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In 1635 Guadeloupe and Martinique became and, after several changes, remained profitable French possessions

The French, unlike the British, also established themselves on Hispaniola, Spain’s largest, most prestigious and administratively most important island in the area.

Just before the last Habsburg King of Spain died, the French presence in the Spanish mare nostrum generally, and in Hispaniola in particular, was given international recognition in the treaty of Ryswick of 1697

The Most Serene King of Great Britain, his Heirs and Successors, shall have, hold and possess for ever, with full sovereignty, ownership and possession, all the lands, regions, islands, colonies and dominions, situated in the West Indies or in any part of America, that the said King of Great Britain and his subjects at present hold and possess

The recognition of the new status quo, distressing but realistic so far as Spain was concerned, while being a considerable political and commercial boon to Charles II’s government

the peace of Utrecht was in reality only an uneasy truce

Spain, weakened by Protestant aggression and incapable of adapting its rigid and creaking caste system to the new realities of maritime and economic life

The Netherlands had in fact been the first country deliberately to challenge the power of the King of Spain on his own ground in the Indies

No wonder that in 1609 Philip III offered these irrepressible heretics a twelve years’ truce, which implied a preliminary recognition of independence

Rich in ships, men and money -the days of the Dutch sea-beggars were over -the company, parent and model of all future companies of this type, pursued an ambitious programme. Not content like the British and French to settle on the smaller islands of the Caribbean neglected by Spain, they attacked the mighty colony of Brazil itself since until 1640 the crowns of Portugal and Spain were united in personal union under the Habsburgs

With the Treaty of Westphalia we enter in the West Indies on the violent but passing era of the buccaneers, when Englishmen like Henry Morgan

This uncontrollable anarchy in the Caribbean and along the coasts of Central and South America was exceeded only by the savage cruelty with which these accomplished but coarsened sailors pursued their greedy aims, and the spectacle was viewed with mounting disfavour by the governments at Whitehall and Versailles

The first opportunity to root out this barbarous nuisance came during the negotiations at Utrecht and elsewhere for a settlement to end the War of the Spanish Succession. In 1713 the Bourbons were accepted as Kings of Spain and the Indies

Thus with the restoration of Charles II and the almost simultaneous taking up of the reins of government by the young Louis XIV, Britain and France stood poised in the Caribbean facing each other from positions of great potential wealth, strategic advantage and political power. Both monarchs had triumphed over their enemies at home, but equally they had both come into an inheritance accumulated by their predecessor

In the French islands, les grands blancs, among whom the family of the future Empress Josephine at Martinique was perhaps the most celebrated example, ruled on the basis of the code noir, introduced by Louis XIV and subject to various reforms and modifications in subsequent reigns, especially that of Louis XVI

Where in the French islands absolutist rule was maintained by the conseils supérieurs appointed by the King at Versailles, in the British possessions political power was vested in a Governor sent out from England by letter-patent together with a handful of other political and administrative officers

In the south another ex-slave presently proclaimed himself Emperor of Haiti, while in 1811 the black titan of the North, Jean Christophe, became King Christophe I of Haiti

Las Casas insisted that the Indians, no less than any other of God’s creatures, were capable of receiving the Faith under instruction; and it was this part of his doctrine that aroused the strongest controversy of all, for the Spanish settlers in 1511

We came here to serve God and the King, and also to get rich

The story opens with Spain. It was during the reign of King Charles I of Spain, who is better known in history as the Emperor Charles V, that the South American Empire was added to the Crown of Spain, which in the person of Charles already included his Burgundian and Netherland inheritance

Habsburg Spain, in fact, was culturally and socially the oddest mixture

Like Louis XI of France and Henry VII of England, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, under whose encouragement Colombus had established the island spring-board from which the South American possessions had been conquered under Charles V, belonged in several respects to what is commonly called the ‘New Monarchies’, a somewhat simplified term for the Crown striving to establish its own power at the expense of the feudal overlords

The Catholic Kings therefore welcomed any and every move that was likely to curb the power of the land-owning classes overseas

in government circles and even at the Courts of Charles V and Philip II

The Spaniards exercised not the slightest measure of control over these swift and elusive marauders who, over large stretches of the outer islands, had things all their own way until the French and British arrived

The King of France declared that his countrymen would never acquiesce in being ‘disturbed in their navigation of the seas, nor will they consent to be deprived of the sea or the sky’

both France and England challenged Spain’s monopoly in the Indies without at first going to war with her for that reason in Europe. Sir John Hawkins sailed to the Indies three times between 1562 and 1568

in the end the Spanish monopoly, though being patently far from inviolate and getting more than a little frayed at the fringes, remained intact while the Habsburgs occupied the throne of Spain until the end of the seventeenth century

We might finish this chapter of Spanish supremacy in the West Indies with a glance at the most serious challenge yet thrown out to Spain in Elizabethan times.

For both, as later for Nelson, all oceans of the world were one, a way of thinking that led to Drake’s great voyage of circumnavigation of 1577-80, while it caused Menéndez, in the last year of his life, to lay before Philip II the bold plan of making one of the Scilly islands a Spanish base to deal with the menace of foreign privateering by the French and English in the Caribbean

The sixteenth century ended with England and France’s failure to cut the life-line between Spain and the Indies that ran through the Caribbean and enabled Spain to take events like the defeat of her Armadas in European waters in her stride

The Spaniards were apt to call both French and English enemies Corsarios luteranos, Protestant corsairs, but as in Europe Anglo-French relations under Henry VIII were anything but friendly

It was only when England and France were ready again to resume their offensive against the Caribbean and each other that Spain fell from the rank of an Imperial power to the sorry role of a professional ally of the stronger battalions and navies

Some Caribbean nations have already begun assessing the lasting damage they suffered, ranging from stunted educational and economic opportunities to dietary and health problems, Mr. Day said.

Sugar was a luxury in Europe prior to the 18th century. It became widely popular in the 18th century, then graduated to becoming a necessity in the 19th century.

Some 100 tons (91 metric tons) of cocaine passed through the Caribbean in 2013,

at least 90 percent of the drugs that enter Puerto Rico end up in the U.S.

suspects relying on go-fast boats, ferries, yachts and even cruise ships to transport drugs.

Cash seizures at Puerto Rico's main international airport are at an all-time high, according to the plan.

Drugs are blamed for more than 80 percent of killings in Puerto Rico,

“The People’s Republic of China needs to understand that in America we make decisions about meeting with visitors for ourselves,” Mr. Cruz said.

The United States does not maintain official diplomatic relations with Taiwan as a result of negotiations with Beijing that led to Washington’s recognition of the People’s Republic of China in 1979.

China has warned Mr. Trump against making changes to the One China policy after he takes office on Jan. 20. The warning came in response to a phone call between Ms. Tsai and Mr. Trump after his November election victory, the highest-level exchange between American and Taiwanese leaders since the end of diplomatic relations

“Cruz is influential above and beyond many senators, given his performance in the last election campaign. It makes sense to add Cruz, whatever his relationship is going to be with the Trump administration.”

Beijing’s influence in Latin America and the Caribbean is growing, and it is expected to achieve recognition from more countries, as China is the wealthier benefactor.

We will continue to meet with anyone, including the Taiwanese, as we see fit.”

While American leaders have vowed to defend Taiwan from attack, the United States is not legally bound to do so, despite what Mr. Cruz said. Advertisement Continue reading the main story

Beijing opposed any contact between Taiwan’s leader and “anyone from the U.S. government,” saying it threatens to hurt ties between Beijing and Washington.

“The U.S. is Taiwan’s most important ally and friend, and it occupies a special place in the hearts of the Chinese people,”

neither Mr. Trump nor anyone on his transition team would be meeting with Ms. Tsai.

“In general, it raises Tsai’s national and international stature to be going on trips like this,”

Crew members like my Panamanian cabin attendant seem to work 24 hours a day. A waiter from New Delhi tells me that his contract is six months and three weeks long. After a cruise ends, he says, “in a few hours, we start again for the next cruise.” At the end of the half a year at sea, he is allowed a two-to-three-month stay at home with his family. As of 2019, the median income for crew members was somewhere in the vicinity of $20,000, according to a major business publication. Royal Caribbean would not share the current median salary for its crew members, but I am certain that it amounts to a fraction of the cost of a Royal Bling gold-plated, zirconia-studded chalice.

It is also unseemly to write about the kind of people who go on cruises. Our country does not provide the education and upbringing that allow its citizens an interior life. For the creative class to point fingers at the large, breasty gentlemen adrift in tortilla-chip-laden pools of water is to gather a sour harvest of low-hanging fruit.

Under pressure from European Union officials in Brussels, Malta this week agreed to require foreigners seeking to buy Maltese passports to be residents for at least one year. It has also vowed to carefully vet applicants. Yet initial plans to limit to 1,800 the number of passports granted have been scrapped.

Cyprus recently slashed the amount of investment required to be eligible for citizenship, to $4.06 million from $13.5 million. It is also offering citizenship to foreigners who lost at least €3 million during the recent bailout crisis.

The Caribbean island federation of St. Kitts and Nevis offers citizenship for those who can invest $250,000

Portugal and Belgium offer residency permits leading to citizenship in exchange for big investments.

Crisis-hit Spain offers residency permits to foreigners who buy homes worth more than $260,000, with the aim of drawing Chinese and Russian investment.

Dr. Hunte-Ceasar said that, at this point, the Department of Health did not consider vaccine tourism to be a problem. “We definitely want to ensure the local residents get vaccinated,” she said. But “we have not had any shortages by serving both populations.” The Virgin Islands currently have 27,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine, 18,900 doses of the Moderna vaccine, and 600 doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine available, said Monife Stout, the department’s immunization director.

or now, health authorities are focused on ways to reduce vaccine hesitancy in the territory. “People access misinformation and perpetuate lies and things that are harmful,” Dr. Hunte-Ceasar said in a news conference last week. As a result, the islands have been experiencing a surge in cases and hospitalizations that she said give her “chest pain and heartburn every night.” Although vaccine hesitancy does seem to be decreasing, residents will need to start widely embracing the vaccine if the islands are to meet their goal of vaccinating 50,000 Virgin Islanders by July 1.

According to government data, Mexico has given more than 23.2 million adults in the country at least one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine.

Government officials have indicated that the actual death toll from the pandemic is likely far higher, according to The Associated Press., with a preliminary assessment suggesting more than 350,000 excess deaths — 54% above the official toll.

they urged the European Union commissioner responsible for taxation, Algirdas Semeta, to work to get all 27 members of the European Union to sign up.

Mr. Cahuzac was fired and expelled from the party, but that the minister in charge of fighting tax fraud had committed it himself has been deeply damaging.

The journalist consortium, a project of the Center for Public Integrity, disclosed confidential information on more than 120,000 offshore companies and trusts and nearly 130,000 individuals and agents, including 4,000 Americans. But the consortium has refused requests by governments for access to the files, saying that it is not an arm of law enforcement.

In addition to creating the prosecutor position, he ordered cabinet ministers to disclose their finances and asked legislators to do the same. He also promised to create an independent authority to monitor the assets and possible conflicts of interest of senior officials and legislators.

the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists announced that it had obtained confidential information relating to tens of thousands of offshore bank accounts and shell companies. The leaked data, which centered on the Caribbean and especially the British Virgin Islands and the Cayman Islands, embarrassed European governments, including Luxembourg, by showing how wealthy citizens routinely hide assets, sometimes illegally, and avoid paying taxes by setting up offshore companies.

France’s resilience to external shocks is “diminishing” and its medium-term growth prospects are “increasingly hampered by long-standing imbalances,” the report said, noting that France’s share of European Union exports declined by 11.2 percent from 2006 to 2011, while rising labor costs have damaged competitiveness.

The move by Luxembourg toward disclosure leaves Austria as the lone holdout in the European Union. It pays a 35 percent withholding tax on the interest income of accounts held by foreigners in Austrian banks to their country of residence, but refuses to disclose the account holders’ identities.

As the 57th AIDS patient to reach the CDC team’s attention, Dugas was originally billed as Case 057. But since he came from outside California, and wasn’t even a U.S. resident, the investigators started referring to him offhandedly as the “Out-of-California patient”—or “Patient O” for short.

He sequenced the complete genomes of HIV taken from U.S. samples collected in the late 1970s, and showed that Dugas could not possibly have been the first AIDS patient in the U.S. Indeed, the disease likely entered the country from Haiti in 1971, flying under the radar for a decade before anyone realized what was happening.

The idea fit with the prejudices of the day: Here was a modern Typhoid Mary, whose homosexuality and irresponsible promiscuity had brought a plague to American shores.

The CDC team did their best to naysay this misconception, but it gained steam globally in 1987, after the journalist Randy Shilts published his bestselling book And The Band Played On.

HIV first started infecting humans somewhere in West Africa, having jumped into us from chimpanzees.

He also concluded that the virus must have arrived in the U.S. around 12 years before AIDS was formally recognized in 1981.

They reveal that HIV had spread from Africa to the Caribbean by around 1967, and had jumped into the U.S. by around 1971. It landed in New York City and began diversifying rapidly

By the time anyone noticed the first sign of AIDS in 1981, the virus had already hopped from coast to coast, and become genetically diverse.

This means that not only did Dugas not bring AIDS to America, but he didn’t spread it west either. He was a totally mundane part of a very unusual epidemic.

In 2010, evolutionary biologists used gene trees to prove that a man named Anthony Eugene Whitfield had knowingly infected many women with HIV. More recently, biologists used a pocket-sized DNA sequencer to track the evolution of Ebola in real-time, providing details about routes of transmission that helped to curtail the recent west African outbreak.

The housing is just one example of the military’s expansive role in Mr. Castro’s plan for Cuba, and it illustrates a central conflict in his attempts to open up the economy without dismantling the power structure he and his comrades have been building for more than five decades.

he is relying on the military to push through changes and maintain stability as he experiments with economic liberalization. Yet his abiding dedication as a lifelong soldier who was defense minister for 49 years threatens to further entrench an institution that has often undermined changes challenging its favored status.

As president, Raúl Castro, 82, has accelerated the growth of what some scholars have described as a military oligarchy.

But in the lower and middle ranks, experts say, esteem and relative wealth have eroded. Career officers in Cuba are now more likely to have friends or relatives who live abroad, or who visit Miami and often return with iPhones or new clothes unavailable at the state’s musty stores.

The new housing, a basic necessity in extremely short supply across the island, looks to many Cubans like another attempt at favoritism. According to government figures, the military’s construction budget has more than doubled since 2010. When combined with the Interior Ministry (often described as a branch of the military), the armed forces are now Cuba’s second-largest construction entity.

But in the push and pull that has defined Cuba’s economic policies over the last two years, the government has often struggled with when to let the market function and when to protect the Communist establishment. The authorities, for example, recently cracked down on private vendors selling clothes and other items, widely seen as an effort to help the state’s own retail network.

Based on the current trajectory, war between the United States and China in the decades ahead is not just possible, but much more likely than recognized at the moment. Indeed, judging by the historical record, war is more likely than not.

A risk associated with Thucydides’s Trap is that business as usual—not just an unexpected, extraordinary event—can trigger large-scale conflict. When a rising power is threatening to displace a ruling power, standard crises that would otherwise be contained, like the assassination of an archduke in 1914, can initiate a cascade of reactions that, in turn, produce outcomes none of the parties would otherwise have chosen.

The preeminent geostrategic challenge of this era is not violent Islamic extremists or a resurgent Russia. It is the impact that China’s ascendance will have on the U.S.-led international order, which has provided unprecedented great-power peace and prosperity for the past 70 years. As Singapore’s late leader, Lee Kuan Yew, observed, “the size of China’s displacement of the world balance is such that the world must find a new balance. It is not possible to pretend that this is just another big player. This is the biggest player in the history of the world.”

More than 2,400 years ago, the Athenian historian Thucydides offered a powerful insight: “It was the rise of Athens, and the fear that this inspired in Sparta, that made war inevitable.

Note that Thucydides identified two key drivers of this dynamic: the rising power’s growing entitlement, sense of its importance, and demand for greater say and sway, on the one hand, and the fear, insecurity, and determination to defend the status quo this engenders in the established power, on the other.

However unimaginable conflict seems, however catastrophic the potential consequences for all actors, however deep the cultural empathy among leaders, even blood relatives, and however economically interdependent states may be—none of these factors is sufficient to prevent war, in 1914 or today.

Four of the 16 cases in our review did not end in bloodshed. Those successes, as well as the failures, offer pertinent lessons for today’s world leaders. Escaping the Trap requires tremendous effort

Lee Kuan Yew, the world’s premier China watcher and a mentor to Chinese leaders since Deng Xiaoping. Before his death in March, the founder of Singapore put the odds of China continuing to grow at several times U.S. rates for the next decade and beyond as “four chances in five.

Could China become #1? In what year could China overtake the United States to become, say, the largest economy in the world, or primary engine of global growth, or biggest market for luxury goods?

Could China Become #1? Manufacturer: Exporter: Trading nation: Saver: Holder of U.S. debt: Foreign-direct-investment destination: Energy consumer: Oil importer: Carbon emitter: Steel producer: Auto market: Smartphone market: E-commerce market: Luxury-goods market:   Internet user: Fastest supercomputer: Holder of foreign reserves: Source of initial public offerings: Primary engine of global growth: Economy: Most are stunned to learn that on each of these 20 indicators, China has already surpassed the U.S.

In 1980, China had 10 percent of America’s GDP as measured by purchasing power parity; 7 percent of its GDP at current U.S.-dollar exchange rates; and 6 percent of its exports. The foreign currency held by China, meanwhile, was just one-sixth the size of America’s reserves. The answers for the second column: By 2014, those figures were 101 percent of GDP; 60 percent at U.S.-dollar exchange rates; and 106 percent of exports. China’s reserves today are 28 times larger than America’s.

On whether China’s leaders are serious about displacing the United States as the top power in Asia in the foreseeable future, Lee answered directly: “Of course. Why not … how could they not aspire to be number one in Asia and in time the world?” And about accepting its place in an international order designed and led by America, he said absolutely not: “China wants to be China and accepted as such—not as an honorary member of the West.”

As the United States emerged as the dominant power in the Western hemisphere in the 1890s, how did it behave? Future President Theodore Roosevelt personified a nation supremely confident that the 100 years ahead would be an American century. Over a decade that began in 1895 with the U.S. secretary of state declaring the United States “sovereign on this continent,” America liberated Cuba; threatened Britain and Germany with war to force them to accept American positions on disputes in Venezuela and Canada; backed an insurrection that split Colombia to create a new state of Panama (which immediately gave the U.S. concessions to build the Panama Canal); and attempted to overthrow the government of Mexico, which was supported by the United Kingdom and financed by London bankers. In the half century that followed, U.S. military forces intervened in “our hemisphere” on more than 30 separate occasions to settle economic or territorial disputes in terms favorable to Americans, or oust leaders they judged unacceptable

When Deng Xiaoping initiated China’s fast march to the market in 1978, he announced a policy known as “hide and bide.” What China needed most abroad was stability and access to markets. The Chinese would thus “bide our time and hide our capabilities,” which Chinese military officers sometimes paraphrased as getting strong before getting even.

With the arrival of China’s new paramount leader, Xi Jinping, the era of “hide and bide” is over

Many observers outside China have missed the great divergence between China’s economic performance and that of its competitors over the seven years since the financial crisis of 2008 and Great Recession. That shock caused virtually all other major economies to falter and decline. China never missed a year of growth, sustaining an average growth rate exceeding 8 percent. Indeed, since the financial crisis, nearly 40 percent of all growth in the global economy has occurred in just one country: China

What Xi Jinping calls the “China Dream” expresses the deepest aspirations of hundreds of millions of Chinese, who wish to be not only rich but also powerful. At the core of China’s civilizational creed is the belief—or conceit—that China is the center of the universe. In the oft-repeated narrative, a century of Chinese weakness led to exploitation and national humiliation by Western colonialists and Japan. In Beijing’s view, China is now being restored to its rightful place, where its power commands recognition of and respect for China’s core interests.

Last November, in a seminal meeting of the entire Chinese political and foreign-policy establishment, including the leadership of the People’s Liberation Army, Xi provided a comprehensive overview of his vision of China’s role in the world. The display of self-confidence bordered on hubris. Xi began by offering an essentially Hegelian conception of the major historical trends toward multipolarity (i.e. not U.S. unipolarity) and the transformation of the international system (i.e. not the current U.S.-led system). In his words, a rejuvenated Chinese nation will build a “new type of international relations” through a “protracted” struggle over the nature of the international order. In the end, he assured his audience that “the growing trend toward a multipolar world will not change.”

Given objective trends, realists see an irresistible force approaching an immovable object. They ask which is less likely: China demanding a lesser role in the East and South China Seas than the United States did in the Caribbean or Atlantic in the early 20th century, or the U.S. sharing with China the predominance in the Western Pacific that America has enjoyed since World War II?

At this point, the established script for discussion of policy challenges calls for a pivot to a new strategy (or at least slogan), with a short to-do list that promises peaceful and prosperous relations with China. Shoehorning this challenge into that template would demonstrate only one thing: a failure to understand the central point I’m trying to make

What strategists need most at the moment is not a new strategy, but a long pause for reflection. If the tectonic shift caused by China’s rise poses a challenge of genuinely Thucydidean proportions, declarations about “rebalancing,” or revitalizing “engage and hedge,” or presidential hopefuls’ calls for more “muscular” or “robust” variants of the same, amount to little more than aspirin treating cancer. Future historians will compare such assertions to the reveries of British, German, and Russian leaders as they sleepwalked into 1914

The rise of a 5,000-year-old civilization with 1.3 billion people is not a problem to be fixed. It is a condition—a chronic condition that will have to be managed over a generation

Success will require not just a new slogan, more frequent summits of presidents, and additional meetings of departmental working groups. Managing this relationship without war will demand sustained attention, week by week, at the highest level in both countries. It will entail a depth of mutual understanding not seen since the Henry Kissinger-Zhou Enlai conversations in the 1970s. Most significantly, it will mean more radical changes in attitudes and actions, by leaders and publics alike, than anyone has yet imagined.

One area is freeing itself from US hegemony and is thriving, but may founder if Chinese and Indian growth slows. Another is increasingly integrated with the US and Canada. Despite its current travails, it will discover a path to prosperity when the US does.