Atlantic Africa And The Spanish Caribbean, 1570-1640 (published By The Omohundro Institute Of Early American History And Culture And The University Of North Carolina Press)
by David Wheat /
2016 / English / PDF
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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.
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.
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.