A product of decades of deep archival research and complete immersion in the scholarly literature, this book will certainly be required reading for scholars of the early Spanish colonization of the islands of Hispaniola, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica. From major political developments to the lived experience of relatively ordinary Spaniards, Indigenous people, and Afro-descendants, Altman has provided a thorough account of life and society in the early Spanish Caribbean.As Altman states in the introduction, the “central question this book addresses is what was it like to live in these societies that were forged in violence and structured by coercive relationships that affected nearly every aspect of daily life and enabled the establishment of an economy based on mining, commerce, and agriculture” (2). Though seemingly simple, the question is difficult to answer, particularly because, as Altman admits, the nature of the available sources complicates the task of recovering the lived experience of Indigenous people and Afro-descendants. To the extent that Altman includes Indigenous and African perspectives, she has to reconstruct them from the writings of the European historical actors who recorded the information.The documentation for Spaniards, however, is robust, enabling Altman to provide a rich and detailed account of the lives of those who crossed the Atlantic and settled, permanently or temporarily, in the Greater Antilles during the first half of the sixteenth century. To do so, she relied on a wealth of documents, including petitions, depositions, notarial documents, and parish registers. Although she does not explicitly state an overarching response to the question that she poses, a basic conclusion can be extracted from the narrative arc of the book. In short, even though some Spaniards managed to profit greatly from the colonization enterprise, most faced a life of uncertainty, risk, and hardship.Yet the difficulties that Spaniards faced paled in comparison to the exploitation and coercion that enslaved people, both Indigenous and African, had to endure. Be that as it may, Altman insists that the complete dominance of enslaved people was more of an aspiration than a reality. A long history of rebellions and marronage, as well as smaller acts of resistance, demonstrates that enslaved people resisted colonialism in the Americas from the very beginning. Nonetheless, they often had to compromise with colonial authorities, as they did in the rebellion of the cacique Enriquillo, who in 1553 agreed to return escaped Natives and Africans in exchange for his community’s autonomy.After a first chapter focused on the start of the colonization process, the subsequent chapters proceed thematically, covering the subjects of death and danger, government and politics, the Church and religiosity, and women and family life. The first chapter is especially interesting; it reconstructs a latent political tension between the conquerors and the Crown that continued throughout the period examined in the book. Although the conquerors, including Christopher Columbus, wanted to secure the right to profit from colonialism by subjecting Indigenous people to encomiendas (tribute and labor) and enslaved Africans to the plantation complex, the Crown was determined to place the newly “discovered” islands under its direct control. This dynamic, which is essential to understanding the entire colonial period, makes the first chapter a particularly important contribution.Altman’s research for this book is admirable, but a few problems are worth mentioning, if only in the spirit of scholarly debate. Rather than pursuing a distinct line of inquiry, Altman attempts to provide a panoramic view of life in the early Spanish Caribbean. This otherwise useful exercise, however, prevents her from asking more probing and provocative questions. For example, if life was so unpredictable and risky for the majority of Spaniards who crossed the Atlantic, why did so many of them keep making the trip? The prospect of enrichment was probably the main motivating force, but no one could take success for granted.Similarly, Chapter 5, which treats Hispaniola’s economic transition from gold extraction to agriculture and cattle ranching, raises more questions than it answers. Although it clearly shows that the exhaustion of the island’s gold deposits was responsible for Hispaniola’s turn to a sugar economy based on slave labor, it does not explain why the island eventually dropped the plantation complex as well. Was it because of the persistent acts of resistance by maroons or because Spaniards turned their attention to the vast silver mines discovered in New Spain and Peru? Whatever the case may be, the abandonment of the plantation complex in Hispaniola remains an enigma, especially because of how profitable the enterprise would later prove to be in Brazil and the seventeenth-century Caribbean.In Chapter 6, Altman states that “notwithstanding the growing progeny from Spanish-Indigenous marriages and nonmarital unions, the term mestizo almost never appears in the documents of this period” (184). Be that as it may, without interrogating the conditions under which the term mestizo originally appeared, Altman appears to be noting a mere curiosity, not providing a historical explanation. In the same chapter, her claim that “Spaniards always constituted a minority within the Caribbean populations, and as result they established a regime based on coercion” is hardly obvious (190). Would the Spaniards have been able to establish a regime based exclusively on coercion if they were always outnumbered?Notwithstanding the fact that the book is thoroughly researched, its lack of an organizing framework (other than the panoramic question posed at the outset) is a major weakness. As a result, it reads more like a textbook than a scholarly work exploring a readily identifiable question and argument. It may well provide a foundation for subsequent research, but it misses an opportunity to explore pointed questions in greater depth. Despite these minor qualms, Altman’s informative and important book will undoubtedly benefit the next generation of scholars of the early Spanish Caribbean.
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Jan 1, 2024
Th. E. Smith 
Open Access