Description
Book SynopsisBreaks new ground in articulating the early Spanish Caribbean as a distinct and diverse group of colonies loosely united under Spanish rule for roughly a century prior to the establishment of other European colonies.
Trade Review"
The Spanish Caribbean and the Atlantic World in the Long Sixteenth Century conveys the foundational character of the region for the immediate postcontact Americas while also allowing room for debate and more subtle articulations of the period's historical diversity. . . . Educators will benefit from assigning the book in its entirety to specialized classes or using its many valuable individual essays to fill in the cracks of Latin American, Caribbean, or Atlantic history syllabi."—Jesse Cromwell, H-LatAm
"Covering both standard topics and less conventional subjects, this volume reminds us of the multiple research opportunities related to the sixteenth-century Caribbean that still deserve attention from scholars. It also provides plentiful evidence that the early colonial Spanish Caribbean functioned as a social, economic, and immigration incubator for the Atlantic world with far-reaching ramifications."—Daniel S. Murphree,
Hispanic American Historical Review“The editors have assembled a uniformly strong collection of essays. This is essential reading for those interested in Iberian America, the West Indies, and the Atlantic world. Bravo to Altman and Wheat!”—Carla G. Pestana, professor of history and Joyce Appleby Endowed Chair of America in the World at the University of California, Los Angeles
“This extremely interesting collection of highly original, engagingly written essays demonstrates persuasively the enormous richness and tantalizing complexity of the initial century of contact between Europeans and indigenous Americans in the Caribbean. This work provides a wonderful window on the early Americas.”—Franklin W. Knight, Leonard and Helen R. Stulman Professor Emeritus and Academy Professor at Johns Hopkins University
“This excellent volume brings together the work of veteran historians with that of a new generation of scholars in a series of detailed and innovative studies.”—Stuart B. Schwartz, George Burton Adams Professor of History at Yale University
Table of ContentsList of Maps
List of Tables
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Ida Altman and David Wheat
Part 1. Indians in the Early Spanish Caribbean
1. The Cemí and the Cross: Hispaniola Indians and the Regular Clergy, 1494–1517
Lauren MacDonald
2. The Revolt of Agüeybaná II: Puerto Rico’s Interisland Connections
Cacey Farnsworth
3. War and Rescate: The Sixteenth-Century Circum-Caribbean Indigenous Slave Trade
Erin Stone
Part 2. Europeans in the Islands
4. Vasco Porcallo de Figueroa: Ambition, Fear, and Politics in Early Cuba
Ida Altman
5. Two Doñas: Aristocratic Women and Power in Colonial Cuba
Shannon Lalor
6. Between Acceptance and Exclusion: Spanish Responses to Portuguese Immigrants in the Sixteenth-Century Spanish Caribbean
Brian Hamm
Part 3. Africans and the Spanish Caribbean
7. The Early Slave Trade to Spanish America: Caribbean Pathways, 1530–1580
Marc Eagle
8. Biafadas in Havana: West African Antecedents for Caribbean Social Interactions
David Wheat
Part 4. Environment and Health
9. Environment and the Politics of Relocation in the Caribbean Port of Veracruz, 1519–1599
J. M. H. Clark
10. Hospitals and Public Health in the Sixteenth-Century Spanish Caribbean
Pablo F. Gómez
Part 5. International Commercial Networks
11. The Hispano-German Caribbean: South German Merchants and the Realities of European Consolidation, 1500–1540
Spencer Tyce
12. The Azorean Connection: Trajectories of Slaving, Piracy, and Trade in the Early Atlantic
Gabriel de Avilez Rocha
Glossary
Contributors
Index
