Save your Victorious Victorian Values, history bears witness to as many or more atrocities by the Brits than Hitler and the communists combined.
Virtuous Victorian Values
- In the Caribbean (1500s–1600s), Indigenous peoples such as the Taíno and Kalinago (often called “Caribs”) were violently targeted during colonization.
- Spanish colonizers were the first to do this extensively, using horses, weapons, and attack dogs to capture, terrorize, or kill Indigenous people.
- When the British took control of islands like Barbados, Jamaica, St. Kitts, Antigua, and others, similar violence occurred—especially during land seizures and suppression of resistance.
Hunting “like animals”
- Contemporary European accounts describe organized manhunts, where Indigenous people were:
- Chased while fleeing
- Captured for forced labor or slavery
- Killed to break resistance or clear land
- Dogs trained to attack humans were commonly used. Horses gave colonizers a huge military advantage.
- This practice was sometimes framed as “pacification” or “punishment,” but modern historians are clear: it was racialized violence and ethnic cleansing.
British involvement specifically
- The British did not invent this practice, but they continued it in certain colonies.
- On islands like St. Vincent and Dominica, British forces conducted armed campaigns against the Kalinago well into the 1700s.
- In some cases, Indigenous survivors were exiled, enslaved, or killed, contributing to near-total population collapse.
Important nuance
- This wasn’t every British settler, and it wasn’t always literal “sport hunting.”
- But state-sanctioned violence, bounties, raids, and mounted pursuit of Indigenous people absolutely occurred.
- Modern historians broadly agree these actions meet today’s definitions of crimes against humanity and, in some cases, genocide.
Why this isn’t talked about much
- Caribbean Indigenous populations were almost wiped out early, so fewer written records survive from their side.
- Later histories focused more on African slavery, which (rightly) dominates Caribbean history—but that sometimes pushed Indigenous genocide out of public memory.
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