Small Islands in the Revolutionary Caribbean

• In Event: Scale and Circulation: Bringing History and Geography Together in Global Environmental Histories of Empire

Abstract

Does size matter? Can a Caribbean island be too small to become a plantation society?
If unsuitable for plantation development, what role can/did small Caribbean islands play in the structure of empires? How does the history of empires in the Caribbean look like from the perspective of small islands? In an era of dramatic political transformations, how did small Caribbean islands threaten the stability of already unstable empires? Using the small Caribbean island of San Andrés—a small island about 125 miles east of Nicaragua’s coast, 440 miles northwest of Colombia’s coast, and 460 miles southwest of Jamaica—as vantage point, this paper argues that small islands played a particularly important role in the geopolitical imagination of imperial agents during the Age of Revolutions. Drawing comparisons between San Andrés and other small islands, in particular Trinidad, St. Thomas, and Galveston, I will show how scarcely populated and largely understudied islands figured prominently in imperial schemes to expand, reorganize, and protect empire. The case of San Andrés, I will argue, reveals the extent to which Spanish imperial officers considered population schemes and commercial reforms key elements of a transformed Spanish empire that would keep Spanish possessions secure from outside imperial and revolutionary threats. Using British shipping returns and official correspondence of Spanish officials, this paper will locate San Andrés at the heart of the commercially dynamic and politically unstable world that was the Caribbean during the Age of Revolutions.

Author

• Ernesto Bassi, Cornell Unviersity