Daily Life and Death in Port Cities of the Colonial Circum-Caribbean

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

This panel focuses on the lives of free and enslaved sailors, migrants, and other non-elites of diverse races and nations who circulated through the port cities of the colonial Circum-Caribbean and the many hardships they faced. Despite enduring harsh environments, tropical diseases, and institutions of violence like slavery and war, these survivors drew on their occupational skills, savvy, and networks to navigate their worlds and refashion themselves in new Caribbean locales. Cromwell examines impoverished Canarian families, how they embarked on crown-sponsored voyages of repopulation to the empire’s neglected Caribbean peripheries, and endured discrimination and uncertainty. Muller explores the role of empire and identity among Africans in Cuba and the ways in which they envisioned themselves as maroon communities of immigrants. Quintero inquires about soldiers in colonial ‘marginal’ places such as taverns and pulperías in the port city of Cartagena de Indias during the eighteenth century. Fletcher examines illegally enslaved black sailors in the Caribbean and the ways in which they used the law to gain their freedom in United States' courthouses. Drawing on a wide array of primary sources, panelists attempt to broaden the view of these historical subjects and show how their valuable knowledge was precisely what allowed them to claim social recognition and help create the Atlantic World.

Sub Track

• History and Historiography

Session Organizers

• Jessica S Fletcher, Vanderbilt University

• Viviana Quintero

Chairs

• Jane G Landers, Vanderbilt University

• Renée M Soulodre-La France, University of Western Ontario/King's University College

Discussant

• Kris Lane, Tulane University

Individual Presentations

• The Flotsam and Jetsam of Empire: Canarian Familial Migration and Bourbon Retrenchment in the Eighteenth-Century Spanish Caribbean - Jesse Cromwell, The University of Mississippi

• Maroon Communities of Immigrants: Africans in late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Cuba - Dalia A Muller, University at Buffalo

• El Africa’s Crew: From Rebel Soldiers to "Pulperos" in Cartagena de Indias, 1720s to 1750s - Viviana Quintero

• “Accidentally on the Levee": Atlantic Networks, National Identities, and Law in Black Sailors' Freedom Suits in the Nineteenth-Century Circum-Caribbean - Jessica S Fletcher, Vanderbilt University