Islanders and empire : smuggling and political defiance in Hispaniola, 1580-1690 / Juan José Ponce-Vázquez, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ponce Vázquez, Juan José, 1978- author.

Series:

Cambridge Latin American studies ; 121.

Cambridge Latin American studies ; 121

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Smuggling--Hispaniola--History--16th century.

Smuggling.

History.

Colonies.

Administration.

Commerce.

Hispaniola--Commerce--History--16th century.

Hispaniola.

Hispaniola--Politics and goverment--16th century.

Spain--Colonies--America--Administration--History--16th century.

Spain.

Hispaniola--History--16th century.

Colonies--Administration.

Spanish colonies.

America.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xv, 303 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2020.

Summary:

"This book focuses on the peoples of Hispaniola and their deep, intimate, and persistent embrace of smuggling, situating their story at the crossing of the fields of colonial Latin American, Caribbean, and Atlantic history. Hispaniola residents traded extralegally in order to circumvent the increasingly marginal space the island occupied within the Spanish colonial system, one which left them on the fringes of lawful commercial connections. During the long seventeenth century (which I define between 1580s and 1690s), the Atlantic world was a growing network of interconnected port towns and cities and their hinterlands that developed simultaneously to the integration of those port cities into their own imperial systems. With this twin dynamic in mind, this book argues that the inhabitants of the Spanish colony of Hispaniola overcame their peripheral status within the Spanish empire by embracing the possibilities that the people, networks, and goods of the nascent new Atlantic world provided. Elites wove themselves into the fabric of the trade and dominated it as they could; other residents also made their lives in the trade. By carefully navigating around Spanish imperial monopolistic expectations - or simply ignoring them - Hispaniola's residents turned the island into an Atlantic center in its own right. They pursued their short-term and intermediate social and economic goals, while also embracing cross-imperial contraband as an economically viable and morally acceptable livelihood for their own personal prosperity. In the process, steeped in the contraband networks that ruled the colony, Hispaniola residents transformed the political dynamics that ruled their relationship with the Spanish monarchy, giving them great control over the decision-making progress of the island and a good part of the Spanish Caribbean region"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction

Colonial Origins: Hispaniola in the Sixteenth Century

Smuggling, Sin, and Survival, 1580-1600

Repressing Smugglers: The Depopulations of Hispaniola, 1604-06

Tools of Colonial Power: Officeholders, Violence, and Enslaved African Exploitation in Santo Domingo's Cabildo

"Prime Mover of All Machinations". Rodrigo Pimentel, Smuggling, and the Artifice of Power

Neighbors, Rivals, and Partners: Non-Spaniards and the Rise of Saint-Domingue

Conclusion.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

ebook version :

ISBN:

9781108477659

1108477658

OCLC:

1156432567