Jamaica's illicit trade with Spanish America in the early eighteenth-century (original) (raw)
Related papers
Islands at the Crossroads: Migration, Seafaring, and Interaction in the Caribbean, 2011
By 1713, the Treaty of Utrecht had ended the War of Spanish Succession and had, in theory, formalized the imperial domains of north ern European powers in the Americas, particularly in the Caribbean. Simultaneously, a series of legislative actions taken by the imperial seats attempted to control these boundaries through the establishment of trading regimes which privileged royal monopolies and national trading companies. Yet rather than a period of equilibrium in the Caribbean plantation colonies, the eighteenth century was marked by considerable internal regional trade in which the interstices of empire were sites of inter-and intracolonial economic interaction. In this chapter we explore the incongruity of collective economic frontiers and po liti cal boundaries. Specifically, we focus on the ways in which everyday internal and informal trade circumvented colonial frontiers. This incongruity has implications for the ways in which the material world shaped everyday life and for the way in which we as archaeologists are conceiving human interaction.
Jahrbuch für Geschichte Lateinamerikas, 2010
Historiography on Spanish colonial trade stresses the essential role played by non-Hispanic mercantile networks in the economic expansion in the Atlantic. The Flemish and Dutch merchant community of Cadiz maintained a prosperous trade, and throughout the enlightened XVIII century, the old enemies of the Hispanic Monarchy had developed certain sophisticated operations within the framework of trade between Spain and America, from within the very heart of the state monopoly. In this presentation, I deal with some of the features of the mercantile networks developed by this foreign colony settled in Cadiz and their trading practices. Through an analysis of such networks, I try to analyze their mechanisms and the extent of their influence in the Spanish trade with America between 1680 and 1750 and how they could maintain their business connections.
Smuggling and provisioning in Antigua during the eighteenth century
This paper examines the trade relationships that the Leeward Caribbean Island of Antigua maintained with the American colonies during the American Revolution and the subsequent decade (ca. 1775-1854). The paper focuses more specifically on the trade in perishable goods, which often operated illicitly at the edges of the idealized colonial dependency that the Navigation Acts aimed to maintain. Drawing from archaeological and documentary evidence, this paper follows the transformation of long-term regional trade partnerships linking the Caribbean island of Antigua, the neighboring island of Guadeloupe and continental America during the eighteenth and nineteenth century, in order to better understand how the restrictions dictated by metropolitan laws, such as the Navigation Acts, played out on in colonial contexts. The paper illustrates the enduring presence of informal trade, smuggling and illicit exchange between Antigua, Guadeloupe and the United States during periods of colonial conflict, by combining a close reading of correspondence relating to the administration of the Betty's Hope Plantation, with the analysis of material cultural evidence recovered at the Betty’s Hope Plantation archaeological site (Antigua). This diverse dataset shows that, despite metropolitan legislation aiming to restrict trade partnerships in the colonial Caribbean, Antigua continued to obtain large volumes of produce, cattle and lumber from the continental United States after the Revolution; it also consistently relied on fresh water supplies from the French colony of Guadeloupe during the severe drought that plagued Antigua throughout the eighteenth century. Implications for the history of pan-Caribbean and transatlantic trade, for example in contrast with North Atlantic fisheries, are considered.
Journal of Caribbean Archaeology
This volume is an excellent study that will interest students of the African Diaspora, African-influenced pottery of the Americas and Caribbean, and the economic strategies of slaves. Hauser presents a detailed examination of how the pottery made by African-Jamaicans in the eighteenth century can be used to model the various interactions that occurred in the informal market economy. Under this system, enslaved Africans and African-Jamaicans were provided the opportunity to sell or barter their excess garden produce and crafts at Sunday markets throughout the island. Hauser recognizes the distributions of local pottery as a reflection of these exchange systems. He examines the phenomenon of informal African-Jamaican markets as having both positive and negative effects on the various actors in the plantation system. With a strong backing in his data, Hauser goes so far as to suggest that the informal market system provided the opportunity for African-Jamaicans to coordinate the rebellion of 1831. Hauser draws from diverse data sources to provide an excellent context for his discussions.
The Caribbean and the Atlantic World Economy Circuits of trade, money and knowledge, 1650-1914
Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies, Palgrave History Collection, 2015
This collection of essays explores the inter-imperial connections between British, Spanish, Dutch, and French Caribbean colonies, and the 'Old World' countries which founded them. Grounded in primary archival research, the thirteen contributors focus on the ways that participants in the Atlantic World economy transcended imperial boundaries.
Formal and Informal Economy in Atlantic Trading Communities, 1680-1700
Das Meer : Maritime Welten in Der Fruhen Neuzeit/The Sea: Maritime Worlds in the Early Modern Period, 2020
Sometime in February 1682 a ship arrived on the coast of the Island of Mozambique, intended as a venture to procure slaves for the sugar plantations of Barbados. Known as the "Old London" and sailing in the service of the English East India Company (EIC), the vessel was laden with a highly valuable cargo of gold and silver. Its crew then disembarked to the south of São Sebastião, an Estado da Índia fort on the island, where they bought over a hundred enslaved people from either Bantu or Portuguese merchants. This exchange took place away from São Sebastião, as the fort's officials would surely seek to enforce their prohibition against other Europeans trading on the island. The voyage was to end dramatically soon thereafter. As the ship set sail with its human cargo, the "Old London"'s Swahili interpreter fomented an uprising amongst the slaves aboard, killing six of the English crew in the process. 1 The remainder of the EIC sailors were then cast adrift and eventually captured by the Portuguese authorities at Mozambique, but from here, the story of the ship and its crew took several further turns. The captain, Samuel Davis, was imprisoned for several months and eventually transported to Goa, where he stood accused of robbing a Portuguese vessel twelve years previously. 2 The newlyfreed slaves fared somewhat better. Their subsequent behaviour indicates that the uprising on the "Old London" may have been premeditated, as they subsequently met with the "Firebrass" off the coast of Mozambique, a ship funded by the EIC's opponents in London. 3 The Bantu sailors then transferred the gold and silver they had acquired onto this ship and, from this point, both vessels and their crews disappear from the records of the East India Company.
Colonial Latin American Review, 2023
Using the wreck of the galleon Nuestra Señora de Las Maravillas (1656) as a point of departure, this article analyzes the role of Cartagena de Indias as a logistical center for fraudulent silver salvaging and transportation in the Spanish Caribbean during the middle of the seventeenth century. After 1640, Cartagena’s insertion into Atlantic maritime networks suffered from the collapse of Portuguese-led slave trading, the decline in legal silver circulation in Spanish ports, and expansion of other European colonial powers across the Caribbean. The article uses the cases made against officials and contractors involved in unauthorized silver salvaging in Cartagena to show how Caribbean-based Spanish merchants and administrators created trans-Atlantic bullion transportation networks independent of royal control. Like their legal counterparts, these unauthorized networks relied on specialized maritime labor from free and unfree divers of African and Amerindian origin, and sailors of all races. Simultaneously, maritime laborers’ knowledge, often extracted under torture, formed the basis of prosecutors’ cases against suspect colonial officials. By following these maritime linkages, this article highlights the centrality of maritime labor and communication logistics in the structural rearrangement of the Caribbean during the seventeenth century.
Reframing the English Conquest of Jamaica in the Atlantic Context
2020
The following thesis confronts pre-existing histories of the English conquest of Jamaica which primarily write about it within either the Caribbean context or the more narrow European context. These prior histories tend to misinterpret the central causes of why Spain was unable to successfully dislodge the English between 1655 to 1660. Previous histories typically cite it as evidence for a broader Spanish or Habsburg decline. By reframing this conquest within a broader Atlantic context, which takes into account both the Caribbean and European perspectives, the reader will come to see why Jamaica was lost by the Spanish to the English. This was primarily because Iberian forces were heavily involved in European conflicts and thus unable to traverse the Atlantic. Meanwhile, Spanish Caribbean forces were instructed to, and primarily focused on, the defense of their ports and territories to ensure that the wealth of the 'Indies' made it safely to Spain proper. The thesis relies on primary source documents from both Spanish and English authors to show what the priorities of the Spanish were at the time and in doing so show that Jamaica was not one of those priorities.