Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570-1640

by David Wheat

This work resituates the Spanish Caribbean as an extension of the Luso-African Atlantic world from the late sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth century, when the union of the Spanish and Portuguese crowns facilitated a surge in the transatlantic slave trade. After the catastrophic decline of Amerindian populations on the islands, two major African provenance zones, first Upper Guinea and then Angola, contributed forced migrant populations with distinct experiences to the Caribbean. They played a dynamic role in the social formation of early Spanish colonial society in the fortified port cities of Cartagena de Indias, Havana, Santo Domingo, and Panama City and their semirural hinterlands.

David Wheat is the first scholar to establish this early phase of the "Africanization" of the Spanish Caribbean two centuries before the rise of large-scale sugar plantations. With African migrants and their descendants comprising demographic majorities in core areas of Spanish settlement, Luso-Africans, Afro-Iberians, Latinized Africans, and free people of color acted more as colonists or settlers than as plantation slaves. These ethnically mixed and economically diversified societies constituted a region of overlapping Iberian and African worlds, while they made possible Spain's colonization of the Caribbean.

Genres: History, Africa, 17th Century, Nonfiction, 16th Century

352 pages, Paperback

First published May 16, 2016

Reviews

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wheat documents how forced migrants from African functioned as "de facto colonists." The book added detail and nuance to my understanding of the early modern Atlantic world. Ibero-African creolized cultures existed on both sides of the Atlantic c. 16oo. Many Africans trafficked as slaves to the Spanish Caribbean arrived with some Iberian cultural knowledge. Moreover, these forced migrants often also retained specific ethnic identities from Africa. These identities were also known to many Iberians, both in Africa and in the Caribbean. The large scale slave societies, especially those based on sugar production, evolved later. As always historians need to remember not to project the most salient aspects of past further back than the evidence supports.

"[E]nslaved workers...performed tasks that in Spain would have been done by Iberian agricultural workers...The extensive participation of sub-Saharan Africans in Spain's colonization of the circum-Caribbean created an economically and socially diversified population that does not resemble models of later monoculture slave systems. At the same time, that most of these de facto colonists arrived as involuntary migrants on slave ships makes their participatory roles far more ambiguous than those of voluntary migrants performing similar labors in other settings" (160).

[Jack · Rating 3 out of 5]

More like 3.5 stars but it’s a decent account of the cultural exchange and relations betwixt the Iberians and Africans both on the continent and enslaved in the Americas. It’s rather dry at times and in my opinion kind of understates the horror of slavery in these times (not that I need a reminder) but such is the case in a dry historical work of nonfiction.

[Claire · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately I did not find this book very engaging. It reads just as a description of the sources Wheat used to complete his book. I keep waiting for a narrative or analysis and not much was coming. If you're looking for what reads close to a primary source on the topics covered, this book will well supplement your reading, but as a history it's very thin, which is unfortunate because I think it's a great topic.

[Emily Kamm · Rating 3 out of 5]

I agree with other reviewers who said that this book read more like a transcription of sources than a cohesive analysis. Although perhaps I'm biased by concurrently reading another book that deals with some of the same source material in a much more engaging way.

[Flynn Evans · Rating 3 out of 5]

A compelling argument, if somewhat sidelined by the limitations of its source base. Perhaps its most compelling contribution is expanding our sense of colonization and its relationship to imperialism as seen by the participation of both enslaved and free blacks in the Spanish Caribbean in various subtle ways.

[Brett Martinez · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is very informative. However, it is very heavy and not very engaging