Founding Greater Caribbean

March 30, 2017 Hunter Wallace Antigua, Barbados, Barbuda, Caribbean Project, Georgia, History, Identity, Jamaica, Montserrat, Nevis, South Carolina, St. Kitts 48

Here’s another excerpt from Matthew Mulcahy’s Hubs of Empire: The Southeastern Lowcountry and British Caribbean:

“The English Men – and it was almost exclusively men at first – who ventured to the Caribbean in the early seventeenth century came in search of riches. As the historian Richard Dunn remarked, these early adventurers “did not attempt calypso-style Holy Experiments, nor did they build palm-fringed Cities on a Hill.” Neither religious persecution nor the desire to establish new, model societies motivated the majority of the colonists. That is not to say that religion played no role in the development of English colonies in the Caribbean, but there is little doubt that the search for individual wealth occupied a particularly prominent place in the minds of these men. As one early visitor stated, colonists “came here in order to be wealthy.”

Colonists in Barbados and the Leeward Islands pinned their initial hopes for riches on tobacco. They gradually cleared the land, built up farms, grew provision crops along with tobacco for export, and used the profits to purchase more and more indentured servants. Tobacco provided solid, if unspectacular profits for several years, but prices dropped in the 1630s and colonists began to search for other crops that could generate revenue. Beginning in the 1640s, a few planters in Barbados learned the secrets of making sugar from the Dutch in Brazil, and within a few decades the island had become an economic juggernaut …”

I went ahead and bought the book on Michael Cushman’s recommendation.

This is a profound statement when you think about it. The English who settled the Caribbean “came here in order to be wealthy.” As Mulcahy explains, it started with the pirates like Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh who sailed the Caribbean in order to loot the Spanish Main and search for the riches of El Dorado. It progressed from there to establishing colonies on the fringes of Spanish America in order to grow tobacco. When that proved unprofitable due to competition with the superior tobacco crop grown in the Chesapeake, the Caribbean colonists switched to sugar.

As we saw in Pursuits of Happiness, New England was a great exception in British America. Most of the other British colonies were founded by mainstream Englishmen. By mainstream Englishmen, we mean the colonists were highly individualistic and materialistic like England was at the time. They were secular and commercially oriented. Eventually, the Anglican Church became the established church in all of the “Greater Caribbean” colonies of the Lower South and West Indies.

There was no grand idealistic purpose behind these colonies. They weren’t established to promote universal liberty and equality. Quite the opposite. The local Indians were enslaved, exterminated or pushed aside. African slaves were imported to work on sugar and rice plantations. The idea was to make as much money as possible so that one day you could return to England, join the country gentry and live in a mansion. They didn’t have any qualms about “racism” or “human rights.”

This was the culture the Barbadians brought to South Carolina. I’ve never believed in “American Exceptionalism.” I’ve always known that I didn’t care about being part of any “City on a Hill.” I don’t feel any sense of White guilt. All the moralizing about “racism” leaves me feeling flat. I knew intuitively that it wasn’t part of my culture long before I could explain why I felt that way. MacDonald King Aston explains that morally speaking we are an honor culture, not a guilt culture.

It is not in our nature to be paralyzed by guilt over racism, sexism, nativism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, etc., etc. I’m laughing just typing that out. Unlike New England, the Greater Caribbean wasn’t founded as a Covenant based society. We don’t have any history of thought policing our neighbors or yearning for “moral perfection.”

About Hunter Wallace 12380 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

45 Comments

  1. “It is not in our nature to be paralyzed by guilt over racism, sexism, nativism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, etc., etc.”

    Actually, it’s not in your nature to be much of anything at all …

  2. “I’ve never believed in “American
    Exceptionalism.” I’ve always known that I didn’t care about being part of any “City on a Hill.” I don’t feel any sense of White guilt. All the moralizing about “racism” leaves me feeling flat. I knew intuitively that it wasn’t part of my culture long before I could explain why I felt that way. MacDonald King Aston explains that morally speaking we are an honor culture, not a guilt culture.”

    Exactly how I feel. As a kid, I was confused by T.V. pop culture, because of its references to things I never saw or heard in my daily life. It never took with me. It was foreign. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4da2ec9cf1b7a3fe56b114407074a2f6e58c494f8a8ff96b2b8330bd281967da.jpg

    • If it’s any consolation to you, James, I have no idea what that’s a picture of.

      • Lol. That would be peanuts in Coke. We Southerners like to just get on with our early deaths from obesity related illnesses by combining copious amounts of sodium and sugar in one little package.

        • Thanks for the clarification, H.D. It seems like an interesting combination of flavors.

  3. For the first several decades of White settlement in New England the emphasis was on religious idealism (at least superficially). But by the 1780s it was all about the manufactories and mercantilism, goyim. However, there was a streak of old style Puritanism that lasted into the 1970s – remember the jokey phrase “banned in Boston”?

    • That’s exactly right.

      It started out strongly religious. It became dramatically less so over the time. Anglicanism, which was banned in the beginning, developed a following as New England became wealthier under royal control.

      The Puritan theology faded, but it still left behind residues in the culture like the strong need for social conformity and a guilt based morality.

      • “The (((Dutch))) brought sugar to the carribean”
        Fixed it for you.
        I could sum up, the white man was judeized.

  4. ” I’ve never believed in “American Exceptionalism.” I’ve always known that I didn’t care about being part of any “City on a Hill.”

    I’ll say to you right now, HW, your father-in-law was wrong. Wrong to allow you to marry his daughter. Because, as a Missouri Synod Lutheran, his religion was intimately tied into his ethnicity. Or else he was disingenuous in his religious stances. Only God can determine that latter POV.

    But I can tell you that, as a man over 60, your comments will have less and less relevance as time goes on, which you will find out yourself. You cannot fight a (false) religious ideology, without a competing (true) religious ideology!

    If you don’t “give a damn about God,” God will damn you, to be blunt.

    It’s fascinating for me to watch a gradual awareness on other sites-namely, DS-that acknowledge the place and reality of religion – indeed, a favorable growing appreciation for Orthodoxy… while here, on your site, (which initially purported to have a more Western/Christian worldview) I am seeing a growing secularism on your part. Which is a pity.

    Oh, for the days of Stonelifter and Mosin Nagant…you held such promise, then.

    • HW is against religious fanaticism. The Puritans were blue nosed fanatics who wanted to mind everybody else’s business in the name of creating a holy society. If their experiment would have succeeded in the long run in America, New England would have ended up like Calvin’s Geneva and Cromwell’s England, totalitarian dictatorships that tried to control every aspect of human life. Thank God, most Americans, North and South have always fought and rejected this mentality. Some, like the Reconstructionists, are trying to bring it back, but thankfully, most Americans will have enough common sense to reject such misguided reformers.

      • Stephen, your Roman lace bloomers are showing. The Puritans were not blue-nosed. They actually observed the Sabbath law. Unlike Rome and the continent, as the Anglicans -all Englishman – saw as a degeneracy on the part of the papal religion! So don’t come here throwing your bogus history around, as if you know what the hell you’re talking about!

        • Please don’t lecture me about “bogus history”. The Puritans were Judaizers. They attempted, like so many other so-called religious reformers, to bring the law of Moses into the Christian life. Their “sabbath” was one obvious attempt at Judaizing. When they gained control of England in 1649, they tried to duplicate the Geneva experiment. Thankfully, in the long run, they failed. The English people were overjoyed when the Protectorate was overthrown. Hunter was right. You do have a tendency to project your desires onto history, instead of reading why history actually says.

          • No, again you are wrong -as you are always wrong. The law of God is in effect from now, until the Parousia . Have you never read Matthew 5:17? Or isn’t it in your spurious NAB?

            You need to read one of the modern works speaking about biblical law, by a man named Bahnsen, entitled “Theonomy in Christian ethics.”

            And your prating on about the law of Moses being abolished seems way too facile, and disingenuous, when you look at how many burdens Rome – via her uncanonical canons -have placed upon the faithful over the centuries. Talk about the traditions of man in the spirit of the Pharisees!?

            Go take the damn log out of your own eye!

          • The Mosaic Law was only meant for the Israelites. The writings of the early church fathers make it quite clear the early Christians of the West and the East didn’t observe it. Any attempt to teach it’s observance was regarded as Judaizing.
            I know all about the basic ideas of theonomy. It’s nothing but a misguided attempt to Judaize Christians. It’s merely one of the ‘Christian Reform Movements’ of the like that “Jewish Influence On Christian Reform Movements” talks about. BTW, lulu.com has fresh new copies available for purchase, for those souls who want to read some actual history, instead of somebody’s want to be history.

          • The law of God is indeed still in effect, but the the Old Covenant isn’t binding anymore. The Sermon On The Mount makes it abundantly clear that Jesus was beginning to supersede the Old Covenant during his earthy ministry. Look at how he interpreted the law. His interpretation and teaching went beyond what OC law taught. Look at what he taught on divorce and remarriage. He wasn’t teaching the Mosaic law. Instead, he was teaching the original intent of the law, which came before Moses. Hebrews teaches the Mosaic law is obsolete (Heb. 8:13), so trade in the Old law for the new asap.

          • Yes, the old covenant is no longer in force, but that is not the Law of God. You are confusing a sacrificial system with a moral system. The first was the liturgical means, to achieve the second. The sacrifice of Christ on the Cross abolished the first -good, we are agreed on that. But He did confirm the second, with even greater perspicacity. Do you not realize that Jesus stated, “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees… “.

            So what I said before, you just confirmed. The moral law-the decalogue-the law of righteousness in Christ fulfilled, is still in existence today. And we must obey that law, as St. James’ Epistle makes clear.

          • The Decalogue was part of the Mosaic law. Anybody reading II Cor 3:6-18 and Ex. 20-24 would know that. So when the Mosaic law was abolished, the New Covenant took its place 100%, otherwise we would still be keeping the sabbath. The law of Christ is now what guides the Christian life, not the Mosaic law.

    • 1.) What does Lutheranism have to do with the 17th century Caribbean? Nothing.

      2.) What does it have to do with the Southern colonies? Nothing, the mainland colonies were Anglican at the time, and even Baptists and Methodists were still in the future.

      3.) We’re the West Indian and Southern colonies anything like Puritan New England? No, they were all commercial colonies. Religion was less important in the beginning, but became more so over time while New England went in the opposite direction.

      • HW, you’re missing the point entirely. Religion so if uses the entire being of a culture. It’s not our team theological positions, which is where all protestant eventually go to, because they don’t get the incarnational aspect of Christianity. Your father-in-law, God rest his soul, could only see orthodoxy from that standpoint-but it least He had knowledge the fact, that a foreign “F Nisidia is viewed as being tied to orthodoxy. That is, of course fallacious. But that’s how Rome has brainwashed all of Europe to see the biblical faith.

      • HI Brad, sorry to see foolish Judeo X’tian sectarian squabbling. Hey Brad, can I post my blog about who to support in the Middle East?

    • Can we ban this guy?

      I was very much involved in the courtship and marriage of Hunter and his lovely bride. Now they have a healthy beautiful son.

      And you think this was bad that Hunter’s Lutheran Father in Law supported this great marriage?

      Have you been doing too many MJ bong hits this morning?

      I mean – WT*?

  5. They didn’t have any qualms about “racism” or “human rights.” – I doubt race even entered their minds except in a practical sense, who could be the most profitable. Poor English men where in those field side by side the Africans. “Red-neck” was the label coined for those souls.

  6. Trump administration is very disappointing; the Forgotten Man is still forgotten. Washington is business as usual. Back to uprising from below to carve new nation out of wreckage of the old.

    Trump’s key failing? Being not that smart and relying on “advisors” who are really controllers, much like GWB. He cut himself off from his “alt right” brain, and is essentially brain dead.

    Expect approval ratings in the 20s soon.

  7. There are three reasons for exploration:

    1.) Monetary Gain
    2.) Religious Expansion
    3.) Scientific Endeavour

    #1 Supersedes #2 and #3.

  8. The English who settled the Caribbean “came here in order to be wealthy.”

    They sound like rootless atomized globalists, not nationalists. The Puritans were probably more in line with our thinking than these people. They built strong communities and minimized the non-white population in their territories.

    • The puritans were stock companies, the Massachusetts bay company, etc., they added that colony BS later. The puritans were jews and their travelers hiding behind Christ, to this day you ignorant communist tools hide your evil behind Christ, in a puritan fashion.
      The puritans were the beginning of globalism.

      • The Puritans, to the best of my knowledge, were not Jews. They were Judaizing Christians. Read Jewish Influence On Christian Reform Movements to get a better understanding of this mindset. lulu.com has a reprint of the original 1925 edition for sale for those who wish to buy a copy.

        • The jews were direct investors in the puritan companies, and major stock holders, albeit behind the scenes, you don’t have to be a genius to see their “persecuted christian” shtick.
          2 powers left Europe to globalize the world, the Holy Roman empire and the stock companies.
          The guy I was responding to was so blatantly wrong, I just through that up there, I do know jews traveled with hugeonots and the Dutch east India company, I haven’t studied the English east India company as much.

          • You’re correct about Jews being investors in the Puritan companies. Jews were honeycombed among the Hugeonots and many joined their churches, and passed as Christians. BTW, many of the pirates who sailed the Spanish Main were open or Crypto-Jews. They weren’t going to miss a chance to make a sheckel!

          • I have an old Jesuit history book in which the French huegonots turned the Indians on the Catholic monks in Florida in which they made bowls out of their skulls and ate them, the true date of thanks giving in America, of course the history of It in Florida is opposite of the book.
            Ft. Jefferson on the keys that started out as a Dutch east India company beacon/lighthouse became the prison for confederate if I remember correctly, a nasty mosquito infested purgatory.
            Those pirates looted all across Spanish America, in one of my books a young east indiamen courted a Spanish girl who told him that we will all suffer for what your doing in the world, I’ve always remembered that line, we certainly have a devils ransom to pay.

        • They weren’t Jews. No. But they were sure some no fun, bad dressed, fun destroying folks who were rightly kicked out of Merry Old England.

          England needs to do the same with the Islamists.

          The Puritan tradition is the one that pushed through Prohibition and leads exactly to bitter, no fun feminism, political correctness.

          It’s a no fun, no sex Puritan woman dominated cult. I hate these harpies.

  9. Britain was a small island with a large population. Primogeniture was a law that the oldest son got the property, and the younger sons in decent families got the choice of becoming a cleric, joining the military, or going to the American colonies.

    Property was cheap, almost free, and in some cases free in the American colonies.

    • Quite a time to be alive; for all the hardship, there must have always been a sense that one could throw caution to the wind and seek fortune in the great unknown. It’s almost a shame that we’ve filled out the whole globe now.

      • Fret not, my friend. We have space. Lol. In all seriousness, unless we do end up just totally blowin it, humanity will be colonizing the “Last Frontier” within 2 generations.

        • That would be my hope, but first we need to get our priorities back in order. There’s already been plenty of words written here and in other places about the diversion of funding from space exploration to third worldist subsidies…

          • Oh Lord tell me about it. One of the most telling events in our nations history, at least in my mind, is a little known one. Rev Abernathys Poor People Campaign. It perfectly summed up what we gave up, and what we gave it up for, all in event.

          • I mean they literally showed up on the day of to protest GOING TO THE FRIGGIN MOON when we should have been “gibsin um dat.”

    • Those Brits working in the sugar fields of the Caribbean were from the slums of London. Young boys were kidnapped and/or given the choice of prison or the Caribbean for petty crime, some were indentured servants, willing to work for food or passage to the West.

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