THE HAND OF THE GIANT 243 



of the time at each other's throats in rehgious and imperial- 

 istic wars; and secondly, the proper use and development of 

 land through diversified small holdings had no chance to take 

 hold in the West Indies as it did on the North American con- 

 tinent. All reason and judgment on the part of both govern- 

 ments and settlers was lost in the greed for quick wealth in 

 gold, silver, and other commodities that could be wrested 

 from the natives. And unfortunately the African slave trade, 

 long developed and systematized by Mediterranean peoples, 

 was ready at hand to solve temporarily all the deficiencies of 

 the West Indian sugar economy. 



To begin with, the Spanish crown farmed out the slave 

 trade to the Portuguese, then the French and Dutch, and 

 finally to the British Royal African Company, in ''asientos'' or 

 licenses. This somewhat expensive and complicated remote 

 control naturally encouraged contraband slave trade, and 

 finally, when the labor-hungry sugar plantations of the islands 

 really got going in the seventeenth century, blew the market 

 wide open. The Spaniards made a general mess of their island 

 possessions because of their particular preoccupation with the 

 vast riches of Central and South America. 



Jamaica, potentially one of the richest islands of the west, 

 had been in the hands of the Spanish for a century and a half 

 when the British conquered it in 1655. In 1611, after a hun- 

 dred years, the Church took a census. There were 696 Spanish 

 men, women, and children on the island, 107 free negroes, 

 only 74 surviving Indians of the many thousand original inhab- 

 itants, and about 600 negro slaves — all in all a mere handful. 

 The present population of Jamaica — woefully overpopulated 

 — is 1,364,000. As the Spanish population decreased the freed 

 slaves, plus the Indians, formed a community in the back 

 country and called themselves ''Maroons." Spanish rule had 

 little control. As early as 1 526 immigration from the island to 

 the Main had been forbidden. When the English, under 



