juan Martínez Cruzado, designed an island-wide DNA survey of Puerto Rico's modern population. The received understanding of the profile of Puerto Ricans' ancestry has been as mainly having Spanish ethnic origins, with some African ancestry, and distant and less significant indigenous ancestry. Martínez Cruzado's research revealed that 61% of all Puerto Ricans have Amerindian mitochondrial DNA, 27% have African and 12% Caucasian. According to National Geographic, "Among the surprising findings is that most of the Caribbean's original inhabitants may have been wiped out by South American newcomers a thousand years before the Spanish invasion that began in 1492. Moreover, indigenous populations of islands like Puerto Rico and Hispaniola were likely far smaller at the time of the Spanish arrival than previously thought."