The history of the early Spanish Caribbean is often viewed through a sugar-centered framework, in which the historiography of the region foregrounds the experience of enslaved Africans and their descendants laboring on sugar plantations. Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean challenges this assumption on two levels: economic activity throughout the Caribbean was not limited to sugar cultivation and its attendant production, and African slaves were not used solely in large-scale export-oriented industries, such as sugar or mining. David Wheat's book convincingly argues that early Spanish Caribbean society—during the era of the Iberian Union (1580–1640)—was shaped by cross-cultural exchanges in Upper Guinea that linked Africans to the Iberian world and was sustained by population growth resulting from Iberian expansion in Angola. Free and unfree Africans and people of African descent participated extensively in Iberian efforts to colonize the Spanish circum-Caribbean, not as workers...
Article navigation
Book Review|August 01 2017
Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570–1640
Hispanic American Historical Review (2017) 97 (3): 540-542.
- Views Icon Views
-
CiteCitation
David M. Stark; Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570–1640. Hispanic American Historical Review 1 August 2017; 97 (3): 540–542. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00182168-3933976
Download citation file:
× - Share Icon Share
- Search
Sign in
Don't already have an account? Register
You could not be signed in. Please check your email address / username and password and try again.
Advertisement
52
Views
0
Citations