CXC Caribbean History: Indigenous Peoples, Slavery, Resistance, and Political Development

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the major themes of Caribbean history, including pre-Columbian societies, European colonization, the sugar revolution, slavery, slave revolts, emancipation, post-emancipation adjustments, and 20th-century political and labor movements.

Bering Strait

The narrow stretch of water separating Alaska from north-eastern Asia that formed an "Ice Bridge" during the Fourth Ice Age, enabling Asian nomadic hunters to migrate into the Americas 15,000 to 20,000 years ago.

Subsistence Living

An economic lifestyle practiced by the Tainos in which communities hunted, fished, and cultivated only enough food to sustain themselves and their families, leaving little or no surplus for trade or storage.

Slash-and-Burn Technique

An agricultural method used by the Tainos and Kalinagos in which forested areas were cleared by cutting down and burning trees and underbrush prior to planting crops.

Cassareep

A special sauce prepared by the Tainos made from boiled poisonous cassava juice, salt, and pepper.

Pepperpot

A favorite enduring Taino stew containing meat, vegetables, nuts, and hot peppers that was continuously replenished with fresh ingredients and kept over weeks.

Bohio

The dwelling of a Taino cacique (chief), typically larger than other dwellings and constructed in a rectangular or circular shape.

Caneye

The standard family house in a Taino village, constructed in a circular shape with woven cane walls and a conical thatched roof with a central hole for smoke.

Cacique

The hereditary leader and ceremonial head of a Taino society who oversaw land and crop distribution, led religious ceremonies, and decided on matters of peace and war.

Duho

A ceremonial wooden stool used exclusively by the Taino cacique as a symbol of authority and high social standing.

Mitaynos

Elderly Taino nobles who served as advisors to the cacique, remembered the kingdom's history, laws, and boundaries, and instructed youths through songs and dances.

Coyaba

The peaceful Taino afterlife where souls reunited with ancestors, free from physical ailments and natural calamities such as hurricanes.

Cohoba

A powdered tobacco inhaled directly into the nostrils by Taino priests to induce an unconscious trance state for communicating with the zemis.

Areytos

Taino community assemblies featuring singing, drumming, and dancing where historical tales, religious beliefs, and tribal memories were recounted.

Batos

A ball game played by Tainos on a central village plaza or ceremonial court (batey), where two teams attempted to propel a ball past the opponent's boundary using any part of the body.

Guanin

An alloy of gold and copper hammered into ornaments and worn as jewelry by high-ranking Taino individuals.

Roucou

A red dye derived from plant seeds used by Kalinago women and men to paint elaborate patterns on their bodies.

Tiubutuli Hauthe

The village headman in peacetime Kalinago society, who was usually the head of an extended family unit residing in a settlement.

Ouboutou (Ubutu)

The supreme Kalinago war commander elected by canoe captains to organize war raids, direct military expeditions, and distribute captured prizes.

Carbet (Karbay)

The large, rectangular communal meeting house in a Kalinago settlement where men assembled, lived, and underwent rigorous warrior training apart from the women.

Maboya

Evil spirits in the Kalinago religious belief system that brought misfortune and harm, whom the boyez (priests) sought to placate or repel through spiritual ceremonies.

Halach Uinic

The hereditary ruler and high priest of an independent Maya city-state who exercised absolute civil, religious, and military power.

Batabs

Hereditary Maya local governors chosen from the nobility who administered villages and ensured that imperial policies and laws were enforced.

Nacoms

Maya military commanders elected for a three-year period, during which they abstained from intoxicating drink and directed the training and maneuvers of soldiers.

Ppolms

The independent merchant class of Maya society who conducted inter-city and maritime trade, paid no agricultural taxes, and frequently gathered intelligence as spies.

Chultunes

Large underground chambers or granaries constructed by the Maya to store surplus maize and grain.

Cenotes

Deep natural wells or sinkholes utilized by the Maya to extract water and channel it across agricultural fields.

Enterprise of the Indies

Christopher Columbus's navigational plan to reach the rich markets of Asia (Cipangu/Japan) by sailing westward across the Atlantic Ocean.

Treaty of Tordesillas

The 1494 treaty between Spain and Portugal that moved the line of demarcation 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands, awarding non-Christian lands east of the line to Portugal and west of it to Spain.

Encomienda System

A Spanish colonial labor system under which Spanish colonists were granted indigenous laborers, ostensibly in return for providing them with Christian religious instruction and protection.

House of Trade (Casa de Contratación)

The institution established by the Spanish Crown in 1503 in Seville to strictly control and license all shipping, merchants, and commerce between Spain and its American colonies.

Sugar Revolution

The rapid mid-to-late 17th-century transition in the British and French West Indies from small-scale tobacco cultivation to large-scale sugarcane plantation monoculture using enslaved African labor.

Absenteeism

The practice of West Indian plantation owners residing permanently in Great Britain or mainland Europe while collecting profits from estates operated by hired attorneys and overseers.

Barracoons

Fortified shoreline barracks or dungeons on the West African coast where captured Africans were held and examined prior to being loaded onto slave ships.

Middle Passage

The traumatic transatlantic voyage of slave ships carrying chained Africans from the West African coast to the Americas under severely crowded, unsanitary conditions.

Muscovado

Raw, unrefined brown sugar crystals remaining in the barrels (hogsheads) after excess liquid molasses had dripped away through small openings in the curing house.

Ratoons

Sugarcane stalk cuttings planted into manured soil holes that sprouted to grow succeeding crops of cane.

Code Noir

The 1685 French royal legal code governing the regulation, treatment, discipline, religious obligations, and punishment of enslaved people across the French Caribbean colonies.

Las Siete Partidas

The ancient Spanish legal code applied in the colonies which recognized an enslaved person as a human being with legal rights, including baptism, protection from excessive cruelty, and the right to purchase freedom.

Marronage

The practice of enslaved individuals escaping plantations to establish independent settlements in inaccessible interior areas, divided into small groups (petit marronage) or large, permanent communities (grand marronage).

Cudjoe

The leader of the Jamaican Leeward Maroons who conducted successful guerilla warfare against British forces and concluded the Peace Treaty of 1739.

Boukman

A Vodou priest who provided initial spiritual and tactical leadership to the Saint-Domingue slave rebellion in August 1791, igniting the Haitian Revolution.

Coffy

An enslaved house cooper who organized and led the 1763 Berbice Rebellion in Dutch Guiana, establishing control over most of the colony before being defeated by internal divisions.

Bussa

The head ranger at Bayley's Plantation who commanded the enslaved forces in the island-wide 1816 Easter slave rebellion in Barbados.

Quamina

A respected enslaved deacon at Le Ressouvenir chapel who attempted to restrain rebel violence and advocate a peaceful work strike during the 1823 Demerara Revolt.

Samuel Sharpe

A literate enslaved Baptist deacon who organized a massive general work strike across western Jamaica that erupted into the 1831–1832 Baptist War (Christmas Rebellion).

Mansfield's Judgement

The 1772 legal ruling by Chief Justice Lord Mansfield regarding James Somerset, which established that English law provided no legal basis for forcibly holding or removing a slave in England.

Amelioration

A policy initiated by the British Imperial Government between 1823 and 1833 aimed at reforming slave conditions and curbing abuses in an effort to avoid immediate emancipation.

Apprenticeship System

A mandatory transitional labor scheme enacted under the 1833 Emancipation Act requiring ex-slaves to work 40.5 hours per week without wages for their former owners from 1834 to 1838.

Stipendiary Magistrates

Salaried magistrates appointed by the British Government to oversee the Apprenticeship System and mediate disputes over labor and discipline between planters and apprentices.

Victor Schoelcher

The French Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whose advocacy led to the April 27, 1848 decree abolishing slavery immediately throughout the French Empire without an apprenticeship period.

Patronato

A mandatory transitional trusteeship system established in Cuba in 1880, requiring former slaves to labor for former owners without pay until full emancipation was decreed in 1886.

Free Village Movement

The post-emancipation establishment of independent settlements throughout the British Caribbean, often assisted by Christian missionaries, where freed people bought plots to build homes and escape estate control.

Métayage

A sharecropping arrangement widespread in the Windward Islands after 1846, where laborers cultivated and harvested estate sugarcane in exchange for a share of the crop proceeds rather than cash wages.

Morant Bay Rebellion

An 1865 uprising in St. Thomas, Jamaica, led by Baptist deacon Paul Bogle over land shortages, judicial bias, and high taxation, which was brutally suppressed under Governor Edward Eyre.

Crown Colony Government

A centralized system of colonial administration wherein the British Crown exercised direct control via an appointed governor and legislative council, replacing elected local assemblies.

Sugar Duties Equalization Act of 1846

British legislation that phased out preferential tariffs on colonial sugar, forcing British West Indian planters to compete in the British market against cheaper, foreign slave-grown sugar from Cuba and Brazil.

Platt Amendment

A 1901 provision incorporated into Cuba's constitution that gave the United States the legal right to intervene in Cuban affairs, oversee its national finances, and maintain a naval base at Guantanamo Bay.

Roosevelt Corollary

President Theodore Roosevelt's 1904 policy addition to the Monroe Doctrine asserting the right of the United States to exercise an international police power in Caribbean and Latin American states to prevent European intervention.

Dollar Diplomacy

A United States foreign policy pursued particularly under President William Howard Taft, utilizing American capital loans and financial receiverships in Caribbean nations to safeguard regional stability and exclude European powers.

Operation Bootstrap

An economic industrialization and modernization program launched in Puerto Rico during the 1940s that utilized federal tax exemptions to attract private manufacturing enterprises.

British West Indies Federation

A regional political union of ten British Caribbean colonies operating from 1958 to 1962 aimed at fostering economic cooperation and achieving unified political independence from Great Britain.

CARICOM

The Caribbean Community, established by the Treaty of Chaguaramas on July 4, 1973, to advance regional economic integration, harmonize foreign policies, and develop functional cooperation among Caribbean states.

Theophilus Albert Marryshow

A Grenadian journalist and statesman known as the "Father of Federation" who campaigned extensively for universal adult suffrage, constitutional reform, and British West Indian political integration.

Sir Grantley Adams

A Barbadian attorney who organized the Barbados Labour Party and Barbados Workers' Union, served as the first Premier of Barbados, and became the Prime Minister of the West Indies Federation.

Moyne Commission

The British Royal Commission appointed in 1938 under Lord Moyne to investigate the economic hardships, inadequate health facilities, and labor conditions that caused the widespread 1930s West Indian labor rebellions.

Hubert Nathaniel Critchlow

A Guyanese dockworker and labor organizer who campaigned for the eight-hour working day and founded the British Guiana Labour Union in 1919.