The Predatory Sea : Human Trafficking and Captivity in the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean / Casey Schmitt.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Schmitt, Casey, author.

Series:

Early American Studies.

Early American Studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Human trafficking--Caribbean Area--History--17th century.

Human trafficking.

Slave trade--Caribbean Area--History--17th century.

Slave trade.

Slavery--Caribbean Area--History--17th century.

Slavery.

Caribbean Area.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 277 pages) : maps

Other Title:

Human Trafficking and Captivity in the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2025]

Summary:

A new interpretation of captivity, human trafficking, and colonization in the seventeenth-century Caribbean A century before the height of the Atlantic slave trade, early modern racialized slavery emerged through practices of captive-taking and human trafficking in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Caribbean. The Predatory Sea offers the first full-length study of this deeply entangled history of captivity and colonialism. Between 1570 and 1670, a multinational assortment of privately funded ship captains, sailors, merchants, and adventurers engaged in widespread practices of captive-taking and human trafficking. Raids against coastal communities and regional shipping in the Caribbean ensnared multitudes, including free and previously enslaved people of African and Indigenous descent, who found themselves trafficked into slavery away from their communities of belonging. Beginning in the 1570s, their captors established maritime bases on small, strategically located islands throughout the region. Those anchorages served as temporary settlements for northern European traffickers decades before their respective monarchs sanctioned official colonies. Colonization thus started with practices of captive-taking and human trafficking, which remained central to the development of the first English and French colonies in the Caribbean. Through extensive research in Spanish, French, and English archives in Europe and the Caribbean, Casey Schmitt offers a fresh perspective on how captivity and maritime violence shaped early English, French, and Dutch settlement. Reading across imperial archives, she also reveals the experiences of those ensnared in this trade. Many captives escaped to Spanish population centers, where they testified to officials about what they witnessed in early English, French, and Dutch colonies. Those testimonies informed a series of Spanish attacks on foreign settlements in the Caribbean over the decades leading up to the 1650s. As Schmitt argues, captives were cause and consequence of inter-imperial competition and warfare during this violent century of Caribbean history. This captive economy, as explicated in The Predatory Sea, shaped English and French colonization, inter-imperial competition, and the lived experiences of captives and their captors.

Contents:

Cover

Series page

Title page

Copyright page

Dedication

Epigraph

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1. "A Sea of Islands": Cross-Cultural Trade and Captive Slavery

Chapter 2. "Betwixt Ye Two Rivers": Human Trafficking and Colonization

Chapter 3. "They Took Him to Sea": Captivity and Violence Before Mid-Century

Chapter 4. "As He Himself Confessed": Contested Spaces and Serial Displacement

Chapter 5. "A Trail Would Be Blazed": Reform, Commercial Competition, and War

Chapter 6. "Free as Any Children of Adam": Warfare, Racialized Vulnerability, and the English Invasion of Jamaica

Conclusion

Notes

Index

Acknowledgments

Notes:

Electronic book.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9781512828153

OCLC:

1543175657