Veracruz and the Caribbean in the Seventeenth Century

Explores how Veracruz's Afro-Mexican residents drew on Caribbean relationships to define a distinctive social and cultural community.

Joseph M. H. Clark (Author)

9781009180313, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 19 January 2023

344 pages
23.5 x 15.6 x 2.5 cm, 0.66 kg

'This excellent, long-awaited study breaks new ground by examining seventeenth-century Mexico in relation to the Spanish Caribbean. Creatively employing an impressive range of disparate sources, Clark opens multiple new ways of envisioning early colonial Veracruz as a Black and Caribbean space.' David Wheat, author of Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570–1640

In the seventeenth century, Veracruz was the busiest port in the wealthiest colony in the Americas. People and goods from five continents converged in the city, inserting it firmly into the early modern world's largest global networks. Nevertheless, Veracruz never attained the fame or status of other Atlantic ports. Veracruz and the Caribbean in the Seventeenth Century is the first English-language, book-length study of early modern Veracruz. Weaving elements of environmental, social, and cultural history, it examines both Veracruz's internal dynamics and its external relationships. Chief among Veracruz's relationships were its close ties within the Caribbean. Emphasizing relationships of small-scale trade and migration between Veracruz and Caribbean cities like Havana, Santo Domingo, and Cartagena, Veracruz and the Caribbean shows how the city's residents – especially its large African and Afro-descended communities – were able to form communities and define identities separate from those available in the Mexican mainland.

Introduction
Part I. Building the Mexican-Caribbean World: 1. Veracruz before the Caribbean
2. Environment, health, and race, 1599–1697
3. Imperial designs and regional systems
4. The large- and small-scale introduction of Africans to Veracruz
Part II. The Caribbean in Veracruz: 5. After the slave trade: nation, ethnicity, and mobility after 1640
6. Practice and community in a spiritual borderland
7. Caribbean defenses, the free-black militia, and regional consciousness
Conclusion: the Mexican Archipelago
Appendices.

Subject Areas: Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], History of the Americas [HBJK], African history [HBJH]