I did something a little different with the backdrop for this video. Still experimenting, but let me know what you think. If you'd like to read any of the sources I quote from in this video, you can find them linked in the description under "Sources" - they're all free! Also, if you're interested in buying my new book, you can find it here: www.nativeoak.org/bookshop Finally be sure to check out Ekster during their Summer Sale! When you use my code, BRANDONF, you can get even more savings! partner.ekster.com/brandonf
Great video, backdrop looks good though I would prefer more images throughout. I cannot wait to receive my book, I pre-ordered the first time it was offered and am looking forward to reading it!
@@NathanDudani Depends on the tea in my opinion, but overall i agree wuth you as theres different types of honey that compliment certain teas better. Having a black tea? Try blackberry honey, or lavender honey in a floral one, but id use plain sugar for a london fog. If for some God forsaken reason you wanna put sweetener in a spice tea, such as an orange or chai one, then i think sugar would work better too.
Back then the slave trade was mainly for the sake of sugar and tobacco, neither of which really improve the economy and both of which are bad for people. So we inflicted untold misery on all those black people only to poison ourselves. :o
Have you been to a tropical island, like ever? They're in a huge, cool sea bath. They don't get to 110 degrees. They're in the 80s year round. 90s is a heat wave. Humidity inland is high, but the air in the coasts feels very nice.
Nowadays, modern militaries don't spend much of their time boiling roads, that's typically done by civilian contractors or road crews that work for the government. That and most the people (if not all) doing the work will be from the region and fully acclimated to the climate, wearing clothing much more suited for the climate and likely given regular breaks during their shifts.
As horrific as it was, I can't help but chuckle at the idea of the french government going "Mon dieu. This place is terrible. Let's give up on it. We will focus our attention on Indochina. Nothing bad will ever happen in french Indochina."
The climate in modern SE Asia is just as brutal and their monsoon season is roughly the same as the hurricane season of the Atlantic. The French abandoned North America long before they tried to colonize Indochina in the 1850's.
@@celston51 I live in southeast Florida the weather here is something else. Just existing in the everglades in the summer with all the mosquitoes is just as brutal as anything I did in the military.
Reading of a heroic regiment that fought valiantly always comes with the risk that the final line will be, “And then they were deployed to the West Indies and were completely annihilated”
This really helps with Perspective. I learned that Napoleon had sent the Polish Legion to quell the Haitian slave rebellion. Those that survived the voyage and conditions soon realized that they had more common with the slaves than the crown and turned on the French forces. Now we still have Polish Haitians, descendants of the soldiers that joined the slaves and were allowed to settle, have families and land in Haiti. It really puts in perspective how much of “throwaways” the Polish Legion was to Napoleon.
Yup , and when there was a massacre of whites in Haiti in retaliation for Napoleon reneging on the independence deal and killing hatia’s general touissant. The Polish were entirely spared , in fact it was a crime to harm the Poles. That’s how based the Poles were
It seems like the main issue was Europeans having no idea how to safely live in a tropical climate. I guess those were lessons that had to be learned the hard way…
Plus consider the fact no one knew how diseases such as yellow fever were spread. The connection between mosquitoes and yellow fever, to say nothing of other diseases, wouldn't be made until the turn of the 20th Century.
@@oldrabbit8290 The basics, yes. But against something like yellow fever? No. Yellow fever was imported into the New World with the slaves from Africa. In fact, yellow fever's been called "Africa's Revenge."
Me, playing Empire: total war, checking the american theatre with its ten scattered units of colonial dragoons: "i'm sorry my friends, but i need at least a half stack here just in case someone slips past the navy..."
maratha confederation taking the windward islands that I (poland-lithuania) island-hopped with MY colonial army with MY colonial navy whilst I was occupying all of central america
I found the lack of pay interesting. When I worked in the Caribbean I had to fight every month to get paid. It was a British company, imagine that. The more things change, the more they remain the same.
I don't think there is overwhelming evidence that British companies are less likely to pay employees than any other nation. Your personal anecdote and one historical reference don't prove much
@@danw5760 ive been to the DR 4 times. Home companies pay shit and the foreign companies also pay shit. The spanish and mexicans exploit people very bad. The british companies exploit people really bad. Its not a anecdote. Its most if not all of them.
The thumbnail is so good. Here is why: The palm tree and blue sky look gorgeous and joyous, but the words “HELL” in bright scarlet are plastered over it, along with a stoic redcoat who looks like he was recently evicted from his home and deprived of all tea. This video is golden
A hot and humid climate is nice on something like a 7 day vacation, with pools, drinks, repellants and air conditioning, otherwise its just a "green hell" full of disease. umbearable heat and mosquitoes.
@@JoeyStarley Its a question of being adapted to it, I heard americans talking about 26 degress celsius like "the hottest day ever" when that is a perfect temperature in south america, not too hot or too cold.
@@kinsmarts2217 don’t know who gave you that information but I’m from the south, Kentucky to be exactly but 27-29 is pretty enjoyable & during the winter months -1 & -10 are enjoying weather we wear shorts & shorts in the snow were a different breed
@@jeovanysanchez4136 humidity is a big factor, air conditioningand insulation is also something big, heat or cold means little if you spend 20 to 30 minutes actually exposed to the elements, you can wear shorts everywhere, air conditioning is not something common in south america.
Although geographically much closer, the Amazon was, at the time, nothing more than a hot and humid jungle itself. Not the global trading hub it is today.
Imagine being a sailor in the Caribbean, then two Tainos in a row boat with a book pull up beside you, and one of them is blasting tunes on his portable drum setup which you can hear from several nautical miles away (Ye olde Dominicans in a Honda Civic)
Ugh. Unfortunately those with the blood of Iberia would be the ones to do that, the Tainos got wrecked very little of their dna remains in the Greater Antilles.
Not so. Between 5 or 35 % of Puerto Ricans have Taino DNA. The highest in the Greater Antilles. My brother had his DNA analyzed and he has 3% Taino from Cuba.
@@miguelvaliente1475 I’ve seen at least close to 300+ PR DNA tests, very few of them with EXCLUSIVE Taino go above 18%, the highest I found was someone that was almost a full quarter Taino at 23% but that is exceedingly rare, and they usually have higher amounts of SSA. I’ve seen people with upwards of 30% but they usually have various Native populations mixed in, not purely Taino when it comes to the Native. As for Tainos in Cuba they weren’t much different from their brethren in Hispaniola and Puerto Rico for the most part.
@@JoeJoe-wv6dewhile "coup de Soleil" does mean sunburn today, in context that doesn't make sense. Men don't just keel over and die from a sunburn as described in the writing. That sounds far more like sun/heatstroke, which in current usage would be coup de chaleur. It could be a change in usage or mistake, but if men collapsed and died on the march like that it would almost certainly be heat/sunstroke.
My favorite (secundary) source on the subject is ''Mosquito Empires'' by J.R. McNeill. Note that ''acclimatization'' mostly entailed building resistance against Malaria, but you couldn't build such resistance against Yellow Fever; you could only gain immunity against Yellow Fever, which required exposure in early life, while exposure in later life had a very high death rate. Colonial empires--especially the Spanish--came to rely on European troops born in the Americas to fend of European troops born in Europe (most notably perhaps during the siege of Carthagena de Indias in 1741). And even when European-born troops were victorious, they often continued to suffer under occupation duties (Havana de Cuba, 1762-'63). The reliance on American-born troops would come back to bite European empires once Washington, Louverture and Bolivar rose to prominence. (Malaria weakened the British in the Carolinas in 1780, forcing Cornwallis to march north.) Still, it can be argued that the Spanish empire could have militarily collapsed a full century earlier than it actually did if it wasn't for their proactive weaponization of the season of sickness.
I hope Brandon talks about British experience in the American south- relentless guerillas, unhelpful loyalists not wanting to contribute, the suffocating humidity. I've read US soldiers accounts serving in the same places, and they basically had to rely on occupation of livable areas or just keep moving to some other place. I imagine it'd be worse for the British
That's why the Spanish mostly used Mexican-born Spaniards to conquer and administrate the Philippines while ruling from Mexico City, a place at least tolerable to the Iberian-born Spaniards of the Viceroyalty.
Unfortunately "building resistance against malaria" has been achieved genetically. It's called Sickle Cell Anemia. Malaria is the single biggest cause of death for our species over the millennia. This mutation inhibits the transference of malaria in the blood system but it also inhibits oxygen transfer from blood cells to other parts of the body.
Yup, also Porto Bello 1727, Eastern Cuba 1741, Central America 1780 where Nelson suffered his first major defeat, and Haiti 1804 where Napoleon lost thousands of elite troops to yellow fever. Biological warfare at its finest.
@@BrandonF lmfaooo I had no idea you knew of EU4! Also, Amazing job on both this one and the Maratha Confedaracy one. Actually, amazing job on all your videos.
I am from the Dominican Republic, during the imperial era in which we were part of Spain, the Spaniards were rarely affected by the epidemics of the Caribbean or at least not as much as the rest of the Europeans, that is, the rest of the Europeans died like flies, the Spaniards were very tough, that is why they lasted more than 300 years in the Dominican Republic.
I often find these stories so strange having been born and raised in the Caribbean. It makes me feel lucky to have survived the poisonous snakes, centipedes and mosquito bourne diseases. I maybe only ever heard of 1 kid getting dengue fever in high school and he was the anomaly. Perhaps a combination of publicly funded insecticide use, genrational immune exposure and vaccination eliminated a lot of these. Funnily the worst illness I've ever experienced was when I caught chicken pox in North America. What a vile disease that (perhaps due to no one, not even my parents, having been exposed to it) ravaged my body. It's funny that all my North American friends say chicken pox was relatively mild but for me the sleepless nights of extreme itching still haunt me to this day.
Chicken pox is much easier on little kids, who in areas where the virus is endemic, usually contract it long before adulthood and get lifelong immunity. It's then when it's horrible.
Its funny you mention that, cause even in different coasts of the US the people are resistant to different conditions. Californians think 70 is chilly, new englanders run around in shorts in snowy weather 😂
@@scentsoftravelmeditation no we do the thing is it was rare to see, I perhaps saw them 2, times in the 13 years I lived there. Never even close to being bitten. Never heard of anyone other than the few people still living in rural areas or working in the forest areas getting bitten. And to my memory none died from getting bitten. Most people died from either another human or a heart attack.
Chicken pox tends to be more severe the later in life you get it, and is more dangerous in men than women. I've no idea what your demographic is, but that's my 2 cents why your case may have been so awful.
I think its absolutely absurd that the British were resuppling their troops from all the way in England instead of building logistical hubs in Georgia specifically for the West Indies since it was a "garrison province."
That wouldve forced a more aggresive stance from spain and that wouldve meant getting the colonies invaded by new spanish, caribbean and south american armies
@@LawAcieIV Georgia served two purposes, for debtors to work off their debts and the English working poor to get parcels of land to work as smallholders. The second reason for its founding was as I said a garrison province to act as a buffer against Spanish Florida.
@sebastianprimomija8375 yes but in the early history the West Indies were more developed and important than the 13 colonies. So the base would have been in Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas or Bermuda. I think Bermuda was later the headquarters of the Royal Navy in the America's. Charles Towne later Charleston would have been the only port near Georgia sizable enough to supply the logistics you speak of.
I have three words, sugar, sugar, sugar. And if you read up on the subject how vile & brutal the conditions were on these plantations, you suddenly have a lot more sympathy regarding the very bloody and ruthless slave rebellion on Haiti. And when you really want to get some righteous anger, read up about how France, the beacon of human rights, treated them afterwards and this continued until the mid 20th century! If you are looking for Freedom, Equality, Fraternity, you wont find any from France when it comes to Haiti.
I am definitely planning to make two parallel videos to this one some time about the practise of slavery in the West Indies, and the military recruitment from the slave populations.
IIRC General Dumas, the father of the Musketeers author, had left Napoleon's army upon the issue of reversing policies concerning slavery in Caribbean, so...
Fun fact: most Poles who get sent there by Napoleon most of them either died of yellow fewer or switched sides joining the rebel forces. It's kind of weird how much Napoleon is venerated as liberator of Europe over here, even having place in our national anthem. And at the same time he duped our men so hard by promise that they would fight for freedom against tzar and prussians and sending them to quell the rebellion of slaves fighting for freedom instead.
And not too long after this, a couple of prominent food scientists in France figured out how to extract table sugar from an unassuming little root vegetable. And so Europe is now completely capable of meeting its own sugar needs domestically. France is the number one sugar beet producer in the EU. All the death, cruelty and deprivation was for nothing.
Having volunteered at the San Juan National Historic Site at the gate to Castillo San Cristobal, I can tell you that the heat, sun, and humidity was intense to deal with in our modern, breathable uniforms. So imagine a Spanish or local regular who had to stand in uniform for drill or for guard duty in over 100 degree heat and 90+% humidity in the blistering sun. We had some other volunteers in period dress for living history and they stayed in the shade the whole time and I dont blame them. The city of San Juan itself was sieged down 5 or so times during its time as a Spanish colony and I can imagine the horror of siege warfare being combined with the climate of the Caribbean would be a nightmare of the highest order.
I did it twice in Iraq. Let’s be honest, most of the people in these comments are people who haven’t worked a day of physical labor in their life nor have they worked outside for large periods of time. The thought of being outside in hot and humid weather more than 4 hours is a nightmare to them. I could do it standing on my hands at this point.
As someone who has lived most of his young boy life in Tampa Bay, Florida, I can tell you, the Caribbean Sea is somewhere you do not want to sail in without some type of sailor live-in experience alongside you, even if it's in the 21st Century.
@mrttripz3236 rampant organized crime, kidnapping, alot of volatile sea conditions. The nicer the weather, the more likely there will be people there, espcially bad ones bumping into each other.
I live near the Tampa area and I can confirm. It’s way worse there and St. Pete/Clearwater than my shitty little town near by. The flooding was bad over there a week ago
I have been to the Cayman Islands and believe you me, without any of the modern amenities it really would be hell. Razor sharp coral rocks everywhere which will cut your feet to ribbons and you'd better hope to god you don't fall on it; nothing grows on the island save thick mangrove swamp and jungle full of very hostile and inedible flora; intense, unrelenting, red hot sun burning you to a cinder day in and day out; tropical storms that can swamp the island and wash you all out to sea with frighteningly little notice; the only water available being rainwater cause everything else is salty; clouds of malaria bearing mosquitoes. And to top it all off, the sheer isolation. Grand Cayman is hundreds of miles from the nearest island and it's small. People take modern convenience for granted way too much and end up highly disconnected from the environment in which they find themselves. Islands like Cuba, Jamaica or Hispaniola are better than the Cayman Islands by virtue of being larger. However, you still have malaria and other tropical diseases, there is still the intense heat with humidity and the storms and the very thick jungles. However, at least the larger islands have half decent farmland and Jamaica even has fertile volcanic soil.
I see you have been to the Hell just outside of Georgetown, July is brutal in Grand Cayman. The western part on the way to Rum Point is interesting, all of the houses on that road near the ocean are concrete blockhouses that managed to survive the Cat 5 Hurricanes that hit that place on a regular basis..
@@ClayinSWVA I have. When you strip away the concrete, the island is mostly like that. North Side and East End are almost entirely coral hellscapes. It's very rough.
@@foxman9709 It's not living but the calcified remnants of ancient corals, built upon over countless aeons and then thrust out of the sea by tectonic activity. The island itself is the peak of a coral mountain which plunges down to a depth of over 5,000 metres (~16,000ft) at the bottom of the Cayman trench. You can swim out over the trench and it drops away into the blue.
My great-great-great-great grandfather was a gunner in the Royal Artillery 7th battalion, posted to the West Indies (maybe Barbados?) for 12 years, he was pensioned out in 1814 due to spectoral complaint (not sure what that is), I've also been researching 2 officers from the 39th regiment of foot who both met there demise in central India in 1840 from cholera. Sickness is such a prevalent problem. Great video!
Cholera was widespread everywhere during that time as they had yet to discover the connection between tainted drinking water and the outbreak of the sickness.
100% Wool is actually a thermal regulator. Not saying it's not hot in summer, but it does help to keep cooler in the heat and warm in the cold. Not to mention, it's much better to sweat it out in wool than other materials like cotton, linen, etc from a soldier's survival perspective. Not the best choice for a tropical vacation, but definitely the best choice as a soldier during that time. Source: lifetime wool user outdoorsman, wool socks user Marine veteran, and full wool uniforms as a Civil Reenactor Battle of Gettysburg during 90°F+ days in sweaty PA.
@@pennsyltuckyreb9800yeah but how much you wanna bet those officers had those poor guys in layers, buttoned to neck, etc. Gotta shave in the field; how can you kill the enemy unshaven!?
It's the same like in Batavia: the so called "Friedhof der Europäer" (cemetery of Europeans). The Germans had send unit per unit for the Dutch to occupy the town. Many died on their journey. I saw a letter by a soldier from the 1730s from Southwestern Germany writing from Batavia, who described all the losses of his unit. He still hoped to come back - but died shortly before he had got his money and could return.
The long trip without any vitamin rich nutrition must have weakened the men sent to the east indies even more than those who were crossing the atlantic.
My Ancestor Richard Rowe after the war in Spain in 1814, was sent out to the West Indies and was there for 5 years 8 months. His Regiment was The Queen's 2nd Foot, almost half died from yellow fever. After he ended up in Ireland for 2 years and ended his service and returned home to Rattlesden Suffolk. He married had 8 children one was my 2x Gt Nan Harriet and died at the age of 80..
Honestly I never used to find the Caribbean to be the most interesting place on Earth, nor did I ever find pirates to be all that interesting, but I began playing a lot of Port Royale 2 about a year ago and it really made me realize how fascinating this region is, particularly during the golden age of piracy. It was actually the same with the Napoleonic Era, I never cared much for it but my neighbor when I was like 11 gave me his Napoleon: Total War disc and I downloaded it onto my computer and now I find it to be one of the most fascinating periods in human history.
I agree. As a young person, something about the era just seems stale. But once you naturally arrive there by your own means, it's positively enthralling, a crossroads of history
Almost willingly to pay money to have those two do a video pretending to be that. The Caribbean is the Fort Polk of the overseas empires based on what this video is going on.
"The Fever Islands" were difficult places. Of course, they were handy places to put rebellious Irish and Scots who tend NOT to get things like Cholera and lasted a bit longer. A big aspect of the Louisiana Purchase was the Southern Parts of that were among the only places OUTSIDE the Carribean where you could grow Sugar. If Cotton were King, Sugar was Emperor . . . . .
Cotton was a small princeling until the invention of the cotton gin. Cotton and tobacco could be grown in Virginia the dangers of the Caribbean were risked for sugar.
@@MrMonkeybat But for the Cotton Gin; it is possible the end of the transatlantic slave trade in 1808 (under the US Constitution) would have ended Slavery in the US. However, the tech made US grown cotton valuable . . . .
I mean theres loads of militia level favela gangs & rampant piracy still, & some of the islands dont play well with each other so its still dicy af down there. At least you wont die of disease, just a regular ol bullet or kidnapping
Being stationed there now would only be fun for a month before the reality of having to regularly work and excercise outside in heavy clothing sets in. The military doesn't give a damn about the weather, you're still wearing the same uniform that's warm in the winter, the most they'll give you is rolling the sleeves up.
Before the invention of the Industrial-sized air conditioner 100 years ago, Florida's population was less than 1 million. Now everyone wants to move here.
@@smtandearthboundsuck8400 it wouldn’t be all bad if it weren’t for the swamps, hurricanes, and insects (especially mosquitoes & the diseases they carry).
@@CliffCardi the mosquitos are a product of heat not environnement, that's why you're seeing more and more in evropa. Heat is terrible. I'd rather live in Siberia than spend a week in French Guiana.
@@smtandearthboundsuck8400 when it’s cold, you can always put on a coat. But when it’s hot? There is NOTHING you can do. Go naked and the sun will ruin your skin or be eaten alive by mosquitoes. But the big attraction for mosquitoes is stagnant water.
worse for sailors because the army you at least got to have extra curricular activities unlike the navy where you could spend months stuck on a ship with all the rest of the nice tropical illnesses and scurvy.
When I first researched about the economic history of the Caribbean region, as the islands were populated by Africans and Europeans, I noticed that the pork from locally-raised swines was one of the core sources of nutrition. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I learned that salt production there was pretty much impossible except for a handful of islands. No wonder that the Caribbean was hell on earth at that time.
1. People always talk about attention spans these days, but Brandon’s content can capture my attention for the whole video. (Minus skipping the wallet ad.) 2. I am 75% sure I’ll get that book.
Currently a native of the Caribbean, the formerly Spanish citadel of Puerto Rico. I even staff the same fortifications that vexed all who attempted to besiege them, El Morro. I can say with certainty that those unaccustomed to the climate still suffer to this day, I spend a decent portion of my day aiding and recovering those who pass out in the heat. I sometimes look over these walls and fields, wondering just how much blood was spilled in vain to take the castle. From a local population both eager to defend and accustomed to the climate.
The many threats to a soldier in the Caribbean. Disease, dangerous wildlife, brutal heat, and Edward Kenway dropping down and plunging two swords in your back
3:40 It has rarely been profitable to breed slaves. Raising children is time consuming and expensive, it has nearly always been much more profitable to kidnap grown adults. The exception was the Americans in the first half of the 18th century. The slave trade was banned but the cotton business needed slaves, so slaves were bred. This is the reason that African Americans are around today whereas the millions of slaves taken to the Arab world have no descendents.
If you can control the mosquitoes you can limit malaria, yellow fever and other tropical diseases. The problem was knowing that mosquitoes actually spread the viruses. Even as late as the 1920's malaria was one of the biggest killers in the state of New Jersey, which except in summer, has a decidedly untropical climate, but a lot of mosquitoes in certain areas. In the 19th and early 20th centuries Washington D.C. in the summer was considered a hardship post for European embassy staff. There's a very good reason why the neighborhood around the State Department is called "Foggy Bottom."
haemagogus mosquitoes were in brazil they transmit yellow fever and aedes aegypti and anopheles were in africa. So is there record of what was causing the spread at the time.?
@@WarDogMadness Not until they understood that mosquitoes were the problem. For centuries malaria was attributed to foul air, thus the name malaria. IYellow fever was also misunderstood. Governments used to quarantine patients with yellow fever as if they were the cause of the disease. It wasn't until the late 19th century when a Cuban physician identified the mosquito as the cause.
I spent a week in Davis Park Fire Island off Long Island last summer. It butts up against Fire Island National Seashore. It’s pretty much how Long Island and probably most of the Atlantic Coastal Plain was a more wild place. The mosquitoes, ticks, green flies and horseflies were absolutely relentless. A good portion of the US must have also been very hostile to native Europeans during the age of exploration and colonization.
@@tamer1773 yeah I live on the south shore the mosquitoes are brutal, but fire island was on another level. It was relentless, I never experienced anything like it in my life.
I am British, I am well aware that there was little to be gained, for my ancestors, from the institution of the British Empire other than a small corner of a foreign field. Some people from former British colonies think there is something I have to apologise for. No, we were both exploited. Both British soldiers and sailors as well as denizens of colonised countries. The same people who oppressed their ancestors sent my great great grandfather down a coal mine at 9 yrs old. As my grandfather once told me, a bayonet is a weapon with a worker at either end of it.
I can’t believe there are people who don’t like this type of history despite the significance that brought to the modern day society. Keep going. History are records of the past, not meant to be repeated.
The leader of the Black Watch Mutiny, Farquhar Shaw, has a statue at Aberfeldy in Perthshire. It’s next to “Wade’s Park”, where the Highland Regiment was first mustered. Shaw is still a bit of a legend in the regiment. My great and great great grandfathers were both in the Royal Regiment of Scotland.
I recently had a early modern history exam, in which i chose to focus on the Haitian Revolution and the 7 years war. In both manuals i read that in both the french and british armies, soldiers and officers alike would pay good money not to be sent in the Caribbeans. Been folllowing you for years, I love your channel its one of the things that motivated me to study history in Uni. Cheers from Italy.
funny enough I'm in trinidad rn. my great grandma and grandma are from here so this is my second time visiting. being from NY and living in VA (50 mins from DC) between bug bites and heat I'm kinda missing home😂😂 and my conditions here are probably better than most so I can't imagine if I didn't have two fans hyper blasting on me as I type this😅
It's not like they had any warning of the severity of the hurricanes either. You look up and casually tell the kids that it's getting ready to rain, not knowing that everything you own is going to end up on the beaches of nearby islands. 😮
No, a soldier's worst nightmare is being captured and sold into slavery, having to go through all the different passages from Africa to the Americas, then being worked to death in the Caribbean - a place that the European slavers thought was their worst nightmare even as they didn't have to even be slaves there
On top of all this bullshit, they had to deal with undead pirate crews cursed by aztec gold, octopusheaded captains and undoubtedly the worst pirate anyone had ever heard of.
I remember reading about the Great Hurricane. A British officer stationed on St. Lucia wrote about how the winds were so loud no one could hear their own voices and were so strong the heavy cannons were carried hundreds of feet away.
As a geologist from Costa Rica, I can assure you the fieldwork we do during both wet and dry seasons it's completely exhausting. Heat, Sunlight, humidity, etc. I can't imagine what soldiers have to deal with. And I haven't mentioned the snakes, poisonous animals, and insects 🤣🤣🤣
I was going to mention the old army barracks museum in Berwick on Tweed but you talked about it yourself. It's a fascinating source of information. When I was there years ago I had the whole place to myself, so I took my time. As you point out in the 18th century, casualty rates in combat were relatively low. Death rates from disease and privation on the other hand were horrendous. The other posting British soldiers dreaded was Gibraltar. Together with the West Indies it amounted to a virtual death sentence. The best posting was the American mainland colonies. Of course that only lasted until 1783, for obvious reasons. After that the British had to seek out another remote land mass to colonise (Australia).
Just a bit of trivia: World War Two was the first war in history where combat deaths exceeded deaths by disease, in the larger scheme of things of course.
when the army is run in a pre-modern manner, any place where soldiers are based away from his kin is a hell. during the Napoleonic wars, Russian soldiers were known to have died in France and Germany, because there digestive systems were not accustomed to the consumption of wheat, earlier, during the wars against the Crimean Khanate, the vast majority of the army did not reach the enemy, in conditions that were considered the soviet breadbasket. even in the modern days... whilst being stationed in a normal fashion is usually ok, special forces and UN-instructor or the medical units being sent to assist such allies as are in modern Sub-Saharan Africa often come down with incurable diseases at a rates quite unseen in the modern 1st world. *(true as far as we know among all sides, French-legionaries, US Marines, Israeli private instructors, UN forces, Chinese Industrial Security firms, Wagner... every force infiltrating into these places without full-out support, suffers it's toll to disease)
I remember studying the muster roll of a British regiment of foot sent to Jamaica in 1750. Six months later, out of three hundred men, over half were listed as dead mostly due to heatstroke and diseases. I can only imagine how much worse the conditions were for prisoners sentenced to transportation to either Jamaica and Barbados, let alone the slaves there.
8:34: "Although the members of the corps to which I had the honour to belong, were by no means addicted to the use of water as a beverage, we nevertheless suffered severely from its scarcity."
As a fellow 18th/19th Century Historian from Massachusetts; dare I say?: a combat Veteran with over 24 years of Army service in the most inhospitable places on planet Earth: I'd love to write an article for your next book brother, especiallysonce i have experiencewoth acclimatingto a new region. Love you and your channel.
The caribbean wasn't just horror, its hell, sure it sounds pleasant now but remember, there is ocean for miles, there are a mixture of pirates and privateers, and all islands are varying in degree of sustainability which become "when do you die?" Not only that, depending on the seasons, you can get crushed by tropical storms, yes, giant tidal waves crashing onto islands is a thing.
This proves that a soldiers suffering here in the Spanish Caribbean and the British Caribbean wasn’t so different after all. Obviously there are some clear differences, for example we had more access to food and water and better overall infrastructure due to having larger islands, but similarities among the common soldiers are impressive. I want to add, in the Siege of San Juan in 1797, the part of the Black Watch was deployed and many, along with other soldiers, died of heat stroke rather than in combat
It's similar to Siberia, which was considered a death sentence for the Imperial Russian Army. Like the Caribbean, there was no infrastructure, just a vast tundra of trees and meadows, the Russians had to build garrisons from scratch, mostly constructed from wood, forts offered little protection from freezing winters and blizzards, the cold was a major killer of Russian squaddies. In addition, due to the vastness of the Steppe, it can take weeks or months for resupply and reinforcement from Muscovy, the soldiers had to fend for themselves, spending much of their time chopping down lumber, and hunting for whatever they could find, moreover, many infantrymen and cavalrymen would die on the march to these farflung garrisons. Siberia was also a dangerous and hostile battlefield, as the Mongol, Turkic and Tungusic peoples resisted European encroachment on their native lands, as warriors would skirmish and harass Russian foragers and porters. Although the Russians partially succeeded in taking Siberia, it was never fully pacified, as it cost hundreds of thousands of lives, over a century to advance from the Urals to the Pacific, even in Soviet times, Siberia was still taking soldier's lives, we may never know the full total, but best estimate is that 700,000 to a million Russian soldiers, died expanding the empire east. Incidentally, the Americans experienced their own frontier hell, it's easy to forget, but Great Plains, the Southwest, the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific coast, were every bit as hostile as Siberia, and although the Americans succeeded in pacifying the frontier, it was _not_ a cheap accomplishment.
In Singapore now. 8pm. 96F 68% humidity. In August. And I am staying a couple of hundred meters from the seashore, on the 10th floor. Even as a local, i feel 🥵. And you won't want to open the windows, because mozzies, and dengue and other diseases. That's why about 75% of the households, and all the hotels have air-conditioners in Singapore.
I hope to be able to publish an article in your book one day, really looking forward to seeing how the project goes! As always, fantastic video Brandon!
Fascinating. I live in St. Vincent, which was occupied by the Arawak Indians, then by the French, then the British, then the French again and finally the British once more. At colossal expense, the British then built a large fort overlooking the main harbour in Kingstown, called Fort Charlotte. The aim was to deter the French from trying to regain the island again.....and of course, it was never attacked or threatened again by the French and so became redundant from the moment it was finished. Later it became in part a women's prison. Now it's a weather station and a museum. A recovered French cannon, fished out of the harbour in 1997, sits in the Cruise Line terminal in Kingstown but it isn't clear if it was lost in battle or in a storm or overboard in an accident. As for the sugar industry here, it's a distant memory. The plantations are all abandoned and mainly overgrown, the industrial buildings and the " Great Houses" collapsed or demolished aside from a few stumps of chimneys and a few iron gear wheels. The sugar and molasses we now use comes from Guyana. Antigua and Anguilla still have water shortages. Cancel Comment
For a long time Dutch naval personel could retire at an earlier age than our army or airforce. Because it used to be bad though from 1900 it can't be an excuse anymore.
3:34 reminds me a lot of the current immigration situation in europe. instead of caring for the native population european governments just import new... "specialised workers" from the middle east
I did something a little different with the backdrop for this video. Still experimenting, but let me know what you think.
If you'd like to read any of the sources I quote from in this video, you can find them linked in the description under "Sources" - they're all free!
Also, if you're interested in buying my new book, you can find it here: www.nativeoak.org/bookshop
Finally be sure to check out Ekster during their Summer Sale! When you use my code, BRANDONF, you can get even more savings! partner.ekster.com/brandonf
The book looks great , it is next on my list
@@lindsayspears5760 Glad to hear it! I hope you enjoy, when the time comes.
Great video, backdrop looks good though I would prefer more images throughout. I cannot wait to receive my book, I pre-ordered the first time it was offered and am looking forward to reading it!
While remaining thy most humble and obedient of servants, @@BrandonF, it's pronounced Rob-bee Mac-Niv-en.
@@BrandonFare you welsh because I see the flag in your background sometimes ?
"Why did they send all those soldiers to waste away in the mosquito lands?"
Britain: You need some sugar to go with that tea.
Honey is better
@@NathanDudani Depends on the tea in my opinion, but overall i agree wuth you as theres different types of honey that compliment certain teas better. Having a black tea? Try blackberry honey, or lavender honey in a floral one, but id use plain sugar for a london fog. If for some God forsaken reason you wanna put sweetener in a spice tea, such as an orange or chai one, then i think sugar would work better too.
Back then the slave trade was mainly for the sake of sugar and tobacco, neither of which really improve the economy and both of which are bad for people. So we inflicted untold misery on all those black people only to poison ourselves. :o
@@carlcramer9269misery is a big word. They'd have been ritually sacrificed, worked to death at home or castrated and sold to Muslims anyway.
@@carlcramer9269but it improved our meals and waiting between courses.
Even being a soldier nowadays in the Caribbean doesn’t sound fun, can’t wait to build a road in 110 degrees in the most humid jungle on earth.
Fair!
Have you been to a tropical island, like ever? They're in a huge, cool sea bath. They don't get to 110 degrees. They're in the 80s year round. 90s is a heat wave. Humidity inland is high, but the air in the coasts feels very nice.
As a scot anything over twenty degrees is considered uncomfortable
@@joesterling4299 yeqah but you dont really build roads on the coast too often
Nowadays, modern militaries don't spend much of their time boiling roads, that's typically done by civilian contractors or road crews that work for the government. That and most the people (if not all) doing the work will be from the region and fully acclimated to the climate, wearing clothing much more suited for the climate and likely given regular breaks during their shifts.
As horrific as it was, I can't help but chuckle at the idea of the french government going "Mon dieu. This place is terrible. Let's give up on it. We will focus our attention on Indochina. Nothing bad will ever happen in french Indochina."
The climate in modern SE Asia is just as brutal and their monsoon season is roughly the same as the hurricane season of the Atlantic. The French abandoned North America long before they tried to colonize Indochina in the 1850's.
To be fair, the French lost Paris first before they lost Indochina.
* Paint it Black plays as the credits roll *
*Fortunate Son starts playing* merde
@@celston51 I live in southeast Florida the weather here is something else. Just existing in the everglades in the summer with all the mosquitoes is just as brutal as anything I did in the military.
Reading of a heroic regiment that fought valiantly always comes with the risk that the final line will be,
“And then they were deployed to the West Indies and were completely annihilated”
💔
Rip colonialism 😂🎉
@kettelbe you will never be white
@@kettelbe It’s alright we still have made generation of children :D
@@kettelbe Too bad colonialism won.
This really helps with Perspective.
I learned that Napoleon had sent the Polish Legion to quell the Haitian slave rebellion. Those that survived the voyage and conditions soon realized that they had more common with the slaves than the crown and turned on the French forces.
Now we still have Polish Haitians, descendants of the soldiers that joined the slaves and were allowed to settle, have families and land in Haiti.
It really puts in perspective how much of “throwaways” the Polish Legion was to Napoleon.
I remember during the Spanish campaign, he literally threw the polish calvary against the artillery because he was impatient
@@zombieoverlord5173
He was always the model *S*o*n*O*f*A*B*i*t*c*h$
wow thanks for this. it lead me to do some research on polish in haiti
Yup , and when there was a massacre of whites in Haiti in retaliation for Napoleon reneging on the independence deal and killing hatia’s general touissant.
The Polish were entirely spared , in fact it was a crime to harm the Poles.
That’s how based the Poles were
Napoleon was incredibly callous about the lives of his soldiers.
It seems like the main issue was Europeans having no idea how to safely live in a tropical climate. I guess those were lessons that had to be learned the hard way…
if only there was a native population, who has lived on these foreign lands for thousands of years, that could share some useful survival tips..
Plus consider the fact no one knew how diseases such as yellow fever were spread. The connection between mosquitoes and yellow fever, to say nothing of other diseases, wouldn't be made until the turn of the 20th Century.
@@oldrabbit8290 The basics, yes. But against something like yellow fever? No. Yellow fever was imported into the New World with the slaves from Africa. In fact, yellow fever's been called "Africa's Revenge."
@@oldrabbit8290 "Pah, what could those pesky savages know that the formidable British Minds not already have discovered" 😂😅😂😅
@@aleisterlavey9716 Our hardy shetland ponies and well engineered tractors are much more appropriate than a bunch of lowly dogs.
Me, playing Empire: total war, checking the american theatre with its ten scattered units of colonial dragoons:
"i'm sorry my friends, but i need at least a half stack here just in case someone slips past the navy..."
Relatable, the South American theatre is a nightmare in transporting troops so I always have 3 units of line infantry and 2 native cav
@@erichvondonitz5325 Why no native infantry?
@@_--Reaper--_ short range and they break & route easily. However, I do sometimes deploy them as skirmishers if I don't have the number advantage
maratha confederation taking the windward islands that I (poland-lithuania) island-hopped with MY colonial army with MY colonial navy whilst I was occupying all of central america
Me creating Russian Cuba and Russian Nova Scotia
the thought of wool uniforms and tropical climate makes me sweat.
I can handle wearing button ups in the hot central Florida weather but not wool. That’s how to burn up
I cannot grasp why couldn't they be issued linen uniforms standardized
I found the lack of pay interesting. When I worked in the Caribbean I had to fight every month to get paid. It was a British company, imagine that. The more things change, the more they remain the same.
I don't think there is overwhelming evidence that British companies are less likely to pay employees than any other nation. Your personal anecdote and one historical reference don't prove much
@@danw5760 ive been to the DR 4 times. Home companies pay shit and the foreign companies also pay shit. The spanish and mexicans exploit people very bad. The british companies exploit people really bad. Its not a anecdote. Its most if not all of them.
@@danw5760 r/iamverysmart
@@danw5760🤓☝🏻
@@danw5760it's a jab, chief
The thumbnail is so good. Here is why:
The palm tree and blue sky look gorgeous and joyous, but the words “HELL” in bright scarlet are plastered over it, along with a stoic redcoat who looks like he was recently evicted from his home and deprived of all tea. This video is golden
Calm down Lane
@@cboyslim5490 I didn’t get my morning tea.
Would you like some sugar with that?
@@FeyTheBin Yessir
A hot and humid climate is nice on something like a 7 day vacation, with pools, drinks, repellants and air conditioning, otherwise its just a "green hell" full of disease. umbearable heat and mosquitoes.
To you zoomers, sure. I could do 12 months with my hands tied.
I grew up in middle Ga and still cant find the heat/humidity of summer very uncomfortable.I think the Pacific Northwest would be a lot more bearable.
@@JoeyStarley Its a question of being adapted to it, I heard americans talking about 26 degress celsius like "the hottest day ever" when that is a perfect temperature in south america, not too hot or too cold.
@@kinsmarts2217 don’t know who gave you that information but I’m from the south, Kentucky to be exactly but 27-29 is pretty enjoyable & during the winter months -1 & -10 are enjoying weather we wear shorts & shorts in the snow were a different breed
@@jeovanysanchez4136 humidity is a big factor, air conditioningand insulation is also something big, heat or cold means little if you spend 20 to 30 minutes actually exposed to the elements, you can wear shorts everywhere, air conditioning is not something common in south america.
One of the Sharpe novels has a whole plotline devoted to Sharpe trying to avoid deployment to the Carribean.
If I remember correctly, it was called “Sharpe’s Pina Colada”
The first thing that came to mind was Sharpe calling them "The Fever Islands."
The soldiers should have ordered supplies through Amazon, they would not suffer as much.
They weren't as smart as us. We know better now.
Can't believe they didn't think of that
Yeah! Were they stupid?!???! Lol
I believe the Portuguese did just that
Although geographically much closer, the Amazon was, at the time, nothing more than a hot and humid jungle itself. Not the global trading hub it is today.
Imagine being a sailor in the Caribbean, then two Tainos in a row boat with a book pull up beside you, and one of them is blasting tunes on his portable drum setup which you can hear from several nautical miles away
(Ye olde Dominicans in a Honda Civic)
Ugh. Unfortunately those with the blood of Iberia would be the ones to do that, the Tainos got wrecked very little of their dna remains in the Greater Antilles.
Not so. Between 5 or 35 % of Puerto Ricans have Taino DNA. The highest in the Greater Antilles. My brother had his DNA analyzed and he has 3% Taino from Cuba.
@@miguelvaliente1475 I’ve seen at least close to 300+ PR DNA tests, very few of them with EXCLUSIVE Taino go above 18%, the highest I found was someone that was almost a full quarter Taino at 23% but that is exceedingly rare, and they usually have higher amounts of SSA. I’ve seen people with upwards of 30% but they usually have various Native populations mixed in, not purely Taino when it comes to the Native. As for Tainos in Cuba they weren’t much different from their brethren in Hispaniola and Puerto Rico for the most part.
All this numbers and all these origins and none of them mention their African side🤣 what a shame. These folks are very embarres of their African dna.
Dominicans are mostly of African descent I believe
Coup de soleil would be sunstroke (coup is a hit, soleil is the sun), and the pronunciation was actually adequate.
Haha, I thought it was a place! I figured 'coup' was 'cape'!
@@BrandonFthat'd be cap de
@hazenoki628 you've got the individual words correct however all together a blow from the sun almost always refers to a sunburn (in french)
@@JoeJoe-wv6dewhile "coup de Soleil" does mean sunburn today, in context that doesn't make sense. Men don't just keel over and die from a sunburn as described in the writing. That sounds far more like sun/heatstroke, which in current usage would be coup de chaleur.
It could be a change in usage or mistake, but if men collapsed and died on the march like that it would almost certainly be heat/sunstroke.
@@BrandonFfor reference it is "coup" as in "coup de main", "coup d'etat", or "coup de grace"
Much as we Present Day folk enjoy a good Caribbean holiday, people really have forgotten how awful tropical environments used to be.
That's why the season is December to April. The rest of the year you have hurricanes or insane heat. It's really cheap to go right now, I'm sure
I wouldn't walk barefoot in the sand.
Hey, people lived there for thousands of years without the conditions to develop industrial-scale nightmare wars. Can't have been that bad.
Maybe for the unaccustomed, I don't know about the Carribbean but I live in tropical asia, so do like hundreds of millions of people, isn't that bad.
When you really think about it... The whole concept of "tropical paradise" is basically a modern marketing scheme 😂
My favorite (secundary) source on the subject is ''Mosquito Empires'' by J.R. McNeill. Note that ''acclimatization'' mostly entailed building resistance against Malaria, but you couldn't build such resistance against Yellow Fever; you could only gain immunity against Yellow Fever, which required exposure in early life, while exposure in later life had a very high death rate. Colonial empires--especially the Spanish--came to rely on European troops born in the Americas to fend of European troops born in Europe (most notably perhaps during the siege of Carthagena de Indias in 1741). And even when European-born troops were victorious, they often continued to suffer under occupation duties (Havana de Cuba, 1762-'63). The reliance on American-born troops would come back to bite European empires once Washington, Louverture and Bolivar rose to prominence. (Malaria weakened the British in the Carolinas in 1780, forcing Cornwallis to march north.) Still, it can be argued that the Spanish empire could have militarily collapsed a full century earlier than it actually did if it wasn't for their proactive weaponization of the season of sickness.
They had the blessing of Nurgle
I hope Brandon talks about British experience in the American south- relentless guerillas, unhelpful loyalists not wanting to contribute, the suffocating humidity. I've read US soldiers accounts serving in the same places, and they basically had to rely on occupation of livable areas or just keep moving to some other place. I imagine it'd be worse for the British
That's why the Spanish mostly used Mexican-born Spaniards to conquer and administrate the Philippines while ruling from Mexico City, a place at least tolerable to the Iberian-born Spaniards of the Viceroyalty.
Unfortunately "building resistance against malaria" has been achieved genetically. It's called Sickle Cell Anemia. Malaria is the single biggest cause of death for our species over the millennia. This mutation inhibits the transference of malaria in the blood system but it also inhibits oxygen transfer from blood cells to other parts of the body.
Yup, also Porto Bello 1727, Eastern Cuba 1741, Central America 1780 where Nelson suffered his first major defeat, and Haiti 1804 where Napoleon lost thousands of elite troops to yellow fever. Biological warfare at its finest.
We're taking you to CARRIBEAN
21st century kids: We're gonna roleplay as pirates!, arrr!
18th century kids: 💀💀💀
me sending a 50k stack to the carribean to quell a native rebellion:
1k losses to the natives- 30k on the voyages there and back. As the kids would say, skull emoji.
@@BrandonF lmfaooo I had no idea you knew of EU4!
Also, Amazing job on both this one and the Maratha Confedaracy one. Actually, amazing job on all your videos.
@@adityavk-iw7pb I'm a big fan of the Paradox games. And thank you!
I was thinking Total War. But both are rather accurate. XD
In Europa Universalis 4 I lost half 50% or more of my guys on the trip. I was complaining about it until you verified.
I am from the Dominican Republic, during the imperial era in which we were part of Spain, the Spaniards were rarely affected by the epidemics of the Caribbean or at least not as much as the rest of the Europeans, that is, the rest of the Europeans died like flies, the Spaniards were very tough, that is why they lasted more than 300 years in the Dominican Republic.
Capitania General de Santo Domingo
Baptized Catholics with the Holy Ghost... unlike the dirty, apostate, hellbound, smelly Protestants.... eeww
Spanish soldiers were former descendents of the moors and north africans
@@lionzhaven not even remotely true
Many Spaniards who initially settled there were from Andalucia and Canary islands
I often find these stories so strange having been born and raised in the Caribbean. It makes me feel lucky to have survived the poisonous snakes, centipedes and mosquito bourne diseases. I maybe only ever heard of 1 kid getting dengue fever in high school and he was the anomaly. Perhaps a combination of publicly funded insecticide use, genrational immune exposure and vaccination eliminated a lot of these.
Funnily the worst illness I've ever experienced was when I caught chicken pox in North America. What a vile disease that (perhaps due to no one, not even my parents, having been exposed to it) ravaged my body. It's funny that all my North American friends say chicken pox was relatively mild but for me the sleepless nights of extreme itching still haunt me to this day.
Chicken pox is much easier on little kids, who in areas where the virus is endemic, usually contract it long before adulthood and get lifelong immunity. It's then when it's horrible.
Its funny you mention that, cause even in different coasts of the US the people are resistant to different conditions. Californians think 70 is chilly, new englanders run around in shorts in snowy weather 😂
So you don’t have poisonous snakes now?
@@scentsoftravelmeditation no we do the thing is it was rare to see, I perhaps saw them 2, times in the 13 years I lived there. Never even close to being bitten. Never heard of anyone other than the few people still living in rural areas or working in the forest areas getting bitten. And to my memory none died from getting bitten. Most people died from either another human or a heart attack.
Chicken pox tends to be more severe the later in life you get it, and is more dangerous in men than women. I've no idea what your demographic is, but that's my 2 cents why your case may have been so awful.
Thank you Brandon for not using artificially generated imagery in your videos.
I think its absolutely absurd that the British were resuppling their troops from all the way in England instead of building logistical hubs in Georgia specifically for the West Indies since it was a "garrison province."
That wouldve forced a more aggresive stance from spain and that wouldve meant getting the colonies invaded by new spanish, caribbean and south american armies
Georgia was originally a penal Colony
@@LawAcieIV Georgia served two purposes, for debtors to work off their debts and the English working poor to get parcels of land to work as smallholders. The second reason for its founding was as I said a garrison province to act as a buffer against Spanish Florida.
@sebastianprimomija8375 yes but in the early history the West Indies were more developed and important than the 13 colonies. So the base would have been in Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas or Bermuda. I think Bermuda was later the headquarters of the Royal Navy in the America's. Charles Towne later Charleston would have been the only port near Georgia sizable enough to supply the logistics you speak of.
@@LawAcieIV If you watched the video you would understand why I said Georgia and not one of the Caribbean Islands. The weather.
I have three words, sugar, sugar, sugar. And if you read up on the subject how vile & brutal the conditions were on these plantations, you suddenly have a lot more sympathy regarding the very bloody and ruthless slave rebellion on Haiti. And when you really want to get some righteous anger, read up about how France, the beacon of human rights, treated them afterwards and this continued until the mid 20th century! If you are looking for Freedom, Equality, Fraternity, you wont find any from France when it comes to Haiti.
I am definitely planning to make two parallel videos to this one some time about the practise of slavery in the West Indies, and the military recruitment from the slave populations.
IIRC General Dumas, the father of the Musketeers author, had left Napoleon's army upon the issue of reversing policies concerning slavery in Caribbean, so...
gives you an even more bitter pill when you read about how Haiti has become a terrifyingly horrible place again today ...
Fun fact: most Poles who get sent there by Napoleon most of them either died of yellow fewer or switched sides joining the rebel forces. It's kind of weird how much Napoleon is venerated as liberator of Europe over here, even having place in our national anthem. And at the same time he duped our men so hard by promise that they would fight for freedom against tzar and prussians and sending them to quell the rebellion of slaves fighting for freedom instead.
And not too long after this, a couple of prominent food scientists in France figured out how to extract table sugar from an unassuming little root vegetable. And so Europe is now completely capable of meeting its own sugar needs domestically. France is the number one sugar beet producer in the EU. All the death, cruelty and deprivation was for nothing.
A Dominican general who fought the Spanish in Cuba said his best generals were July and August. This is a great analysis
An inversion of Russia’s Generals December, January and February
32:50 Its so disturbing that even the people in charge knew that this deployment was equally as bad as execution.
Having volunteered at the San Juan National Historic Site at the gate to Castillo San Cristobal, I can tell you that the heat, sun, and humidity was intense to deal with in our modern, breathable uniforms. So imagine a Spanish or local regular who had to stand in uniform for drill or for guard duty in over 100 degree heat and 90+% humidity in the blistering sun.
We had some other volunteers in period dress for living history and they stayed in the shade the whole time and I dont blame them.
The city of San Juan itself was sieged down 5 or so times during its time as a Spanish colony and I can imagine the horror of siege warfare being combined with the climate of the Caribbean would be a nightmare of the highest order.
I did it twice in Iraq. Let’s be honest, most of the people in these comments are people who haven’t worked a day of physical labor in their life nor have they worked outside for large periods of time. The thought of being outside in hot and humid weather more than 4 hours is a nightmare to them. I could do it standing on my hands at this point.
Forget about the soldiers standing guard... Building those walls under that sun, that by itself separate men from children.
As someone who has lived most of his young boy life in Tampa Bay, Florida, I can tell you, the Caribbean Sea is somewhere you do not want to sail in without some type of sailor live-in experience alongside you, even if it's in the 21st Century.
I support this claim as another gentleman in tampa bay.
Could you describe the challenges for those of us who don’t know?
I support this claim as someone who was born and raised in Miami. I never take a boat past Biscayne bay
@mrttripz3236 rampant organized crime, kidnapping, alot of volatile sea conditions. The nicer the weather, the more likely there will be people there, espcially bad ones bumping into each other.
I live near the Tampa area and I can confirm. It’s way worse there and St. Pete/Clearwater than my shitty little town near by. The flooding was bad over there a week ago
The "Holland fabric" is linen which is actually very well to deal with tropical weather
They made the men wear dresses 👗
I have been to the Cayman Islands and believe you me, without any of the modern amenities it really would be hell.
Razor sharp coral rocks everywhere which will cut your feet to ribbons and you'd better hope to god you don't fall on it; nothing grows on the island save thick mangrove swamp and jungle full of very hostile and inedible flora; intense, unrelenting, red hot sun burning you to a cinder day in and day out; tropical storms that can swamp the island and wash you all out to sea with frighteningly little notice; the only water available being rainwater cause everything else is salty; clouds of malaria bearing mosquitoes. And to top it all off, the sheer isolation. Grand Cayman is hundreds of miles from the nearest island and it's small.
People take modern convenience for granted way too much and end up highly disconnected from the environment in which they find themselves.
Islands like Cuba, Jamaica or Hispaniola are better than the Cayman Islands by virtue of being larger. However, you still have malaria and other tropical diseases, there is still the intense heat with humidity and the storms and the very thick jungles. However, at least the larger islands have half decent farmland and Jamaica even has fertile volcanic soil.
I see you have been to the Hell just outside of Georgetown, July is brutal in Grand Cayman. The western part on the way to Rum Point is interesting, all of the houses on that road near the ocean are concrete blockhouses that managed to survive the Cat 5 Hurricanes that hit that place on a regular basis..
@@ClayinSWVA I have. When you strip away the concrete, the island is mostly like that. North Side and East End are almost entirely coral hellscapes. It's very rough.
Wait, coral - on the land??
@@foxman9709 According to Wikipedia, it's jagged black limestone, it would probably cut you as bad as coral. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell,_Grand_Cayman
@@foxman9709 It's not living but the calcified remnants of ancient corals, built upon over countless aeons and then thrust out of the sea by tectonic activity. The island itself is the peak of a coral mountain which plunges down to a depth of over 5,000 metres (~16,000ft) at the bottom of the Cayman trench.
You can swim out over the trench and it drops away into the blue.
My great-great-great-great grandfather was a gunner in the Royal Artillery 7th battalion, posted to the West Indies (maybe Barbados?) for 12 years, he was pensioned out in 1814 due to spectoral complaint (not sure what that is), I've also been researching 2 officers from the 39th regiment of foot who both met there demise in central India in 1840 from cholera. Sickness is such a prevalent problem. Great video!
Coughing, like expectoral?
Cholera was widespread everywhere during that time as they had yet to discover the connection between tainted drinking water and the outbreak of the sickness.
@@Tony.795 yes it sounds like a most horrible way to die, I think the connection was made in the 1850's or 60's?
Your 4x great-grandfather was being haunted?
@@richardiv385spectoral, not spectral
"Take him to the Bahamas."
"NO! NOT THE BAHAMAS! PLEASE NO! ANYTHING BUT THAT!"
Actual literal truth.
Just the wool uniform and boots alone must have been torture
Even in a modern kit, it's still spicy.
@@natejones902and we have AC nowadays!
100% Wool is actually a thermal regulator. Not saying it's not hot in summer, but it does help to keep cooler in the heat and warm in the cold.
Not to mention, it's much better to sweat it out in wool than other materials like cotton, linen, etc from a soldier's survival perspective. Not the best choice for a tropical vacation, but definitely the best choice as a soldier during that time.
Source: lifetime wool user outdoorsman, wool socks user Marine veteran, and full wool uniforms as a Civil Reenactor Battle of Gettysburg during 90°F+ days in sweaty PA.
@@pennsyltuckyreb9800yeah but how much you wanna bet those officers had those poor guys in layers, buttoned to neck, etc. Gotta shave in the field; how can you kill the enemy unshaven!?
This young man is earnest and passionate and there ain’t enough of it in this world! My Man!!
It's the same like in Batavia: the so called "Friedhof der Europäer" (cemetery of Europeans). The Germans had send unit per unit for the Dutch to occupy the town. Many died on their journey. I saw a letter by a soldier from the 1730s from Southwestern Germany writing from Batavia, who described all the losses of his unit. He still hoped to come back - but died shortly before he had got his money and could return.
The long trip without any vitamin rich nutrition must have weakened the men sent to the east indies even more than those who were crossing the atlantic.
I seeing the grave here in Jakarta
Also being a soldier and doing some greedy devils bidding is usually detrimental to ones inner balance i'd think...
Nice work ! As a french speaker I can tell you that dying from coup de soleil means dying from excessive heat. It means sun strike literally.
We definitely need a video on the experience of Black West Indian soldiers I feel like there's a lot to unpack there.
France and other powers start using more colonial troops in general.
Absolutely! The history of colonial troops
My Ancestor Richard Rowe after the war in Spain in 1814, was sent out to the West Indies and was there for 5 years 8 months. His Regiment was The Queen's 2nd Foot, almost half died from yellow fever. After he ended up in Ireland for 2 years and ended his service and returned home to Rattlesden Suffolk. He married had 8 children one was my 2x Gt Nan Harriet and died at the age of 80..
Honestly I never used to find the Caribbean to be the most interesting place on Earth, nor did I ever find pirates to be all that interesting, but I began playing a lot of Port Royale 2 about a year ago and it really made me realize how fascinating this region is, particularly during the golden age of piracy.
It was actually the same with the Napoleonic Era, I never cared much for it but my neighbor when I was like 11 gave me his Napoleon: Total War disc and I downloaded it onto my computer and now I find it to be one of the most fascinating periods in human history.
If you ever wanta good serious pirate show, I highly recommend the show Black Sails. Only 'pirate' thing I ever got into.
I agree. As a young person, something about the era just seems stale. But once you naturally arrive there by your own means, it's positively enthralling, a crossroads of history
Now I’m imagining Zach Hazard in British uniform sitting in a thatch hut in the Caribbean instead of Louisiana.
"Have I told you about the one time I caught yellow fever?"
@@ethanhatcher5533 Only once? Lucky
Holy shit lol
Almost willingly to pay money to have those two do a video pretending to be that. The Caribbean is the Fort Polk of the overseas empires based on what this video is going on.
Who is Zach Hazard?
I thought that fighting for rum is a cause that any soldier would find worthy.
"It's all for me grog, me jolly jolly grog. It's all for my beer and tobacco!"
Australians certainly thought so - but the Rum Rebellion was a bit complicated than that...
Rums good & all but not dying of heat stroke & dehydration in a heavy wool coat & skin tight stockings sounds dope too
"The Fever Islands" were difficult places.
Of course, they were handy places to put rebellious Irish and Scots who tend NOT to get things like Cholera and lasted a bit longer.
A big aspect of the Louisiana Purchase was the Southern Parts of that were among the only places OUTSIDE the Carribean where you could grow Sugar.
If Cotton were King, Sugar was Emperor . . . .
.
Cotton was a small princeling until the invention of the cotton gin. Cotton and tobacco could be grown in Virginia the dangers of the Caribbean were risked for sugar.
@@MrMonkeybat There were also places in the Louisiana Territory where you could grow sugar. That is something that is often forgotten.
@@MrMonkeybat But for the Cotton Gin; it is possible the end of the transatlantic slave trade in 1808 (under the US Constitution) would have ended Slavery in the US. However, the tech made US grown cotton valuable . . . .
coup de solel is not a place - it is sunstroke, you silly Brandon :)
A brandon video at 7 am to start my day
Good morning!
8 for me
In India it is 7 30 pm and i am gonna have evening brownies and milk while i hear about the horrors of the carabbian
I always love when I sit down with my morning coffee and see a RUclipsr I really like just uploaded a new video
Same doing my hair and shaving listening to this
I know that meme is dead but being stationed in the Caribbean as a soldier today vs. back then sounds like a real Barbie-Oppenheimer-meme.
I mean theres loads of militia level favela gangs & rampant piracy still, & some of the islands dont play well with each other so its still dicy af down there. At least you wont die of disease, just a regular ol bullet or kidnapping
Being stationed there now would only be fun for a month before the reality of having to regularly work and excercise outside in heavy clothing sets in. The military doesn't give a damn about the weather, you're still wearing the same uniform that's warm in the winter, the most they'll give you is rolling the sleeves up.
Before the invention of the Industrial-sized air conditioner 100 years ago, Florida's population was less than 1 million. Now everyone wants to move here.
Inventions
And people still pretend to like warm temperatures
@@smtandearthboundsuck8400 it wouldn’t be all bad if it weren’t for the swamps, hurricanes, and insects (especially mosquitoes & the diseases they carry).
@@CliffCardi the mosquitos are a product of heat not environnement, that's why you're seeing more and more in evropa.
Heat is terrible. I'd rather live in Siberia than spend a week in French Guiana.
@@smtandearthboundsuck8400 when it’s cold, you can always put on a coat. But when it’s hot? There is NOTHING you can do. Go naked and the sun will ruin your skin or be eaten alive by mosquitoes.
But the big attraction for mosquitoes is stagnant water.
worse for sailors because the army you at least got to have extra curricular activities unlike the navy where you could spend months stuck on a ship with all the rest of the nice tropical illnesses and scurvy.
When I first researched about the economic history of the Caribbean region, as the islands were populated by Africans and Europeans, I noticed that the pork from locally-raised swines was one of the core sources of nutrition. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I learned that salt production there was pretty much impossible except for a handful of islands. No wonder that the Caribbean was hell on earth at that time.
1. People always talk about attention spans these days, but Brandon’s content can capture my attention for the whole video. (Minus skipping the wallet ad.)
2. I am 75% sure I’ll get that book.
I appreciate it haha- let me know if there's anything I can do to make it 100%!
I wonder if there were a group of soldiers who declared:"Im out of here...lets take over a boat and be pirates."😂
Currently a native of the Caribbean, the formerly Spanish citadel of Puerto Rico. I even staff the same fortifications that vexed all who attempted to besiege them, El Morro.
I can say with certainty that those unaccustomed to the climate still suffer to this day, I spend a decent portion of my day aiding and recovering those who pass out in the heat.
I sometimes look over these walls and fields, wondering just how much blood was spilled in vain to take the castle. From a local population both eager to defend and accustomed to the climate.
This is why Jamaica won so many golds in athletics.
Survival of the fittest.
The many threats to a soldier in the Caribbean.
Disease, dangerous wildlife, brutal heat, and Edward Kenway dropping down and plunging two swords in your back
3:40 It has rarely been profitable to breed slaves. Raising children is time consuming and expensive, it has nearly always been much more profitable to kidnap grown adults. The exception was the Americans in the first half of the 18th century. The slave trade was banned but the cotton business needed slaves, so slaves were bred. This is the reason that African Americans are around today whereas the millions of slaves taken to the Arab world have no descendents.
If you can control the mosquitoes you can limit malaria, yellow fever and other tropical diseases. The problem was knowing that mosquitoes actually spread the viruses. Even as late as the 1920's malaria was one of the biggest killers in the state of New Jersey, which except in summer, has a decidedly untropical climate, but a lot of mosquitoes in certain areas.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries Washington D.C. in the summer was considered a hardship post for European embassy staff. There's a very good reason why the neighborhood around the State Department is called "Foggy Bottom."
haemagogus mosquitoes were in brazil they transmit yellow fever and aedes aegypti and anopheles were in africa. So is there record of what was causing the spread at the time.?
@@WarDogMadness Not until they understood that mosquitoes were the problem. For centuries malaria was attributed to foul air, thus the name malaria. IYellow fever was also misunderstood. Governments used to quarantine patients with yellow fever as if they were the cause of the disease. It wasn't until the late 19th century when a Cuban physician identified the mosquito as the cause.
I spent a week in Davis Park Fire Island off Long Island last summer. It butts up against Fire Island National Seashore. It’s pretty much how Long Island and probably most of the Atlantic Coastal Plain was a more wild place. The mosquitoes, ticks, green flies and horseflies were absolutely relentless. A good portion of the US must have also been very hostile to native Europeans during the age of exploration and colonization.
@@patamats LI can get pretty buggy in the summer.
@@tamer1773 yeah I live on the south shore the mosquitoes are brutal, but fire island was on another level. It was relentless, I never experienced anything like it in my life.
"To Hell we must sail
To the shores of sweet Barbados
Where the sugar cane
Grows taller than
The god we once believed in"
I am British, I am well aware that there was little to be gained, for my ancestors, from the institution of the British Empire other than a small corner of a foreign field. Some people from former British colonies think there is something I have to apologise for. No, we were both exploited. Both British soldiers and sailors as well as denizens of colonised countries. The same people who oppressed their ancestors sent my great great grandfather down a coal mine at 9 yrs old. As my grandfather once told me, a bayonet is a weapon with a worker at either end of it.
I can’t believe there are people who don’t like this type of history despite the significance that brought to the modern day society.
Keep going. History are records of the past, not meant to be repeated.
The leader of the Black Watch Mutiny, Farquhar Shaw, has a statue at Aberfeldy in Perthshire. It’s next to “Wade’s Park”, where the Highland Regiment was first mustered. Shaw is still a bit of a legend in the regiment. My great and great great grandfathers were both in the Royal Regiment of Scotland.
I recently had a early modern history exam, in which i chose to focus on the Haitian Revolution and the 7 years war. In both manuals i read that in both the french and british armies, soldiers and officers alike would pay good money not to be sent in the Caribbeans.
Been folllowing you for years, I love your channel its one of the things that motivated me to study history in Uni. Cheers from Italy.
We live in the 18th century right now. Corporate slaves. Not as existentially brutal, but just as financially draining.
Yet.
9:46 "Coup de soleil" is not a place, but simply French for "sunstroke".
It's funny of you to upload this as I'm currently boarding a trip to a Carribean island.
Godspeed! No worries, I'm told things are a bit improved these last few hundred years!
@BrandonF Thanks for the reply lol. Appreciate it.
funny enough I'm in trinidad rn. my great grandma and grandma are from here so this is my second time visiting. being from NY and living in VA (50 mins from DC) between bug bites and heat I'm kinda missing home😂😂 and my conditions here are probably better than most so I can't imagine if I didn't have two fans hyper blasting on me as I type this😅
It's not like they had any warning of the severity of the hurricanes either. You look up and casually tell the kids that it's getting ready to rain, not knowing that everything you own is going to end up on the beaches of nearby islands. 😮
Yep, I would've gone pirate too.
🏴☠️
Jack Sparrow: feel free to *burps* scuse me
No, a soldier's worst nightmare is being captured and sold into slavery, having to go through all the different passages from Africa to the Americas, then being worked to death in the Caribbean - a place that the European slavers thought was their worst nightmare even as they didn't have to even be slaves there
I'm Jamaican. It's still a nightmare here
I can imagine. The Englis enjoyed sending people to Jamaica because it pleased their devils as they viewed it as a hell
Yellow fever and malaria were huge killers.
The Caribbean was also the gateway to the western hemisphere from Europe.
On top of all this bullshit, they had to deal with undead pirate crews cursed by aztec gold, octopusheaded captains and undoubtedly the worst pirate anyone had ever heard of.
But you had heard of him
A New Brandon video dropped, life is good.
Well, not for the people sent to the West Indies back in the day, but for us absolutely!
I remember reading about the Great Hurricane. A British officer stationed on St. Lucia wrote about how the winds were so loud no one could hear their own voices and were so strong the heavy cannons were carried hundreds of feet away.
0:43 💰💰💰💰💰💰💰💰 is why
As a geologist from Costa Rica, I can assure you the fieldwork we do during both wet and dry seasons it's completely exhausting. Heat, Sunlight, humidity, etc. I can't imagine what soldiers have to deal with. And I haven't mentioned the snakes, poisonous animals, and insects 🤣🤣🤣
Why was the western world invested in the Caribbean? Because they were literally invested in the Caribbean
I was going to mention the old army barracks museum in Berwick on Tweed but you talked about it yourself. It's a fascinating source of information. When I was there years ago I had the whole place to myself, so I took my time. As you point out in the 18th century, casualty rates in combat were relatively low. Death rates from disease and privation on the other hand were horrendous. The other posting British soldiers dreaded was Gibraltar. Together with the West Indies it amounted to a virtual death sentence. The best posting was the American mainland colonies. Of course that only lasted until 1783, for obvious reasons. After that the British had to seek out another remote land mass to colonise (Australia).
Just a bit of trivia: World War Two was the first war in history where combat deaths exceeded deaths by disease, in the larger scheme of things of course.
when the army is run in a pre-modern manner, any place where soldiers are based away from his kin is a hell.
during the Napoleonic wars, Russian soldiers were known to have died in France and Germany, because there digestive systems were not accustomed to the consumption of wheat, earlier, during the wars against the Crimean Khanate, the vast majority of the army did not reach the enemy, in conditions that were considered the soviet breadbasket.
even in the modern days... whilst being stationed in a normal fashion is usually ok, special forces and UN-instructor or the medical units being sent to assist such allies as are in modern Sub-Saharan Africa often come down with incurable diseases at a rates quite unseen in the modern 1st world. *(true as far as we know among all sides, French-legionaries, US Marines, Israeli private instructors, UN forces, Chinese Industrial Security firms, Wagner... every force infiltrating into these places without full-out support, suffers it's toll to disease)
I remember studying the muster roll of a British regiment of foot sent to Jamaica in 1750. Six months later, out of three hundred men, over half were listed as dead mostly due to heatstroke and diseases. I can only imagine how much worse the conditions were for prisoners sentenced to transportation to either Jamaica and Barbados, let alone the slaves there.
Good News: "We're sending you to the Caribbean"
Bad News: "It's the Caribbean before modern tourism""
Woolen suits with full combat kit--these guys literally had their brains cook in their skulls marching for the King. ☠👑
I was sure that Timmy was getting sent to Jamaica during the ad break.😂
8:34: "Although the members of the corps to which I had the honour to belong, were by no means addicted to the use of water as a beverage, we nevertheless suffered severely from its scarcity."
A new video from Sir Brandon always makes my day.
Also, First Opium War when :3
It's on my list for one of these days!
@@BrandonF Oki uwu
As a fellow 18th/19th Century Historian from Massachusetts; dare I say?: a combat Veteran with over 24 years of Army service in the most inhospitable places on planet Earth: I'd love to write an article for your next book brother, especiallysonce i have experiencewoth acclimatingto a new region. Love you and your channel.
The caribbean wasn't just horror, its hell, sure it sounds pleasant now but remember, there is ocean for miles, there are a mixture of pirates and privateers, and all islands are varying in degree of sustainability which become "when do you die?"
Not only that, depending on the seasons, you can get crushed by tropical storms, yes, giant tidal waves crashing onto islands is a thing.
Without modern tech and medicine Europeans are not suited to live in such an environment.
This proves that a soldiers suffering here in the Spanish Caribbean and the British Caribbean wasn’t so different after all. Obviously there are some clear differences, for example we had more access to food and water and better overall infrastructure due to having larger islands, but similarities among the common soldiers are impressive.
I want to add, in the Siege of San Juan in 1797, the part of the Black Watch was deployed and many, along with other soldiers, died of heat stroke rather than in combat
From what I have seen, it wasn't until the 1950s when the Carribean became a major tourist destination.
popularity of tourism world wide started during the 1950s, if Im not mistaken
It's similar to Siberia, which was considered a death sentence for the Imperial Russian Army. Like the Caribbean, there was no infrastructure, just a vast tundra of trees and meadows, the Russians had to build garrisons from scratch, mostly constructed from wood, forts offered little protection from freezing winters and blizzards, the cold was a major killer of Russian squaddies. In addition, due to the vastness of the Steppe, it can take weeks or months for resupply and reinforcement from Muscovy, the soldiers had to fend for themselves, spending much of their time chopping down lumber, and hunting for whatever they could find, moreover, many infantrymen and cavalrymen would die on the march to these farflung garrisons. Siberia was also a dangerous and hostile battlefield, as the Mongol, Turkic and Tungusic peoples resisted European encroachment on their native lands, as warriors would skirmish and harass Russian foragers and porters. Although the Russians partially succeeded in taking Siberia, it was never fully pacified, as it cost hundreds of thousands of lives, over a century to advance from the Urals to the Pacific, even in Soviet times, Siberia was still taking soldier's lives, we may never know the full total, but best estimate is that 700,000 to a million Russian soldiers, died expanding the empire east. Incidentally, the Americans experienced their own frontier hell, it's easy to forget, but Great Plains, the Southwest, the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific coast, were every bit as hostile as Siberia, and although the Americans succeeded in pacifying the frontier, it was _not_ a cheap accomplishment.
In Singapore now. 8pm. 96F 68% humidity. In August. And I am staying a couple of hundred meters from the seashore, on the 10th floor. Even as a local, i feel 🥵. And you won't want to open the windows, because mozzies, and dengue and other diseases.
That's why about 75% of the households, and all the hotels have air-conditioners in Singapore.
I hope to be able to publish an article in your book one day, really looking forward to seeing how the project goes!
As always, fantastic video Brandon!
Fascinating.
I live in St. Vincent, which was occupied by the Arawak Indians, then by the French, then the British, then the French again and finally the British once more.
At colossal expense, the British then built a large fort overlooking the main harbour in Kingstown, called Fort Charlotte. The aim was to deter the French from trying to regain the island again.....and of course, it was never attacked or threatened again by the French and so became redundant from the moment it was finished. Later it became in part a women's prison. Now it's a weather station and a museum.
A recovered French cannon, fished out of the harbour in 1997, sits in the Cruise Line terminal in Kingstown but it isn't clear if it was lost in battle or in a storm or overboard in an accident.
As for the sugar industry here, it's a distant memory. The plantations are all abandoned and mainly overgrown, the industrial buildings and the " Great Houses" collapsed or demolished aside from a few stumps of chimneys and a few iron gear wheels. The sugar and molasses we now use comes from Guyana.
Antigua and Anguilla still have water shortages.
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Just one note: The locals on the island of Antigua pronounce it ''An-TEE-gah''. [The U is silent.]
great work as always, glad the algorithm took this one and ran
As someone living in a tropicla country, you might say "It isnt that bad" until you feel the heat, the humidity and the mosquitoes.
"Imported" is such a bad word to describe slave trade
For a long time Dutch naval personel could retire at an earlier age than our army or airforce. Because it used to be bad though from 1900 it can't be an excuse anymore.
3:34 reminds me a lot of the current immigration situation in europe. instead of caring for the native population european governments just import new... "specialised workers" from the middle east
Now I see why they were called the fever islands