Why on earth didn't you do it on pirates?

You can't say the local economy was booming when all the proceeds went over seas. In fact the local economy was often quite sick and showed a startling lack of diversity and a lack of specie to pay off debts

At the same time staple production tied the islands to the world economy in a way that subsistence farming never could. This is why Toussaint and Dessalines forced the fremen back onto the plantations after both times haiti expelled the European overlords. Subsistence farming does not pay the bills. Unfortunately in haiti's case neither did sugar and coffee production.

Damn, thanks to all for the input.

"You can't say the local economy was booming when all the proceeds went over seas."

But it didn't all go overseas. Much of it went to the local planters.

"In fact the local economy was often quite sick and showed a startling lack of diversity"

By the mid to late 1700s the economies were quite diverse, although still predominantly sugar based. But tobacco, indigo, and later-on coffee were quite important.

I don't have any data on specie or debts. But the fact that even broke Spain was able to afford to keep Puerto Rico and Cuba well into the late 1800s speaks to the profitably of Caribbean colonies.

"My point Putin is what does "booming" mean? Booming for whom? Certainly a lot of *something* was going on, but what it good, prosperous, beneficial? That's highly arguable."

That's capitalism though. You could ask the same question of any economy ever.

"In short, I question the proposal that rich is the same thing as good. "

Sure, wealth is a different question from justice. But I thought wealth was the question being asked. Not everything needs to have a normative bite.

What is wealth without a wealth of justice? Yeah, that's capitalism for you, but I don't see why questioning it is outside the bounds of ILN's paper. It's actually well within it. A subjugated, exploited part of the world like the Caribbean which was once so stable is as good a case study of the destructive power of greed as a student of modern history is likely to get.

But whatever I digress , perhaps. However on many islands the planters were absentees anyway, so even in a narrow traditional sens the islands were being stripped of wealth.

When was the Caribbean ever stable? They were a bunch of cannibalistic tribes who killed each other all the time.

There is a normative bite in ILN's original question though Putin. He is not just wanting to describe the economy, he was asking if the economy was hurt or helped by colonization. And so I answer, if your idea of a good economy is an equitable distribution of resources, then the Caribbean economy was destroyed wholesale by colonization.

In some parts where the Carib were active perhaps but in the Greater Antilles not so much. And I hardly think some war canoes island hopping to raid largely democratic caciques can be compared to genocide followed by a slave society whose impact lingers in the present day.

"By the mid to late 1700s the economies were quite diverse, although still predominantly sugar based. But tobacco, indigo, and later-on coffee were quite important."

Complete focus on cash crop staples is not diverse. Sure, there were different cash crops as I alluded to before, but each island, or on the bigger islands, region was dependent on a specific crop as well as the metropol and other areas of the empire for food supplies clothing, shipping and pretty much any needed goods and services.

Take San Domingue on the eve of the Haitian Revolution. It produced in its different regions Indigo, Coffee and Sugar, yet when its cash crops were embargoed and food supplies were withheld by its usual suppliers the damage was catastrophic.

As I said, labor camp colonies. Imagine if we deployed robots on Mars to mine something and sent shipments of gas or whatever. Robots and robot food go on, ore comes out, simple as that. The islands had an economy in the way that prisons have an economy.

By the way if you still do it on pirates I would do it on the thesis that after the Glorious Revolution runaway Cromwell supports becoming buccaneers was a major conduit for revolutionary republican ideology to spread to the Caribbean. There is at least evidence of anxiety about this among governors, and the buccaneer crews themselves were fiercely democratic. Trying to remember what book I read about this in.

that was mercantilism.

By the way, great book on the subject is "The Reapers Garden" its about the pervasiveness of death in Jamaica and its effect on society. probably one of the best written history books I've read.

"By the way if you still do it on pirates I would do it on the thesis that after the Glorious Revolution runaway Cromwell supports becoming buccaneers was a major conduit for revolutionary republican ideology to spread to the Caribbean. There is at least evidence of anxiety about this among governors, and the buccaneer crews themselves were fiercely democratic. Trying to remember what book I read about this in. "

Then why is it that the most popular pirate ports, The Caribbean, South Carolina, Florida etc all rejected or were reluctant when faced with the American Revolution? I understand there are more important factors at play but I'm kind of skeptical that you could trace these buccaneers influence to revolutionary republican ideology which did not take hold until one hundred years in the future.

Well for one pirate ports doesn't mean ports filled with pirates, for another, the argument is simply that this was the first conduit by which the ideas were transmitted to the region, combined with runaway indentured servants, Indians, slaves, essentially the lowest castes of European imperialist culture, so it doesn't seem too implausible to me, but I couldn't find the name of the book it was in so I'll just drop it. It was some Dutch historian who wrote a book about one such Dutch pirate in the 1680s that started with a Z I forget who though lol

It can't have been that devastating if Saint Domingue survived several years of war with both France and Britain and won independence.

"The islands had an economy in the way that prisons have an economy."

I don't see the point of such a characterization. Prison economies can still be wealthy.

The French Caribbean weren't just producing goods for export. They had large numbers of settlers compared to other colonies like Canada and thus had to produce goods for domestic consumption. Colonies heavier with settlers tended to be healthier and less one-dimensional.

The French settled the Illinois and Louisiana territories primarily to provide needed food for the heavily settled Caribbean.

How can a prison economy be healthy? It is delimited by an external oppressor and its activities, eg breaking rocks, are directed by the same, the benefits to be reaped by non-prisoners. The prisoners meanwhile are given rations only, no freedom, no education, no prosperity. In these conditions they may trade some contraband among themselves, but how can this be called healthy?

I'm surprised at your view honestly, Putin, that economics can be normative without being normative. The idea of a "good economy" divorced from moral questions is a paradox. Without morality it is just "an economy" and there is no good and bad.

"In these conditions they may trade some contraband among themselves, but how can this be called healthy?"

If it develops resources and raises overall GDP then it is healthy. Dismissing the 400 year history of the Caribbean from the 15th to the 19th century dismisses the productive achievements of the population that produced this wealth. Based on your criteria, very little could ever be considered a healthy economy and considering you're not a Marxian socialist, I don't get what purpose it serves to have such a narrow normative view of economic health. What does a healthy economy look like under your terms?

"The French settled the Illinois and Louisiana territories primarily to provide needed food for the heavily settled Caribbean."

Saint Domingue was home to a very large population of free people of color, many of them farmers and many of them very wealthy. It made absolutely no sense for them to be reliant on external sources of food when Haiti was so productive. There are also reports that slaves themselves were allowed to grow their own manioc and plantains. See: Before Haiti by John Garrigus.

You know, I'm going to have to side with Putin here. A plantation economy can be a healthy economy. If you can grow and produce a lot more sugar than you can, say corn, then why the hell would you bother growing corn? Grow what makes the most sense given the land and what makes you the most money. Most of the Caribbean islands - St. Kitts for example - have the perfect growing conditions for sugar. So why not grow sugar on them? Its a very simple Econ 100 idea.

You're mistaking healthy with equitable. A healthy economy is one that can sustain shocks, is not too debt-ridden, and doesn't have structural problems preventing them from growing. I won't pretend to know those answers, but that's the mindset. It can be the case that an economy is not healthy *because* it is not equitable, but they are two separate things.