Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570-1640
Book description
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…
Why read it?
2 authors picked Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570-1640 as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
A multiple award-winning book that has given new wings to the field of early Caribbean history. Wheat’s insightful book forces to reckon with the extraordinarily close links between the Spanish Caribbean and the African slave trade in which Portuguese merchants played a crucial role. Even though local and peninsular Spaniards ruled, Afrodescendant men and women did most of the labor, cultivated most of the land, defended the colonies against other European powers, and constituted an overwhelming majority of the population, both enslaved and free. The early Spanish colonization of the region started a pattern of profound African cultural influence in…
From Juan's list on the Spanish Caribbean in the early colonial period.
David Wheat integrates Africa and Africans into the history of the Spanish Caribbean. Before I read this book, I knew that the Spanish relied more on native laborers than on Africans initially, and that their policies limited migration from Spain to Castilians of Roman Catholic heritage. Yet Wheat reveals how diverse and complex the early Spanish islands became, with Spanish from other regions not to mention Portuguese, Africans, and conversos (Catholics of Jewish heritage) intermixed with the approved migrants and the long-time indigenous residents.
From Carla's list on the early modern global Caribbean.
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