We highlight North and South America, by way of the Caribbean, a/k/a the “New World.” North and South America represent the largest contiguous landmass in the “New World” which embodies the epicenter of modern civilization. Accordingly, the Caribbean region is our point of entry and portal to “Prophetic Mission.” Ruled by four major, and several minor European empires, the populations of the Caribbean islands developed an interesting diversity. Island cultures were therefore more varied than in either North America (primarily northern European and Protestant) or South America (mainly Hispanic and Roman Catholic). Each empire imposed its own language, religion, habits, culture and prejudices, etc. on the governed. The Spanish tried to govern their empire from Europe, which proved to be a challenging scenario. The British and the Protestant empires, at least before 1810, allowed whites on each island to make their own laws. Cuba and Jamaica both became major producers of sugarcane, grown and harvested by enslaved Africans. However, Jamaica was developed into a plantation society in the 18th century, while Cuba entered the peculiar industry (slavery) in the 19th century.

The Caribbean was the first part of the New World to be reached by Columbus, and his first stop was the island of Hispaniola, now known as Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Moreover, Europeans ruled the islands longer than most other parts of the Americas. Until the 1960s, many islands were directly attached to European states as political and economic colonies. And their peoples, or at least the ruling groups, often considered themselves to be Europeans even though they had been born on the islands. When Columbus discovered the Americas, Europe was only beginning to emerge from its medieval past. During the next few centuries, both technology and the ways in which Europeans viewed the world changed dramatically. Thus the history of the islands is largely a story of adaptation to developments in Europe or, in later centuries, in the United States. Europeans imposed slavery on the islands. Later, European governments were forced island planters to abandon slavery as their populations on the mainland protested the continuance of the institution, and rebellions of the enslaved populations grew.

Before leaving on his first voyage, Columbus negotiated with Queen Isabella of Spain the terms of a contract in the form of a royal grant (capitulation). In the event that he succeeded, the Crown would grant Columbus hereditary nobility and the title of admiral making him viceroy of the mainland and islands he reached, and would give him one-tenth of the profits taken from the conquered. The privileges granted to Columbus were unusually generous, but the capitulation itself was a traditional device through which the Crown delegated specific royal powers to the leader of an expedition. Most of the conquistadores who followed Columbus into the Americas solicited and operated under these contracts. Normally, the expedition’s leader combined most of the administrative authority of a governor with the powers of a military captain-general. Queen Isabella believed that she could delegate such great powers to her captains because the lands of pagan peoples were hers by right of conquest. A legitimate monarch did not invade the territory of another Christian ruler without just cause. But monarchs were obligated to bring under their rule territories occupied by pagans, or Christian heretics. By right of conquest, the ruler owned everything in these territories. And he or she could in turn distribute this conquered property to various subjects in whatever ways deemed most likely to facilitate settlement by Christian of the conversion of the present inhabitants.

The papal “Treaty of Tordesillas” divided the world between Spain and Portugal, with Spain receiving the lion’s share of the newly discovered lands of Columbus. The Treaty was intended to solve the dispute that had been created following the return of Christopher Columbus and his crew, who had sailed for the Crown of Spain. On his way back to Spain he first reached Lisbon, in Portugal. There he asked for another meeting with King John II to show him the newly discovered lands. After learning of the Spanish voyage, the Portuguese King sent a threatening letter to the Catholic Monarchs stating that by the previous Alcaçovas Treaty signed in 1479, with the papal bull, Æterni regis, that granted all lands south of the Canary Islands to Portugal all of the lands discovered by Columbus belonged, in fact, to Portugal. Also, the Portuguese King stated that he was already making arrangements for a fleet to depart shortly and take possession of the new lands. After reading the letter the Catholic Monarchs knew they did not have any military power to match with the Portuguese, so they pursued a diplomatic way out. On 4 May 1493 the Pope Alexander VI, decreed in the bull Inter caetera that all lands west and south of a pole-to-pole line 100 leagues west and south of any of the islands of the Azores or the Cape Verde Islands should belong to Spain, although territory under Catholic rule as of Christmas 1492 would remain untouched. The bull did not mention Portugal or its lands, so Portugal could not claim newly discovered lands even if they were east of the line. Another bull, Dudum siquidem, entitled Extension of the Apostolic Grant and Donation of the Indies and dated 25 September 1493, gave all main lands and islands, “at one time or even yet belonged to India” to Spain, even if east of the line.

The Portuguese King John II was not pleased with that arrangement, feeling that it gave him far too little land as it prevented him from possessing India, his near term goal. As of 1493, Portuguese explorers had already reached the southern tip of Africa, the Cape of Good Hope. The Portuguese were unlikely to go to war over the islands encountered by Columbus, but the explicit mention of India was a major issue. With the failure of the Pope to make changes, the Portuguese king opened direct negotiations with the Catholic Monarchs, the King Ferdinand and the Queen Isabella, to move the line to the west and allow him to claim newly discovered lands east of the line. In the bargain, John accepted Inter caetera as the starting point of discussion with the Catholic Monarchs, but had the boundary line moved 270 leagues west, protecting the Portuguese route down the coast of Africa, but also gave the Portuguese rights to Brazil. As one scholar assessed the results, with such that “both sides must have known that so vague a boundary could not be accurately fixed, and each thought that the other was deceived, concluding that it was a diplomatic triumph for Portugal, confirming to the Portuguese not only the true route to India, but most of the south Atlantic.” The treaty effectively countered the bulls of Alexander VI but was subsequently sanctioned by Pope Julius II by means of the bull Ea quae pro bono pacis of 24 January 1506. Even though the treaty was negotiated without consulting the Pope, a few sources call the resulting line the Papal Line of Demarcation.

Very little of the newly divided area had actually been seen by Europeans, as it was only divided via the treaty. Spain gained lands including most of the Americas, which in 1494 had little proven wealth. The easternmost part of current Brazil was granted to Portugal when in 1500 Pedro Álvares Cabral landed there while he was en route to India. Some historians contend that the Portuguese already knew of the South American bulge that makes up most of Brazil before this time, so his landing in Brazil was not an accident. One scholar points to Cabral’s landing on the Brazilian coast 12 degrees farther south than the expected Cape São Roque, such that “the likelihood of making such a landfall as a result of freak weather or navigational error was remote; and it is highly probably that Cabral had been instructed to investigate a coast whose existence was not merely suspected, but already known.”

The line was not strictly enforced as the Spanish did not resist the Portuguese expansion of Brazil across the meridian. However, the Roman Catholic monarchs attempted to stop the Portuguese advance in Asia, by claiming the meridian line ran around the world, dividing the whole world in half rather than just the Atlantic. Portugal pushed back, seeking another papal pronouncement that limited the line of demarcation to the Atlantic. This was given by Pope Leo X, who was friendly toward Portugal and its discoveries, in 1514 in the bull Praecelsae devotionis.

For a period, the treaty was rendered meaningless between 1580 and 1640 while the Spanish King was also King of Portugal. It was superseded by the 1750 Treaty of Madrid which granted Portugal control of the lands it occupied in South America. However, the latter treaty was immediately repudiated by the catholic monarch. The First Treaty of San Ildefonso settled the problem, with Spain acquiring territories east of the Uruguay River and Portugal acquiring territories in the Amazon Basin. Emerging Protestant maritime powers, particularly England and The Netherlands, and other third parties such as France, did not recognize the division of the world between two Catholic nations brokered by the pope.

The consequential role of the Roman Catholic papacy set the stage for the establishment of the Christian monarchs of Europe to settle and engineer the economic, political and social trajectory of the New World from four the voyages of Columbus to date. The future and role of the Americas in relation to a dynamic and unfolding world, remains in the process of becoming…

The “Spanish Caribbean” became the nomenclature of the various islands and main lands that comprised the New World… For more than 2 centuries, Spanish rulers claimed that all of the Americas were their property because Columbus had sailed under the authority of Queen Isabella. By virtue of conquest, the Crown was said to possess all political, judicial, and religious authority, own all property, and retain all powers of taxation throughout the New World. Anyone of any nationality entering the Americas must obey the royal laws. In theory, only Spaniards could move to or trade with the colonies, and all goods had to be bought over from Spain in annual fleets of licensed Spanish ships.

Rulers of other European states soon resented Spain’s claim to a monopoly over the New World. Francis I of France reportedly asked where in “Adam’s will” was the New World put exclusively in the hands of the Spanish king… But the Dutch, British, and France did not begin to plant colonies in Spain’s Caribbean world until the 1620s. Seizing territory involved expensive problems of governance and defense. Spain’s European enemies (Britain, France, Dutch), preferred to weaken the Spanish economy and kingdom by licensing ‘pirate’ and ‘privateers’ who seized Spanish ships on the high seas. Until the 1620s, piracy was the most common form of warfare in the Americas.

In seeking to maintain a total monopoly over all of the Americas, the Spanish government ironically permitted its enemies to invade its New World holdings. The Spanish Crown focused its attention on Europe, and it depended on the Americas primarily as a source of treasure to support its European wars. The Spanish government showed little interest in Cuba, Jamaica and Hispaniola after the discovery of gold and silver in Mexico and Peru. The Spanish Crown left most settlements to fend for themselves, even to the point of deliberately depopulating them. Undefended Spanish settlers on the islands were poor and they were easy prey to pirate and buccaneer raids.

The New World became the cockpit of European powers as the French, British and Dutch, by way of pirates, etc, and claimed the various islands in the Caribbean. The large mainland of North America and South America became the primary focus of the Spanish empire. South America remains a Spanish culture, and language, and the Roman Catholic religion continues to be the dominant faith.  On the other hand North America was ultimately settled by Puritans a form of Christianity that followed the Protestant Reformation. Accordingly, the United States of America was founded in the framework of the Puritan ethic.