The Spanish Caribbean and the Atlantic World in the Long Sixteenth Century

Abstract

Twenty-first-century edited collections addressing the Spanish presence in the early colonial Caribbean have approached the topic from a variety of perspectives. Negotiated Empires: Centers and Peripheries in the Americas, 1500–1820 (2002), edited by Christine Daniels and Michael V. Kennedy, conceptualized the role of Spain in the region via a borderlands focus characterized by interactions between peripheral outposts and Iberian ports. The Early Modern Hispanic World: Transnational and Interdisciplinary Approaches (2017), edited by Kimberly Lynn and Erin Rowe, explored the subject thematically, juxtaposing social and cultural developments in Iberia and Iberian colonies in the Western Hemisphere and elsewhere. Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra's edited work Entangled Empires: The Anglo-Iberian Atlantic, 1500–1830 (2018) explored the interconnected endeavors of two major colonizing powers and, in part, how Caribbean peoples and lands experienced their competition. The book under review differs from the above in multiple ways, but two points stand out: The Spanish Caribbean and the Atlantic World in the Long Sixteenth Century concentrates primarily on the 1500s, and the region covered is highlighted as a distinct influencer of colonial dynamics in the Americas and beyond.Editors Ida Altman and David Wheat claim that the sixteenth-century Caribbean deserves attention from scholars for a variety of reasons: “Not only was the region in many senses a microcosm of the larger Atlantic world; arguably it was also the first full-fledged incarnation of that world, rapidly becoming the setting for imperial and national rivalries and geopolitics, interethnic conflict and accommodation, the mixing, movement, and displacement of peoples, new economic ambitions and opportunities, social experimentation, the testing and pursuit of new ideological and religious aspirations, and social and cultural interaction and hybridity” (pp. xiii–xiv). To make this point, they recruited ten scholars to contribute studies illustrating the above from a variety of vantage points. The volume contains 12 chapters sorted into sections labeled “Indians in the Early Spanish Caribbean,” “Europeans in the Islands,” “Africans and the Spanish Caribbean,” “Environment and Health,” and “International Commercial Networks.” All authors, to varying degrees, highlight the central role of the sixteenth-century Caribbean in their areas of study.Readers will learn about colonial precedent setting in the years following Christopher Columbus's pivotal voyages. The section on native peoples addresses early missionary efforts, the 1510 indigenous revolt led by Agüeybaná II in Puerto Rico, and the slave trade that engulfed native peoples on the islands prior to the widespread presence of African slavery in the Caribbean. Chapters on the first Europeans in the region examine political jockeying in Cuba by influential men and aristocratic women as well as how people from Spain viewed Portuguese immigration to nascent island settlements. African slavery in the Caribbean receives less treatment, but contributors examine early pathways bringing enslaved peoples across the Atlantic Ocean and how ethnic differences in Africa affected the interaction of African ethnic groups in Cuba and surrounding locales. Readers also will learn why Veracruz changed locations multiple times in the sixteenth century and how colonial authorities regarded public health over the course of the era. Concluding chapters investigate the activities of German merchants in colonial Venezuela and the important role of the Azores in facilitating Caribbean development and trade to Europe.As is typical of such collections, the content of this volume is uneven in terms of argument and evidence. Most contributors are early career scholars, including two graduate students, whose works are informative but conceptually incomplete, often relying on the volume's theme as their thesis rather than exploring alternate interpretations. The more polished chapters, unsurprisingly, are authored by David Wheat and Pablo Gómez, whose respective chapters on “Biafadas in Havana” and “hospitals and public health” result in part from their past research and publications that have made them leading scholars in the field. Further research on all the topics presented in this volume, by the contributors and others, promises to reveal important new insights that will be valuable for students of early colonial Caribbean history.As a whole, The Spanish Caribbean and the Atlantic World in the Long Sixteenth Century accomplishes its editors' goals of demonstrating the significant role of the time and region in defining precedents and themes that would characterize the islands' societal evolution and colonial activities in Central and South America as well. 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.