A Family of Islands

by Alec Waugh

  During the nineteenth century, the islands repaired the damage that had been inflicted on them during the eighteenth. There was a great deal of damage to repair. Those of the towns that had not been destroyed by enemy action and civil war had been the victim of fires, hurricanes and earthquakes. Usually the forts guarding each harbour were the only survivals of the original colonization. Havana looked more Spanish than Spain itself, but otherwise, in the whole Caribbean, with the partial exception of the capitals of the Danish islands, there were only two cities that bore unmistakably the stamp of their first founders – Willemstad in Curaçao and Saint-Pierre in Martinique.

  Curaçao had had a special history. When the navigation acts of Britain and France drove the Dutch to regard their Caribbean possessions as trading bases rather than colonies, Curaçao was advantageously placed to conduct illegal traffic along the Spanish Main. The Spanish governors, fettered by the bureaucrats of Seville, found the proximity of Curaçao’s harbours not only useful but lucrative. They did nothing to hinder its activities. It became a smuggler’s paradise, a black-market slave market, a rendezvous for revolutionaries and various stormy petrels. The Dutch did their best to maintain their neutrality. For the most part they succeeded. On the two occasions when they failed, Curaçao was fortunately sited geographically. She did not interfere with the belligerents. In the American War of Independence she avoided the fate of St Eustatius; twenty-five years later, in the Napoleonic period, she slipped easily and painlessly into British hands. There was no fighting.

  In another way, too, Curaçao has been lucky geographically. It is a low, flat island that has not attracted storms and has lain out of the path of hurricanes, so that the modern traveller, when his ship swings round toward the harbour to a pontoon bridge, guarding an entrance so narrow that the sentries can talk across it, finds himself a few minutes later looking down on a succession of Dutch eighteenth-century houses, pastel-coloured with white scrolls upon the rounded gables, with steep tiled roofs, chunky dormers and baroque parapets. He will imagine himself in The Hague or Amsterdam; but to reassure him that he is actually in the tropics he will hear spoken in the streets a language that bears no relation to anything he has heard before. It is called Papiamento and it is a pepper pot of a language – a mixture of Spanish, Dutch, Indian, African and Hebrew. All these races have at one time taken root here; the first real settlers were, in fact, the Jews who had been expelled from Portugal. The Jewish cemetery, started in 1650, is the oldest Caucasian burial ground in the Americas, and the synagogue, with its stout mahogany pews, is one of the most impressive buildings in the city; but there are also stern Dutch churches and there are señoras in black mantillas, their prayer books in their hands, returning from morning mass. That was Willemstad in the last decade of the nineteenth century, that is Willemstad in the middle of the twentieth.

  Eastward and northward, on the other side of the Caribbean, lay during those days the one other city that had survived disaster – Saint-Pierre in Martinique. The fighting, fierce and consistent though it had been in Martinique, had been concentrated upon Fort Royal, whose name was later changed to Fort de France. Fort Royal was the capital of the island; it was fortified; it had a harbour, whereas Saint-Pierre was unfortified on an open roadstead. The French often had two centres in their islands; a capital, the administrative centre and the official residence of the governor, and a secondary, commercial centre; Saint-Pierre was that, but it was much more than that; it might be the business centre, it was also the social centre.

  Set on the leeward coast, thirty miles north of Fort Royal, in an amphitheatre of towering hills, under the shadow of Mont Pelé, Saint-Pierre was the loveliest city in the West Indies. The loveliest and the gayest. All day its narrow streets were bright with colour; in sharp anglings of light the amber sunshine streamed over the red tiled roofs, the lemon-coloured walls, the green shutters, the green verandas. The streets ran steeply, ‘breaking into steps as streams break into waterfalls’. Moss grew between the stones. There was no such thing as silence in Saint-Pierre. There was always the sound of water, of fountains in the hidden gardens, of rainwater in the runnels, and through the music of that water, the water that kept the town cool during the long noon heat, there throbbed ceaselessly, from the hills beyond, the murmur of the lizard and the cricket. A lovely city, with its theatre, its lamplit avenues, its jardin des plantes, its schooners drawn circle-wise along the harbour. Life was comely there; the life that had been built up by the old French émigrés. It was a city of carnival. There was a culture there, a love of art among those people who had made their home there, who had not come to Martinique to make money that they could spend in Paris, and who had not had their traditions destroyed during the Revolution. The culture of Versailles was transposed there to mingle with the Carib stock and the dark mysteries of imported Africa. Saint-Pierre was never seen without emotion. It laid hold of the imagination. It had something to say, not only to romantic intellectuals like Hearn or Stacpoole, but to the sailors and the traders, to all those whom the routine of livelihood brought within the limit of its sway.’Incomparable’, they would say as they waved farewell to the pays des revenants, knowing that if they did not return they would carry all their lives a regret for it in their hearts. Such was Saint-Pierre as the century waned.

  16 Cuba – The Ever-Faithful Isle

  For the Caribbean area as a whole, the nineteenth century was a period of gradual decay, but for one island it was a period of growth and drama; and that island, contrarily, was the very one that had been least affected by the turbulence of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Cuba’s history is curious, its destiny lying apart from that both of the Spanish-American empire and the Caribbean islands.

  After its discovery by Columbus there had been a brief period of prosperity, when its mines were believed to be the repository of fantastic wealth, but the discovery of real wealth on the Central and South American mainlands soon depopulated it of men, horses and money. Its value for Spain lay from then on in the port of Havana, where the silver fleets could assemble. The mainland was neglected, with Santiago serving as a smugglers’ base. So neglected indeed was the eastern section of the island, that it might well have been taken over by the French or British and split into a divided ownership, as Hispaniola was.

  The African slave trade, as far as Spain was concerned, was based on Havana, but Cuba itself had little need of slaves, being occupied with cattle, and those of the original Indians who had not perished in the mines were declared free. The economy was allowed to disintegrate, the officials quarrelled among themselves, and such little prosperity as the island enjoyed was the outcome of illegal traffic with privateers. In 1655, indeed, the colonists presented the King of Spain with a shipload of goods, to purchase his pardon for their smuggling offences.

  Until the eighteenth century, its only commerce was in hides and skins. Then tobacco was cultivated and bees were imported from Florida. But the tobacco trade was so hampered by trade monopolies that there were two uprisings, in 1717 and 1723. For a period, Havana served as a shipbuilding centre, but Spain stopped the trade because it interfered with her other interests. As the eighteenth-century sugar boom increased, the development of coffee and sugar estates began, but in such a restricted form that when the British captured Havana in 1762 the island only possessed thirty-two thousand slaves.

  In another aspect, too, Cuba differed from the other islands; its climate was far more temperate than that of Jamaica, Hispaniola and the Lesser Antilles. In Havana, the temperature never reached 100°; in January it went below 50°, and the average temperature during the four hottest months was 80°. This, as has been previously pointed out, made it possible for Europeans, particularly for Spaniards who were accustomed to the heat of Andalusia, to perform manual labour; a capacity that was to prove of great importance when the cigar trade was developed, since slave labour could not have acquired the technical skill that was needed for the rolling of the tobacco leaf. Cuba was ab
le therefore to offer employment to Spaniards who were destitute in their own country. When Froude visited Havana in 1880, he was astonished at the small proportion of Negroes that he saw in the streets.

  It has been already pointed out that Cuba’s course was redirected after its capture by the British in the Seven Years’ War. The occupation only lasted for a few months, but during that time the British acquired a taste for the Havana cigar, and the eyes of the Cubans were opened to their own possibilities. They recognized the advantages of less restricted trading with European powers and also they obtained enough slaves to develop their own sugar estates. In 1760, Cuba exported thirteen thousand boxes of sugar, in 1770 fifty thousand, in 1789 seventy thousand, and in 1824 a quarter of a million.

  During the last decade of the eighteenth and the first decade of the nineteenth century, circumstances combined to hasten Cuba’s prosperity. Cuba had always presented a refuge to certain types of European. A number of Irish, after the Battle of the Boyne, took rank in the Spanish army and made their homes in Cuba, founding families with such surnames as O’Reilly, O’Donnell, O’Farrell and O’Lawlor, and there was now a considerable immigration both of capital and personnel. Soon after the outbreak of the French Revolution, the Spanish section of Hispaniola was ceded to the French, and many of the Spanish planters sought refuge in Cuba, just as they had done a hundred and forty years earlier when Jamaica was captured by the British. Later, when the slaves rose against the French, many of the survivors crossed to Cuba. Settling mainly in the southwestern section of the island, they brought with them their experience and skill as agriculturists, and the province of Oriente was soon rich with coffee. Cuba at this point also offered a satisfactory refuge for Spaniards at odds with their own government. A couple of liberal-minded governors provided scope for the Cubans to develop their own industries without excessive government interference; and when Simon Bolivar lit the fires of rebellion in Central and South America, Cuba did not follow the example of Colombia and Venezuela. In consequence, many conservative Spanish planters who did not approve of the new regimés emigrated to Cuba, and when Napoleon set his nephew on the throne of Spain, Cuba remained loyal to the royal house, earning the title of ‘the ever-faithful isle’. Cuba seemed more contented with its lot than any Spanish-speaking territory in the New World, though it must be remembered that the fact of its being an island made it very difficult for the revolutionaries to attack it. The colonies on the mainland were far more vulnerable.

  In 1815 Cuba was in a fate-favoured position, and in fact her prosperity did mount progressively through the century. In 1851, for example, she produced six million hundredweight of sugar, whereas all the British West Indian islands put together did not export three million hundredweight; and in addition to sugar she had her tobacco crop and, in a lesser degree, coffee, until the competition from Brazil became too great. She was better equipped than any of the other islands to meet the slump caused by the end of the slave trade and the subsequent emancipation of the slaves, because though the slave trade had been forbidden, and Spain had been paid a substantial recompense for her losses through its closure, she used her compensation money to purchase from Russia five ships-of-the-line and eight frigates, and she continued to transact steady business with the illegal traders. The Havana customs house records the entrance of 116,000 slaves during the second decade of the century, and statisticians estimate that between 1811 and 1825 very nearly 200,000 slaves were admitted. Nor did Spain later follow the example of her European neighbours in emancipating the slaves. The population at the turn of the century was estimated at 275,000. But the census of 1817 gave 290,021 whites, 225,259 slaves and 115,091 free coloured, and these figures should probably be increased by twenty-five per cent., since census figures are unreliable, and a planter’s taxes were based on the number of his slaves.

  In addition, Spain imported a number of Chinese coolies. They came without proper contracts. They were sold to the planters for four hundred dollars each. They received four dollars each a month for eight years’ service. Their masters presumed that by the time their eight years were up they would be so heavily in debt that they would have to stay on as long as they possessed the power to work. They did not bring their womenfolk with them, so that there was no possibility of their settling in the island. It is not surprising that the Jamaican sugar planters looked enviously across the water, complaining that they were subjected to unfair competition.

  And indeed, the paper profits of the island soared prodigiously throughout the first half of the century. At the same time, the island itself was in a constant state of ferment, industrial and political, for which the disturbed condition of Spain herself was in large part responsible. The bare details of Spain’s history over this period speak for themselves.

  Spain has not been lucky in her kings, and Ferdinand VII, who occupied the throne when Napoleon was turning his attention toward the Iberian Peninsula, was one of her least creditable. His country was at the time disturbed by a persistent conflict between the resolve of the court to rule despotically, with a truncated Cortes presenting a semblance of constitutional authority, and the growing popular demand for a more democratic form of government. Ferdinand, thinking that he could exploit Napoleon’s interest in Spain to his own advantage, begged the Emperor for a Bonaparte bride. ‘I venture to say,’ he wrote, ‘that this union and the public announcement of my intentions which I will make to Europe if Your Majesty permits, will exercise a salutary influence on the destiny of Spain and deprive a blind and angry people of the pretext for deluging their fatherland in blood, in the name of their prince, the heir of their ancient dynasty, who has been converted by a solemn treaty, by his own choice and by the most glorious of all adoptions, into a French prince and a son of Your Imperial Majesty.’

  Napoleon, however, preferred to place his nephew on the throne of Spain, and Ferdinand became a king in exile; in which situation, to rally his subjects to his defence, he issued in 1812 a new constitution that was later to become one of the chief points of issue between the contending parties. No sooner had British arms, with the gallant co-operation of Spanish patriots, driven the French out of Spain and restored the monarchy, than Ferdinand revoked the new constitution and Spain was split in two. In 1815 the Congress of Vienna confirmed Ferdinand’s re-accession, but the country was already divided against itself, and committed to a condition of civil war that at the time of writing must still be regarded as being not dead but dormant. Within five years, a minor revolution made Ferdinand a prisoner in the hands of the Cortes, and the chaos was so complete that France and Russia decided, in the name of the Holy Alliance, to intervene on his behalf. Ferdinand promised a liberal government if he was restored to power, but no sooner was he his own master than, under the protection of French bayonets, he delivered himself to an orgy of reprisals. The general who had led the usurping government was dragged through the streets in a basket, at a donkey’s tail, before being hanged and quartered as a felon.

  Ferdinand lived until 1853, and he was to leave behind him a politically inflammable situation. His first three marriages had left him without an heir, and his brother Don Carlos was heir presumptive; but a fourth marriage, contracted a few years before his death with a very young woman, produced two daughters; the succession of the elder daughter led to the Carlist wars.

  The issue turned on the Salic law, by which a woman was not allowed to ascend a throne. That law had never been operative in a country which owed so much to Isabella of Castile. Philip V, the first Spanish Bourbon, had limited the succession to male heirs ‘by pragmatic sanction’, which meant by his own order. This enactment was irregular, was never registered by the Cortes and was protested by the council of Seville. Carlos IV, the father of Ferdinand, revoked the enactment, but never published his revocation, when several sons secured the succession. Ferdinand published his father’s revocation, but when his daughters were born the extreme clerical party urged him to restore Philip V’s enactment. In a moment o
f extreme ill health he agreed to do so, and Don Carlos was accepted by him and the nation as his heir. But on the recovery of his health he revoked the Salic law and appointed his wife, Doña Maria Christina, as the regent. The consequent Carlist wars lasted intermittently for thirty-five years.

  The young princesses were brought up in a curious atmosphere. Their mother had been a dutiful and loyal wife, but she was still a young woman, and within a few weeks she had contracted a morganatic marriage with a private soldier. The union produced four children, but as the law did not allow her to remarry, she could not officially be pregnant. She had to display tact, courage and discretion to carry out her official duties, as she did, punctiliously, through this period.

  In 1843 Isabella II assumed the power of the throne, and the intrigues of European diplomacy to find appropriate husbands for the two sisters figure in history as ‘the case of the Spanish Marriages’. Louis Philippe was anxious that his son Montpensier should be her consort, but Britain opposed the match. Louis Philippe’s failure to effect this marriage was a contributory cause to the loss of his own throne. Had Isabella married his son, it would have been better both for her and Spain, and possibly for Europe. Eventually she married an effeminate, weak, degenerate Bourbon, Francisco de Asis, Duke of Asis. Isabella was disgusted at the choice that had been forced on her. ‘What,’ she complained, ‘shall I say of a man who, on his wedding night, wears more lace than I?’ When many years later they paid a state visit to Paris and were received in Versailles by Louis Napoleon, the Duke, ignoring the court that was gathered to honour him, anxiously inquired, ‘Where is Lambert?’ Lambert had been the Duke’s valet on an earlier informal visit. Où est Lambert? became one of the jokes of the boulevards. Doña Maria Christina told him that he was not worthy of lying in her daughter’s bed, but in point of fact this privilege was soon denied him, and Isabella consoled herself with a succession of lovers. One of the later ones, a lieutenant of Engineers, Antonio Perez Motlo, is believed to be the father of the son who became Alfonso XII. On one occasion, when the Queen was closeted with her lieutenant, with the door guarded by her Prime Minister and her A.D.C., the King and the Minister of War demanded access to the royal suite. Access was denied them, and a duel ensued in which the A.D.C. and the Minister of War were killed. The deaths were reported as being from natural causes. And all the time the Carlist war was draining the reserves of the country, like a running sore.