Genocide in the West Indies by the Brits?

[Knowledge 6 6 6]

Just outta curiosity, I'm yet to find any topics about this...does anyone know if the Brits or Spaniards committed Genocide in the Caribbean?

[@[email protected]@]

Perhaps, we should initiate a movement: Let the American soldiers go home crosses the Christmas day?

[Fidelbrand]

ha!? :huh:

[Sabocat]

Well the Spaniards (under the direction of Italian explorer Columbus) certainly did.

They pretty much single handedly wiped out the Carib and Arawak Indians from the Carribean. Not to mention what they did to the indigenous peoples of Mexico and Central America.

After the annihilation of the indigenous people of the Carribean, the English brought in slaves to work sugar plantations on many of them.

[Invader Zim]

Yeah the empire did a lot of bad stuff, hell even Hitler learned a lesson from the Brits, who do you think made up the idea of concentration (sp) camps?

[Knowledge 6 6 6]

Originally posted by @[email protected]@@Dec 14 2003, 04:43 PM
Perhaps, we should initiate a movement: Let the American soldiers go home crosses the Christmas day?
...WTF?!

Anyway, so the Spaniards DID commit genocide in the West Indies? But why? What was their justification? And why would they allow the Brits to come in and export slaves to mind the sugar plantations? Wouldnt the Spaniards want to run the countries ?

[Sabocat]

They annihilated the indigenous peoples because they were "heathens"(non-Christians). They regarded them as nothing more than animals. Some of course got lucky and were "saved" by missionaries, but never fully accepted as anything but subhuman.

Also, naturally, Spain was looking for great wealth and expansion of empire like all good imperialist/colonialist conquerers.

Spain didn't allow the Brits to take over the Carribean or "Spanish Lake" (as it was known as then) per se, rather it was through naval battles and invasions that it was taken and exploited by them later on.

[Knowledge 6 6 6]

whoa...

so, why did the brits send such different amounts of ppl to the caribbean? I'm West Indian (from Barbados), but my ancestry is East Indian. Some of my friends from the caribbean are white, (portuguese), african, chinese...etc.

why the diversification?

[Sabocat]

I'm not too sure. I had a friend from Trinidad that was Indian as well. Very large community of Indians there from what he told me.

I can only assume all the different cultures is indicative of the importance in trade with the islands for a lot of the countries and the inevitable "master and slave" culture that existed there at the beginning.

[FabFabian]

Some were slaves, some were adventurers and others were cheap labour.