THE CARIBBEAN CULTURE

1081 WD

When most people hear ‘Caribbean’ what jumps to mind is colour, steel drums, good food, smoothies, beaches, laid back attitudes, and all we do is party. Hopefully at the end one’s stereotypical thoughts would have changed.

Brief History

I shall start from the beginning Christopher Columbus did not discover the Caribbean, it was already there, people inhabited the islands before he ‘discovered the new world’. He died believing that he’d reached the islands southeast of India-Indonesia and Malaysia. Numerous explorers –Spanish and Portuguese, followed his path, knowledgeable of the ‘New world’ but they brought diseases which the natives were victims to and their population diminished. The Spanish, English, French, and Dutch colonists began to settle, they grew tobacco, spices, Sugarcane, rice. But to profit from the healthy soil they’d need a large work force, so they tricked the Africans and brought them as slaves from Ghana, Chad, Mali, Cameroon and many more. This was the famous ‘slave trade’ and they worked for back breaking hours in the hot sun on the plantations.

1081 WD

When most people hear ‘Caribbean’ what jumps to mind is colour, steel drums, good food, smoothies, beaches, laid back attitudes, and all we do is party. Hopefully at the end one’s stereotypical thoughts would have changed.

Brief History

I shall start from the beginning Christopher Columbus did not discover the Caribbean, it was already there, people inhabited the islands before he ‘discovered the new world’. He died believing that he’d reached the islands southeast of India-Indonesia and Malaysia. Numerous explorers –Spanish and Portuguese, followed his path, knowledgeable of the ‘New world’ but they brought diseases which the natives were victims to and their population diminished. The Spanish, English, French, and Dutch colonists began to settle, they grew tobacco, spices, Sugarcane, rice. But to profit from the healthy soil they’d need a large work force, so they tricked the Africans and brought them as slaves from Ghana, Chad, Mali, Cameroon and many more. This was the famous ‘slave trade’ and they worked for back breaking hours in the hot sun on the plantations.