Bridging the Early Modern Atlantic World

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Bridging the Early Modern Atlantic World

People, Products, and Practices on the Move

Edited by Caroline A. Williams


This page has been left blank intentionally

Bridging the Early Modern Atlantic World People, Products, and Practices on the Move

Caroline A. Williams University of Bristol, UK

© Caroline A. Williams 2009 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Caroline A. Williams has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company Wey Court East Suite 420 Union Road 101 Cherry Street Farnham Burlington Surrey, GU9 7PT VT 05401-4405 England USA www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Williams, Caroline A. Bridging the early modern Atlantic world : people, products, and practices on the move 1. Intercultural communication – Europe 2. Intercultural communication – America 3. United States – Relations – Europe 4. Europe – Relations – United States 5. America – Relations – Europe 6. Europe – Relations – America I. Title 303.4’824’073 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bridging the early modern Atlantic world : people, products, and practices on the move / [edited by] Caroline A. Williams. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-7546-6681-3 (alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-7546-9467-0 (ebook) 1. History, Modern. 2. Atlantic Ocean Region—History. 3. Acculturation—Atlantic Ocean Region— History. 4. Culture conflict—Atlantic Ocean Region—History. I. Williams, Caroline, 1962– D210.B697 2009 909’.09821—dc22 ISBN 978-0-7546-6681-3 (hbk) EISBN

2008052521

Contents List of Figures Notes on Contributors Preface Introduction: Bridging the Early Modern Atlantic World Caroline A. Williams 1

Codfish, Consumption, and Colonization: The Creation of the French Atlantic World During the Sixteenth Century Laurier Turgeon

vii ix xiii 1

33

2 Negotiating Fortune: English Merchants in Early Sixteenth-Century Seville Heather Dalton

57

3 Interlopers in an Intercultural Zone? Early Scots Ventures in the Atlantic World, 1630–1660 Douglas Catterall

75

4

‘A People So Subtle’: Sephardic Jewish Pioneers of the English West Indies Natalie Zacek

5 Subjects or Allies: The Contentious Status of the Tupi Indians in Dutch Brazil, 1625–1654 Mark Meuwese

97

113

‘To Transmit to Posterity the Virtue, Lustre and Glory of their Ancestors’: Scottish Pioneers in Darien, Panama Mark Horton

7

Controlling Traders: Slave Coast Strategies at Savi and Ouidah 151 Kenneth G. Kelly

8

Walking the Tightrope: Female Agency, Religious Practice, and the Portuguese Inquisition on the Upper Guinea Coast (Seventeenth Century) Philip J. Havik

6

131

173

vi


9 Slaves, Convicts, and Exiles: African Travellers in the Portuguese Atlantic World, 1720–1750 James H. Sweet

193

10 The Life of Alexander Alexander and the Spanish Atlantic, 1799–1822 Matthew Brown

203

Bibliography Index

223 251

List of Figures 6.1 General plan of the Scottish colony, located in Puerto Escocés, Kuna Yala, Panama 6.2 Archaeological excavation of the communal oven located on the south side of Fort St Andrew, showing external granite wall and internal coral filling. The oven was domed by bricks probably carried from the nearby former Spanish site of Acla (photo Mark Horton) 6.3 Plan of Fort St Andrew constructed by the Scots between 1698–1700, as revealed by excavation and survey 7.1 7.2 7.3

Map of Gold and Slave coasts showing the Hueda and Dahomey states Map of central region of Savi depicting excavated areas Map of Ouidah depicting excavated areas

132

141 147 153 160 167


Notes on Contributors Matthew Brown is Senior Lecturer in Latin American Studies at the University of Bristol. He is the author of Adventuring through Spanish Colonies: Simón Bolívar, Foreign Mercenaries and the Birth of New Nations (Liverpool University Press, 2006), the editor of Informal Empire in Latin America: Culture, Commerce and Capital (Blackwell, 2008), and the editor, with Martín Alonso Roa Celis, of Militares extranjeros en la independencia de Colombia: Nuevas perspectivas (Museo Nacional de Colombia, 2005). He has also published a number of articles in journals including the Journal of Latin American Studies, the Bulletin of Latin American Research, and Historia y Sociedad (Medellín, Colombia). Douglas Catterall is Associate Professor of History at Cameron University of Oklahoma. His chief interests centre on the societies of the North Sea Zone and their ties to the Atlantic world. He is the author of Community without Borders: Scots Migrants and the Changing Face of Power in the Dutch Republic, c. 1600–1700 (Brill, 2002), and a number of articles and book chapters on the Scots diaspora, ethnic enclaves in Europe, tolerance, confessionalization, and women’s social position in port cities. Currently he is at work on two projects, one entitled The Migrant’s View, on the eighteenth-century Scots diaspora; the other, Women in Port, an edited volume of essays on the social, economic, and cultural position of women in Atlantic-world ports co-edited with Jodi Campbell of Texas Christian University. Heather Dalton. After graduating with an honours degree in American Studies from the University of Manchester, Heather worked in academic publishing, journalism and business and communications consulting before completing her PhD thesis, ‘Roger Barlow: Tudor Trade and the Atlantic World’, at the University of Melbourne in 2008. Heather is interested in mercantile networks and European encounters with ‘new worlds’ in both the Atlantic and Pacific regions. Her publications include ‘Roger Barlow: Fashioning New Worlds from Old Words’, in Old Worlds, New Worlds: European Cultural Encounters 1100–1750, edited by Lisa Bailey, Lindsay Diggelmann and Kim Phillips (Brepols, 2009). Philip J. Havik is Researcher at the Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical (IICT) in Lisbon, with the support of the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT). He teaches at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Universidade Nova in Portugal, and is Visiting Professor in the History Department of the University of Brasilia, in Brazil. His research focuses on the Senegambia and Guinea Bissau region, covering a broad range of anthropological, historical, and political issues, from first contact to the present. His most recent publications include Silences and


Soundbites: The Gendered Dynamics of Trade and Brokerage in the Pre-colonial Guinea Bissau Region (LIT, 2004) and, in collaboration with Malyn Newitt, Creole Societies in the Portuguese Colonial Empire, a special issue of Lusophone Studies, 6 (2007). Mark Horton is Professor of Archaeology in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Bristol. His research has focused principally on the historical archaeology of Arab and European expansion in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. He has conducted extensive excavations both in East Africa and the Caribbean. He is the author of Shanga: The Archaeology of a Muslim Trading Community on the Coast of East Africa (British Institute in Eastern Africa, 1996), and co-author, with John Middleton, of The Swahili: The Social Landscape of a Mercantile Society (Blackwell, 2001). He has also published in a number of journals, including Azania and Antiquity. Kenneth G. Kelly is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of South Carolina, where he teaches historical archaeology and African archaeology. Dr Kelly’s longstanding research focus has been on developing a transatlantic perspective on the archaeology of the African Diaspora, and its impacts both in West Africa and the Caribbean. He has conducted long-term archaeological research in Bénin, Jamaica, Guadeloupe, and Martinique, supported by grants from the Fulbright Program, the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and the French Ministry of Culture. Kenneth Kelly has published the results of his work in a variety of edited volumes and journals, including American Anthropologist, World Archaeology, the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, Archéologiques, Journal of Caribbean Archaeology, and Ethnohistory. Mark Meuwese is Assistant Professor in the History Department of the University of Winnipeg in Canada. His research has focused on Dutch relations with indigenous peoples in the Americas, on which he has published several chapters in edited volumes including John Smolenski and Thomas J. Humphrey (eds), New World Orders: Violence, Sanction, and Authority in the Colonial Americas (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), as well as articles including ‘Cultural Boundaries in the Backcountry of Colonial Brazil: European Diplomatic Agents among the Rio Grande Tarairius, 1642–1654’, Portuguese Studies Review, 14 (2006). He is currently working on a book on diplomatic relations between the Dutch West India Company and native peoples in the Atlantic world from 1621 to 1674, to be published by Brill. James H. Sweet is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin. His research focuses on the African diaspora during the era of the slave trade. He is the author of Recreating Africa: Culture, Kinship, and Religion in the African-Portuguese World, 1441–1770 (University of North

List of Contributors

xi

Carolina Press, 2003), and has also published in a number of edited volumes and journals, including Slavery and Abolition and the William and Mary Quarterly. Laurier Turgeon is Professor of History and Ethnology and Director of the Institute for Cultural Heritage at Laval University, Quebec City. He holds a Canada Research Chair in Cultural Heritage. Much of his recent work focuses on the transmission and construction of heritage in intercultural contacts and exchange in colonial as well as postcolonial contexts. His Patrimoines métissés: Contextes Coloniaux et Postcoloniaux (Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme and Laval University Press, 2003), was awarded the Luc Lacourcière Prize in 2004 for the best book published in the history and ethnology of French North America. His most recent book, published with Octave Debary, Objets et mémoires (Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme, 2003), deals with the ways material objects construct memory, and with the manners in which memory constructs objects. He has published more than 60 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, and has edited several books, including Le patrimoine religieux du Québec: Entre le cultuel et le culturel (Presses de l’Université Laval, 2005). Caroline A. Williams is Senior Lecturer in Latin American Studies at the University of Bristol. A historian of colonial Latin America, her work has focused mainly on Spanish-indigenous interactions on the frontiers of Spain’s empire during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. She is the author of Between Resistance and Adaptation: Indigenous Peoples and the Colonisation of the Chocó, 1510–1753 (Liverpool University Press, 2004), and has published in a number of journals, including the Hispanic American Historical Review, the Bulletin of Latin American Research, and the Boletín Cultural y Bibliográfico (Bogotá, Colombia). Natalie Zacek is Lecturer in History and American Studies at the University of Manchester. She is completing a monograph on the development of white plantation societies in the English West Indies, and has published articles in Slavery and Abolition, the Journal of Peasant Studies, Wadabagei, and a number of edited volumes, including Billy G. Smith and Simon Middleton (eds), Class Matters: Early North America and the Atlantic World (University of Pennsylvania Press, forthcoming), and David S. Shields and Bernard Herman (eds), The Material World of the Tidewater, the Lowcountry, and the Caribbean (University of South Carolina Press, forthcoming). Her new project is a social and cultural history of the American racetrack from the end of the Revolution to the decades immediately following the Civil War.


Preface This volume arises out of the ‘Pioneers, Adventurers, and the Creation of the Atlantic World’ Symposium held at the University of Bristol in September 2005. Sponsored by the Colston Research Society, which was founded in 1899 by a body of Bristol citizens who wished to assist the University, the Society has since 1948 sponsored an annual series of symposia, many of which have been explicitly cross-disciplinary in nature. The idea for the ‘Pioneers’ symposium grew out of a long-standing interest on the part of the co-organizers (the volume editor, of the Department of Hispanic, Portuguese, and Latin American Studies, and Professor Mark Horton, of the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology) in considering whether – and how – the approaches, sources, and insights of history and archaeology might usefully be integrated by scholars of the regions and peoples that came into contact in the Atlantic following the momentous European voyages of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. As co-organizers, we also shared a further aim. This was to make the conference one that would attract not only scholars interested in the British Atlantic World, but also those concerned to address the relative neglect of the Dutch, French, Portuguese, Spanish, African, and native American contributions to the emergence and development of an ‘Atlantic’ community over the period c1500–c1830. With the financial support of the Colston Research Society, and the enthusiastic encouragement of the members of its Planning Committee, the shape of the ‘Pioneers’ Conference gradually came into being over 2004 and 2005. Thanks to the additional financial support offered by the British Academy, as well as the University of Bristol’s Bristol Institute for Research in the Humanities and Arts (BIRTHA), and the Centre for the Study of Colonial and Postcolonial Societies, we were privileged to be able to bring together 22 historians, archaeologists, and historical anthropologists from Europe and the Americas to explore the ways in which the activities of European pioneers (broadly defined) and their interactions with the peoples and environments of territories extending around the Atlantic basin contributed to the emergence of that complex but often still vague phenomenon now commonly referred to as ‘The Atlantic World’. Whilst all 16 papers presented at Bristol in September 2005 demonstrated the potential for conversation and collaboration between the two disciplines, ten are brought together in this volume. Each of these focuses on interactions between peoples previously separated, on the formal and/or informal linkages whereby new products and ideas circulated (often across regional, national, and imperial boundaries), and on the variety of outcomes thereof – in the realms of diet, taste, and fashion; new commercial and personal relationships; or changing beliefs and attitudes. Of the ten contributions, eight rely entirely on archival and

xiv


printed sources; two combine documentary sources and archaeological evidence, illustrating the contribution which archaeology makes to understanding such aspects of the history of the Atlantic world as the long-term changes experienced by societies as a consequence of contact and engagement with Europeans, and the challenges faced by settlers in, and the adaptations they made to, new physical and social environments. We are grateful to the Colston Research Society, and to our colleagues at the University of Bristol, who contributed to making the conference a success. Our greatest debt of thanks, however, is to all the participants for their stimulating contributions; to Professors Barry Cunliffe and Felipe Fernández-Armesto, who delivered the two Plenary Lectures; and to our discussants, Professors Anthony McFarlane of the University of Warwick, Michael Braddick of the University of Sheffield, and Peter Wells of the University of Minnesota. As editor of this collection of essays, I should also like to thank Dr Linda Rupert of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, for kindly–and swiftly– sending me copies of her work, to which I hope the Introduction to the volume makes justice; Professors Bruce Lenman and Michael Braddick for their incisive comments and helpful suggestions, which I hope they will see reflected in the final product; and Dr John Smedley at Ashgate for his patient advice and support over the years since our proposal first reached his desk. Caroline A. Williams Bristol, September 2008

Introduction

Bridging the Early Modern Atlantic World Caroline A. Williams

The concept of the Atlantic world – of an interconnected Atlantic world formed by the ‘kaleidoscopic movement’ across and around the Atlantic basin over a period of more than three centuries of peoples, products, practices, and ideas – has gained great currency in recent years, especially since Professor Bernard Bailyn established the International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World at Harvard University in 1995. The broader outlook and new perspectives that have arisen from the work of Atlantic scholars, primarily historians, have been widely welcomed by the academic community, as evidenced by the ever-growing number of monographs, essay collections, textbooks and readers which contain the term ‘Atlantic’ in their titles, as well as by the publication since 2004 of the journal Atlantic Studies: Literary, Cultural, and Historical Perspectives. Scholarly engagement with the Atlantic paradigm is ongoing, giving rise to numerous conferences, seminar programmes, postgraduate programmes and, increasingly, survey courses aimed at undergraduate students, especially but not exclusively in the United States. Writing in the American Historical Review in 2006, Alison Games described this explosion of interest as a ‘passion that has developed for all things Atlantic’, adding for Atlantic history in particular that it ‘has arrived with a vengeance, making a rapid transition between 1995 and 2005 from novelty to establishment’. The steady growth in the number of publications incorporating a specifically Atlantic dimension certainly justifies the optimism of historians as seasoned and committed to the project as Alison Games. It is also the case, however, as even the most recent additions to the literature show, that the field remains fluid and in process of definition. Scholars continue to debate the significance and

For the origins and evolution of the Atlantic idea, see especially Bernard Bailyn, Atlantic History: Concept and Contours (Cambridge and London, 2005). See also William O’Reilly, ‘Genealogies of Atlantic History’, Atlantic Studies, 1/1 (2004): 66–84, and Peter A. Coclanis, ‘Drag Nach Osten: Bernard Bailyn, the World-Island, and the Idea of Atlantic History’, Journal of World History, 13/1 (2002): 169–82. Coclanis also offers a critique of what he considers to be the limitations of the field. Alison Games, ‘Atlantic History: Definitions, Challenges, and Opportunities’, American Historical Review, 111/3 (2006): 743, 745. See Toyin Falola and Kevin D. Roberts (eds), The Atlantic World: 1450–2000 (Bloomington, 2008), and Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra and Erik R. Seeman (eds), The Atlantic in Global History, 1500–2000 (Upper Saddle River, 2007).


usefulness of the Atlantic as a unit of analysis; to conceptualize, define, or redefine what exactly the ‘Atlantic world’ is; to interrogate the extent to which an Atlantic approach can enhance understanding of the transformations that occurred following the opening up of the ocean in the wake of the voyages of the fifteenth century; to debate the point at which the Atlantic ceases to be a viable unifying concept for study; and to discuss the relative merits, or point to the limitations, of particular methods and/or approaches. In evaluating, in 2002, three approaches to, or models for, Atlantic history, David Armitage acknowledged that it ‘has no agreed canon of problems, events, or processes’; that it ‘follows no common method or practice’; and that it is like the ocean itself, ‘fluid, in motion and potentially boundless, depending on how it is defined’. In 2005, Nicholas Canny concluded that ‘there is such limited agreement over what the subject entails that it might be said that there are as many varieties of Atlantic history as there are Atlanticists’. The ‘what and why’ of Atlantic history remains, then, a matter of scholarly consideration and debate. Yet few would disagree with the respective assessments of Eliga Gould and Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, in a recent AHR Forum on the ‘entangled’ histories of the Spanish and British Atlantic empires, that one of the defining features of the field ‘has been an insistence on studying the early modern Atlantic world as a zone of interconnection’, and that the emerging consensus among scholars is ‘that “the Atlantic” as a category’ must ‘deliver narratives’ that illuminate how ‘a distinctly transnational space’ was created through the circulations of people, products, and ideas. The potential which this broader geographical and conceptual perspective offers for study of the Atlantic ‘as a zone of interconnection’ or as ‘a distinctly transnational space’ continues to be limited, however, both by the tendency of historians to restrict their research to single nations or national experiences, and by the uneven output on the disparate lands and peoples that came into contact as the ocean was transformed, to borrow Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert’s phrase, from

David Armitage, ‘Three Concepts of Atlantic History’, in David Armitage and Michael J. Braddick (eds), The British Atlantic World, 1500–1800 (Basingstoke and New York, 2002), p. 26. Nicholas Canny, ‘Atlantic History and Global History’, in Renate Pieper and Peer Schmidt (eds), Latin America and the Atlantic World, 1500–1850: Essays in honor of Horst Pietschmann (Cologne, 2005), p. 25. Nicholas Canny, ‘Atlantic history: what and why’, European Review, 9/4 (2001): 399–411. Eliga H. Gould, ‘Entangled Histories, Entangled Worlds: The English-Speaking Atlantic as a Spanish Periphery’, American Historical Review, 112/3 (2007): 784. Jorge Cañizares Esguerra, ‘Entangled Histories: Borderland Historiographies in New Clothes?’ American Historical Review, 112/3 (2007): 796. John Elliott, ‘Afterword’, in Armitage and Braddick (eds), The British Atlantic World, p. 235.

Introduction

a barrier to a via.10 It is well known that historians of colonial Anglo-America have been the most enthusiastic in embracing the Atlantic project. Of 268 papers presented at the Harvard International Seminar between 1996 and 2004, surveyed by Games in the AHR, as many as 115 related to the British Atlantic, compared with, at the lower end, nine to Portugal or Portuguese Brazil, and eight to the Dutch Atlantic. Only five focused on Africa.11 The preponderance of papers on the British experience substantiates the view, most recently expressed by the authors of the first survey text to attempt to integrate the histories of the four continents into a single narrative, that Atlantic history is still largely equated with the history of English America.12 Conversely, the under-representation of Africa goes some way towards explaining Africanists’ pointed critiques of Atlantic historians – including one as influential in shaping the field as Bernard Bailyn13 – for their failure adequately to recognize African participation beyond the acknowledged and well-documented contribution which they made through their labour as slaves to the development of the American colonies, and for their tendency to regard the continent as ‘a site of European activities, rather than an active agent’, and Africans as no more than marginal, indeed passive, players in the creation and development of the Atlantic world.14 Two main challenges, then, face Atlantic scholars. The first is to bring to the centre of analysis regions and peoples – non-European as well as European – whose role in the formation of the Atlantic world has so far tended to figure less prominently in the literature.15 The second, equally important, challenge is Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert, A Nation Upon the Ocean Sea: Portugal’s Atlantic Diaspora and the Crisis of the Spanish Empire, 1492–1640 (Oxford and New York, 2007), p. 6. 11 Games, ‘Atlantic History’: footnote 29, 750. 12 Douglas R. Egerton, Alison Games, Jane G. Landers, Kris Lane and Donald R. Wright, The Atlantic World: A History, 1400–1888 (Wheeling, 2007), p. 5. 13 Robin Law and Kristin Mann, for example, have challenged Bailyn’s conception of the Atlantic world, in which, they state, ‘Africa has played a very limited role in shaping the history and culture of the Atlantic basin’. Alison Games has similarly critiqued his perspective on the Atlantic, which, she states, he approaches ‘largely as the study of Europe and the Americas’. See Robin Law and Kristin Mann, ‘West Africa in the Atlantic Community: The Case of the Slave Coast’, The William and Mary Quarterly, 56/2 (1999): 308, and Games, ‘Atlantic History’: 744. 14 See Kristin Mann, ‘Shifting Paradigms in the Study of the African Diaspora and of Atlantic History and Culture’, in Kristin Mann and Edna G. Bay (eds), Rethinking the African Diaspora: The Making of a Black Atlantic World in the Bight of Benin and Brazil (London and Portland, 2001), p. 14, and Robin Law, ‘The Port of Ouidah in the Atlantic Community, 17th to 19th Centuries’, in Horst Pietschmann (ed.), Atlantic History: History of the Atlantic System, 1580–1830 (Göttingen, 2002), p. 349. 15 There are, however, clear indications that a significant shift of emphasis is taking place. Two research groups launched in 2006 – the ‘French Atlantic History Group’ (http:// antlantique.mcgill.ca) at McGill University, and the ‘Rethinking the Iberian Atlantic Project’ (http://www.liv.ac.uk/iberianatlantic/about.htm) at the University of Liverpool – promise 10


to find ways of bridging the imperial or national boundaries within which most scholarship remains confined, in part at least for reasons to do with the often insuperable difficulties scholars face in conducting research in numerous countries and several languages, and in mastering vast and unfamiliar literatures outside clearly defined areas of expertise. Yet as Erik Seeman has argued in the context of the Americas, historians who confine themselves to the Atlantic ventures of individual nations can lose sight of ‘the dynamic interplay across national boundaries that characterized the early modern Atlantic’.16 The limitations of ‘nation-driven narratives’17 are most obviously revealed in the Caribbean, where the proximity of islands held by the English, Spanish, French, and Dutch meant that colonists and slaves interacted on a regular basis with counterparts of different national origin.18 But individuals normally divided by the boundaries of nations, empires, even religious cultures, ‘keenly conscious’ that they were sharing in the endeavour of settling in and exploiting the resources of the Atlantic basin with others ‘who might be their competitors or even their enemies, but who might, on occasion, assist them’,19 wove ‘webs of mutual dependence’20 based on shared economic interest in towns and cities throughout the Atlantic world. In Europe, West Africa, and the Americas, as David Hancock reminds us, not only did the activities of independent entrepreneurs bind ‘people together across imperial through future publications to advance understanding of the nature and consequences of French, Spanish, and Portuguese participation in the Atlantic world. Indeed, the need for further consideration of French participation in particular was acknowledged in a special issue of the journal Atlantic Studies published in 2007, which had as its aim to focus ‘attention on French participations in trans- and circum-Atlantic exchanges’, and to force ‘debate on what that “French Atlantic” might be’. See Maria Lauret, Bill Marshall, and David Murray, ‘Editorial’, Atlantic Studies, 4/1 (2007): 1–4. 16 Erik R. Seeman, ‘Jews in the Early Modern Atlantic: Crossing Boundaries, Keeping Faith’, in Cañizares-Esguerra and Seeman (eds), The Atlantic in Global History, p. 39. 17 Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra and Erik R. Seeman, ‘Introduction: Beyond the Line: Nations, Oceans, Hemispheres’, in Cañizares-Esguerra and Seeman (eds), The Atlantic in Global History, ibid., p. xxiv. 18 Seeman, ‘Jews in the Early Modern Atlantic’, p. 39. 19 Canny attributes the willingness of individuals ‘to act in concert with subjects of a different ruler for the achievement of a goal that was to their mutual benefit’ to the fact that they felt ‘scant loyalty to any government’ – this because they identified themselves not as being from Spain or France or England or the United Provinces, but as being from Extremadura, Brittany or Normandy, Bristol, or Holland. When it suited their interests to do so, or when they shared religious loyalties, people normally divided by imperial boundaries could cooperate in pursuit of a common aim. Nicholas Canny, ‘Writing Atlantic History; or Reconfiguring the History of Colonial British America’, Journal of American History, 86/3 (1999): 1107. 20 Wim Klooster, ‘The Rise and Transformation of the Atlantic World’, in Wim Klooster and Alfred Padula (eds), The Atlantic World: Essays on Slavery, Migration, and Imagination (New Jersey, 2005), p. 30.

Introduction

boundaries’ regardless of ‘government fiat or modern analytical convenience’, but ‘real people’ constructed their social and cultural (as well as commercial) lives ‘out of plural demands and influences’.21 Bridging the Early Modern Atlantic World: People, Products, and Practices on the Move aims to contribute to our understanding of the ways in which ordinary people shaped their social and cultural lives by directing attention to regions, communities, and groups whose activities in, or responses to, an ever-more closely bound Atlantic world remain under-represented in the literature. Spanning the period stretching from the earliest French crossings to Newfoundland at the beginning of the sixteenth century to the end of the wars of independence in northern Spanish South America, c1830, and encompassing a range of disciplinary approaches, the chapters that comprise the volume seek to shed light on the complex and varied outcomes of the intermingling of peoples, circulation of goods, exchange of information, and exposure to new beliefs and ideas that are the hallmarks of the early modern Atlantic. Six of our chapters focus on the experiences of Europeans, but among these we find French consumers of Newfoundland cod, English merchants forming families in Spanish Seville, Scots men and women establishing a close-knit community in Dutch Rotterdam, and Jewish refugees from Dutch Brazil making the English Caribbean island of Nevis their home. Most being travellers, traders, soldiers, sailors, and settlers, these chapters examine the activities in which they became involved, consider the adaptations which they made in new and unfamiliar environments, and assess the extent to which they – or the societies from which they originated – were changed by the encounter with the peoples, places, and/or resources of the Atlantic. Four focus on the ways in which the populations with whom Europeans came into contact, enslaved, or among whom they settled in Africa or the Americas – the Tupi peoples of Brazil, the Kriston women of the West African port of Cacheu, among others – adapted to and were in turn changed by their interactions with previously unknown peoples, goods, institutions, and ideas. All, however, share a central concern to explore – as A.J.R. Russell-Wood has so skilfully done for Portugal’s far-flung enterprises overseas – the ‘human dimension of a world on the move’. Ours, however, is not a multi-oceanic world connected by a single expanding culture, but an Atlantic world connected by the interaction and interpenetration of greatly diverse peoples and cultures.22 To provide a context for the chapters that follow, this Introduction first directs attention to the sheer extent of movement that characterized the early modern Atlantic, the frequent opportunities that existed for contact and exchange across geopolitical, social, and cultural boundaries, and the extraordinary variety of peoples who, in different ways, participated in and were affected by the opening of the ocean to colonization, migration, slavery, and trade. It does not set out to 21 David Hancock, ‘The British Atlantic World: Co-ordination, Complexity, and the Emergence of an Atlantic Market Economy, 1651–1815’, Itinerario, 23/2 (1999): 108, 119. 22 A.J.R. Russell-Wood, The Portuguese Empire, 1415–1808: A World on the Move (2nd edn, Baltimore and London, 1998), pp. xvi, xviii, xxv, 6.


offer another comprehensive review of recent Atlantic scholarship, however, nor are all the sources upon which it is based drawn from an explicitly ‘Atlantic’ literature. Its purpose is instead to highlight, through discussion of a striking range of examples, the transformative effects of the experiences, exchanges, and relationships – affective as well as commercial – that resulted from the convergence of individuals and communities of different ethnic, national, and religious cultures, and of exposure to new products, beliefs, and ideas. Given the continued underrepresentation of Africa in current scholarship,23 we begin by focusing on a number of key contributions by historians of Africa and African-America, which have not only challenged the marginalization of the continent, but illustrated the critical role of Africans, on both sides of the ocean, in the historical development of the Atlantic world. Africa, Africans, and the Atlantic World John Thornton’s Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, first published in 1992 and re-published in extended form in 1998, was one early and influential contribution. Through a wide-ranging analysis of African-European military, economic, and political relations during the era of the slave trade, Thornton set out to demonstrate that in Africa, it was African rulers who determined the nature of their interactions with Europeans, participating in Atlantic trade – including the slave trade – actively, voluntarily, and on their own terms. He also set out to show, through examination of the part played by slaves, as cultural actors, in the colonial societies of the Americas, that many Africans were able successfully to transmit their cultural traditions, however altered by new environments, and to contribute to the development of an ‘African-oriented culture’ in spite of the undoubtedly difficult conditions of enslavement.24 A central argument of Africa and Africans, as it is of Thornton’s work more generally, is that the African background and experiences of slaves are essential to understanding their actions and development in the Americas,25 and by extension also essential to understanding the nature of the wider Atlantic world. Of particular relevance in the context of this discussion is his assessment of the impact on the first generation of slaves transported to the Americas of prior 23 This is notwithstanding the fact that historians of the transatlantic slave trade, beginning with Philip Curtin, in sharing a concern to place the movement and experiences of slaves at the centre of their work, could be considered pioneers of an Atlantic approach ‘unfettered’, as Games puts it, ‘by state borders’. See Games, ‘Atlantic History’: 743. See also Elliott, ‘Afterword’, p. 235. 24 John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1800 (Cambridge, 1998), p. 182. 25 Ibid., p. 129. Among others, see also John Thornton, ‘African Dimensions of the Stono Rebellion’, American Historical Review, 96/4 (1991): 1101–13.

Introduction

contact with Europeans along the Atlantic coast of Africa itself. Beginning in the fifteenth century, he shows, the growth of trade not only resulted in knowledge of European languages spreading widely through the commercial community of the region, but also led to the emergence of ‘European lingua francas’ (pidgins and creoles) that would in time help to provide slaves with ‘a common lingua franca in the New World’. Missionary endeavours, moreover, combined with the proselytizing efforts of merchants and settlers, resulted in the conversion of some Africans to Christianity even before embarkation. There were, then, among the first slaves to arrive on American shores, at least a proportion who were familiar with European languages and religions, having ‘borrowed’ from them ‘willingly and on their own terms in their home territory’ rather than ‘under the stultifying influence of slavery’. These individuals, Thornton argued, played a cultural role out of proportion to their numbers, helping to both disseminate the use of the creole language and shape the development of African-American religion.26 In an equally influential contribution that has made deep inroads in subsequent African scholarship (including in Kenneth Kelly’s chapter in this volume), Ira Berlin focused more closely on the new peoples, some of whom were of mixed ancestry, who evolved out of the meeting of Africans and Europeans on the west coast of Africa. These were individuals, whom he termed ‘Atlantic Creoles’, who ‘by experience or choice, as well as by birth, became part of a new [cosmopolitan] culture that emerged along the [entire] Atlantic littoral’ from the sixteenth century.27 Berlin examined the growth and development of the Atlantic creole population from their first appearance at the trading posts or factories established by Europeans, beginning with the Portuguese at Axim and Elmina, and explored the distinctive experience of those amongst their number, often individuals on the margins of the creole community in Africa itself, who found themselves enslaved and shipped across the Atlantic, to form part of the ‘charter generation’ of slaves who helped develop the Dutch, English, French, and Spanish colonies of mainland North America from the seventeenth century.28 He argued that the creoles’ experience of Atlantic trade and commerce and their skills as intercultural negotiators – acquired through prior occupations as intermediaries and interpreters, employees of European trading companies, sailors, shipboard servants, and independent traders, among others – together with their familiarity with its cultures and religions and their ‘cosmopolitan ability to transcend the confines of particular nations and cultures’, set them apart from the millions of Africans from the interior of the continent who followed them into slavery in Thornton, Africa and Africans, pp. 8, 213, 216–17, 254. Ira Berlin, ‘From Creole to African: Atlantic Creoles and the Origins of AfricanAmerican Society in Mainland North America’, American Historical Review, 53/ 2 (1996): 254, footnote 8. 28 Among those who formed part of black America’s charter generations there were also Atlantic creoles of European, Caribbean, and South American origin, Berlin argues. Ibid., 276. 26

27


later generations.29 ‘Atlantic creoles’, Berlin stated, ‘did not arrive in the New World as deracinated chattel stripped of their past and without resources to meet the future’.30 Their skills as intercultural negotiators, for instance, made them as valuable to Europeans in the colonies of the Americas as they had been on the coast of Africa. Thus, the experience of ‘Domingo the Negro’, called upon to serve ‘as interpreter’ for the slave Jan Angola when, in 1665, he was brought before the Dutch court of New Amsterdam on a charge of stealing wood, is representative of that of creoles in countless places around the Atlantic rim.31 Berlin further argued that the creoles’ knowledge and understanding of the wider Atlantic, and their ‘confidence in their abilities to master a world they knew well’,32 equipped them with strategies that enabled many to overcome their condition as slaves, to integrate into their local societies, and to prosper. In New Netherland, for example, they exploited the large measure of independence which, in the interests of short-term profit, the West India Company (WIC) allowed company-owned slaves, to learn the Dutch language, trade on their own account, acquire property, participate in the religious life of the Dutch Reformed Church, and establish families. As early as 1635, fewer than ten years after the arrival of the first Africans, black people in the Dutch colony had learned enough about their new masters to travel to company headquarters in Holland to petition the WIC for wages. By 1664, as many as one in five had gone on to gain their freedom; some joined the landholding class, and participated actively in the life of New Netherland.33 Crucially, according to Berlin, there was nothing anomalous in the experience of Atlantic creoles in this Dutch-controlled territory. It was, rather, characteristic of the experience of creoles in Virginia, South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida as well – at least, that is, until the ‘triumph of plantation production’ transformed the colonies of mainland North America from ‘societies-with-slaves’ into ‘slave-societies’ dependent on the large-scale importation of Africans drawn from the interior of the continent rather than the littoral.34 More recently, Robin Law and Kristin Mann, while questioning the degree of cultural creolization that took place in coastal communities of West Africa during the early period of contact, and the numerical significance of Atlantic creoles among the slave population of seventeenth-century North America,35 have applied Berlin’s 29

Ibid., 254–62. Ibid., 266. 31 Ibid., 267. 32 Ibid., 282. 33 Ibid., 269–71. 34 Ibid., 254, 274, 277–84. For an analysis of the case of Florida, and the extent to which Africans fit Berlin’s profile of Atlantic creoles, see Jane Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida (Urbana and Chicago, 1999). 35 For a further critique of Berlin’s evidence, see James H. Sweet, ‘Collective Degradation: Slavery and the Construction of Race’, Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Gilder Lehrman International Conference at Yale University, 7–8 November 2003, Yale University: 25–9 30

Introduction

conceptual framework of a cosmopolitan culture linking all sides of the Atlantic to explain the growth and transformation, between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, of an ‘Atlantic community’ on the Slave Coast (Bight of Benin) whose outlook, commercial activities, social relationships, and cultural practices spanned the ocean.36 Over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they show, the commercial contacts and networks that developed as a result of the slave trade led to the emergence on the Slave Coast of a European population consisting of traders, chaplains, and soldiers of several nations who formed social relationships and engaged in cultural exchanges with coastal populations, from the political and commercial elites to the African employees, enslaved and free, of the forts the Portuguese, French, and English established at Ouidah. Europeans, some of whom established prominent families in Africa – the d’Oliveiras, descended from Joseph Ollivier de Montaguère, commander of the French fort between 1775 and 1786, is one among many such families37 – brought literacy, numeracy, and Christianity to the Slave Coast, as well as European languages, customs, and goods, which were disseminated within the surrounding community by the newcomers and by their locally-recruited personnel.38 Critically, they also draw attention to the fact, as did Berlin, that it was not only Europeans and enslaved Africans who journeyed across and around the ocean. Many Africans acquired knowledge of European languages and cultures through personal travel, serving as diplomatic emissaries of African rulers, for example, or temporarily settling abroad for the purpose of education. Mattéo Lopes was one such individual. Said to be a professed Christian of Portuguese nationality (who appears to have originated from the island of São Tomé), in 1670 Lopes was sent by the king of Allada on a mission to France, to which he travelled via Martinique accompanied by several members of his large family. He returned to Africa later that year, after having been granted an audience with King Louis XIV. Another was Latévi Awoku, the founder of the Lawson family of Little Popo. Taken to England for an education by the English captain of a slave ship (from whom he took the name Lawson), by 1784 Latévi Awoku had one son studying in England and another in Portugal, no doubt accounting for why, as late as 1850, some members of the family were described as ‘living as Portuguese’, and ‘others as Englishmen’.39 The conduct of the slave trade also required that representatives of African rulers travel across the Atlantic to the Americas, principally to Brazil (especially Bahia), to which the vast majority of slaves were transported from the Bight of Benin. Between 1750 and 1812, seven official embassies are recorded to have arrived (http://www.yale.edu/glc/events/race/Sweet.pdf). For a refinement of Berlin’s interpretation, see Linda M. Heywood and John K. Thornton, Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585–1660 (Cambridge, 2007), especially pp. 236–93. 36 Law and Mann, ‘West Africa in the Atlantic Community’: 307–12. 37 Ibid., 307. 38 Ibid., 313–14. 39 Ibid., 316, 319.


10

there from Slave Coast states. Beginning in the seventeenth century, moreover, but gathering pace after the legal abolition of the trade, many white Brazilian and thousands of Afro-Brazilian immigrants – the latter former slaves and descendants of slaves, some of whom had converted to Islam in the Americas, and many of whom maintained family and social bonds on both sides of the Atlantic – added significantly to the cultural mix on the Slave Coast,40 as did smaller numbers of Africans returning from Cuba, the West Indies, and the United States.41 Thus, as Kristin Mann has argued elsewhere, people, products, and practices ‘flowed not only east to west, but also in the reverse direction in the era of the slave-trade and after abolition’. Immigrants, she states, brought with them ‘a transatlantic economic orientation’, ‘new ideas about ethnicity that had been forged abroad’, ‘new religious institutions and practices, both Catholic and Muslim’, and ‘new material culture and aesthetic values’.42 Over the course of the first half of the nineteenth century, newcomers and repatriates (some of whom, including former slaves, themselves became substantial slave traders) contributed to a process which Law and Mann have described as the ‘Brazilianization’ of the Slave Coast. This was a process whereby the ‘Brazilian’ community in Ouidah and elsewhere – a community which not only absorbed individuals from across the Portuguese Atlantic, including São Tomé, Madeira, and Angola, but also from Spain and Cuba – came to define itself, in cultural terms, as Brazilian. The ‘Brazilian’ identity of what was in effect a very heterogeneous population was forged by the use of the Portuguese language, the widespread (though not exclusive) practice of Catholicism, and the adoption of Brazilian styles in music, dress, and cuisine; it was sustained and reinforced by the commercial and social relationships which individuals and families on both sides of the Atlantic maintained with each other.43 Approaching the study of African agency and its role in the development of the Atlantic world from an entirely different angle, Judith Carney has focused instead on the contribution which Africans and African indigenous crops made to the agricultural history and to the food culture of the region. Scholars, Carney argues, have traditionally tended to concentrate ‘on the food staples of New World provenance’ (such as maize, manioc, and peanuts) which were introduced into Africa as part of the process of plant transfer that has come to be known as the ‘Columbian 40

Ibid., 320, 323–6, 329. The founding of Ouidah’s first mosque dates to this period. See Law, ‘The Port of Ouidah’, pp. 356–7. 41 Mann, ‘Shifting Paradigms’, p. 10. 42 Ibid., p. 10. 43 According to Law and Mann, Africans who had never travelled to Brazil also came to form part of this community, having assimilated Brazilian culture in Africa, either as slaves or as clients of Brazilian settlers. See Law and Mann, ‘West Africa in the Atlantic Community’: 324–7. See also Law, ‘The Port of Ouidah’, pp. 358–9. For a discussion of families who still live in the Maro, Zomaï, Boya, and Brazil quarters of Ouidah and who acknowledge their descent from returned slaves, see Robin Law, Ouidah: The Social History of a West African Slaving ‘Port’, 1727–1892 (Oxford and Athens, OH, 2004), pp. 180–81.

Introduction

11

Exchange’.44 Such emphasis on the spread of American crops, combined with the privileging of the Europeans who brokered the transfer of seeds, has, however, obscured the part played by African expertise and knowledge systems in transferring and adapting favoured African foodstuffs to the new and diverse environments of the Atlantic islands and the Americas.45 ‘Africa’, she states, echoing the concerns with which we opened this discussion, ‘remains conceptualized as a region where crops diffused to, rather than from, and where New World domesticates revolutionized the continent’s agrarian systems’.46 Yet many indigenous food crops which provisioned the slave ships of the Middle Passage subsequently became established in the Americas, frequently grown for domestic use by slaves using African technologies and processing devices, or by maroon communities for subsistence. Glaberrima rice, whose introduction to the Americas Europeans attributed to their own ingenuity, is a case in point. There is, Carney shows, strong evidence of its use by slaves in El Salvador, Brazil, and South Carolina, as well as in Cayenne, where, in the 1940s and 1950s, French botanists recovered from the descendants of maroons varieties of glaberrima related to those grown in Guinea, Liberia, and Ivory Coast.47 More importantly, in South Carolina, where the higher-yielding Asian sativa variety had become favoured for export by the early eighteenth century, planters who ‘had no prior rice-farming knowledge’ seemingly relied on charter generation slaves from West Africa’s rice region to ‘tutor’ them in growing the crop and adapting it ‘to challenging New World conditions’.48 Indeed, as late as the second half of the eighteenth century, Carolina planters showed a marked preference for slaves originating in the rice-growing region of Africa, one newspaper advertisement of 1785, for instance, announcing the arrival of a Danish ship carrying ‘a choice cargo of windward and gold coast negroes, who have been accustomed to the planting of rice’.49 Whilst difficulties to do with breakage during the process of husking the grain prevented the widespread adoption of glaberrima as an export crop – although it continued to be grown by slaves for their own use – the important point is that the knowledge and expertise of slaves, as well as their labour, proved critical to the evolution of the colony as a major rice producer. Africans also played a part in the spread throughout the Americas of many other crops of African origin, in some instances probably grown from seeds obtained from African sailors and/or cooks on board slave ships. Indeed, Carney reminds us how many crops valued by slaves for their medicinal properties and preferred As first formulated by Alfred W. Crosby in The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, 1972). See Judith A. Carney, ‘African Rice in the Columbian Exchange’, Journal of African History, 42/3 (2001): 381, and Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2001), p. 11. 45 Carney, ‘African Rice’: 377, and Black Rice, pp. 7, 12–13, 97–8. 46 Ibid., p. 166. 47 Carney, ‘African Rice’: 387–91, and Black Rice, pp. 2–3, 76–7, 80, 153–5. 48 Ibid., pp. 80–81, 83–4, 147. 49 Ibid., p. 90. 44


12

as foodstuffs – among others, yam, okra, oil palm, ackee, and black-eyed peas – became key ingredients in, and contributed to shaping, the regional cuisines of the Americas, including those of South Carolina, Jamaica, Suriname, and Brazil.50 Atlantic Interactions The examples outlined in brief above are particularly striking because they are suggestive of the extent to which Africans–regional and generational differences notwithstanding–engaged with and contributed to the changes set in motion as the Atlantic world gradually came into being, of the mobility that characterized the region during the early modern period, and of loyalties and identities that were considerably more fluid than they have previously tended to appear. The fluidity of national, religious, and cultural loyalties and identities are further considered in this section, which explores the nature and significance of interactions between people and economies supposedly divided, principally in the context of the Americas. Whilst many such contacts (as Heather Dalton and Douglas Catterall show in this volume) were licit and welcomed, others arose out of ‘illegal connections’51 formed for the purpose of pursuing a contraband trade that paid little heed to mercantilist theories, commercial rivalries, or warfare; that corrupted imperial boundaries; and that made a mockery of imperial control.52 In Brazil, for example, as Bernard Bailyn points out, the gold of Minas Gerais found its way to England, Portugal, and Africa in spite of repeated decrees directed at curbing smuggling activities. The Dutch West African stronghold of Elmina, in fact, ‘became such a hub of this illicit trade that return voyages arrived in America loaded with miscellaneous European goods’. Into British North American territory, French Caribbean sugar products were imported in such quantities that they flooded the North American market. In Massachusetts, for instance, evidence of the magnitude of this illegal trade is provided by figures on both official imports of molasses entering Boston in 1754–55 – a total of 384 hogsheads – and on the output of the province’s sixty-three distilleries, which required a staggering 40,000 hogsheads to maintain normal production levels.53 50

Carney, ‘African Rice’: 377, 392–6. On African plants used for medicinal purposes, see Linda A. Newson, ‘Medical Practice in Early Colonial Spanish America: A Prospectus’, Bulletin of Latin American Research, 25/3 (2006): 379, 383, and Robert Voeks, ‘African Medicine and Magic in the Americas’, Geographical Review, 83/1 (1993): 74. For a critique of the ‘black rice’ hypothesis, see David Eltis, Philip Morgan, and David Richardson, ‘Agency and Diaspora in Atlantic History: Reassessing the African Contribution to Rice Cultivation in the Americas’, American Historical Review, 112/5 (2007): 1329–58. 51 Bailyn, Atlantic History, p. 89. 52 I also draw here on Sir John Elliott’s Plenary Lecture, ‘The Americas and the Atlantic World: Connections and Comparisons’, delivered at ‘The Americas Plural: Regional and Comparative Perspectives’ Conference, Institute for the Study of the Americas, London, 19 June 2008. 53 Bailyn, Atlantic History, pp. 88–90.

Introduction

13

It was the overseas possessions of Spain, however, that were especially subject to penetration (or, as John Elliott has termed it, ‘collective larceny’) by imperial rivals, especially from the second half of the seventeenth century, when the economic and military weakness of Spain enabled the Dutch, the French, and the English to seize numerous islands in the Caribbean and to establish footholds on the mainland (in the Guiana region, for instance), several of which came to serve as bases for the ‘stripping’ of Spain’s imperial assets. This was achieved in part, of course, through raiding and/or piracy, but Spanish resources also passed to foreign hands through a peaceful contraband trade in which Spaniards and Spanish Americans were themselves complicit.54 Nuala Zahedieh’s work on records relating to Jamaica from its seizure by the English in 1655 is indicative of the frequency and scale of the trade in contraband that took place between this island alone and Spanish territories in the years leading up to 1692. She estimates that between 1679 and the end of the 1680s, almost half of all English and colonial ships that called in at Port Royal went on to trade in Spanish markets – many under cover of the 1670 Anglo-Spanish Treaty of Madrid and the legal (asiento) trade in slaves. Trade with Spanish territories also stimulated the growth of the local sloop fleet, which expanded from 40 in 1670 to approximately 100 in 1689. Whilst the absence of detailed statistical evidence means that it is not possible accurately to quantify the value of the trade over the 1655–1692 period, its importance to Jamaica is suggested by the returns of the Naval Officer Reginald Wilson, who reported that in the 16 months to March 1679, island sloops carried out approximately £20,000 worth of trade with colonists in Spanish-held territories; by the fact that the inventories surviving for Port Royal for the years 1686 to 1692 indicate that as many as one quarter (29 of 118) of the deceased to whom they relate participated in it; and by the claim of the earl of Inchiquin, governor between 1689 and 1692, that in 1690 alone more than £100,000 worth of bullion was carried by the fleet leaving Jamaica, exceeding by £12,000 the value of the island’s sugar exports in 1689.55 According to Zahedieh, the trade in contraband goods ‘was mainly carried on “underhand” in bays and creeks and smaller towns’, as larger fortified cities such

54 J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in the Americas, 1492–1830 (New Haven and London, 2006), p. 224. 55 Under the terms of the Treaty of Madrid, Spain officially recognized British ‘sovereignty, ownership and possession’ of ‘all the lands, regions, islands, colonies and dominions, situated in the West Indies or in any part of America’ which ‘the King of Great Britain and his subjects’ held at the time of its signing; it also authorized ships from either nation to enter each other’s ports for repair, refitting, revictualling, or in the event of shipwreck or bad weather. Nuala Zahedieh, ‘The Merchants of Port Royal, Jamaica, and the Spanish Contraband Trade, 1655–1692’, William and Mary Quarterly, 43/4 (1986): 574, 576, 579, 584, 590–92; and ‘Trade, Plunder, and Economic Development in Early English Jamaica, 1655–89’, Economic History Review, 39/2 (1986): 216, 218–19. On the Treaty of Madrid, see also Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic, p. 220.


14

as Havana, Portobello and Cartagena ‘were more difficult and risky to penetrate’.56 The evidence for Cuba certainly suggests that smuggling activities took place principally in the southern districts of Bayamo, Isla de Pinos, and Puerto Príncipe, rather than in the heavily protected district of Havana; similarly, in Santo Domingo, smuggling is said to have been carried out in rivers and streams rather than in the ports of the colony, where the presence of officials implied a greater risk of detection.57 The city of Cartagena, however, the headquarters for Spanish military and naval units stationed on the northern coast of New Granada (present-day Colombia) and a key centre for Spanish imperial trade, has been described by Lance Grahn as ‘a cog in the distribution network of foreign Caribbean and Atlantic trading ports such as Willemstad, Kingston, and Philadelphia’.58 In spite of the primacy of the port, he argues, Spain’s inability to meet colonial needs meant that consumers turned to foreign suppliers, often illegally, to obtain a range of goods including cloth and clothing (that made of Brittany linen being especially favoured), as well as essential foodstuffs such as flour and meat. Provincial producers in the colony, for their part, diverted cacao, dyes, and woods into foreign hands, not infrequently abetted by port officials who were themselves implicated in an enterprise which, in the mid-1730s, was estimated to be worth two million pesos annually.59 Indeed, according to one senior officer resident in Cartagena in the early 1720s, the city had become a base from which English, French, and Dutch contrabandists sold their wares as freely as they did in their home towns, whilst the fortifications that surrounded the port were said to serve not as the deterrents for which they were intended, but as ‘mere guideposts’ for foreign smugglers.60 Grahn attributes the cosmopolitan outlook of Cartagena’s population, which was to become especially evident when, in the early 1800s, leading creoles began to express their growing disillusion with the Spanish colonial system, to the city’s long-standing links (licensed as well as illicit) with foreign merchants and contrabandists.61 Yet due to the clandestine nature of that part of the trade that was conducted illegally, we know little about the relationships that enabled such networks to function, or about their social and cultural impact. Recent work 56

Zahedieh, ‘Trade, Plunder’: 218. Wim Klooster, Illicit Riches: Dutch Trade in the Caribbean, 1648–1795 (Leiden, 1998), pp. 76–7. 58 Lance R. Grahn, ‘Cartagena and its Hinterland in the Eighteenth Century’, in Franklin W. Knight and Peggy K. Liss (eds), Atlantic Port Cities: Economy, Culture, and Society in the Atlantic World, 1650–1850 (Knoxville, 1991), pp. 168, 175. 59 Lance Grahn, The Political Economy of Smuggling: Regional Informal Economies in Early Bourbon New Granada (Boulder, 1997), pp. 99–102. 60 Grahn, ‘Cartagena and its Hinterland’, p. 176. 61 Ibid., pp. 175–7. On the ideas that informed creoles in Cartagena, and on the fall of royal government in the colony, see especially Anthony McFarlane, Colombia Before Independence: Economy, Society, and Politics under Bourbon Rule (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 297–352. 57

Introduction

15

on the Dutch island of Curaçao’s links with the Spanish mainland, however, provides some insight into the range of individuals involved on both sides of this particular imperial divide, and into the wider and longer-term effects of contact between them. Captured by the Dutch from the Spanish in 1634, administered by the West India Company, and a free port after 1675, Curaçao has been described as ‘an American counterpart of Amsterdam’,62 ‘a thriving regional entrepôt in the Dutch commercial system, linking American colonies of several different imperial spheres with Europe, Africa, and markets well beyond the Atlantic’.63 The island developed principally as a base from which a wide variety of European commodities, such as wines, cloth, and spices – shipped in from Dutch ports but the vast majority of which were neither of Dutch origin nor manufacture – were sold on to buyers in the Spanish, English, and French colonies in exchange for a whole range of commodities, including cacao, brazilwood, tobacco, and sugar. Most crucial to its prosperity, however, was the illicit trade with the Spanish mainland, especially with the nearby and relatively accessible coasts of Venezuela and New Granada, where, as we have seen, the French and the British were also actively involved in trade.64 Along the Guajira peninsula, for example, large stretches of which remained under Indian control in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Curaçaoan merchants not only traded with, but for part of the year reportedly lived among, the indigenous Guajiro people, exchanging logwood, among other products, for the gunpowder and firearms that enabled native groups to hold back Spanish encroachment.65 During or soon after 1693, moreover, colonists from Curaçao, some of whom were Sephardic Jews, boldly established the settlement of Tucacas on the Paraguaná peninsula, on the northwest coast of Venezuela. In spite of several half-hearted attempts to destroy the settlement, which maintained its own synagogue, Tucacas survived until the 1720s – apparently serving as the centre of a smuggling network that, according to José Francisco de Canas, governor of Caracas in the mid-1710s, was protected by the ‘Spanish friends’ of ‘the Jews and Dutch’, and that reached deep into the interior of the Spanish empire, linking

62 Klooster, Illicit Riches, p. 59; Wim Klooster, ‘The Jews in Suriname and Curaçao’, in Paolo Bernardini and Norman Fiering (eds), The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West, 1450–1800 (New York and Oxford, 2001), p. 353. 63 Linda Rupert, ‘Contraband Trade and the Shaping of Colonial Societies in Curaçao and Tierra Firme’, Itinerario, 30/3 (2006): 38. See also Jonathan Israel, ‘The Jews of Dutch America’, in Bernardini and Fiering (eds), The Jews and the Expansion of Europe, p. 337. 64 Klooster, Illicit Riches, p. 74; Klooster, ‘The Jews in Suriname and Curaçao’, pp. 355–6; and Grahn, ‘Cartagena and its Hinterland’, p. 175. 65 Klooster, Illicit Riches, p. 76, and Grahn, The Political Economy of Smuggling, pp. 41–3. Spanish sources also indicate that, on occasion at least, Guajiro chiefs travelled to the island in person to obtain supplies for their communities. See Eduardo Barrera Monroy, Mestizaje, Comercio y Resistencia: La Guajira durante la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII (Bogotá, 2000), pp. 156–7.


16

Curaçao with cities as distant as Santa Fe de Bogotá and Quito, and these, in turn, with the wider Atlantic world.66 Linda Rupert has shown that the contraband trade between Curaçao and Venezuela linked, on the Dutch side, merchants and traders (Protestants and Jews), shipowners, dockworkers and sailors (enslaved and free), with, on the Spanish American side, landholders large and small, plantation labourers, soldiers, vagabonds, runaway slaves, and local officials ‘torn by conflicting loyalties’. Even Catholic clergy from the mainland, permitted to proselytize among, and conduct services for, the island’s black population – whom the Dutch were less committed to converting – participated in the illegal inter-imperial trade.67 Interests shared by the inhabitants of both colonies made possible the exchange of Venezuelan commodities, especially cacao (shipped out of Curaçao’s port of Willemstad to markets in and beyond the Atlantic), for slaves destined for the plantations (some of whom were legally obtained), and manufactured goods much needed in a region outside the main shipping routes between Spain and its empire. Critically, she argues, the smuggling networks that developed across geopolitical boundaries, and which depended on a degree of confidence between the parties involved, also created opportunities for other types of social and cultural exchange, among people of African descent for example, who by 1800 comprised the majority of the population in both colonies.68 Between the mid-seventeenth and the late-eighteenth centuries, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of slaves, women as well as men, exploited these networks to flee the Dutch island for the Spanish mainland, where, between 1680 and 1790, they were offered freedom on condition of baptism in the Catholic faith. So many Afro-Curaçaoans had established themselves in the Venezuelan city of Coro by 66

According to Klooster, the Dutch remained active in Tucacas until at least 1767–68, when they were reported to be taking local products ‘as boldly as if they were on their own soil’. See Klooster, Illicit Riches, pp. 135–8; Israel, ‘The Jews’, p. 338; and Mordecai Arbell, ‘Rethinking the Jewish Experience: Rediscovering Tucacas’, American Jewish Archives 48/1 (1996): 36–7. 67 Rupert, ‘Contraband Trade’: 39–42. Cornelis Goslinga cites the case of Agustín Caicedo, an Augustinian and a member of a wealthy Bogotá family, who purportedly combined his ministry in Curaçao with interests in the tobacco trade. See Cornelis C. Goslinga, The Dutch in the Caribbean and in the Guianas, 1680–1791 (Assen/Maastricht, 1985), pp. 257–61. 68 Rupert, ‘Contraband Trade’: 42–3. See also Israel, ‘The Jews’, pp. 343–4. Israel argues that that the geopolitical context of the Caribbean from the mid-seventeenth century favoured commercial contacts across the Spanish and Dutch imperial divides. After the Dutch surrendered Recife to the Portuguese in 1654, he maintains, the latter’s presence in the Americas proved no more than a commercial threat to Spain, unlike the English and the French, who became increasingly serious political and strategic threats: if it was necessary to obtain supplies, or slaves, from a rival power, as in the 1660s, then the Dutch, who did not endanger the existence of the empire, were preferable to either the English or the French, who did.

Introduction

17

1704, in fact, that the local Spanish authorities considered creating a new town to accommodate them. By mid-century, former fugitives from the Dutch island could be found living in communities throughout the region. Some became landowners. Many participated – or continued to participate – in the contraband economy, often in collaboration with Venezuelan-based slaves and freemen. Everywhere AfroCuraçaoans learned ‘to use the Spanish colonial legal system to obtain and defend a variety of rights’.69 Fugitive slaves from the Dutch colony, as well as AfroCuraçaoan traders and seafarers, were also instrumental in the spread throughout the region of Papiamentu, a creole language which facilitated communication and the exchange of information between a close and highly mobile African population, and resulted in other types of collaboration, most notably the rebellions that occurred almost simultaneously, in 1795, in Coro (May) and Curaçao (August).70 The ‘symbiosis’, as Wim Klooster has termed it, of Venezuela and Curaçao,71 combined with, for Africans, the prospect of freedom from slavery, resulted in the development of relationships of various kinds between people of diverse ethnic, social, and cultural backgrounds on both sides of the Dutch-Spanish divide. Shared economic interest, of a different kind, also promoted a surprising degree of interaction and co-operation across national, even religious, lines in the sugargrowing region of north-eastern Brazil, at least for a number of years after the Dutch capture of Pernambuco in March 1630. To neutralize resistance to the West India Company, which took control of the administration of the region (1630–54), and to encourage Portuguese mill-owners and cane-farmers to remain within the Dutch zone and rebuild operations damaged or destroyed in the fighting, the WIC directors assured the local inhabitants that their ownership of property would be respected. They also promised economic prosperity, and guaranteed freedom of conscience and belief.72 To attract native support to the Dutch cause, moreover, and to encourage Dutch-speaking Portuguese Jews from Amsterdam with access to the considerable financial resources of the Sephardic community to either settle in Brazil and/or invest in its sugar industry, ‘liberty of conscience’ – as well as the right to practise their respective faiths – was extended to ‘Spaniards, Portuguese, and natives of the land, whether they be Roman Catholics or Jews’.73

69 Rupert, ‘Contraband Trade’: 43–7; and Linda Rupert, ‘Waters of Faith, Currents of Freedom: Gender, Religion and Ethnicity in Inter-Imperial Trade Between Curaçao and Tierra Firme’, in Nora E. Jaffary (ed.), Gender, Race, and Religion in the Colonization of the Americas (Basingstoke, 2007), pp. 159–61. 70 Rupert, ‘Contraband Trade’: 47. 71 Klooster, Illicit Riches, p. 120. 72 Stuart B. Schwartz, ‘Portuguese Attitudes of Religious Tolerance in Dutch Brazil’, in Jonathan Israel and Stuart B. Schwartz, The Expansion of Tolerance: Religion in Dutch Brazil, 1624–1654 (Amsterdam, 2007), p. 46. 73 Jonathan Israel, ‘Religious Toleration in Dutch Brazil’, in Israel and Schwartz, The Expansion of Tolerance, pp. 17–18, 27, and Israel, ‘The Jews’, p. 341.


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Jonathan Israel has argued that the policy of religious toleration implemented by the WIC in Dutch Brazil was pragmatic rather than principled, and in the medium term it certainly did little to change entrenched Portuguese Catholic attitudes towards Jews (to whom many planters, significantly, became indebted). He has also shown, however, that it did create many opportunities for contact across national and religious divides during the period of Dutch dominance. Many Jews, for instance, though based mainly in Recife, Frederikstad, and Mauricia, travelled regularly into the interior to conduct business with Portuguese planters; some ventured out on a more permanent basis, acquiring plantations of their own; after 1636, moreover, a number of Portuguese took up residence in the inner township of Recife, where they lived alongside Jews and Protestant Dutch.74 More noteworthy is the extent to which the Portuguese – Old Christians, clerical and lay, as well as New Christians, many of whom took advantage of the religious liberty extended by the WIC to return to Judaism – accepted Dutch rule, leading, according to Stuart Schwartz, ‘to a period of collaboration and even conviviality between the Dutch and the Portuguese’.75 Frei António Caldeira, an Augustinian in Serinhaem, was one among several clerics who socialized with (and sold sugar to) the Dutch; others were said to have reassured their parishioners of the peaceful intentions of the new rulers.76 Even individuals who initially resisted and later fought to expel the Dutch were reported to have developed close personal relationships with the enemy. Such was the case of João Fernandes Vieira, a man thought to have been of humble Madeiran origin who became the agent and clerk of High Councillor Jacob Stachouwer, and later a confidant of Governor-General Johan Maurits (1637–44). His ‘tight friendship’ with Stachouwer enabled Vieira to make a fortune and become one of the colony’s richest men; his loyalty to the Dutch, however, at least in the short term, clearly extended beyond the merely commercial, in that he also served as town councillor (1641–43) and as captain of a squadron consisting principally, if not exclusively, of Dutchmen.77 Another was the Jesuit Manuel de Moraes. After an initial period of resistance to the invasion, Moraes went over fully to the Dutch. He changed his allegiance again in the mid-1640s, but in the intervening period he had abandoned 74

Israel, ‘Religious Toleration’, pp. 19, 27–8. See also Jonathan Israel, ‘Dutch Sephardi Jewry, Millenarian Politics, and the Struggle for Brazil’, in David S. Katz and Jonathan I. Israel (eds), Sceptics, Millenarians and Jews (Leiden, 1990), p. 91. 75 Schwartz, ‘Portuguese Attitudes’, p. 36. 76 Ibid., pp. 49–50. 77 Ibid., p. 51, and C.R. Boxer, The Dutch in Brazil, 1624–1654 (Hamden, 1973), pp. 272–6. Russell-Wood describes Vieira as a mulatto whose commercial dealings had provided him with enough capital to enable him ‘to have his own house’ by the age of 17. He led the 1645 uprising against the Dutch in Pernambuco, and subsequently acquired landholdings and sugar mills formerly owned by them. He became governor of Angola between 1658 and 1661 and, on his return to Pernambuco, superintendent of fortifications on the Brazilian coast. See Russell-Wood, The Portuguese Empire, pp. 68–9.

Introduction

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the Jesuit order, travelled to, and lived in, the Netherlands, married a Protestant Dutch woman and, on her death, a second.78 There were many other examples of individuals who crossed religious boundaries during these years: among these were the three daughters of Domingo Ribeiro, all of whom contracted Protestant marriages with Dutchmen; the Dutch who married Portuguese widows in Rio Grande do Norte and converted to Catholicism; and the two daughters of one Mateus da Costa of Ipojuca, one of whom married a Dutch Protestant, and the other a New Christian who had returned to the practice of Judaism. Both Protestant and Catholic clergy noted these developments with some concern for, as Schwartz explains, such marriages ‘always implied a certain insecurity of national and religious identities’. And indeed, when the period of goodwill and co-operation drew to a close with the outbreak of the Portuguese planters’ revolt in 1645, some Dutchmen who had married in Brazil joined the rebel cause; so, too, did many French and other Catholics who had formerly been employed by the WIC (the soldiery of which, consisting mainly, as Maurits explained, of ‘English, Scots, or Frenchmen’, was itself multi-national). Those Dutch and other non-Portuguese who made common cause with the rebels against the WIC were sufficient in number to form eight companies to fight alongside the Luso-Brazilian forces.79 The insurrection of Portuguese Catholic planters in June 1645 and the subsequent loss of the colony in 1654 represented a serious blow to the West India Company, as it did to the Jewish community which, attracted by the WIC’s promise of liberty of conscience for Jews as well as Catholics, grew to number some 1,450 by 1644. The ‘Catholic zeal’ exhibited by the insurgents, combined with the treatment meted out to a number of captured Jews – including the cases of the two Jews hanged by rebel forces north of Recife in the summer of 1645, and especially the exceptional but nonetheless notorious case of the proselytizer Isaac de Castro Tartas, burned alive at the age of 22 at an Auto-da-fé staged in Lisbon in December 1647 – had a major impact on Jewish attitudes towards the Portuguese. Not the least of the consequences was the return of a substantial number of refugees to the Dutch Republic, and the migration of many others to parts of the New World where they could expect, if not the same degree of toleration that they had experienced in Dutch Brazil, then at least conditions far more favourable than they could expect under the rule of Portugal, where Jews identified as having formerly been New Christians in particular faced the real threat of prosecution by the Inquisition.80 Indeed, when in April 1654 the defeated Dutch requested an extension to the threemonth period allowed them for departure, they were assured by General Francisco Barreto de Menezes that both Dutch and Jews would continue to be treated mildly,

78 Schwartz, ‘Portuguese Attitudes’, pp. 49–50. The case of Manuel de Moraes is discussed in greater detail in Boxer, The Dutch, pp. 267–9. 79 Schwartz, ‘Portuguese Attitudes’, pp. 51–2. On Maurits’ remarks on the soldiery of the WIC, see Boxer, The Dutch, p. 129. 80 Israel, ‘Dutch Sephardi Jewry’, pp. 86–97.

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except, that is, for ‘the Jews who had been Christians, these being subject to the Holy Inquisition, wherein I cannot interefere’.81 Of those who left Brazil, some established new communities in the Dutch colonies of Curaçao and Suriname (taken from the English in 1667), in both of which they came to comprise approximately one-third of the white population,82 and in New Netherland, where Recifean Jews were authorized to settle, with restrictions, on the grounds ‘of the large amount of capital which they have invested in this [West India] Company’.83 Some migrated to Jamaica, where the Sephardic Jewish population, small at the time of the island’s seizure by the English in 1655, by 1672 included 13 individuals (some of whom were of Portuguese origin) holding patents of naturalization, under which they enjoyed ‘the same rights to trade as natural-born citizens without distinction of religion’.84 In spite of other controls and disabilities, discussed by Natalie Zacek in this volume, it grew steadily thereafter, reaching 700 to 800 (equivalent to one-tenth of the total white population) by 1735. As in Curaçao, Jews in Jamaica were able to capitalize, as Allan Meyers explains, on their knowledge of the wider Atlantic world, their multilingualism, and their close ties with communities of co-religionists in Europe, New England, the Caribbean, ‘and all the leading ports on the Spanish Main’, to carve for themselves an important niche in the contraband trade, serving as middlemen supplying Spanish Americans with dry goods imported from Europe through their Christian and Jewish agents.85 Other groups of refugees from Recife migrated to the English colony of Barbados (claimed by the English in 1627) where, in 1650, a full six years before similar legislation was passed in England, the island Assembly permitted the immigration of Jews, placing them, in 1655, ‘on the same footing as foreigners in England’.86 A number subsequently migrated to the small colony of Nevis, whose Jewish community is the subject of Zacek’s chapter. 81 James Homer Williams, ‘An Atlantic Perspective on the Jewish Struggle for Rights and Opportunities in Brazil, New Netherland, and New York’, in Bernardini and Fiering (eds), The Jews and the Expansion of Europe, p. 377. 82 Seeman, ‘Jews in the Early Modern Atlantic’, pp. 42–3; David Eltis, The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas (Cambridge and New York, 2000), pp. 236–40 83 For attitudes towards Jews in New Netherland, and the nature of the restrictions they faced, see Israel, ‘The Jews’, pp. 344–5, and Williams, ‘An Atlantic Perspective’, pp. 377–85. 84 Zahedieh, ‘The Merchants of Port Royal’: 580. 85 Allan D. Meyers, ‘Ethnic Distinctions and Wealth among Colonial Jamaican Merchants, 1685–1716’, Social Science History, 22/1 (1998): 55, 57; and Mordechai Arbell, The Portuguese Jews of Jamaica (Kingston, 2000), p. 8. In his History of Jamaica (1774), Edward Long wrote of the island’s Jews that ‘their knowledge of foreign languages and intercourse with their brethren, dispersed over the Spanish and West Indian colonies have contributed greatly to extend trade and increase the wealth of the island’. See ibid., p. 15. 86 Eltis, The Rise of African Slavery, pp. 239–40. In reality, Eltis states, the rights extended were only those of residence and denization.

Introduction

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Even as they migrated to new homes across national and imperial boundaries, Jews worked to preserve their distinctive identity by maintaining economic and kinship ties with other Jewish communities scattered throughout the Atlantic world, and by strict observance of the rituals of their forebears. However, as Erik Seeman’s study of Jewish death rituals in the English and Dutch Caribbean shows, theirs was not an identity untouched by the diverse cultural heritages of the peoples among whom they lived in both the Old World and the New. Jewish memorialization practices, especially tombstones and markers, are especially revealing in this regard. Seeman shows that in spite of the Second Commandment’s prohibition on the depiction of ‘graven images’, many human images – such as the biblical Esther represented on Esther Senior’s 1714 tombstone, an almost identical copy ‘of a woodcut from a Christian Latin Bible published in Lyon in 1562’ – adorned the tombstones of the dead in Curaçao, Jamaica, and Barbados, clearly demonstrating the extent to which Jews incorporated Christian iconography into their own iconographic traditions. In the English and Dutch islands, he argues, they remembered ‘the dark decades when Catholics forced Sephardim to convert or keep their beliefs secret’ and seemingly ‘rejoiced in their ability to proclaim to the world their faith and their varied cultural inheritances’.87 Perhaps an even more significant adaptation to local conditions took place in Dutch Suriname – a sugar colony with a predominantly African population, and the only place in the New World where a community of mulatto Jews, the offspring of Jewish plantation owners and African women, came into being – where Jewish gravestones were influenced by African, rather than European Christian, iconography. The sankofa, for example, a heart-shaped symbol of the Akan people of West Africa, many of whom became slaves on Suriname’s sugar plantations, appears alongside Hebrew lettering and the Star of David on numerous burial markers that still stand today in the Sephardic cemetery at Paramaribo.88 It is also to be found, Aviva Ben-Ur has demonstrated, in Paramaribo’s Ashkenazi, Moravian, and Protestant cemeteries, indicating not only that Jews and their Christian neighbours found their faith and their practices tested by the new environments in which they found themselves, but also that African influence profoundly permeated memorialization rituals across religious and ethnic lines in Suriname.89

87

Seeman, ‘Jews in the Early Modern Atlantic’, pp. 45–6, 48–9, and especially Figures 2 and 3. See also Aviva Ben-Ur, ‘Still Life: Sephardi, Ashkenazi, and West African Art and Form in Suriname’s Jewish Cemeteries’, American Jewish History, 92/3 (2004): 74. ‘Tombstones’, Ben-Ur states, ‘were a medium through which Suriname’s Jews could express their multi-heritage origins – including the non-Jewish elements of that legacy – as acceptably Jewish’. 88 Seeman, ‘Jews in the Early Modern Atlantic’, pp. 50, 53–5, and especially Figures 6 and 7. 89 Ben-Ur, ‘Still Life’: 77, and footnote 168; and Seeman, ‘Jews in the Early Modern Atlantic’, p. 56.


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Consumption and the Atlantic World The unprecedented circulation of people, beliefs, and ideas that characterized the early modern Atlantic was driven and paralleled by an equally unprecedented circulation of goods which not only linked the region through production, commerce, and consumption,90 but also, as the examples discussed below show, had the potential to transform tastes and fashions in all parts of the Atlantic world. The sheer scale of effort and the extent of the mobilization involved in production and transportation on the part of Europeans alone are reflected in figures relating to the migratory cod fishery which developed off the coast of Newfoundland in the immediate aftermath of John Cabot’s voyage of 1497, which, in addition to demonstrating the existence of a ‘new land’ between Europe and Asia, also made known the extent of the marine resources that existed in the northwest Atlantic.91 The first cargo of North American cod is recorded to have been landed by the Gabriel of Bristol in 1502. By the end of the decade, European crews – particularly Breton, Norman, and French Basque crews, who dominated the fishery through the sixteenth and well into the seventeenth centuries – were seasonally catching and salting cod off the Newfoundland coast,92 in another example of what Nicholas Canny has described as a ‘space’ whose exploitation Europeans were fully aware they shared with others of different origin.93 The combined efforts of Europeans in Atlantic Canada by the end of the century were so extensive that, in volume and value, commercial activity in the region exceeded that taking place in the Gulf of Mexico, traditionally considered ‘the American center of gravity of early transatlantic commerce’.94 Records show that by 1615, the English employed approximately 250 ships and a minimum of 5,000 men to produce an annual output of some 300,000 quintals of dry fish (equivalent to a live catch of 75,000 tonnes per year).95 The French transatlantic fishery was approximately twice that size overall. At mid-century, the French fishing fleet comprised more than 400 ships, and employed almost 10,000 men over a wide area including the shores of Newfoundland, the Gulf of St Lawrence, and Nova Scotia.96 The fleets of these two nations, together with those of the Basque and the Portuguese (whose participation, although significant, was on a smaller scale) are estimated to 90

Games, ‘Atlantic History’: 756. Peter E. Pope, Fish into Wine: The Newfoundland Plantation in the Seventeenth Century (Chapel Hill and London, 2004), pp. 11, 13. 92 Ibid., pp. 15–16. According to James Pritchard, the French supplied the largest single domestic market for cod as well as substantial and profitable export markets in Italy, Spain, and Portugal. See James Pritchard, In Search of Empire: The French in the Americas, 1670–1730 (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 140, 142. 93 Canny, ‘Writing Atlantic History’: 1107–08. 94 Pope, Fish into Wine, p. 13. 95 Ibid., p. 33. 96 Pritchard, In Search of Empire, p. 142. 91

Introduction

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have fished and transported a live catch of perhaps as much as 200,000 tonnes per season. This was, as Peter Pope has stated, an enormous industry not only for its own time, but already by the end of the 1600s ‘in the same order of magnitude as catches of northern cod in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century’.97 Wind-dried cod and the related ling, known as stockfish, had of course been accessible to, and eaten by, Europeans long before the waters of the northwest Atlantic were found to be ‘churning with codfish of a size never before seen and in schools of unprecedented density’.98 Norway had been exporting stockfish to the continent in commercial quantities from about 1100; by 1350, it had become Iceland’s principal export staple; and by the beginning of the fifteenth century, migratory fisheries had been established by the English in Icelandic waters.99 Perhaps for this reason, and despite the fact that due to the resources of the new fishing grounds cod came to account for as much as sixty per cent of all fish consumed in Europe between the mid-sixteenth and the mid-eighteenth centuries,100 its impact on the societies and cultures of consuming nations has received less attention than those previously unknown and more obviously exotic plants of New World origin that altered tastes, transformed diets, and created new customs and rituals across the Old. Yet as Peter Mancall’s and Marcy Norton’s recent studies of two such exotic plants – tobacco and chocolate, respectively – demonstrate, analysis of the processes whereby the products of the Americas came to be incorporated into European habits, cultures, and value systems have great potential for illustrating how individuals who never left their towns or villages of origin could also experience the opening up of the Atlantic through their own consumption. Both studies show the ways in which over time, exposure to, and/ or the spread of information about, products which on first acquaintance most Europeans in the Americas actually found unappetizing if not decidedly distasteful, gave rise to new practices, fashions, and the adoption of new implements on the other side of the Atlantic, first among a handful of aficionados and subsequently among the population at large.101 Norton, as we shall see, focuses first on the 97 Pope, Fish into Wine, pp. 16, 19–20. Pope clarifies that the Portuguese, who had their own fisheries off Madeira and the Azores, and were also heavily involved in Brazil, Africa, and the Indian ocean, did not become major participants in the migratory fishery in north Atlantic waters. ‘Even in the second half of the sixteenth century’, he states, ‘when the port of Viana, in particular, sent ships regularly to Newfoundland, they did not commit themselves as seriously as the French already had or as the English would’. 98 Mark Kurlansky, Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World (London, 1999), p. 49. 99 Pope, Fish into Wine, p. 11. 100 Kurlansky, Cod, p. 51. 101 Peter C. Mancall, ‘Tales Tobacco Told in Sixteenth-Century Europe’, Environmental History, 9/4 (2004): 648–78, and Marcy Norton, ‘Tasting Empire: Chocolate and the European Internalization of Mesoamerican Aesthetics’, American Historical Review, 111/3 (2006): 660–91.


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contexts in which Spaniards in Mesoamerica became familiar with, and unwittingly developed a liking for, chocolate, before examining how they transmitted their taste for this indigenous beverage as well as the paraphernalia required for its preparation to Spain, and then to the rest of Europe.102 Mancall explores instead the processes whereby tobacco, a product initially associated with native savagery, heathen rituals, and even demonic intervention, was desacralized, ‘civilized’, and ‘commodified’ for a European market, a transition that made possible its ‘leap from unknown plant to highly desired [and widely consumed] good’.103 Tobacco’s transformation was, Mancall argues, connected to and facilitated by the rapid expansion of print over the course of the sixteenth century.104 The dissemination of a growing number of printed books – especially travel accounts, herbals and treatises – some of which contained illustrations of the plant and of the ways in which it was smoked by indigenous peoples, gradually made accessible to literate Europeans knowledge of the medicinal benefits and healing properties celebrated by its advocates, as well as the corrupting and addictive qualities highlighted by its detractors.105 Gauging the size of the reading public in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is, as he acknowledges, notoriously difficult, as is assessing the popularity of any particular text. It is known, however, that some 10,000 books containing information on the Americas were distributed from the major European print centres between 1500 and 1650, satisfying a growing demand for books and pamphlets that described (and made familiar) the environments, peoples, and products of the New World. Of these, approximately 400 either included mention of tobacco or focused on it exclusively. Once it had ‘leapt the cultural divide’ through the medium of print, and its ‘underlying value’ was ‘extracted from its savage context’, tobacco production spread rapidly throughout (and well beyond) the Atlantic world. So too, of course, did consumption, increasingly for recreational rather than medicinal purposes. In England alone it is estimated that imports rose from 25,000 pounds in 1603 to 38 million pounds by the end of the century. In Africa, its impact was said to have been so great that tobacco creation myths were invented following its introduction there.106 Indeed, according to Robert Voeks, once tobacco had been naturalized in Africa and incorporated into African ethnomedical systems, it was diffused through the slave trade back to the Americas. By the latter years of the trade, he states, ‘Africans arriving in Venezuela introduced healing rituals with tobacco that were uniquely African’.107 Chocolate was another New World product with potentially ‘idolatrous’ associations that successfully made the leap from the unfamiliar (and initially 102

Norton, ‘Tasting Empire’: 660, 687. Mancall, ‘Tales Tobacco Told in Sixteenth-Century Europe’: 648–50, 656. 104 Ibid., 648–50, 656. 105 Ibid., 650, 655–65. 106 Ibid., 666–7, 670. 107 Voeks, ‘African Medicine’: 75. 103

Introduction

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disliked) to the widely consumed. In her study of the ways in which the drink gained acceptance by Europeans, however, Marcy Norton finds that the publication and dissemination of books played no obvious part in this transition: by the time the first such work aimed at a Spanish readership, Santiago de Valverde Turices Un discurso de chocolate, was printed in 1624, thousands of pounds of cacao and chocolate were being imported annually, and consumption was on the way to becoming well established in Seville.108 Arguing instead that Spaniards acquired a taste for the product as a consequence of their ‘continued material dependence on Indians’, Norton explores the ‘colonial spaces of dependence’ in which they were exposed to, and gradually absorbed, the material practices connected to the consumption of this pre-Columbian drink. She pays particular attention to households, Indian villages, and the marketplace, all meeting points between cultures and sites where colonists were open to acculturation (and probably pressure to conform) to local customs, by women as well as men. In the household, for example, it was Indian women, traditionally charged with the preparation of the drink, who played a particularly important role as wives and concubines in acculturating Spanish men ‘to Indian dietary and domestic practices’ and creating ‘culturally mestizo’ environments. Even Indian women who served as domestics in creole households, however, played a part in this process, principally through their role in exposing creole children to a milieu that was culturally indigenous. Spaniards also encountered chocolate in Indian villages – where as late as the seventeenth century, in accordance with pre-Hispanic forms of hospitality, tributaries and parishioners commonly offered the beverage on welcoming visiting officials and clerics – and in the marketplace where, as one Spaniard discovered in the 1570s, of ‘all the varieties of fresh and dried fruits, indigenous and from our own land ... that which is held in higher appreciation than all of the others is cacaotl’.109 Whilst cross-cultural contacts of this kind explain how European colonists developed a taste for chocolate and learned to consume it as it was consumed in Mesoamerica, its eventual diffusion from colony to metropolis – after a lapse of some seventy years – Norton attributes to the emergence in Spain of a ‘critical mass of aficionados’ who had first-hand experience of the New World and its resources. Among these she identifies in particular merchants and clergy who ‘moved often and easily within an integrated Spanish Atlantic world’, and who through their social contacts initiated metropolitan ‘neophytes’ in all the varieties of the chocolate drink, and in the ways of drinking it. In the process they contributed to an extraordinary expansion of demand, reflected in figures on exports from Venezuela, which rose from some 31,000 pounds between 1620 and 1650, to 7 million pounds between 1650 and 1700.110 Over time, Norton acknowledges, the beverage that people in Europe consumed diverged from that which early settlers 108

Norton, ‘Tasting Empire’: 668, 680. Ibid., 676–9, 682. 110 Ibid., 668, 670, 679–81. 109


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had initially encountered in the Americas, not least because Old World spices and flavourings, the most notable being sugar and cinnamon, replaced the original ingredients of honey, chilli pepper, and flower spices. She argues, however, that this should not be taken to mean that Europeans set out to modify chocolate to accord with their own aesthetic predilections. Contrary to common assumptions, such tinkering was part of a process of gradual evolution motivated by the desire to maintain ‘the sensory impact’ of a product for which Europeans – the vast majority of whom had never, and would never, set foot on American soil – had acquired a new, unexpected taste.111 Peoples, Products, and Practices on the Move The aim of this Introduction has been to highlight, albeit briefly, the themes that are developed in greater detail in the following chapters, which explore, from a variety of different perspectives and based on a wide range of sources, what engagement with the Atlantic world meant for the individuals and communities who are their subjects, and how these ordinary people contributed through their own travels, relationships, and day-to-day choices to the process whereby four continents were brought into regular communication and exchange. In the opening chapter, Laurier Turgeon takes a fresh look, from a new angle, at the establishment and rapid expansion from the beginning of the sixteenth century of a French migratory fishery off the coast of Newfoundland, with particular reference to the impact and consequences of the increasingly widespread consumption of codfish on the culture of France itself. His chapter begins with a discussion of the development of the French fishing fleet, and then goes on to chart, using sources that include notarial records, provisioning contracts, account books, and cookbooks, the ways in which Newfoundland cod penetrated the interior from coastal ports, and came to be accessible to, and eaten by, people of practically all social classes. Turgeon’s principal concerns are to explore the connection between mass consumption of what was at the time considered an ‘exotic’ New World product and the establishment of a permanent colony in Canada in the early seventeenth century, and the part cod played in the development of a French national market and national identity. Can widespread consumption of this North American product be interpreted as the means whereby the French appropriated the geography of the ‘New Lands’ and made the region a desirable site for colonization? Can it be argued that the sharing of a ‘common good’ enabled the French to ‘materially acknowledge’ that they belonged to the same community? In considering these questions, he offers an innovative exploration of how the French experienced the Atlantic world through their own consumption and in their own bodies. Heather Dalton focuses on the small community of English merchants based in Seville in the early decades of the sixteenth century, and discusses the commercial 111

Ibid., 660, 669, 683–6.

Introduction

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interests and the personal relationships which they developed whilst settled in the city. Basing her study principally on the records relating to the settlement of the will of Thomas Malliard, who died in Seville in 1522, she shows that, contrary to the widely held view of historians, English merchants such as Malliard accumulated substantial fortunes during these years, by investing in local industries and properties, and by collaborating with Spanish and Genoese merchants in trade with Spain’s Atlantic colonies. Dalton also pays close attention to the controversy that developed when Malliard’s Spanish mistress Beatriz Hernández and their daughter Ana contested his will, to the events that took place subsequently, and to the interests of the individuals involved on both sides. Her analysis offers important insights into the ways in which English merchants operated in the city, and into their connections with the local community. She shows that although English merchants always remained loyal to their families back home, to whom they willed the bulk of their fortunes, they also formed new families in Seville, and became influential members of local society, taking sides with, and being supported by, those factions within the city who were willing to accommodate the foreign merchants and embrace their expertise. Douglas Catterall also explores the Atlantic activities and associated support networks of a small expatriate community, namely, that of the Scots based in Rotterdam in the middle decades of the seventeenth century. Few of these individuals were substantial merchants of the kind who are the subject of Dalton’s chapter. Rather, most were common sailors (some were captains or skippers) who formed part of the large international labour pool that the city, home to one of the chambers of the Dutch West India Company from 1621, attracted to support a variety of enterprises, including those in Brazil, the Caribbean, and the Chesapeake. Basing his analysis principally on notarial records, Catterall estimates the size and analyses the composition of the city’s Scot’s population; explores the nature and extent of their participation in those parts of the Caribbean and the Chesapeake where the Dutch had a significant presence; and examines the institutions and networks which the Scots community developed to support the sailors, soldiers, and itinerant labourers who participated in Dutch ventures in the Atlantic, as well as the families they left behind. He pays particular attention both to the extensive network of lodging-house keepers who provided lodging, credit, and wage-collection services, and to the role of the Scots Church of Rotterdam, founded in 1643, to show how the Scots community was able to take part in, and profit from, Dutch activities in the wider Atlantic world. Natalie Zacek turns our attention to the Americas, specifically to the Jewish community which established itself in the island of Nevis in the decades following the Portuguese re-capture of Recife in 1654. She focuses on the business and social networks of some of the most prominent of the island’s Jewish merchants, and in so doing provides important insights into their activities and interests, and into the ways in which both Jews and the English among whom they settled in the Caribbean in the later decades of the seventeenth century came to terms with, and adapted to, each other’s cultures and religions. Basing her analysis principally on

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legal and commercial documents, Zacek shows that in spite of legal proscriptions and the often far from favourable attitudes displayed towards Jews by the English, illustrated vividly in this chapter, the displaced Recifeans prospered here. Indeed, she also demonstrates that Jewish families, such as those of Haim Abinum de Lima and Isaac Pinheiro, did not form a sub-culture segregated from the white planter society of the island, but rather that their commercial and personal relationships included many non-Jews of property and prestige. Far from being excluded from participation in the social and economic life of the white community, they enjoyed positions of respect, and were linked by ties of friendship as well as commerce to wealthy and prominent local Christian families. Mark Meuwese explores a much-neglected aspect of the history of northeastern Brazil during the period of West India Company rule (1630–54) – namely, relations between the Dutch and their indigenous Tupi allies. He shows that although Dutch control over the lucrative sugar-growing provinces of the region was achieved with the support of the Tupi peoples, many of whom welcomed the newcomers as liberators when the WIC committed itself to abolishing Indian slavery, Dutch-Tupi relations were frequently marred by discord and conflict, due to the divergent understandings of both sides regarding the status that the native population was to enjoy in the emerging Dutch Atlantic empire. Was this to be a diplomatic alliance between equals, or were the Tupi to be subordinate members of Dutch colonial society? Central to this analysis is Antonio Paraupaba, a prominent leader of the Potiguar who over a period of three decades from 1625 until his death in the Netherlands in 1656, travelled to the Republic on three occasions to negotiate the terms of the relationship between his people and the WIC administration. Meuwese pays particular attention to Paraupaba’s role as an intercultural negotiator, and examines how, having become familiar with Dutch customs and interests, and gained some fluency in the Dutch language, he sought to exploit distance and differences between the board of WIC directors and the High Council in Recife to secure self-governance for the Tupi, a key demand of the indigenous leadership. Archaeologist Mark Horton considers the Atlantic ventures of another company – that of The Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies – in the Darien region of Panama in the closing decades of the seventeenth century. Combining analysis of the written record of the early settlers with the archaeological evidence derived from survey and excavation at the sites of New Edinburgh and Fort St Andrew, Horton considers the reality of everyday life for the colonists during their short period of settlement, discusses the challenges they faced in the harsh contested environment of Darien, and provides a detailed account of their day-today experiences. In paying particular attention to the physical characteristics of the region, the location, scale, and form of construction of the fortifications built to defend the colony, and the miscalculations made in both Scotland and at the local level concerning, among other key issues, supplies and provisions, Horton offers a fuller and more nuanced interpretation of the failure of what has come to be known as the Scottish Darien Scheme.

Introduction

29

Archaeologist Kenneth Kelly explores African responses to trade and interaction with Europeans in the trading state of Hueda (with its capital at Savi) and its successor Dahomey (which channelled trade though Ouidah) over the period stretching from the mid-seventeenth century to the early nineteenth century. Kelly’s chapter, like that of Horton, combines analysis of archaeological evidence and documentary sources to examine how Africans and Europeans interacted at these sites, the strategies developed by the rulers of Hueda and Dahomey to control their relationships with foreign traders, and the longer-term outcomes of those relationships for local societies. He shows that African participants in the slave trade were well informed about the Atlantic world and willing actively to engage with their foreign partners, and that at Savi and Ouidah, Africans also developed strategies to assert power and authority over Europeans, and ensure their continued autonomy–as manifested, for instance, in the quality of construction and physical location of European trading lodges. Kelly also argues, however, that despite their successful control of European traders, participation in the Atlantic economy had far-reaching consequences for coastal people: changes in political and economic power balances upset existing relationships in coastal and inland areas, and led to long-lasting conflict between African groups. Anthropologist Philip Havik also explores the nature of African-European interactions, in this case in the trade settlement of Cacheu, in what is now Guinea Bissau, during the seventeenth century. Based on the still largely neglected records of the Portuguese Inquisition, he examines the activities, relationships, cultural traditions, and religious beliefs and customs of the diverse population of what was at the time Portugal’s principal port on the Upper Guinea coast, considers the bonds the tied the community to neighbouring African societies, and discusses the part played in processes of cross-cultural exchange and transculturation by free Christianized Africans (Kriston). The case of the healer and diviner Crispina Peres, the daughter of a Christianised Guinean mother and a Portuguese father and the wife of a second-generation New Christian (who was tried by the Inquisition in Lisbon for practising African rites, consulting witch-doctors, and performing ‘heathen’ rituals), is central to this chapter. Through careful reading of the documents relating to the case – in particular the detailed descriptions of local religious beliefs and rituals contained in witness statements – Havik is able to identify what he terms a set of ‘Afro-Atlantic’ cultural practices shared by all the inhabitants of the community, assess the ways in which these were shaped and influenced by those of their ‘ethnic’ neighbours, and illustrate the role which African women played as cultural mediators in these Christianized communities. James Sweet takes a broader approach to the analysis of African participation in the Atlantic world by examining the role played by slaves in disseminating knowledge of the powerful protective talismans of the ethnic Mandinga of the Upper Guinea coast – the bolsas the mandinga – throughout the Portuguese Atlantic. Sweet also bases his analysis on Inquisition records, specifically those relating to the trials of enslaved Africans accused of producing and trading mandinga pouches (the mandingueiros), and explores the ways in which, through

30


the buying, selling, borrowing, and sharing of mandingas containing a variety of substances and items, they linked places as far apart as Ouidah, Pernambuco, Madeira, and Porto. By unravelling the histories of the accused, and explaining the connections between them and the many other Africans they implicated in the manufacture and distribution of the bolsas, his chapter shows that the slaves involved in the trials were all products of an overlapping and interconnected Atlantic world. Sweet also considers, however, the extent to which the Portuguese were themselves implicated in the proliferation of the magical ideas with which the pouches were associated. Not only were white Portuguese as likely to purchase bolsas as were Africans, but the Inquisition, in defining mandingas as ‘heresy’ and ‘witchcraft’, bringing Africans to trial in cities such as Lisbon and Coimbra, and exiling the guilty to small villages such as Faro and Bragança, affirmed the power of the pouches, and linked the cultures of Brazil and Africa to those of Portugal itself. In the final chapter, Matthew Brown turns our attention to the life experiences of Scottish-born Alexander Alexander, one of the more than 7,000 foreigners who joined the forces of the leaders of the Spanish American independence movements in the early decades of the nineteenth century. Based on close analysis of his autobiography – The Life of Alexander Alexander, published in Edinburgh in 1830 – Brown discusses Alexander’s accounts of his activities within and outside the Atlantic world over the period stretching from 1800 to 1822. He follows his travels in search of profitable occupation to Curaçao (1800–01), to several British Army postings in England, Ireland, and Asia (1802–15), to Demerara (1815–17), and to various islands of the West Indies (1821–22), in order to consider the ways in which Alexander’s often bitter experiences in the British imperial world shaped his attitudes towards, and responses to, the societies he encountered during two separate periods of residence in Venezuela and Colombia between 1816 and 1822. Alexander’s British identity, Brown shows, was shaken and tested by enlistment in a republican army in a region characterized by racial and cultural diversity, but he also argues that the Atlantic dimension of his life was no more than ‘a facet of a life that was lived imperially’, and that was marked by concerns about status and race that transcended geographical regions. For Brown, Alexander Alexander’s autobiography reveals the porosity and fluidity not only of the boundaries of the Spanish and British empires in the Americas, but also those of the Atlantic world itself. In highlighting the sheer extent of movement and interaction that characterized the early modern Atlantic, the contributions to this volume enhance our understanding of that complex phenomenon which we call ‘The Atlantic World’ in two main ways. First, they show that if the significance of the ‘Atlantic’ as a unit of analysis lies in what it tells us about the overlapping and interconnected character of the region, then scholars must pay attention to, and incorporate, the full diversity of peoples who in countless points of contact around the Atlantic basin interacted with, changed, and were changed by, others who were different from themselves. Secondly, the emphasis in a number of the chapters on the non-

Introduction

31

European experience serves to remind us that African and indigenous American peoples were neither passive nor marginal participants in the changes set in motion as the Atlantic world came gradually into being. The agency of Africans and native Americans – their capacity and willingness, that is, to use a variety of means to advance or protect their own interests and/or those of their own people – has of course long since been recognized by scholars whose perspective is centred on the indigenous populations of both continents. From these studies, however, they also emerge as playing as significant a role in the construction and development of the Atlantic world as the Europeans whose voyages first brought them into contact with others from whom they had for millennia been separated by the ocean.


Chapter 1

Codfish, Consumption, and Colonization: The Creation of the French Atlantic World During the Sixteenth Century Laurier Turgeon

Introduction The historiography of the Atlantic World is one that has dealt largely with shipping and trade. Historians, historical archaeologists, and cultural geographers have been primarily concerned with identifying shipping routes, measuring the volume of the different trades (including the trade in human beings), determining their impact on European economies, evaluating their role in the formation of a merchant class, and speculating about their contribution to the development of capitalism. The Atlantic World is also a world of colonization, and there has been much interest in the establishment of colonial societies, their trade with native groups, the production of colonial products, their social and economic impact in the colonies, and their distribution in Europe. However, very little work has yet been done on the anthropology of their consumption. Because consumption comes at the end of the distribution chain, it is generally taken for granted, whereas it is in fact the initial

I am very grateful to the conference organizers, Caroline Williams and Mark Horton, for inviting me and for giving the opportunity to present a first version of this article at the conference for discussion. I would like to thank Catherine Briand, Evan Jones, Michael Braddick, and Anthony McFarlane for their very helpful comments and suggestions. I would also like to thank Carla Zecher, Director of the Renaissance Studies Center at the Newberry Library (Chicago), for helping me translate the original text from French to English as well as for her assistance in refining the ideas and the language of the text. Much of the research for this article was generously funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Fonds québécois de recherche pour la société et la culture. I revised the text for publication while I was William Lyon Mackenzie King Visiting Professor in Canadian Studies at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and at the History Department of Harvard University. I would like to acknowledge their generous and stimulating support. As far as I know, the only historians who have dealt with the topic to any great extent are: Timothy Breen, ‘“Baubles of Britain”: The American and Consumer Revolutions of the Eighteenth Century’, Past and Present 119 (1988): 73–104; John Brewer and Roy Porter (eds), Consumption and the World of Goods (New York, 1993); and Robert Blair St. George, Conversing by Signs: Poetics of Implication in Colonial New England Culture (Chapel Hill, 1998).

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stage of economic activity and of the colonial process. After all, it is the desire of consumers that determines the demand for the goods traded, their value, their market and, by extension, the types of economic, social, and political institutions established in the colonies. To gain a better understanding of the meaning of trade in the Atlantic world, it is important to consider the anthropology of the consumption of colonial products such as codfish, furs, tobacco, cacao, coffee, and sugar. What attracted European consumers to these New World products? How were they integrated into European consumer habits and how did they change them? What impact did the consumption of colonial products have on European national food cultures? The answers to these questions can teach us a great deal about the circulation of colonial goods, the meanings of their consumption, and the role played by New World products in European colonization and nation-building. This chapter is based on a case study of one colonial product in one European country, namely, codfish in France. Codfish was the first New World product consumed massively in France. It has seldom been considered a colonial product because the cod fishery began long before the establishment of a colony – assuming that we define a colony as the endeavour to found a permanent settlement on a territory, exploit its resources, and place its indigenous peoples or other forms of subservient labour in the service of the settlers. Nonetheless, the cod fishery allowed the French to ‘occupy’ the coasts of north-eastern North America, to symbolically consume this space and progressively construct a colonial territory. In a sense, their colonial project originated in the fishery. The fishermen preceded the explorers – sometimes serving as their guides – and they were the first to exploit the resources of the North American continent. The fishery was a ‘proto-colonial’ activity that helped to initiate the process of colonization through consumption. Since codfish is a food, its consumption expressed effectively the desire to colonize. Eating gives agency to foods and to people. It represents a form of social action by the choice of the foods eaten, by the people who eat them, by the manner in which they are prepared, by the place where they are eaten, and by the performance There already exists a large body of literature on the anthropology of consumption: Arjun Appadurai, ‘Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value’, in Arjun Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 3–63; Michael Dietler and Brian Hayden, ‘Digesting the Feast – Good to Eat, Good to Drink, Good to Think: An Introduction’, in Michael Dietler and Brian Hayden (eds), Archaeological and Ethnographic Perspectives on Food, Politics and Power (Washington, 2001), pp. 1–22; Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwood, The World of Goods: Towards an Anthropology of Consumption (New York, 1979); David Howes, ‘Commodities and Cultural Borders’, in David Howes (ed.), Cross-Cultural Consumption: Global Markets, Local Realities (London and New York, 1996); Fred R. Meyers, The Empire of Things: Regimes of Value and Material Culture (Santa Fe, 2001); Daniel Miller, Material Culture and Mass Consumption (Oxford, 1987); Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York, 1985). Mintz provides an interesting model in his stimulating study of sugar, Sweetness and Power.

Codfish, Consumption, and Colonization

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of eating itself. To be consumed, foods must be displaced, transported from their place of production to their place of consumption, and thereby effectively express appropriation of the peoples and the places they come from. The act of eating is indeed a powerful political tool, for it responds to a vital need of the human body and, at the same time, places the body on stage. Eating is a concrete everyday practice that rapidly becomes a structured habit. Its agency is therefore repetitive, perfomative and routinized, and it has profound long-lasting effects on social practices. Further, what is eaten is incorporated into the body and becomes an integral and material part of the self. As the saying goes, ‘you are what you eat’. A food is more than a sign, or a representation of something; it is an essence in itself. This material association between biological and cultural domains is what makes alimentary practices so efficient in the appropriation of territories, the construction and manipulation of social relationships, and the process of colonization. It is not surprising that most colonial products brought from the Americas in the early modern period were foods (codfish, coffee, cocoa, and sugar) or habit-forming addictive products like tobacco. In this chapter, I hypothesize that to eat codfish in France during the sixteenth century was to participate in a quest for imperial power and in the construction of a political economy of colonization. The Rise of the French Cod Fishery From the early sixteenth century, the French cod fishery expanded at a rapid pace in all the major ports of the Atlantic seaboard. Cod fishing in Newfoundland is mentioned as early as 1510 in the Rouen archives, and in 1517 in Bordeaux. In the same year a Basque merchant from Saint-Jean-de-Luz also sold in Bordeaux a large quantity of green cod, most likely from Newfoundland.10 The Basques took Michael Dietler, ‘Feasts and Commensal Politics in the Political Economy: Food, Power, and Status in Prehistoric Europe’, in Polly Wiessner and Wulf Schiefenhövel (eds), Food and the Status Quest: An Interdisciplinary Perspective (Oxford, 1996), p. 90; Dietler and Hayden, ‘Digesting the Feast’, pp. 20–22; and Ron Scapp and Brian Seitz, ‘Introduction’, in Ron Scapp and Brian Seitz (eds), Eating Culture (Albany, 1998), pp. 1–10. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London, 1979). Claude Fischler, L’Omnivore (Paris, 2001), pp. 66–70. Henry P. Biggar, Les précurseurs de Jacques Cartier, 1497–1534: Collection de documents relatifs à l’histoire primitive du Canada (Ottawa, 1913), pp. ix–xvii, 116–18; Michel Mollat, Le commerce maritime normand à la fin du Moyen Âge: étude d’histoire économique et sociale (Paris, 1952), pp. 262–3. Archives Départementales de la Gironde (hereafter, ADG), 3E 9796 (23 September 1517), cited in Jacques Bernard, Navires et gens de mer à Bordeaux, vers 1450–vers 1550 (Paris, 1968), p. 806. 10 Bernard, Navires, p. 810, n.31.


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the route to Newfoundland at about the same time as the Normans and Bretons; ‘Terres Nabes’ appears in the maritime archives of Cap Breton in 1512 and again in those of Bayonne in 1519.11 Beginning in 1520, outfitting for cod-fishing increased: at least three at Fécamp in 1522 and five at La Rochelle in 1523.12 These few indications gleaned from notarial and judicial archives that have been poorly preserved must represent only a fraction of the entire scope of the cod-fishing enterprise. An English source from this period reveals that the French fishing fleet numbered more than 100 ships.13 The fishery, already substantial in the 1520s, grew at a remarkable rate from the middle of the century. Wherever they have been preserved, the notarial archives reveal a rapid increase in voyages to Newfoundland. In Bordeaux, departures registered by notaries grew from approximately ten per year in the 1540s to more than 50 per year from 1560.14 The same rate of increase is recorded in the neighbouring port of La Rochelle.15 At Rouen, the number rose to nearly 100: 73 outfittings for 1549 and at least 94 for 1555.16 Altogether, incomplete documentation for these three ports alone provides a list of more than 150 ships for certain years during the 1550s. To these already high figures we should add the outfitting that would have taken place in other large cod-fishing ports like

11

The municipal archives of Cap Breton, CC 5 (deposited in the Departmental Archives of the Landes) contain a declaration that a ship left in 1512 ‘a la pesque à les Terres Nabes’ [‘to fish in the New Lands’], according to Madame Maxime Degros, ‘La grande pêche basque des origines à la fin du XVIIIe siècle’, Bulletin de la Société des Sciences, Lettres et Arts de Bayonne, 35 (1940): 166; and Edouard Ducéré, ‘Les pêcheurs basques à Terre-Neuve’, Bulletin de la Société des Sciences, Lettres et Arts de Pau, 22 (1895): 246–74. See also Edouard Ducéré, Les corsaires sous l’Ancien Régime (Bayonne, 1895), pp. 10–11. The Gascon registers mention two outfittings for Newfoundland from the port of Bayonne in 1519 and another in 1520: re-transcribed in Registres gascons (Bayonne, 1906), vol. 2, pp. 240–42, 280–82. 12 Michel Mollat, Le commerce maritime normand à la fin du Moyen Âge: étude d’histoire économique et sociale (Paris, 1952), p. 264; Georges Musset, Les Rochelais à Terre-Neuve, 1500–1789 (La Rochelle: self-published, 1899), pp. 29–30. 13 Harold A. Innis, The Cod Fisheries: The History of an International Economy (Toronto, 1978), p. 16. 14 Laurier Turgeon, ‘Bordeaux and the Newfoundland Trade During the Sixteenth Century’, International Journal of Maritime History 9/2 (1997): 26. In August 1540, the king of France granted to all of his subjects the right to go to the ‘New Lands’. Henry P. Biggar, A Collection of Documents Relating to Jacques Cartier and the Sieur de Roberval (Ottawa, 1930), pp. 102–27. This dispensation may well have contributed to the marked increase in the outfitting of French ships for Newfoundland in the 1540s. 15 We find 49 outfittings for Newfoundland in the notarial records of La Rochelle for 1559. See Biggar, Collection, p. 25; Étienne Trocmé and Marcel Delafosse, Le commerce rochelais de la fin du XVe siècle au début du XVIIe siècle (Paris, 1952), pp. 69–74. 16 Turgeon, ‘Bordeaux’: 6, 25.


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Saint-Malo,17 Sables d’Olonne, and Saint-Jean-de-Luz, for which we do not have precise documentation, as well as another 50 or so small ports which each outfitted a few ships per year.18 For example, the small ports in Saintonge (Blaye, Meschers, Talmont, Mortagne, Marennes, and La Tremblade) harboured some 30 cod-fishing vessels in the 1560s.19 Others managed to accumulate small fleets quite rapidly: Croisic, the service port for Nantes, already maintained 25 cod-fishing vessels in 1565, and Granville had 15 by about 1572.20 In 1580, the English writer, Robert Hitchcock, taking his information from correspondents in the French ports, estimated the entire French fishing fleet to number approximately 500 vessels, while his French counterpart, Antoyne de Montchrétien, numbered it, at the beginning of the 17th century, at more than 600 vessels for the ports of Normandy and Brittany alone.21 Although incomplete, these statistics nonetheless point to an immense fishing enterprise that has been largely overlooked in the maritime history of the North Atlantic. In fact, the French Newfoundland vessels represented one of the largest fleets in the Atlantic. These 500 or so ships had a combined loading capacity of some 40,000 tons burden (1.4 m3), and they mobilized 12,000 fishermen-sailors each year. And the French were not alone in this enterprise; other European countries also had cod-fishing vessels. The English navigator Anthony Parkhurst, during a reconnaissance voyage he undertook for the English navy in 1578, assessed the European fishing fleet in Newfoundland at 100 Spanish ships, 50 Portuguese ships, and 30–50 English ships.22 Although the fishing activity of the Iberian countries 17

According to La Morandière, the outfitting of ships for Newfoundland became important in Saint-Malo beginning in the middle of the century. Charles de La Morandière, Histoire de la pêche française à la morue dans l’Amérique septentrionale (3 vols, Paris, 1962), vol. 1, pp. 243–4. 18 Ibid., p. 231. 19 Marc Séguin, ‘Les débuts de la pêche saintongeaise à Terre-Neuve (1546–1570)’, in Dominique Guillemet and Jacques Peret (eds), Les sociétés littorales du Centre-Ouest Atlantique (Poitiers, 1996), pp. 187–202. 20 La Morandière, Histoire, pp. 241, 247. 21 Robert Hitchcock, A Politicall Platt for the Honour of the Prince (London, 1580), cited in Innis, Cod, pp. 44–5 n.40; and Antoyne de Montchrétien, Traicté de l’oeconomie politique, ed. Théodore Funck-Brentano (Rouen, 1615; Paris, 1889), p. 114. 22 David B. Quinn, New American World: A Documentary History of North America to 1612 (5 vols, New York, 1979), vol. 4, pp. 7–8, 105. Parkhurst apparently overestimated the number of Spanish ships, probably by counting French Basque ships among them, for Barkham has identified only about 15 ships outfitted for cod-fishing in the Spanish Basque ports, according to a census of 1571; see Selma Barkham, ‘Guipuzcoan Shipping in 1571 with Particular Reference to the Decline of the Transatlantic Fishing Industry, in W.A. Douglass (ed.), Anglo-American Contributions to Basque Studies (Reno, 1977), pp. 76–7. On the other hand, Parkhurst clearly underestimated the size of the French (established at 150 ships) and Portuguese fleets, no doubt because it was difficult to spot the French and Portuguese vessels that were already fishing on the Grand Bank of Newfoundland and

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declined toward the end of the century, English activity augmented considerably, so that the total number of ships remained high.23 The Newfoundland fleet surpassed by far the prestigious Spanish fleet that trafficked with the Americas, which had only half the loading capacity and half as many crew members.24 These statistics demonstrate that the Gulf of the Saint Lawrence represented a site of European activity fully comparable to the Gulf of Mexico or the Caribbean. Far from being a marginal space visited by a few isolated fishermen, Newfoundland was one of the first great Atlantic routes and one of the first territories colonized in North America. While North American codfish obviously did not possess the economic value of silver and gold, it demanded larger numbers of vessels and men – perhaps double what was needed for the routes that led to South America – and had far reaching implications for the North Atlantic maritime economy. Codfish throughout the Realm Little known in the Middle Ages, in the sixteenth century codfish became the most widely consumed fish in France, surpassing hake and even herring, the king of medieval fishes.25 Pierre Belon devotes a long article to codfish in La nature et diversité des poissons (Paris, 1555) – the first natural history of fish written in French – which states that ‘there is no place where it is not sold’.26 Indeed, after mid-century, codfish overran the wharfs of all the large Atlantic ports. In Nantes, for instance, the commerce in codfish, which already dominated that of all other salt-water fish at mid-century, tripled within a decade.27 From there, codfish in a multitude of small ports scattered over several thousand kilometres of coastline. A census of 1552 indicates that the port of Aveiro alone counted 70 ships ‘engaged primarily in fishing in the New Land and in commerce with Ireland, England, and Flanders’; see Darlene Abreu-Ferreira, ‘Fishmongers and Shipowners: Women in Maritime Communities of Early Modern Portugal’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, 21/1 (2000): 11–12. 23 Innis, Cod, pp. 30–38, 52–70; and Harold A. Innis, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Spanish Fishery in Newfoundland’, in Harold A. Innis (ed.), Essays in Canadian Economic History (Toronto, 1956), pp. 43–61. Towards 1615, the English fleet numbered about 250 ships; see Gillian T. Cell, English Entreprise in Newfoundland 1577–1660 (Toronto, 1969), p. 24. 24 According to the Chaunus, the fleet engaged in Hispano-American commerce comprised between 50 and 100 large vessels which loaded an annual average of 16,036 toneladas and were crewed annually by 4,000–5,000 men during the 1570s; see Pierre Chaunu and Huguette Chaunu, ‘À la recherche des fluctuations cycliques dans l’économie des XVIe et XVIIe siècles’, in Fernand Braudel (ed.), Éventail de l’histoire vivante: hommage à Lucien Febvre (Paris, 1953), pp. 392–7. 25 Robert Delort, Les animaux ont une histoire (Paris, 1984), pp. 234–42. 26 Pierre Belon du Mans, La nature et diversité des poissons, avec leurs portraicts, representez au plus pres du naturel (Paris, 1555), p. 122. 27 Jean Tanguy, Le commerce du port de Nantes au milieu du XVIe siècle (Paris, 1956), p. 24.


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ascended the Loire to Tours and Orleans, and then Paris. The capital city was also provisioned by Rouen, where the commerce in codfish became so important that the city council devoted almost as much attention to it as to wheat.28 Departing from Paris and Avignon, the first shipments of codfish reached Marseille in 1555, and the fish continued to follow this long route through the middle of France until the 1580s, when the Breton fishers, especially those from Saint-Malo, began to provision Marseille directly from Newfoundland, by passing through the Strait of Gibraltar.29 Rare and much sought after in Marseille, codfish was only put on sale for three days of the year, and each merchant could only purchase 20 hundredweight at a time. The situation changed at the beginning of the seventeenth century when the number of fishers from Saint-Malo increased considerably; Marseille then became not only an important centre of consumption but also the principal centre for the redistribution of codfish to the back country and the coasts of Provence and Languedoc, and from there to Italy and Spain.30 Codfish penetrated far into the interior of France, reaching even small country towns. For example, from Bordeaux codfish ascended all of the great rivers of Aquitaine. By mid-century cod eclipsed all of the other salted fish marketed in the Bordelais back country: sardines, herring, salmon, and even its medieval rival, Breton hake, which soon disappeared from the records. A selection of Bordelais notarial contracts for the sale of salted fish in the 1550s and 1560s reveals that more codfish was sold in Aquitaine than any other fish. Codfish was so omnipresent in the river trade, it even served as a nickname for the boatman Jehan Pascau, ‘dit moullue’ (called ‘codfish’).31 This predominance of codfish, as well as the overall importance of salted fish in commerce in the interior, is confirmed by three toll registers: one for the Dordogne River at Lamothe-Montravel in 1573; and two others for the Gironde, at Marmande (1593–94) and Castelferrus (1646).32 Used to keep track of the fees levied on merchandise ascending or descending the rivers, these registers indicate Mollat, Commerce, p. 24. Raymond Collier and Joseph Billioud, Histoire du commerce de Marseille, 1480– 1559, vol. 3, series edited by Gaston Rambert (Paris, 1954), p. 406. 30 Louis Bergasse and Gaston Rambert, Histoire du commerce de Marseille, 1480– 1559, vol. 4, series edited by Gaston Rambert (Paris, 1954), p. 163; Fernand Braudel, La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l’époque de Philippe II (Paris, 1949), p. 46. 31 ADG, 3E 4728, 9 August 1552, cited in Bernard, Navires, p. 806. 32 The statistics for Bordeaux are taken from my own research notes in the notarial records; see Turgeon, ‘Bordeaux’: 6–9. Those for Lamothe-Montravel are drawn from Anne-Marie Cocula-Vaillières, ‘Une mesure du trafic fluvial au XVI siècle’, in Actes du 104e Congrès des Sociétés savantes tenue à Bordeaux en 1980 (Paris, 1981), pp. 217–51; those for Marmande from the ADG, C. 4092, ‘Rolle des bateaux passés devant Marmande et les droits levés sur ceux du mois de juin 1593 au mois de décembre 1594’; and those for Castelferrus from René Toujas, ‘Données statistiques recueillies sur le commerce effectué en 1646 entre Bordeaux et Toulouse’, Annales du Midi (1960): 231–8. 28

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the nature and quantity of the products, thus providing a precise record of the flow and volume of the river traffic. The accounts for Marmande and Castelferrus are especially detailed, revealing that cod was far ahead of sardines and herring. Both at the end of the sixteenth century and in the middle of the seventeenth, the quantity of cod surpassed that of all other fish combined. The registers also demonstrate the central role of salted fish of all kinds in the commerce between Bordeaux and the towns of the interior. Fish accounted for more than half of the trade in products that ascended the Garonne in 1593–94. Grains, metals, textiles, and other products made up only a small portion of the commerce. Salted fish still led in importance half a century later, at Castelferrus. Although by then sugar was gaining in importance, it would still be a long time before Caribbean products truly threatened the supremacy of salted fish. It was largely by selling fish and salt that the Bordelais merchants paid for grains, wines, and other products that came from the interior. The small river ports became centres of redistribution that sent the fish still farther inland, as is demonstrated in the account book of Hugues Mario, a merchant from Montaigu-en-Quercy. Mario traded in grains, which he bought from the peasants in the neighbouring hamlets (each a cluster of eight or nine cottages), in a radius of roughly 10 km, in exchange for salt and salted fish – mostly cod, but also sardines and herring.33 He sold nothing else for the six-year period represented by his accounts, from 1648 to 1654. Located in a small valley at an altitude of 170 metres, Montaigu is surrounded by high limestone plateaux that isolate the village from the large axes of circulation. In good weather, just one roadway links Montaigu to Villeneuve-sur-Lot, the closest river port and commercial centre, located some 30 kilometres downstream. To arrive at Villeneuve-sur-Lot from Bordeaux, codfish travelled for two to three weeks by boat, covering some 150 km. Land transport by cart, slower and more expensive, took another three to five weeks from Villeneuve-sur-Lot to the high plateaux of Quercy. These inhabitants must indeed have had a passion for salted cod, to have paid so many intermediaries to bring it from so far away. In fact, in the middle of the seventeenth century, cod and – to a lesser degree – herring and sardines were still the only ‘exotic’ products consumed in these isolated regions. Codfish, A Food for the Nation Cod was not only found everywhere, almost everyone consumed it. It was eaten by practically all social classes. It turned up on the tables of princes as well as those of villagers and peasants. In all of the large port cities, professional sorters (who were incorporated), carefully graded the fish so that they could meet the demands of consumers from different social classes. The sorters generally distinguished 33 All of this information is taken from O. Ganat, ‘Essai sur le commerce dans un canton de l’Agenais au XVIIe siècle: le livre de comptes et de raisons de Hugues Mario de Montaigu-du-Quercy, 1648–1654’, Revue de l’Agenais (1901): 425–40.


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four qualities: the large marketable fish, the marketable, the medium-sized, and the scraps. In some cities the classification was even more refined. In Nantes there were seven grades: the type called ‘pivé’, which was the most sought after; the grey fish; the large marketable; the medium marketable; the small marketable; the large scraps; and the small scraps. The grading was done according to the size of the fish, the condition of its flesh, and the quality of the salting and preservation. The prices varied by a range of 30–60 per cent, and sometimes even more.34 Through grading, prices were adapted to the budgets of different social groups, making it accessible to most people. The cod was not only graded, it was cut into pieces which, in turn, were also ranked: the tail, the most sought after and expensive part; followed by the fillets (from each side of the back); the back (that is, the upper part of the back); the flanks (the fillets from the belly); and finally the scraps: all of the residual bits and pieces that resulted from handling and the process of cutting up the fish.35 This manner of sectioning effectively socialized the consumption of the different parts of the body of the codfish and also conferred on it an additional power of class differentiation. The tails, fillets, and backs were destined for good bourgeois tables. Recipes for ‘codfish tail’, either stuffed or cooked in a saucepan, appear in cookbooks from the period.36 The flanks and scraps, which were not very meaty, were the least prized parts of the fish, as is suggested in this statement, rich in sexual connotations, from a Parisian servant in 1636: ‘I much prefer to see a fat sausage in my pot than a miserable codfish flank’.37 The top quality cod reached the best tables, and cod featured in the most refined French cookbooks. La Varenne, the cook for the bishop of Châlons, near Troyes – a location well inland – offered in his Cuisinier françois five recipes for codfish and another for codfish pâté.38 The only fish for which he provides more recipes is eel. This cookbook, intended for the aristocracy, circulated widely in France. First published in 1651, it witnessed some 50 editions during the second half of the seventeenth century. It reflects traditional cooking practices that had long been followed by the French aristocracy. Indeed, the Sire de Gouberville, a Norman gentleman who resided in a château near Cherbourg, in the Cotentin, ate codfish regularly beginning in 1554.39 Cod appeared even earlier on the table of La Morandière, Histoire, vol. 1, pp. 185–201. Jacques Savary des Bruslons, Dictionnaire (1959), p. 1002; and Delamare, Traité de la Police (3 vols, Paris, 1719), vol. 3, p. 114. 36 See the Cuisinier roial et bourgeois (Paris, 1691), p. 312; La cuisinière bourgeoise, attributed to Menon (Paris, 1746); and Jean-Louis Flandrin, ‘De la diététique à la gastronomie, ou la libération de la gourmandise’, in Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montanari (eds), Histoire de l’alimentation (Paris, 1996), p. 688. 37 Alfred Franklin, La vie privée d’autrefois, vol. 3, La cuisine (Paris, 1888), p. 19. 38 La Varenne, Le cuisinier françois, ed. Jean-Louis Flandrin and Philip and Mary Hyman (Troyes, 1651; Paris, 1983), pp. 62–7 and 239–51. 39 Abbé A. Tollemer, Un Sire de Gouberville: gentilhomme campagnard au Cotentin de 1553 à 1562 (Paris, 1972), pp. 137–43; Philip and Mary Hyman, ‘Table et sociabilité au 34

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the Albret family, the family of Henri IV, the future king of France, whose château is in Pau, at the foot of the Pyrenees.40 When she went to live in Paris, Catherine de Bourbon, the sister of Henri IV, brought with her this custom from her native Pau; she purchased salted cod regularly, along with sole, turbot, red mullet, salmon, and other noble fishes.41 This distinctive aristocratic taste for cod was not limited to a few families from isolated regions. In 1583, Messire Bernard de Nogaret, Seigneur de La Valette, Councillor to the king and his majesty’s Lieutenant General for the Piedmont, made sure that the table of his Parisian residence would be well stocked with salted cod and ‘all sorts of meat, fowl, game, fresh- and saltwater fish, tallow candles and other things’, by signing a provisioning contract with a Paris merchant.42 In the same year we find salted cod listed in a second provisioning contract, this time signed by Monseigneur Charles de Lorraine, Duke of Aumale, Prince of Metz, Peer of France and Knight in the two Orders of the king, who resided in the manor of Aumale located near the Louvre château (which was serving as the royal palace at the time).43 Cod figured in the privileged diet of both religious and secular institutions, which were well provisioned and generally not vulnerable to food shortages. It often appeared on the tables in the refectories of ecclesiastical institutions: establishments that served as models in matters of food, perhaps even more than aristocratic tables. In the middle of the sixteenth century, the nuns of the abbey of Sainte-Croix in Poitiers, who rigorously observed the days of fasting and abstinence of the Catholic calendar, bought codfish two or three times a week: on Wednesdays, Fridays, sometimes the sporadic Saturdays that were also days of abstinence, and almost every day during Lent.44 Male religious communities, such as the Jacobin monastery of Bayonne, followed similar provisioning practices. Moreover, the Jacobins incurred extraordinary expenses for the purchase of cod and other fish when they received important visitors. For example, on the occasion of the visit of the Prior, they bought cod as well as eels, a turbot, and a head of a XVIe siècle: l’exemple du Sire de Gouberville’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine (1984): 465–71; and Barbara Ketcham Wheaton, L’office et la bouche: histoire des mœurs de table en France, 1300–1789 (Paris, 1983), pp. 84–6. 40 Salted codfish appears in the household accounts of the Albret family beginning in 1538; see S. Amanda Eurich, The Economics of Power: The Private Finances of the House of Foix-Navarre-Albret during the Religious Wars (Kirksville, 1994), p. 133; and Archives Départementales des Pyrénées-Atlantiques (hereafter, ADPA), series B, 100–101, Journal de la dépense ordinaire de la maison d’Henri IV, roi de Navarre (1586–87). 41 Robert Le Blant, ‘Marché de viandes et de poisson pour Catherine de Bourbon’, in Actes du 93e Congrès national des Sociétés savantes tenu à Tours, vol. 1, ‘Les problèmes d’alimentation’ (Paris, 1971), pp. 140–41. 42 AN, Minutier central des notaires, LXXXVII–52, 30 May 1583. 43 Ibid. 44 Gérard Jarousseau, ‘L’alimentation dans l’Abbaye Sainte-Croix de Poitiers en 1546 et 1547’, in Actes du 93e Congrès, pp. 257–77.


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shad.45 Cod was popular in secular institutions too. In 1639–40, the five instructors and seven valets of the great Stable of the château of Richelieu at Rueil consumed, on days of abstinence, two good soups, two carp, two platters of eight eggs each, two omelettes of eight eggs each, a ‘good plate of cod’, a salad, and four platters of fruits, morning and evening.46 The navy also ordered large quantities of cod to feed the crews during military campaigns at sea.47 And there were no account books for hospitals or convents that did not show regular purchases of codfish. Although more difficult to assess, the consumption of codfish in well-to-do city households also appears to have been widespread, at least among those who could afford to buy a relatively expensive food and to enrich their diet on days of abstinence. Cod graced servants’ tables in large houses, hostels, and inns.48 Among the customers of the fish merchants who figure in the notarial records of Bordeaux, there appear a good number of artisans: carpenters, coopers, boatmen, and surgeons. We also find merchants, shopkeepers, and the entire administrative world of minor officials and clerks. This category of customer was continually solicited by the fishmongers, who set up their stalls in all of the markets and even at major crossroads on days of abstinence.49 But the cod eaten in these milieus was evidently of average or inferior quality. The accounts of the Bordelais merchant Dubergier clearly indicate that the large codfish were for his own table and the medium ones for that of his servants.50 Cod was also consumed by the lower classes, although not as often, and in smaller quantities. Its consumption in the rural areas was limited almost entirely to the period of Lent. Additionally, the sick and the poor ate cod in hospitals. It figured regularly in the menus of the Saint-André hospital in Bordeaux, the HôtelDieu in Angers, and the Hôtel-Dieu in Nantes.51 However, once the invalid left the hospital, he could no longer afford to buy fish, except perhaps for scraps. Farm 45 ADPA, H. 105, Livre des recettes et dépenses du Couvent des Jacobins de Bayonne, January 1621. 46 Pierre Couperie, ‘Régimes alimentaires dans la France du XVIIe siècle’, Annales, Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations (1963): 1135. 47 Alain Croix, La Bretagne aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles: la vie, la mort, la foi (Paris, 1981), p. 819; Bernard, Navires, pp. 812–13. 48 Hyman, ‘Table et sociabilité’: 466–7. 49 Francisque Habasque, Comment Agen mangeait au temps des derniers Valois (Agen, 1887), pp. 32–5; and ADG, 3E 2407, fols 128r–v, sale of eight pipes of codfish to Josseline Grout (9 April 1555); ADG, 3E 2417, fols 501v–502, sale of salted cod (7 September 1564); ADG, 3E 5406, fols 609–610v, sale of codfish to several fish merchants (23 October 1565). 50 ADG, 7B 2463, Livre journal of Pierre Detchegaray. 51 ADG, H. Suppl. Hôpital Saint-André de Bordeaux, comptabilité, VII E 9–73 (1602– 1717); François Lebrun, Les hommes et la mort en Anjou aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles: essai de démographie et de psychologie historiques (Paris and The Hague, 1971), p. 272; and Croix, Bretagne, pp. 818–19.


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workers were sometimes treated to cod when working on the holdings of major landowners at the time of the threshing or the grape harvest.52 But herring and sardines seem to have been more common among the working classes. When the priests of the Jacobin monastery at Bayonne, who themselves ate cod all the time, employed five carpenters and masons to repair their church in 1591, they bought herring, sardines, and fresh fish for them during Lent, but no cod.53 The phenomenal increase in the consumption of codfish was neither a result of low prices, nor of the practice of fasting amongst Catholics. Cod was a rather expensive protein in Renaissance France. It was much more costly to purchase than any other salt fish, such as herring, sardine, or anchovies. Medium to highgrade cod was more expensive than chicken, pork, beef, and most other common meats. It was only surpassed by the choice pieces of lamb and veal. Although the Christian tradition of abstinence certainly stimulated the consumption of codfish during the sixteenth century,54 one must not overstate its importance. First, the custom of eating fish on days of fasting was firmly established in the Middle Ages and therefore existed long before the appearance of cod from the New World. Secondly, fasters could chose from a large variety of fresh or salted fish. Thirdly, the consumption of fish on fast days was not an obligation. Fish was an option, but so too were eggs, butter, cheese, and dried and fresh vegetables, all of which were cheaper than salted fish.55 Far from being a response to a constraint, then, the consumption of fish was dictated by choice and taste. Fish was often more appreciated than meat. The sixteenth-century French philosopher, Michel de Montaigne, recognized the superior status of fish: ‘Fish has always had the privilege, as it still does, that the great have pretensions of knowing how to prepare it; and indeed its taste is much more exquisite than that of flesh, at least for me’.56 Later in the essays he adds, ‘I am very fond of fish, and I fast on my fat days, and make of fast days my days of feast’.57 Montaigne is not an isolated case. The Vicomte d’Apigné, who resided close to Rennes, ate fish more often than the

Pierre Charbonnier, ‘La consommation des seigneurs auvergnats’, Annales, Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations 30 (1975): 473. 53 ADPA, H. 100, Livre de recettes et dépenses du Couvent des Jacobins de Bayonne, fols 121v–124. 54 There were a total of 166 days designated for abstinence during the year, which corresponded to the holy days of the Christian calendar: the 40 days of Lent; three days at the beginning of each season; the vigils or watches of the great festivals (All Saints’, Christmas, Pentecost, and so on); and the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday of each week. 55 Dictionnaire du droit canonique, ‘Jeûne’, pp. 139–40; Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, ‘Carême’, pp. 1724–50; Emile Vacandard, ‘Les origines du carême’, Revue du clergé français 38 (March 1904): 124–45. 56 Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays of Montaigne, trans. Donald M. Frame (Stanford, 1976), p. 218. 57 Ibid., p. 846. 52


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observance of abstinence required.58 Drawing his inspiration from the Christian custom and no doubt also from local tradition, Protestants were as partial to fish as Catholics. The Albret family, at the vanguard of the Reform movement, procured fish on the days of abstinence throughout the sixteenth century.59 Indeed, although the Reformed church in France was opposed to the doctrine of transubstantiation, it never condemned the use of fish on days of abstinence.60 In the first half of the seventeenth century, English travellers to France remarked that the French ate a great deal of fish, not by obligation, but by preference. A Scottish student in Poitiers, John Lauder, noted that nine out of ten Frenchmen preferred fish to meat because they considered it ‘more delicate to the palate’.61 Consuming the New Land Codfish was sought after and widely consumed because it satisfied a French longing for space and a desire to consume the New Land. Eating is a powerful political act, and taste the expression of ideological and political agendas.62 Foods are also directly linked to space, and eating represents the appropriation of territory. The food we eat is usually associated with its place of origin; the name of the food evokes the essence of the place it came from, an essence rooted in the local soil, climate, and history.63 To eat an exotic or foreign food is to bring that other place to one’s own place and even into oneself, to domesticate it and make it familiar.64 Further, the act of eating expresses not only the consumption of the place from which the food came, but also a double process of ‘spatialization’: both the geographical displacement of the product consumed and the compression of space or distance that this entails as the food is transported from the site of production to the market, house, table, plate, mouth, and finally, digestive tract.65 This act of incorporation enacts a miniaturization of space and a reduction in scale, Croix, Bretagne, p. 827. Eurich, Economics, p. 133. 60 Jean-Marc Daumas, ‘La cène dans la conception de l’Église réformée’, in La table et la partage (Paris, 1986), pp. 179–83. 61 Cited in Jean-Louis Flandrin, ‘Choix alimentaires et art culinaire (XVI–XVIIIe siècle)’, in Flandrin and Montanari (eds), Histoire, pp. 679–80. 62 Bourdieu, Distinction, pp. 3–12. 63 Michèle de La Pradelle, Les vendredis de Carpentras: faire son marché en Provence ou ailleurs (Paris, 1996), pp. 183–201. 64 Sidney Mintz, Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions into Eating, Culture, and the Past (Boston, 1996), pp. 18–21. 65 Ian Cook and Philip Crang, ‘The World on a Plate: Culinary Culture, Displacement and Geographical Knowledges’, The Journal of Material Culture, 1/1 (1996): 132–7; David Bell and Gill Valentine, Consuming Geographies: We are Where We Eat (London, 1997), pp. 9–13, 44–5. 58

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thereby integrating the exterior world into the body. According to Susan Stewart, the consumption of an exotic object ‘represents distance appropriated. … Space is transformed into interiority, into “personal” space’.66 As well as producing a geographical inversion (the outside inside), ingestion culminates in a conversion, in the sense that the eater is physically and morally fortified by the experience. This conversion must be unceasingly renewed, if it is to last. As Michael Deitler suggests, ingestion involves the destruction of the object consumed; once withdrawn from circulation, it cannot (unlike durable goods) be reintroduced into the circuit of exchange.67 To reproduce the object and assure the repetition of the act of consumption, the necessary labour force and capital must be continually mobilized. Consuming an exotic object requires a symbolic appropriation of the place of origin and at the same time an occupation of that territory, in order to make appropriation possible. It is because of this double affiliation with territories that consumption and colonization are so intimately linked and the production of food so central to the phenomena that accompany colonization.68 In a study that has become a classic, Sidney Mintz has shown how the consumption of sugar in Europe developed at lightning speed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as an expression of the desire to control the exotic, far-away spaces that were the West Indies.69 The Europeans mobilized hundreds of thousands of slaves, launched proto-industrial forms of cultivation and refining processes, and assured the maritime transport of considerable quantities of sugar, just to add a little sweetness to their diet. Far from being a nutrient needed to sustain life, sugar was and is a pure object of pleasure. This conspicuous consumption appears all the more flagrant when we think that sugar often served to sweeten and stimulate the consumption of other colonial products – coffee, cocoa, and tea – which would have been considered inedible without it. We know that codfish was considered an exotic product in the sixteenth century because the name of its place of origin, the New Land, is regularly paired with the name of the fish in the documents of the period. In the earliest French record that concerns a fishing expedition to Newfoundland, found in Rouen and dating from 1510, the notary specifies that the fish in question is cod that the crew had gone to seek in parts of the New Land.70 An agreement made between the monks of the abbey of Beauport-en-Kéritry in Brittany and the residents of the island of Bréhat in December 1514 again associates this product with its place of origin; the text stipulates that the fishermen from the island should tithe for fish caught in the New

66 Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Durham, NC, 1993), p. 147. 67 Michael Dietler, ‘Feasts and Commensal Politics’, p. 90. 68 John and Jean Comarroff, Of Revelation and Revolution: The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier (Chicago, 1997), pp. 219–22. 69 Mintz, Sweetness, pp. 63–7, 154–8. 70 Mollat, Commerce, p. 263.


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Land.71 In Bayonne, too, beginning in 1520, the Gascon registers indicate that the fish came from the New Land.72 This use of the place name became even more widespread toward the middle of the century, as the fishing developed extensively. In Bordeaux, long before wine had acquired this privilege,73 the contracts for sales of cod drawn up by notaries indicated ‘codfish from the New Land’; the same is true of the provisioning contracts of the great aristocratic houses of Paris.74 And La Varenne, in his celebrated Cuisinier françois, titles one of his recipes ‘Codfish from the New Land’; of the 93 recipes he provides for fish, this is the only one to which he attributes a place name.75 The toponym of ‘New Land’ appears to have been a French invention. The French notaries employed exclusively the term ‘New Land’, starting with the very first fishing contracts at the beginning of the sixteenth century, no doubt following the usage that was common among their clients: the merchants, shipowners, and of course the fishermen who frequented the new territory. This popular appellation was soon regularized; Jacques Cartier used only the term ‘New Land’ in his reports to the French king detailing his three voyages to North America.76 Similarly, Jean Fonteneau, called Alfonse de Saintonge, who accompanied Cartier and Roberval to Canada, used ‘The New Land’ in the cosmography he wrote at La Rochelle in 1543–44.77 Jean Cabot, the Italian navigator in the employ of the king of England, who ‘discovered’ that part of the world in 1497, simply called it ‘Land of the Codfish’ (‘Terra de los Bachalaos’).78 Several years later, Pietro Martyre d’Anghiera, an Italian in the service of the king of Spain, explained that Cabot called those lands ‘Baccallaos’ after the name of a certain fish found there.79 Likewise, the Italian navigator Giovanni Da Verrazano recounted, in his narrative of his voyage along the American coasts in 1524, that this land – discovered, Julien, Découvertes, pp. 25–6. Registres gascons, vol. 2, p. 281. 73 Jacques Bernard, ‘Le mouvement économique: horizons nationaux et internationaux’, in Histoire de Bordeaux, ed. Charles Higounet, vol. 3: Bordeaux de 1453 à 1715, ed. Robert Boutruche (Bordeaux, 1966), pp. 103–4. 74 Pierre Couperie, ‘Les marchés de pourvoierie: viandes et poissons chez les Grands au XVIIe siècle’, Cahiers des Annales, 28 (Paris, 1970): 246, Table 3. 75 La Varenne, Cuisinier, pp. 247–8. 76 Jacques Cartier, Voyages au Canada de Jacques Cartier, avec les relations des voyages en Amérique de Gonneville, Verrazano et Roberval, ed. Charles-André Julien (Paris, 1984), pp. 95, 101, 129, 195. 77 Henry Harrisse, Découverte et évolution cartographique de Terre-Neuve et pays circonvoisins, 1497–1501–1769 (Paris, 1900), pp. 156, 225. 78 William Francis Ganong, Crucial Maps in the Early Cartography and PlaceNomenclature of the Atlantic Coast of Canada (Toronto, 1964), p. 41. 79 Miren Egaña Goya and Brad Loewen, ‘Dans le sillage des morutiers basques du Moyen Âge: une perspective sur l’origine et la diffusion du mot bacallao’, in Michel Mollat du Jourdin (ed.), L’aventure maritime, du golfe de Gascogne à Terre-Neuve (Paris, 1995), p. 246. 71 72


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according to him, by the Portuguese explorers Gaspar and Miquel Corte Real – is called ‘Bacalaia’ after the name of a fish.80 Nearly all the Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish cartographers and historians of the period retained this name. Although the Portuguese employed the term ‘Terra dos Corte Realis’ at the beginning of the century, in honour of their own explorers, by mid-century they usually opted for the more customary ‘Baccalaos’.81 Only the French declined to use this term. The French cartographers of the Dieppe school were the first Europeans who regularly used the name ‘New Land’ on their maps.82 On what is probably the earliest of the Dieppe maps, produced by an anonymous cartographer in about 1540 and preserved at The Hague, ‘The New Land’ is written in large letters along the coast, to indicate not only the island itself but also the gulf and the coasts that extend to the south.83 Newfoundland appears on the map attributed to Vallard (1547), again on the planisphere of Pierre Desceliers (1550), and – this time in capital letters – on the maps in the atlas of Guillaume Le Testu (1556).84 Even the Italian chronicler Ramusio, in his compilation of travel narratives published in Venice in 1556, adopted the French practice and used the name ‘Terra Nuova’.85 After that, the usage spread.86 The French, who could not claim any other part of the 80

Cartier in Julien, p. 104. Nevertheless, the cartographer Hieronymo Da Verrazano, the explorer’s brother, draws nearer to the French tradition in his map of 1529, for he designates Newfoundland with the expression ‘Terra Nova sive le molve’; see Harrisse, Découverte, pp. 94, 98. 81 Ibid., p. 110. 82 Egaña Goya and Loewen, ‘Sillage’, pp. 241–3; Mollat du Jourdin, Sea, pp. 226–49. The Flemish cartographer Johannes Ruysch was the first European to use ‘Terra Nova’ on his map of 1508, engraved and published in Rome. He noted alongside, ‘In. Baccalavras’, as if hesitating between the French and Iberian designations. Harrisse speculates that Ruysch obtained the name of ‘Terra Nova’ and the information to create his map (which is remarkably precise) from the Bretons of Armorique who were fishing in Newfoundland from the very beginning of the sixteenth century; see Harrisse, Découverte, p. 60. The expression ‘New Land’ may have also come from the English tradition because it does show up in the Bristol documents of the early sixteenth century; see J.A. Williamson, The Cabot Voyages and the Bristol Discovery Under Henry VII (Cambridge, 1962), pp. 214–16, 226–7, 248–9, 263. I am very grateful to Dr Evan Jones for giving me the reference to the work of Williamson. 83 Michel Mollat du Jourdin, ‘Le témoignage de la cartographie’, in Fernand Braudel and Michel Mollat du Jourdin (eds), Le Monde de Jacques Cartier: L’Aventure au XVIe siècle (Paris and Montréal, 1982), pp. 161–3. 84 Michel Mollat du Jourdin and Monique de La Roncière, Sea Charts of Early Explorers (13th to 17th Century), trans. by L. le R. Dethan (New York, 1984), maps 40, 47, and 50. 85 Ramusio, Navigationi, fol. 423. 86 In the early seventeenth century, Marc Lescarbot, Samuel de Champlain, and Pierre de Vaulx used only the term ‘Terre-Neuve’ (New Land); see Harrisse, Découverte, pp. 291– 9; Mollat and La Roncière, Sea, map 71. This term was also adopted by the Flemish, Dutch, and English cartographers; see Harrisse, Découverte, pp. 281–90.


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Americas, made this region – which Cartier reported to be rocky and inhospitable – their own ‘New World’, while for the Portuguese and the Spanish it remained, more banally, the land of the codfish. As its name suggests, the New Land evoked the mythic origins of a virgin territory, exempted from original sin, a paradise that sheltered the fountain of eternal youth.87 The term expressed the hope of attainment of the utopia of the terrestrial paradise, promised in the Apocalypse – a world dating from before the Fall, in which Christians could live in harmony with the elements and establish a direct and peaceful relation with their creator. There would be no need to cultivate the land, for Nature would take care of all, bringing forth her rich fruits and offering them to humanity. This belief in a hidden paradise was rooted in the myth of the Fortunate Isles, whose name expresses this notion of spontaneous abundance. The island of the Cyclops, or Jasconius, the giant cetacian taken for an island, or the island of Avalon, with its luxuriance and its perfumes, all came from the same cradle: the ancient Mediterranean. In his Étymologies, the medieval scholar Isidore of Seville undertook to describe this paradise and to make these islands into Atlantic islands, a notion which all of the geographers of the Middle Ages espoused in turn.88 As with the ancient islands, these ‘Atlantic’ islands were supernatural, linked to the other world and to the sacred. As symbols of divine power and eternal happiness, they met with great success in the Gallic tradition and assumed various names that characterized the pleasures to be found on them: the ‘Land of the Youths’, ‘Land of the Living’, ‘Land of Happiness’, and ‘Land of the Happy’.89 From this long tradition of utopian names, only a small lexical mutation was needed to arrive at ‘New Land’. The New Land became firmly fixed in the French imagination. When he made his first voyage there in 1532, Jacques Cartier would remark with surprise that these newly discovered lands did not resemble those described in the mythical accounts; he did not see a ‘charity of land’, but only ‘moss and scrubby trees’. Disappointed, he declared that this could not possibly be called the New Land, for he reckoned instead that this must be ‘the land that God gave to Cain’.90 But the Breton explorer was not able to dislodge the myth, and the New Land (from whence the British ‘Newfoundland’) kept its name. The Grand Bank marked the entrance into this new space; it was the borderland between ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Worlds. In 1541, Nicolas Desliens, the father of the Dieppe school of cartography, represented the banks of Newfoundland by a double dotted line that encircled, like a border, Newfoundland and the entire region located

87 Frank Lestringant, L’Huguenot et le Sauvage: l’Amérique et la controverse coloniale, en France, aux temps des Guerres de Religion, 1555–1589 (Paris, 1990), p. 265. 88 Jean Delumeau, Une histoire du paradis (Paris, 1992), pp. 15–35, 70–80, 129–52. 89 Henri Touchard, ‘Souvenirs et mythes atlantiques dans l’imaginaire des marins’, in Braudel and Mollat du Jourdin (eds), Monde, pp. 95–110. 90 Cartier, Voyages, p. 101.


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between Labrador and Cape Breton.91 The other cartographers of the Dieppe school followed his lead – Jean Rotz in 1542, the anonymous author of the Harleian map of 1543, Pierre Desceliers in 1546 – as did the Italian cartographer Jacopo Gastaldi, whose work was published by Ramusio.92 Henceforth, the banks were a part of, and at the same time marked the entrance to, this territory.93 In the same way that crossing the equator encouraged the emergence of rites of passage,94 the frontier zone represented by the Grand Bank inspired feasts of commemoration and rituals of consumption among the fishermen. Although fleeting, these moments represented high points of the voyage and allowed for a marking of the place. The Bank became a ‘practiced space’, in the sense that Michel de Certeau has given the term, that is, a site where a strategy of appropriation of space is deployed.95 To invest a place with agency is also a means to demarcate borders and establish a territory. The border is closely tied to the modern State, which claims the exclusive right to fix boundaries, so as to better impose its political will on the space it wants to construct.96 As soon as the ships arrived at the Bank, they stopped, took down their sails, and fished; the codfish caught in this first fishing was consumed fresh by the members of the crew and the travellers on board. The lawyer Marc Lescarbot, who in 1606 accompanied Du Gua de Monts, Champlain, and a group of colonists to found the first French colony in North America (at Port-Royal in Acadia), described in detail this rite of passage on the Grand Bank. Their arrival at the Bank sparked rejoicing and feasting, perhaps all the more because of the colonial nature of the mission: ‘I cannot describe the joy we felt, seeing ourselves there where we had so desired to arrive. There were no more sick people, everyone jumped for joy, and we felt ourselves to be in our country’.97 At this moment of first sighting, out on the Bank, Lescarbot and his companions felt themselves to be already in the New Land. He hastens to explain that the Bank is a land under the sea which reaches up almost to the surface of the water, and which abounds in codfish. More than a geographical curiosity, the Bank was an emerging territory; for Lescarbot, this land, nearly springing from the ocean like a primitive scene of creation, was already ‘our country’. The next day, at dawn, they all set their sights on codfish: ‘We spent the day fishing for cod, with a thousand rejoicings and

Harrisse, Découverte, p. 199. Ibid, pp. 208, 252, and plates XII and XIII; Mollat and La Roncière, Sea, map 40; and Ramusio, Navigationi, pp. 424–5. Gastaldi, in Ramusio, prolongs the line representing the banks all the way to southern New England. 93 Mollat and La Roncière, Sea, p. 227. 94 A. Arnold, ‘The Equator Crossing Ceremony: Origins and Purpose’, in Patricia A. Carlson (ed.), Literature and Lore of the Sea (Amsterdam, 1986), pp. 32–9. 95 Michel de Certeau, L’invention du quotidien: arts de faire (Paris, 1990), p. 173. 96 Daniel Nordman, Frontières de France: de l’espace au territoire, XVIe–XIXe siècle (Paris, 1998), pp. 10–12. 97 Lescarbot, Histoire, p. 571. 91 92


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contentments’. No festival without a meal. As quickly as the settlers caught the fish, they were decapitated, eviscerated, cut into pieces, and consumed: Those who were not fishing for Cod or catching birds, passed the time by gathering up the hearts, tripes, and most delicate interior parts of the said Codfish, which they chopped up and mixed with lard, spices, and the flesh of these Codfish, making sausages as good as those made in Paris. And they ate them with a great appetite.98

This practice continued throughout the seventeenth century, for it is described in numerous travel narratives from New France: those of Paul Lejeune, of the Baron de Lahontan, and of Bacqueville de La Potherie, among others. It was not just the flesh of the fish that was eaten, but especially the more delicate, choice morsels from its interior: the hearts and tripes. It is surely not by chance that it was these vital organs of the thoracic and abdominal cavities that were sacrificed for the feast. In the Christian culture of the Renaissance, the heart and especially the stomach (tripe) represented the most profound, intimate and essential elements of a creature, the core of its identity. Claudine FabreVassass points out that the soul of the pig, that other animal whose slaughter and consumption was highly ritualized among Christians, was lodged in the stomach and intestines of the animal, which were used to make meat sausages and blood sausages.99 To eat codfish tripes therefore was to consume the very essence of the fish. To further decompose its identity, they chopped up the viscera and flesh with spices and lard, and mixed it all together to make ‘cervelas’, a sort of short, fat sausage.100 Thus the tripes were reintroduced into the digestive tube. The circle was closed: the essence of the fish was reduced, transformed, and reconstituted so as to be incorporated into the bowels of the colonizer. The bowels that devour are in turn devoured, to cite a highly charged expression of Mikhail Bakhtin, coined in his analysis of the joyous feast of ‘fat tripes’ in Rabelais’s Gargantua.101 As Bakhtin pointed out, intestines in French Renaissance culture represented the abundance and fullness of material goods. What is even more striking in this case is that codfish, normally considered a lean food, is eaten here as a fat food, with lard and spices, in the form of a sausage. Did Lescarbot not want to suggest that in the New Land the lean foods nourish as much as the fat? Cod tripes were not only consumed on the Bank of Newfoundland; they became a very popular dish at the French court and in Parisian aristocratic circles. We never 98

Ibid., p. 572. Claudine Fabre-Vassas, La bête singulière: les juifs, les chrétiens et le cochon (Paris, 1994), p. 319. 100 The French term ‘cervelas’ comes from the Italian cervelato, which is a rather spicy sausage, usually made with pork meat and brains. 101 Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky (Cambridge, MA, 1968), p. 226. 99


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find them mentioned in provincial notarial records or hospital account books, or in the accounts of convents and monasteries. However, they figure regularly in the provisioning contracts of the great houses of Paris.102 The Duke of Aumale, residing near the Louvre, bought them by the hundreds during Lent. And they even reached the table of the king. The menu of the sumptuous ‘lean’ dinner (that is, for a day of abstinence) served in honour of Queen Elisabeth of Austria, the wife of Charles IX, on the occasion of her formal entry into Paris on 30 March 1571 included 200 codfish tripes, along with sturgeon, sea breams, turbot, and salmon.103 Cod tripes are the only fish tripes mentioned in provisioning contracts. Moreover, in his FrenchEnglish dictionary of 1611, Cotgrave devotes more than a quarter of his article on tripes to cod tripes – an indication of their importance among the different varieties – and he specifies that this is the stomach of the fish, which, dried and then put in water, becomes soft again, and that it is sold separately, during Lent.104 La Varenne takes great care to explain how to prepare them in his Cuisinier françois: first, they should be cooked in broth; then sautéed with butter, onion or chives, parsley, salt, and pepper; and finally, a little vinegar and nutmeg should be added.105 These are the only fish tripes for which La Varenne gives a recipe. And this singularity is not unique to La Varenne, for no other fish tripes are found in early modern cookbooks.106 Thus, the consumption of cod tripes was not part of a pre-existing culinary tradition. It was a completely new practice that developed with the introduction of Newfoundland cod into France and that was reserved for this fish alone. The extraction and consumption of codfish tongues and livers was also a prevalent practice.107 Very early, French fishers adopted the habit of removing the tongue from the codfish, a rather tricky operation because it necessitates putting the hand into the mouth of the fish. It was the first gesture of the fishers as they drew the fish out of the water, an action that seems to express a desire to ‘silence’ this creature seized in the New Lands. In fact, the word ‘baccalao’ or ‘baccallà’, used first by the Portuguese and then by the Basques, Spanish, and Italians to designate codfish,108 comes from the expression ‘tu calla’ (‘be silent!’) or ‘va 102

Couperie, ‘Les marchés’, p. 246 and table 3. Jean Bourgeat, Les plaisirs de la table en France des Gaulois à nos jours (Paris, 1963), p. 104. 104 Cited in La Varenne, Cuisinier, p. 51. 105 Ibid., p. 249. 106 To my knowledge, the only place where a recipe appears for fish tripes, other than cod tripes, is in a recipe for a fish pâté called l’arbaleste de poisson in the printed version of the Viandier of Taillevent, from the end of the fifteenth century, which uses as basic ingredients pike tripes; see ibid., p. 50. 107 Lescarbot mentions cod livers a little later in his narrative. See Histoire, p. 568. References to the extraction of the livers to make oil appear in records from very early in the sixteenth century: ADG, 3E 9836, fols 1271v–1272r, 8 January 1546ns, sale at Bordeaux of ‘cod oil’ (‘d’huile de molue’); and La Morandière, Histoire, vol. 1, pp. 153, 157. 108 Egaña Goya and Loewen, ‘Sillage’, pp. 241–3. 103


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callar’ (‘hush yourself!’).109 Their use of this term suggests the importance of the idea of silencing the fish; its name derives, in some sense, from the treatment to which it was subjected.110 Particularized through this relation to speech, cod tongues were also spotlighted in another way; the fishermen mounted the tongues on wooden sticks so as to display them like trophies. Bearing the spoils of the vanquished fish, these brochettes of tongues served as an accounting of the take of each fisher at the end of the day and thus as a way to measure each man’s skill in comparison with the others. A good fisherman was recognized by the number of tongues he had taken. To accentuate this part of the fish, Pierre Belon illustrated the codfish with its mouth open and tongue sticking out, which he describes as ‘a beard under the chin’.111 Similarly, Guillaume Rondelet, in his treatise on fish, printed at Lyon in 1558, illustrates the codfish with its tongue, represented by a long strip of flesh hanging from the chin.112 Ramusio, following Belon and Rondelet, also took the trouble of depicting the codfish, spotlighting its tongue and vaunting its gastronomical value.113 Well identified by doctors and chroniclers, the codfish tongue was considered to be a choice piece. Generally, the fisherman saved it for his own consumption or sold it himself; we find allusions to cod tongues in texts relating to the Jacobin monastery at Bayonne and to the home of the Sire de Gouberville, the Norman gentleman from the Contentin.114 Fabre-Vassas, Bête, p. 272. There does not appear to have been a word for this North Atlantic fish in the Romance languages of southern Europe. The first written uses of ‘baccalao’ appear at the beginning of the sixteenth century in Portuguese (1500–01) and Spanish (1512): Egaña Goya and Loewen, ‘Sillage’, p. 248. It is possible that the word existed earlier in Basque (‘bakailau’ in modern Basque), but no written trace has survived, since this language was then exclusively a spoken language. The use of the word ‘morue’ in France is attested by Bordeaux documents from the second half of the fifteenth century: Bernard, Navires, p. 806. As the word was then written ‘moulue’ or ‘mourue’, and this fish was generally brought by the English, it is quite possible that the Bordelais adopted the English word ‘morhue’, employed in the Middle Ages (the modern term, ‘cod’ came into use only in the sixteenth century). According to Rondelet, ‘morhue’ or ‘molüe’ is the equivalent of ‘morhuel’ in English; see Guillaume Rondelet, Histoire entière des poissons (Lyon, 1558), p. 222. The word ‘morue’ must not have been very common in France in the fifteenth century, for it is not used to designate a fish in Frédéric Godefroy’s Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française et de tous ces dialectes du IXe au XVe siècle (Geneva, 1982). However, codfish has an important entry in Edmond Huguet’s Dictionnaire de la langue française du XVIe siècle (Paris, 1961); see ‘molue’. 111 Belon, Nature, p. 122. 112 Rondelet, Histoire, p. 29. 113 Ramusio, Navigationi, fol. 419. 114 ‘Codfish tongues as an appetizer’ (‘langues de morue pour Entrée’); ‘codfish tongues for supper’ (‘langues de mourue pour souper’); ADPA, H. 100, Livre des recettes et dépenses (1572–1604). On 19 December 1554, the Sire de Gouberville bought codfish and codfish tongues (‘de la mourue et des nooz de mourue’: the word ‘nooz’ coming no doubt from the English ‘nose’). 109

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The fishermen soon began to take out the cod livers and to extract the oil from them. Cod liver oil is entirely absent from documents dating from the end of the Middle Ages.115 It appears in the notarial records of Bordeaux in the 1540s, and they all concern fishing vessels returning from Newfoundland. Cod liver oil was rapidly commercialized by the barrel-full in the Bordelais back country.116 Unlike pelagic fish such as herring and sardines, whose fat is distributed throughout the flesh, cod, a demersal species, stores its fat in the form of oil in the liver. As the fishers cut up the fish, they took out these fatty livers and threw them into pails or barrels to let the oil seep from the decomposing livers. As was the case with the tripes, the grease or oil (the notaries of the period use these two terms indiscriminately) expressed the generous material and corporeal abundance of the New Land. Bakhtine reminds us that in Renaissance French culture fat was the metaphor par excellence for opulence and profusion.117 The livers of inferior quality served to make an oil destined for lamps or for treating furs, but the best ones were set aside to produce the high quality oil used in medicine. This fatty oil entered the pharmacopeia and was given to children to help their growth and to invalids as a tonic.118 This use as a dietary supplement has continued into the twenty-first century. Conclusion Consumption is a very central component of the political economy of colonization. During the sixteenth century the French actively consumed North American cod as a means of symbolically appropriating the geography of the ‘New Lands’ and making it a territory ripe for colonization. The desire for this product is expressed in high prices and widespread consumption, both geographically and socially. Codfish came to represent the essence of the New World, as French eaters began routinely to include cod in their diet, and to make of its tripes and tongues a delicacy, and of the oil from its liver a panacea. The fat tripes and the oily livers of the gluttonous codfish, which evoked the plenitude of the New World, nourished the devouring bowels of the Old. The tripes, extracted from the very core of the fish, were reserved for the aristocrats and the king himself, and brought back to Touchard, Commerce, pp. 58–61; Bernard, Navires, pp. 214–18, 806. ADG, E 4211, fols 55 and 120, 19 July 1543 and 26 January 1544ns, ‘grease of whale and cod’ (‘gresse de ballene et de moullue’); ADG, 3E 9836, fols 1271v–1272r, 8 January 1546ns, sale at Bordeaux of ‘cod oil’ (‘d’huile de molue’); ADG, C. 4092, Rolle des bateaux passés devant Marmande et les droits levés sur ceux du mois de juin 1593 au mois de décember 1594. 117 Bakhtine, Œuvre, pp. 221–4. 118 Degros, ‘Grande pêche’, no. 46 (October–December 1943): 224; ADG, H. Suppl. Hôpital Saint-André de Bordeaux, comptabilité, VII E 9 (1602–1617), ‘huile de morue pour les malades’. 115

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the centre of the realm to fortify those who incarnated Frenchness. North America was being incorporated into the French body and imagination, domesticated as it were. On the other side of the Atlantic, the new colonial territory, beginning with the Grand Bank, was being charted by rituals of consumption. To ensure the massive consumption of codfish in France, thousands of migratory French fishers occupied the Grand Banks and the coastal regions of the New Land annually, and familiarized themselves with the territory and its native populations. This first phase of colonization, which I have termed ‘proto-colonial’, set the stage for the establishment of a permanent population and a colonial administration in Canada at the beginning of the seventeenth century. But the widespread consumption of codfish also had important repercussions in France itself. I would suggest that it contributed to the building of a French national market and identity. By all consuming the same product, the French effectively shared a common good and could materially acknowledge belonging to the same national community. The grading of fish was a means of accommodating social differences within the community; this practice unified more than it divided, however, because it made the commodity accessible to everyone. Was creating a community of consumers not part of a larger cultural programme aimed at redefining the early modern French nation? In an effort to bring the country together under a common language, Francis I instituted the edict of Villiers-Cotteret in 1539, which made French the official language of government and the courts. It is surely not a coincidence that the following year the king granted to all of his subjects permission to fish in the New Lands, a measure which may have precipitated the outburst of activity at mid-century.119 In the visual arts, the first Fontainebleau School was then engaged in Frenchifying Italian artistic traditions. At about the same time, the Pléiade group of poets set out to reinvent French national literature in imitation of classical models. In a preface to his epic poem, La Franciade, the leader of the Pléiade, Pierre de Ronsard, draws a parallel between commerce and language, the economies of commodities and of words. He advises young poets to enrich their writing by borrowing from different French dialects, and by familiarizing themselves with the styles of other nations as well. To illustrate the effectiveness of the appropriation of foreign elements in language, he evokes New World imports: ‘as in our harbours and ports, merchandise sought from so far away as America is hawked everywhere …’.120 American commodities, like foreign words, had the power to unite and to regenerate French people. Timothy Hampton goes even further in his interpretation of the impact Ronsard attributes to these commodities: ‘They both make legible the edges of France and hold it

Biggar, A Collection of Documents, pp. 128–31. Pierre de Ronsard, ‘Préface sur la Franciade, touchant le poëme heroïque’, in Pierre de Ronsard, Œuvres complètes, ed. Jean Céard, Daniel Ménager, and Michel Simonin (2 vols, Paris, 1993), vol. 1, p. 1176 (pp. 1161–80). 119

120

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together in a way that a common language cannot yet do’.121 American products bound French people together perhaps even more than the French language itself. However, the vogue for codfish from the New Land progressively lost ground to other New World products, such as furs, tobacco, sugar, and coffee. Beginning in the second half of the seventeenth century, consumption waned and outfittings of ships for the New Land tapered off. French merchants now sought foreign markets for these fish that no longer sold so well in France. Toward the middle of the century cod tripes disappeared from the provisioning contracts of the great noble and bourgeois households.122 In hospitals and religious houses the consumption of cod declined, giving way to fattier foods. For example, at the Jacobin monastery in Bayonne about 60 per cent of the expenditure for the meat diet went for the purchase of fish and 40 per cent for red meat during the second half of the sixteenth century; the proportion is inverted a century later: 40 per cent of the funds for fish and 60 per cent for red meat.123 The privileged status of codfish as a lean food, permitted on days of abstinence, was more and more challenged by beans, eggs, and dairy products, and even by meats. At the end of the seventeenth century, Father Louis Thomassin in his Traité des jeûnes de l’Église (‘Treatise on the fasting of the Church’) calls for greater indulgence, especially regarding the consumption of beans, eggs, and dairy products.124 Codfish was no longer affiliated to the New Land in notarial records, treatises on natural history, and cookbooks. Henceforth, Canadian furs and Caribbean products, especially sugar and coffee, would be associated with the Atlantic New World, and the consumption and trade of these products would increase phenomenally. Once thoroughly colonized, Newfoundland would itself become a peripheral region in the New World as the centres of colonization moved towards the interior of the continent and the West Indies.

121 Timothy Hampton, Literature and Nation in the Sixteenth Century: Inventing Renaissance France (Ithaca and London, 2001), p. 194. 122 Couperie, ‘Les marchés’, p. 246. 123 Archives départementales des Pyrénées-Atlantiques (ADPA), Serie H. 100–112, Account Book from the Jacobin Monastery of Bayonne, 1577–1715. 124 Louis Thomassin, Traité des jeûnes de l’Église (Paris, 1680), p. 264.

Chapter 2

Negotiating Fortune: English Merchants in Early Sixteenth-Century Seville Heather Dalton

On 23 August 1522, a Castilian notary was called to a house in Seville to attend to the legal needs of an ailing English merchant, Thomas Malliard. His client died five days later, having dictated his will in the presence of his three executors, Roger Barlow, Robert Thorne, and Thomas Bridges. The day after Malliard’s death, the three executors met at the house of the deceased and Barlow assumed responsibility for sorting out the finances. Malliard had been a wealthy man and his will made generous provisions for his Spanish mistress, Beatriz Hernández, and their daughter Ana, as well as for his primary heir, his brother John, who lived in England. Barlow’s task was stymied, however, when Beatriz challenged the will, claiming to be Malliard’s wife rather than his mistress and insisting that she and Ana were entitled to a larger proportion of his estate. When a Franciscan friar, who had been Malliard’s confessor, attested in court that Malliard had recognized Beatriz as his legitimate wife, the judge ruled that her lawyer, Pedro López de Herrera, should take charge of the estate. Blanca Krauel explored the ensuing struggle over Malliard’s estate in her 1992 paper: ‘Events Surrounding Thomas Malliard’s Will, an English Merchant in Seville, 1522–23’. Using the 1522 records relating to the Consejo Real, held in the Archivo General de Simancas, Krauel set out to ‘consider the hostility towards the English in Seville by evaluating the circumstances relating to Thomas Malliard’s inheritance’. This chapter builds on Krauel’s research by placing it within a wider social context, using English documents such as wills and guild records, as well as notarial records held in the Archivo de Protocolos in Seville. It examines how Malliard and his executors came to be in Seville, how they amassed wealth, and how the involvement of a local power magnate, the converso Francisco del Alcázar, influenced the eventual settlement of Malliard’s substantial estate. Analysis of the activities and connections of the English merchants not only offers important insights into how they operated

Blanca Krauel, ‘Events Surrounding Thomas Malliard’s Will, an English Merchant in Seville,’ in S.G. Fernández-Corugedo (ed.), Proceedings of the 2nd Conference of the Spanish Society for English Renaissance Studies (Oviedo, 1992), p. 168. Consejo Real, 12/6, fols 22, 44–8, Archivo General de Simancas (AGS) in Krauel, ‘Events Surrounding Thomas Malliard’s Will’, p. 171. Ibid., pp. 167–75. Lawsuit contained in Consejo Real, 1522, 8/2 and 12/6, AGS.


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in the Andalusian port on the eve of the Reformation, but shows that they became both more wealthy, and played a more significant role in building industries and in trading with Spain’s Atlantic colonies, than previously thought. Seville: Gateway to the New World Seville, a port on the River Guadalquivir, had been the commercial centre of Andalucía during the fifteenth century, when ships traded with the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and the Canaries. The city was renowned for its olive oil, soap, leatherwork, pottery, and wine production, and as a gold market. During the reign of Henry VII, English traders settled at San Lucar de Barrameda, at the mouth of the Guadalquivir, where they enjoyed the protection of the Dukes of Medina Sidonia. The dukes set custom duties much lower than those charged elsewhere, and encouraged foreign merchants to trade from there. Although the English regularly complained that they were charged higher customs duties than other merchants, and that they rarely managed to retrieve debts in local courts, they prospered. In 1517 they persuaded the current duke to formalize their privileges, and to grant them land by the water where they could build a chapel dedicated to Saint George. However, by the early sixteenth century, when galleons had all but replaced galleys, sailing ships were unable to navigate the sandbar at San Lucar, meaning that cargoes had to be unloaded there and taken to Seville by flat-bottomed barge. Nonetheless, the inland port retained its monopoly over trade with the Indies. The Casa de la Contratación, the customs house, had been set up in Seville rather than Cadiz because it was the largest city and the centre of finance in Castile. As legislation demanded that all trade with the Indies was to pass through the Casa, this effectively gave the inland port a trading monopoly over the New World. This arrangement, which had come about on an ad hoc basis, was confirmed by royal decree in 1503. In 1504, one year after Seville’s monopoly had been enshrined in the initial spate of legislation, three registered ships left the city, bound for the Indies. Numbers increased steadily thereafter, and in 1520, 71 ships left from and 37 ships returned

J.N. Ball, Merchants and Merchantise: The Expansion of Trade in Europe 1500– 1630 (London, 1977), pp. 78–9; Hugh Thomas, Rivers of Gold: The Rise of the Spanish Empire (London, 2003), p. 471. Expertise in making soap and gold trading were skills that came from the long association with Islam. Gordon Connell-Smith, Forerunners of Drake: A Study of English Trade with Spain in the Early Tudor Period (London, 1954), p. 33. Ibid., pp. 82–9; Pauline Croft, The Spanish Company (London, 1973), pp. vii, viii. Clarence Henry Haring, Trade and Navigation between Spain and the Indies in the Time of the Hapsburgs (Gloucester, MA, 1964), pp. 30–31. The ports of San Lucar de Barrameda at the mouth of the Guadalquivir, Puerto de Santa María and Cadiz formed part of the commercial and legal entity administered from Seville.

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to Seville from the Indies. Although English merchants had traditionally received preferential treatment from local power magnates and could source raw materials in demand in northern Europe locally, the primary lure that Seville had for English merchants by the 1520s was that it was the focus of Spanish activity in the Indies. Malliard, Thorne, Bridges, and Barlow have received little attention from historians. When Roger Barlow is mentioned, it is generally only in relation to his failure to interest Henry VIII in exploratory voyages. In 1526, he sailed from Spain with Sebastian Cabot in search of a westerly sea route to the Spice Islands, and, in 1541, he presented Henry with an English translation of Martìn Fernández de Enciso’s Suma de Geographia Que Trata de Todas las Partidas en Prouincias del Mundo. He added descriptions of the Río de la Plata to Enciso’s cosmography in the hope of persuading the king to fund similar ventures, but he was, it seems, unsuccessful. Thomas Bridges has not attracted attention, although it is known that in 1520 his brother, Sir John Bridges, was Mayor of London, and that he may have been the ‘Thomas Brugge’ who held the position of ‘Waterbailiff of London’ in 1522.10 Robert Thorne, on the other hand, has received more attention, but generally in regard either to his role in establishing Bristol’s grammar school, or to his advocacy of his father’s role in early Atlantic voyages from that port. Although the wills of these men suggest that they accumulated substantial wealth trading with the New World, little is known about this community of English merchants in Seville during the first quarter of the sixteenth century.11 Of the studies that have considered this merchant community, the most detailed is that published by Gordon Connell-Smith in 1950, which acknowledges that the decade of the 1520s was the most prosperous for those who settled in Seville in the Tudor period.12 In the 1970s, David Beers Quinn conceded that English merchants Pierre Chaunu and Huguette Chaunu, Seville et l’Atlantique, 1504–1650, Tome 6: Tables Statistiques (Paris, 1956), pp. 160–67; Haring, Trade and Navigation Between Spain and the Indies, p. 339. Roger Barlow, A Brief Summe of Geographie, ed. E.G.R. Taylor (London, 1932); Heather Dalton, ‘Roger Barlow: Fashioning New Worlds from Old Words’, in Lisa Bailey, Lindsay Diggelmann and Kim Phillips (eds), Old Worlds, New Worlds: European Cultural Encounters 1100–1750 (Turnhout, 2009). 10 Caroline M. Barron, London in the Later Middle Ages: Government and People 1200–1500 (Oxford, 2004), Appendix 1: The Mayors and Sheriffs of London 1190–1558, and Appendix 2: Civic Office Holders c1300–c1500, p. 367. Sir John Bridges was sheriff of London in 1513–14, mayor in 1520–21. 11 Wills of: Thomas Malliard, 1522, Consejo Real, 12–6, 1522, fols 22–6, AGS; Roger Barlow, 1526, 5/1, fol. 447, Archivo de Protocolos de Sevilla (APS), 1553, PROB 11/40 and 1554, PROB 11/37, National Archives of the United Kingdom (NA); Robert Thorne, 1532, The Great Red Book of Bristol, pp. 124–30; Thomas Bridges, died in Seville after 1528, Arthur Collins and Egerton Brydges, Collins Peerage of England (London, 1812), vol. 6, p. 710. 12 Gordon Connell-Smith, ‘English Merchants Trading to the New World in the Early Sixteenth Century’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 23 (1950): 53–67; Forerunners of Drake.

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had legally penetrated ‘the trade of the Spanish Indies through their resident merchants in Spain’, but his principal concern was North America, and thus he concluded that this region was the focus of those in power during the reign of Henry VIII.13 Anthony McFarlane, on the other hand, in The British in The Americas, 1480–1815, argued that during the first half of the sixteenth century England’s merchants ‘were more interested in trade with Europe than the exploration and development of new commercial routes’, and suggested that it was not until the second half of the sixteenth century that they ‘sought to take advantage of the burgeoning colonial trades of the Iberian powers as parasites on the commerce of Spain and Portugal’.14 More recently, Evan Jones, writing specifically on Bristol, has argued that ‘for most of the sixteenth century’ that city ‘was more interested in profiting from the new wealth of Spain and its American colonies than in the North American lands that had been explored by the port’s own merchants’.15 The activities of Malliard, Thorne, Bridges, and Barlow certainly suggest that this was as true for the merchants of London as it was for those of Bristol. While the number of English merchants involved in trading with the New World from Seville was never large, their role was seldom simply parasitic. During the first 30 years of the sixteenth century, men like Malliard amassed large fortunes trading into the Atlantic in conjunction with Spanish and Genoese merchants. The Commercial Interests of Thomas Malliard and his Cohorts In the summer of 1522, Thomas Malliard, Roger Barlow, Thomas Bridges, and Robert Thorne were all resident in Seville. Bridges lived in the centre, near the Casa de la Contratación on Calle de Bayona. The street was known for its bookshops, and in the vicinity there were stores selling goods from places such as Genoa, Greece, Flanders, France, and England, as well as from the Indies. Bridges lived with Florentina Núñez and their son, John, and Thorne shared a household with his Spanish mistress, Ana García, and their son.16 As there is no record of 13 David Beers Quinn, England and the Discovery of America 1481–1620 (London, 1974), p. 160. 14 Anthony McFarlane, The British in The Americas, 1480–1815 (Harlow, 1994), pp. 15–16. 15 Evan Jones, ‘Bristol and the Forging of the Atlantic World in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’. Paper presented at ‘Port Histories: British Society and Maritime Culture’ (Annual Conference of the Regional History Centre, Bristol, 17 September 2005) and ‘Pioneers, Adventurers and the Creation of the Atlantic World’ (Colston Research Society Symposium, University of Bristol, 23–25 September 2005). 16 Connell-Smith, Forerunners of Drake, pp. 68–71; Clive Griffin, The Crombergers of Seville: the history of a printing and merchant dynasty (Oxford, 1988); Ruth Pike, ‘Seville in the Sixteenth Century’, Hispanic American Historical Review, 41/1 (1961): 12. When John Bridges sailed for Peru in 1534, he provided details of his parentage: 2 March


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Barlow having a separate abode, he may have lived with Thorne, or with Bridges or Malliard.17 Thomas Bridges was a Merchant Taylor from London who had been living in Seville from 1491.18 Robert Thorne, also a Merchant Taylor, came from a family of well-established Bristol merchants, which had traded with the Genoese in Rhodes, Cyprus, and Seville for at least three generations, and had enjoyed close relations with the Genoese Cataño family in Seville from the middle of the fifteenth century.19 Before settling in Seville, Thorne and Thomas Malliard had both moved to London because the cloth industry in their home city of Bristol had declined to the point where they could not acquire sufficient cloth to sustain their trade with the Iberian Peninsula.20 Roger Barlow came from Colchester, an important cloth producing and trading centre, and he had an uncle who was a Merchant Taylor.21 He and Malliard could well have been Merchant Taylors; however, this cannot be verified as the guild’s records for the period 1493 to 1530 are incomplete.22 In August 1517, Roger Barlow shipped ‘smigmates’ and aniseed into Bristol on the Antony, from the port of San Lucar. The only detail the customs officer noted was that Barlow was an indigenous rather than a foreign merchant.23 Only a few months before Malliard died, Barlow is recorded in the ledger of Thomas 1534, L.1,E.4048 and 4211, Catálogo de Pasajeros a Indias, vol. 1, Archivo General de Indias (AGI); Will of Robert Thorne, 1532, Consejo Real, 12–6, 1522, fols 22–6, AGS. 17 There is a possibility that Barlow was Malliard’s factor in Antwerp, the Canaries or Hispaniola and came to Seville in 1522 because Malliard was ailing. This would explain his role in sorting out Malliard’s estate. Research in these locations may well provide further evidence for this. 18 In 1528 Thomas Bridges was granted the right to trade with the Indies, having lived in Spain for thirty-seven years. Real Cédula of 21 August 1528, 421/13, fols 319v–320r, AGI; Records of Juan and Mateo de la Cuadra, 22 February to 22 December 1513, 1/2, fol. 823 and fol. 823 v., APS in Catálogo de los fondos Americanos de Archivo de Protocolos de Sevilla [CAPS] (Sevilla, 1937–2006), Tomo 3, nos 75 and 76. 19 Will of Robert Thorne, 1532. Robert Thorne is referred to as a ‘late Citizen and Merchant Taillour of London’ in an attachment to his will drawn up by his executors; R.C. Baldwin, ‘Thorne, Robert, the elder (c1460–1519)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; accessed 21/1/06; Ruth Pike, Enterprise and Adventure: The Genoese in Seville and the Opening of the New World (Ithaca, 1966), p. 73. 20 David Harris Sacks, The Widening Gate: Bristol and the Atlantic Economy, 1450– 1700 (Berkeley, 1991), pp. 30–34. 21 ‘List of Members, both Freemen and Brethren, of The Fraternity of Taylors and Armourers of Linen Armour of Saint John the Babtist in the City of London, 1398–1493’, MS 34033 436.3, The Guildhall Manuscript Collection, London, 3. 22 Matthew Davies and Ann Saunders, The History of the Merchant Taylors’ Company (Leeds, 2004), pp. 20–22. The guild’s financial accounts are missing between 1484 and 1545 and the guild did not start recording Court Minutes until 1562. 23 King’s Remembrances Customs Accounts, Controller’s Account 1516/17, E122/ 21/2, fol. 15v2 (nos 3309, 3310), NA. Accounts transcribed for ‘Ireland-Bristol Trade in the Sixteenth Century’, an ongoing project of The Department of Historical Studies, University

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Howell, a Seville-based Draper, as trading from Seville on 26 March 1522, and in the records of the Sevillian notary Manuel Segura on 18 July of that year.24 Segura records that Diego Rodríguez Pepino of Triana, the master of the San Anton, is to export between 70 and 80 pipes of wine for ‘Rogel Baral, mercader, vecino de esta cuidad de Sevilla’ and 20 tuns of wine and other merchandise for a Sevillian merchant, Luis Fernández, to Santo Domingo. As no Seville-based factor is mentioned in the agreement it is likely that both Barlow and Fernández had factors to look after their interests in Santo Domingo. Barlow and his fellow executor, Robert Thorne, sometimes employed a Sevillian, Juan de Marcia, to trade tallow, white soap, wrought tin iron, flour and other foodstuffs with the settlers of Santo Domingo, and he may have been the contact there. By trading in association with a Spanish merchant and employing a Spanish factor in Santo Domingo, Barlow was fulfilling the rules of the Casa as applied to foreign merchants.25 Thomas Malliard’s allegiances, wealth, and community connections, as well as his religious beliefs, are revealed in his will. Although he named his brother John, who lived in Malmesbury in Wiltshire, as his primary heir, Malliard left substantial money and property to other institutions and individuals. He stipulated that a portion of his estate was to be given to the monastery of San Francisco, where he wanted his body to be temporarily interred. His most generous bequest of 500 gold ducats was intended to fund the building of the English Church of Saint George in San Lucar, where he wanted to be permanently buried. He also left 100,000 maravedíes to ransom Christian captives in North Africa and to provide dowries for poor maidens. However, it is his bequests to his wife and daughter that suggest the complexities of Malliard’s life and the breadth of his commercial activities. He bequeathed some houses in Almonte, four slaves, and a yearly income of 34,000 maravedíes for life to Beatriz. He left Ana a dowry of 4,000 ducats which was to be increased by a further 2,000 if she fulfilled his wishes and married Sancho de Herrera, mayor of San Lucar de Barrameda and a member of the Sevillian family which owned the four smaller Canary Islands. It is possible that Beatriz’s lawyer and friend, Pedro López de Herrera, was related to Sancho de Herrera, which would have added impetus to of Bristol. ‘Smigmates’ is thought to be a type of soap. It was not until 1565 that Port Books began to record the domicile or occupation of the merchant. 24 Entry of 26 March 1522, Thomas Howell’s Ledger, fol. 10. The Worshipful Company of Drapers, London, Record of the Sevillian notary Manuel Sigura, 18 July 1522, 4/3, fol. 393v, APS in CAPS, Tomo V, no. 147. 25 Haring, Trade and Navigation between Spain and the Indies in the Time of the Hapsburgs, p. 109. In February 1505, King Ferdinand had answered the confusion of the Casa as to who were foreigners and who were not by declaring that ‘strangers’ living in Seville, Cadiz or Jerez, who had lived in Spain for over fifteen years, owned real estate in those places and who had settled with families should be considered Spaniards for the purposes of trade with the New World. This opinion was embodied in a decree, which included all foreigners resident in Castile as long as they traded in association with Spanish merchants and employed Spaniards as their factors.


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his attempts to secure more of Malliard’s inheritance for Beatriz and Ana in order to benefit his kinsman.26 Malliard may have made contact with the Herrera family through his business interests on La Palma in the Canary Islands.27 From 1515 he was involved in the refining of sugar in partnership with Francesco Spinola at Río de Los Sauces on La Palma. The Spinolas were the largest Genoese merchant family in Seville and they enjoyed the power and influence that came from having connections with the local aristocracy.28 Records in the Archivo de Protocolos in Seville indicate that as early as 1509, Malliard was trading farther out into the Atlantic, with the Spanish settlement of Santo Domingo on Hispaniola.29 Initially, non-Castilian merchants were prohibited from supplying the settlements; such prohibitions were overlooked by those keen to ensure the survival of the Atlantic colonies, however, and they were subsequently modified.30 Many of the sugar mills on Hispaniola were owned by Genoese and it is likely that it was Malliard’s links with this community that led him to trade there. Although Malliard was recorded as a resident of Cadiz in 1512, he was living in Seville by 1516. His various businesses must have thrived for he was able to loan Sebastian Cabot a substantial sum when the navigator brought his family to the port in 1516.31 Malliard, Bridges, and Thorne also had a financial interest in local industries in Seville. They leased farmland in the vicinity of Jerez where there were extensive vineyards. In addition, Malliard owned cattle, houses, and land in Seville and Cadiz as well as in Almonte, a village belonging to the Dukes of Medina in the fertile region west of Seville, renowned for its olive groves and vineyards.32 Olive 26

Précis of Thomas Malliard’s will, Consejo Real 12/6, 1522, fols 22–6 or in 8/2, fols xxiii–xxviii, in Krauel, ‘Events Surrounding Thomas Malliard’s Will’, p. 169. The four smaller Canary Islands, Lanzarote, Fuerteventura, Ferro and Gomera were owned by the Herrera family from 1477 until the end of the eighteenth century. 27 There are notary documents in which Sancho de Herrera, referred to as the keeper of the town of San Lucar de Barrameda, is acting on behalf of members of the church in ‘la isla de la Gomera en Canarias’ and ‘Antigua en Terra Firme’. Records of Alonso de la Barrera, 16 May, 1525, 1/1, fols 784, 785, APS in CAPS, Tomo V, nos. 610, 611. 28 Felipe Fernández Armesto, The Canary Islands after the Conquest (Oxford, 1982), p. 168; Ruth Pike, Enterprise and Adventure, p. 2; Javier Mendez, Public Relations Officer of La Palma, ‘The History of La Palma’, accessed at http://www.ing.iac.es/PR/lapalma/ history/html, 1 September 2005; Cornell-Smith, Forerunners of Drake, p. 20. 29 Ibid., p. 19. Records of Bernal Gonzales Vallesillo, 17, 18 and 26 April, 18 June 1509, 15/1, folios unmarked, APS in CAPS, Tomo I, nos 634, 635, 653, 665. 30 Pike, Enterprise and Adventure, pp. 51–5; Ruth Pike, Aristocrats and Traders: Sevillian Society in the Sixteenth Century (Ithaca and London, 1972), p. 102. 31 Record of Manuel Segura, 15 July 1512, 4/4, fol. 25v., APS in CAPS, Tomo IIII, no. 148; Record of Juan de la Cuadro, 9 May 1516, 1/1, folios unmarked, APS in CAPS, Tomo 1, no. 1297 and Apéndice XVIII; Henry Kamen, Spain’s Road to Empire: The Making of a World Power (London, 2003), pp. 31–2. 32 Krauel, ‘Events Surrounding Thomas Malliard’s Will’, p. 178, Consejo Real, 12– 16, fols xxii–xxvi, AGS; Alfonso Franco Silva, La esclavitud en Andalucía, 1450–1550

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oil was used to make white Castilian soap at the Reales Almonas – the Royal Soap Factory in Triana. By the early 1520s, both Malliard and Thorne had each acquired a quarter share in this substantial factory, as well as a smaller factory in San Salvador in the centre of Seville, and had begun exporting soap to England, Flanders, and Spain’s Atlantic settlements.33 In 1522 the four shareholders were Malliard, Thorne, Thorne’s Genoese friend and business associate, Leonardo Cataño, and a Spanish banker, Alonso de Melgar.34 This placed them in a powerful position, for soap was essential to the manufacture of woollen cloth as well as being used in the domestic sphere. The soft mottled soap manufactured in Bristol was considered to be the best in England, yet it could not equal the white Castile soap when it came to fine laundry work.35 Although Malliard traded mainly in sugar, olive oil, and soap, the inventory taken by his executors indicates that he also traded in both English and Welsh cloths, and in Flemish and German embroidered handkerchiefs and tablecloths, as well as iron, steel, firearms, and African slaves.36 He may have become involved in the slave trade as early as 1509, as part of his trading activities with Hispaniola. Spain’s expansion reached its peak there at around that time and, as native populations diminished, sugar producers, along with other settlers, clamoured for more labour.37 In 1510 King Ferdinand licensed the Casa de la Contratación to send 250 Christian black slaves purchased in Lisbon to Hispaniola. Within a short time, Seville’s nobility and merchants were shipping slaves from Africa to the Atlantic settlements via their home port.38 In his study of slavery in Seville, Alfonso Franco Silva stated that virtually all of the English merchants in Seville in the first quarter of the sixteenth century lived in an area where slaves were imported, and that they were buyers. As most mercantile households would have had at least one slave for domestic use, this is unsurprising. (Granada, 1992), p. 60. Almonte was also known as Ayamonte or Amonte. 33 Records of various notaries, 1523, 5/3, fols 93, 120v, 136v, 156v, 1524, 5/2, fol. 557, 1526, 5/4, fol. 266, APS; Connell-Smith, Forerunners of Drake, p. 67; Pike, Enterprise and Adventure, p. 40; Barron, London in the Later Middle Ages, p. 258. The black soap, manufactured in San Salvador, was favoured locally. 34 Joaquín Gonzáles Moreno, Las Reales Almonas de Sevilla (Seville, 1975), p. 81; Alfonso Franco Silva, La esclavitud en Sevilla y su tierra a fines de la edad media (Seville, 1979), p. 80. When Malliard first acquired his share, the other shareholders were Marco Castiglione and Jacopo Sopranis. The only soap factory in the vicinity that these four men did not control in 1522 was in Utrera. 35 Crown grant no. 1, 3 January, 1561: ‘A Lycense to Stephen Groyett and Anthony Le Leuryer to make white sope (for 10 years)’ in E. Wyndham Hulme, ‘The History of the Patent System under the Prerogative and at Common Law’, The Law Quarterly Review, 12 (1896): 145. 36 Précis of inventory, Consejo Real, 8/12, fols xxix–xxxvi, in Krauel, ‘Events Surrounding Thomas Malliard’s Will’, pp. 170–71. 37 Kamen, Spain’s Road to Empire, pp. 31–2. 38 Pike, Aristocrats and Traders, pp. 31–7, 99–100; Kamen, Spain’s Road to Empire, pp. 82–5, 135–7. Slave transportation figures taken from John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1680 (Cambridge, 1992) p. 118.


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However, Franco Silva named three English merchants who, having done exceptionally well in their Seville businesses, were involved in slave trading on a larger scale. These merchants were Thomas Malliard, Robert Thorne, and Thomas Bridges. He identified Thomas Bridges as ‘un personaje conocido del Mercado de esclavos’ – ‘a well-known person in slave trading circles’ – in the years 1514 and 1516. Although evidence of direct slave trading is hard to track, occasional glimpses into individual transactions and activities involving slaves emerge in notarial and parish records. For example, in 1515 Bridges bought Juan, a fifteen-year old lad, referred to as ‘Juan de quince’, from Juan del Barrio, a mule driver, for 12,200 maravedíes. In 1520 he arranged for one of his slaves, Catalina, to be baptized at Santa Ana in Triana, and, two years later, three of Thomas Malliard’s slaves were also baptized there.39 Santa Ana was in the neighbourhood of the Reales Almonas in Triana and the slaves may have been labourers there. In 1525 the local government performed an audit of the factory and noted that five of the six labourers who tended the cauldrons were slaves and in 1531 Thorne and Cataño sold thirteen slaves employed in the factory to the Welsers.40 Fighting for Thomas Malliard’s Estate Once it was obvious that Malliard was dying, the other shareholders of the soap factory – Robert Thorne, Leonardo Cataño, and Alonso de Melgar – acted swiftly to ensure that Malliard’s share did not slip from their control. A document drawn up on the very day that Malliard died indicates that they came to an agreement with one Doña Inés Portocarrero, vouchsafing their arrangement. This agreement seems to have involved a temporary transfer of Malliard’s share.41 The fact that Thorne and his associates moved so quickly suggests that they were not necessarily confident that his will would go unchallenged. The following day, while the three executors were taking the inventory of Malliard’s goods, Malliard’s lawyer 39 Franco Silva, La esclavitud en Andalucía, 1450–1550, p. 176; Los esclavos de Sevilla (Seville, 1980), p. 30; La esclavitud en Sevilla, pp. 80–81. Santa Ana, Libro I de bautismos, fols 96, 311, 352: ‘En 1523 y 1525 Tomas Mallar bautiza en Santa Ana de Triana a 3 esclavos, Juan, Fernando y Juan.’ Note that either the baptism dates are wrong or Malliard’s slaves were baptized after their owner’s death. In 1520 Malliard had three slaves baptised at the Iglesia del Sagrario, Libro de bautismos, fol. 95v; fourteen slaves are listed in the inventory of Malliard’s property at Almonte drawn up by his executors, 19 August 1522, Consejo Real, 12/6/32v, AGS. 40 Record of Luis de Segura, 2 May 1531, 3289, fol. 23r–24v, APS, Salvador Carmona and Rafael Donoso Anes, ‘Cost Accounting in Regulated Markets: The Case of the Royal Soap Factory of Seville, 1525–1692’, Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, 23 (2004): 136–7; Pike, Enterprise and Adventure, p. 40; Moreno, Las Reales Almonas de Sevilla, p. 81; Franco Silva, La esclavitud en Sevilla, pp. 80, 137–40. 41 Moreno, Las Reales Almonas de Sevilla, p. 81; Franco Silva, La esclavitud en Sevilla, p. 80. Inés Portocarrero was the wife of Fernando Enriquez de Ribera and she remained involved in the soap industry for at least a decade, CRC, 132,5 1543/45, AGS.’


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travelled to the mouth of the Guadalquivir to take charge of his client’s cattle grazing at Aznalcázar, and to check on his property in Almonte. He discovered that Beatriz had taken possession of the estate and he informed Thorne, Bridges, and Barlow that she had challenged Malliard’s will on the grounds that she was his wife rather than his mistress and therefore entitled to his estate.42 As Roger Barlow had taken on the responsibility for sorting out Malliard’s ledgers, he seems to have taken the brunt of the altercation that ensued between the interested parties. There are two versions of the events that subsequently occurred – both involving Beatriz’s ally and lawyer, Pedro López de Herrera, and his associate, the local power magnate and converso, Francisco del Alcázar. López de Herrera claimed that he and Alcázar were having a cordial meeting with Barlow, Beatriz, and Ana at Malliard’s house when Robert Thorne, some other Englishmen and employees of the soap factory arrived armed with weapons. The Englishmen’s statement was very different. They claimed that Roger Barlow, together with Bridges and Thorne, were working through ledgers in Malliard’s house when López de Herrera, Alcázar, and Alcázar’s henchmen burst in and drove them out. The truth of the matter notwithstanding, the English merchants’ fortunes deteriorated further when another judge allowed López de Herrera to take silks and clothes from Thomas Bridge’s house on the understanding that they had belonged to Malliard.43 With Alcázar’s support, López de Herrera used Malliard’s will as a catalyst for challenging the English merchants’ position in Seville. Alcázar was a member of the cabildo or city council and he was as rich as he was powerful. His mother was not only the wife but also the great aunt of his father, a marriage that had been brokered to prevent inheritances being divided. He owned a ship that traded with the Indies and through his positions in local government benefited from the customs taxes collected by the Casa. He flourished under the auspices of the Dukes of Medina Sidonia, who were known to protect the interests of powerful conversos.44 The dukes, as mentioned previously, had encouraged the English merchants to settle under their auspices, but they had been known to block the merchants’ attempts to retrieve debts in local courts. Such circumstances, combined with the unpredictability of Alcázar’s tactics, may have convinced Malliard’s executors that they were never going to get a fair hearing in Seville. What happened next indicates the faith that Robert Thorne and Thomas Bridges had in Roger Barlow, 42

Krauel, ‘Events Surrounding Thomas Malliard’s Will’, p. 171. Ibid., pp. 171–2. English merchants’ account: Consejo Real 12/6, fols 9–20, AGS. Alcazar’s party’s account: Consejo Real, 8–2, fols lxxi–lxxxvii. The fact that Ana’s suitor and her mother’s lawyer share the same surname could be chance as López de Herrera was not an uncommon name; however, Pedro López de Herrera is described as a close friend of Beatriz and if a relation of his planned to marry Ana, then there would be added impetus for him to secure all of Malliard’s inheritence for Beatriz. 44 Pike, Linajudos and Conversos in Seville (New York, 2000), pp. 123–5; Thomas, Rivers of Gold, p. 468. 43


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for he took on the responsibility for arguing the case for Malliard’s will before the Castilian Supreme Court, the Consejo Real. The statements Barlow made in the courtroom, and the effect his words had, are significant because of the light they shed on attitudes to the English merchant community at the time, both at the level of local politics in Seville and at the highest levels of the Spanish government. Justice in the royal court was notoriously slow and inefficient, but it was generally held to be less corrupt than the provincial courts.45 The records of the Consejo Real for September 1522 describe how Barlow appeared in Valladolid and requested justice from Charles V. The chancillería of Valladolid had four presiding judges or oidores. Barlow presented his case from a raised platform where grandees, members of the nobility, and the king’s fiscales or prosecuting attorneys had seats reserved next to the judges.46 Barlow pointed out that John, Thomas Malliard’s brother and named heir, was a servant of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey and that the seizure of Malliard’s ledgers meant that he was unable to ensure that his fortune of 15,000 gold ducats (just under six million maravedíes) would not be lost. He declared that only the king himself could guarantee justice, as the English merchants had enemies in Seville who were able to influence the courts there. He alleged that the city was governed by the House of Medina Sidonia through the city councillors of Seville ‘who do what they want and particularly with foreigners’. Barlow ended his case with a plea to Charles V to intercede on his behalf. Although the king had returned to Spain in the summer of 1522, having been elected Holy Roman Emperor, after an absence of two years, it is unlikely that he was actually present in court in Valladolid. He obviously followed the proceedings, however, given that, within days, Charles dispatched two letters to his asistente in Seville.47 These commanded the asistente to punish those who had offended the Englishmen, and warned that they were not to be harassed again, ‘because being foreigners in our Kingdoms and subjects of the King of England whom I respect, I must be certain that they are treated with justice’.48 The fact that Charles acted without hearing evidence from the party supporting Beatriz may well have been due to the respect in which Thomas Wolsey was held at the time. He had cemented his reputation as a talented statesman by designing the 1518 Richard L. Kagan. Lawsuits and Litigants in Castile, 1500–1700 (Chapel Hill, 1981), p. 209. 46 Manuel Fernandez de Ayala Aulestia, Practica y formulario de real chancilleria de Valladolid (Valladolid, 1667), p. 48, cited in Kagan, Lawsuits and Litigants in Castile, first plate, pp. 169, 170. The court was held in a fifteenth-century palace in the parish of San Pedro on the eastern edge of the medieval city, away from the commercial centre. The court was vital to the city’s economic life and it has been estimated that between two and three thousand residents depended on it for a livelihood in this period. 47 Krauel, ‘Events Surrounding Thomas Malliard’s Will’, pp. 172–3; Consejo Real, 12/6, fols 1–5, AGS; Jocelyn Hunt, Spain 1474–1598 (London, 2001), p. 49. 48 Krauel, ‘Events Surrounding Thomas Malliard’s Will’, p. 173. Two letters sent by the Emperor between 20–24 September 1522, Consejo Real, 8/2, fol. xcviii, AGS. 45

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Treaty of London to frame Henry VIII as the peacemaker of Europe while taking advantage of territorial concessions already made by Charles V and Francis I. In fact, this peace was illusory, and in 1521 Thomas Wolsey had signed the Treaty of Bruges with Charles V.49 This meant that Charles would not have wanted to offend Wolsey by disinheriting a member of his household at a time when England and Spain were supporting each other against France.50 Despite the fact that the king’s asistente placed Francisco del Alcázar and his partners under house arrest, and added the threat of a hefty fine pending the return of Malliard’s property, the case dragged on as appeals and counter-appeals were lodged. Matters were complicated by the fact that Sancho de Herrera had married Ana Malliard (on the understanding that her parents had indeed been married), and had already taken her father’s properties. Even after Charles summoned the Sevillians to Valladolid to appear before the Royal Court, only Beatriz’s lawyer, Pedro López de Herrera, obeyed. Alcázar and Sancho de Herrera pointed out that under the privileges that the King himself had granted Seville, they could only be judged there.51 When John Malliard came to claim his inheritance in April of the following year, he complained to the court that his brother Thomas’s fortune was, in all likelihood, going to be lost due to the slowness of the Spanish legal system. Perhaps for this reason, John seems to have decided to cut his losses in order to preserve at least a portion of the fortune, as there is only one more mention of the case in the court archives. That records that although John received his brother’s share of the soap factories in Seville and Triana, and Thomas’s assets and obligations in England, Ana inherited everything else.52 Malliard’s executors did not let it rest there, however, for on 20 September 1523, they met at Thomas Bridges’ house in the Calle de Bayona where a notary, Francisco de Castellanos, recorded that Roger Barlow gave his permission for ‘Juan Mallart, ingles, vecino de la villa de Malmesberi’ to claim 674 gold pesos that had been registered in the Casa. The notary recorded that Thomas Bridges and Martin Pollard, another English merchant, read out all the relevant documents in English for John Malliard as he did not understand Spanish.53 On 30 September John Malliard met again with Robert Thorne and Roger Barlow. There, the men signed the remaining assets and liabilities notices and Malliard gave both Thorne and Barlow powers of attorney to settle his affairs and to collect debts still owing to his brother’s estate. 49 Nicholas Craft, ‘The 1518 Treaty of London and Early Modern Approaches to International Relations’, Unpublished MA Thesis, University of Melbourne, 2006, p. 99. 50 Krauel, ‘Events Surrounding Thomas Malliard’s Will’, p. 173. 51 Ibid., p. 174; Consejo Real, 8/2, fols liii–xcv, i–vi, xcv–cix, 1–14, 12/6, fols 30–36, AGS. 52 Krauel, ‘Events Surrounding Thomas Malliard’s Will’, pp. 174–5; Consejo Real, 8/2, fols 16–17, 18–25, AGS. 53 Connell-Smith, Forerunners of Drake, p. 68; Record of Francisco de Castellanos, 1523, 5/3, fol. 96 and fol. 97v, APS (‘… six hundred and seventy four pesos of gold … registered from the Indies of the Ocean Sea in the king’s register’).


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Richard Sampson, the English Ambassador to Charles V, later claimed in a letter to Wolsey, dated November 1524, that it had been he who had persuaded Charles to intervene in order to secure John Malliard’s inheritance. He ended the letter by complaining of John Malliard’s ingratitude and of the fact that he had been subsequently forced to borrow from Malliard.54 Connell-Smith did not believe Sampson’s claim to have been the instigator of the Spanish king’s intervention.55 His opinion is supported by a document drawn up by the notary, Francisco de Castellanos, on 30 September 1523, in which a direct reference is made to Thorne and Barlow taking charge of a wine consignment to the Indies, which related to John Malliard’s inheritance.56 It is probable that the money Barlow arranged to be released from the Casa came from 80 pipes of wine that he had arranged for Diego Rodríguez Pepino to ship to Santo Domingo in the San Anton in July 1522.57 Barlow is likely to have sold the wine on Malliard’s behalf and then bypassed the Spanish court by transferring the profits to his heir. Sampson may have hoped to avoid repaying a debt to John Malliard by making the most of the controversy surrounding his brother’s will. Why, then, did John Malliard settle for no more than a share of his brother’s estate? Blanca Krauel thought it somewhat puzzling that he was finally prepared to accept less than half of its value, which Barlow had assessed at 15,000 ducats.58 She may not, however, have realized how profitable the soap factory was. The merchants leased the factory from the Dukes of Alcalá, who had been granted the monopoly over soap production and distribution by King Enrique IV in 1456. The dukes acquired olive trees and sources of ash in order to supply the factories and went to great lengths to prevent soap smuggling.59 The House of Alcalá’s protectionist policies would have made the production of soap under their auspices a good investment. In addition, by inheriting his brother’s interest in the soap factory, John Malliard ensured that the shareholding coterie retained the potential to influence the price of soap and optimize the profits they made selling it to Northern Europe and the Indies.60 13 November 1524, Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, vol. 4, pt. 1, no. 827. Connell-Smith, Forerunners of Drake, pp. 68, 71. 56 Record of Francisco de Castellanos, 30 September 1523, 5/3, fol. 98, APS in CAPS, Tomo V, no. 236. 57 Record of Manuel Segura, 18 July 1522, 4/3, fol. 393v, APS in CAPS, Tomo V, no. 147. 58 Krauel, ‘Events Surrounding Thomas Malliard’s Will’, p. 175. 59 Pike, Enterprise and Adventure, p. 40; Carmona and Anes, ‘Cost Accounting in Regulated Markets’: 129–57, 136. The dukes retained this monopoly until 1811. 60 Carmona and Anes, ‘Cost Accounting in Regulated Markets’: 7–9. As the price for soap was set by the local government there were frequent quarrels. The local government’s attempt to lower the price of soap in 1525 failed after interested parties argued that there were many expenses that should be factored in. The English merchants would have not wanted the price to be lowered. 54 55

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Robert Thorne retained his interest in the soap factory in Seville and continued to export soap to the Indies until he died in 1532. The fact that in May 1531 Thorne and Cataño sold some of their slaves, and granted the freedom of the master soap maker and another slave on condition that they serve the Welser company for five years, suggests they may have sold their shares in the soap factory to the Welsers. Nicholas Thorne continued to trade in soap after his brother’s death in May 1532.61 A Bristol chronicler, writing a century after Thorne’s death said of him that ‘This Robert Thorne was knight in civil, and had all the rule of white soap’.62 Bearing in mind that in August 1522 he and his three partners owned virtually all the Sevillian soap industry, except the factory of Utrera, this claim had some validity.63 Castilian soap continued to be prized in England and in 1561, when trade between England and Spain was becoming increasingly problematic, a ten-year licence to make white soap was granted to two alien merchants living in England, Stephen Groyett and Anthony Le Leuryer. Significantly, the grant stipulated that the soap was to be as good and fine as was made in the ‘Sope house of Triana or Syvile’.64 Reassessing the Position of English Merchants An anonymous Sevillian author, writing in the last years of the sixteenth century, declared that foreign merchants, especially the Genoese, had assimilated well into Sevillian society. The one exception, he wrote, was the English.65 For Blanca Krauel, it was this lack of integration that, in all likelihood, explained what happened to Malliard’s inheritance.66 However, Malliard had been trading from Seville for at least 13 years and, unlike many of his cohorts, considered the city his permanent home. He died several years before relations between England and Spain soured in the wake of Henry VIII’s rejection of Catherine of Aragon, and 70 years before this anonymous Sevillian writer recorded his impression of what was, 61 Records of Francisco de Castellanos, 9 January 1525, 5/1, fol. 9 and 17 February 1525, 5/1, fol. 315, APS in CAPS, Tomo V, nos 482, 532. Although Murcia was temporarily resident in Cadiz at this time, the agreement was drawn up in Seville; Records of Luis de Segura, 2 and 10 May 1531, 3289, fols 23–24, 125–126, APS, in CAPS; Evan T. Jones, ‘The Bristol Shipping Industry in the Sixteenth Century’, Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of Edinburgh, 1998, appendix 3. 62 Adam’s 1628 Chronicle of Bristol (Bristol, 1910). 63 Moreno, Las Reales Almonas de Sevilla, p. 81; Franco Silva, La esclavitud en Sevilla, p. 80. 64 Crown grant no. 1, 3 January 1561: ‘A Lycense to Stephen Groyett and Anthony Le Leuryer to make white sope (for 10 years)’. 65 ‘Representacion de un vecino de Sevilla a fines del siglo XVI en favor de los comerciantes extranjeros que habian en dicha ciudad’, Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid: 6754-S-110, 225v–226v, cited in Pike, Enterprise and Adventure, p. 151, n.39. 66 Krauel, ‘Events Surrounding Thomas Malliard’s Will’, pp. 168, 175.


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by then, a beleaguered community. In fact, it is possible that Malliard considered his Seville-based family to be his legitimate heirs, as his confessor attested, but that he was unable to resist the advice of Thorne, Bridges, and Barlow, who were determined to get the bulk of his fortune back to England. The weakened Malliard may even have been cowed by the three men, for the friar who was Malliard’s confessor revealed to the court that he had wanted formally to marry Beatriz ‘but he did not dare because he felt ashamed before his fellow countrymen’.67 The settling of Malliard’s will also clearly demonstrates the vulnerability of Beatriz’s position, as the domestic and sexual companion of a foreigner. Her daughter’s position was perhaps less vulnerable, but only because her inheritance proved a draw-card. Whilst the mistresses and wives of foreign merchants may have enjoyed a materially comfortable position in society and the independence resulting from their ‘husbands’’ absences, they inhabited a grey area in the city’s society. One of the reasons English merchants married Sevillian women was that such marriages facilitated their access to both economic and political privileges. Beatriz Hernández may well have run Thomas Malliard’s business when he was away and, as a local, her knowledge would certainly have proved invaluable to her ‘husband’. A seventeenth-century Spanish economist, Francisco Martínez de Mata, noted that such men were known to return to their home countries once they had made sufficient money, abandoning their ‘wives’. Whilst Martínez de Mata was known for his xenophobia, there was no doubt some truth in this assertion.68 Robert Thorne, for example, was determined to leave most of his fortune to the City of Bristol and his brother Nicholas, and so left his mistress in Seville, Ana García, 50 pounds in his will on the condition that she renounce all claims to their son Vincent’s inheritance of 3,000 pounds.69 Perhaps Thorne learnt from his experiences as an executor of Malliard’s will and made this arrangement to ensure that Nicholas did not become embroiled in a legal debacle of the kind that had leeched John Malliard’s inheritance. The involvement of the converso Francisco del Alcázar in the dispute over Malliard’s will merits further discussion, for it turned what was essentially a family matter into a struggle that highlights the factious nature of Seville’s trading community. Alcázar was a member of Seville’s city council that, as Roger Barlow pointed out in his address to the court, was in the thrall of the Dukes of Medina Sidonia. The protection of the Dukes was of crucial importance to Alcázar, for he was greatly resented for exporting so much grain to the Atlantic settlements that the price of bread was pushed beyond the reach of many of Seville’s inhabitants. These resentments came to the fore during the Comunero Revolt of 1520, when 67

Ibid., p. 171; Consejo Real 12/6, fols 22 and 44–8, AGS. Mary Elizabeth Perry, ‘“Lost Women” in Early Modern Seville: The Politics of Prostitution’, Feminist Studies, 4/1 (1978): 199, 212. 69 Wills of Robert Thorne, 1532, and Nicholas Thorne, Merchant of Bristol, 1546, PROB 11/31, NA. After Robert’s death, Nicholas kept up payments to Vincent. There was money outstanding when Nicholas died and he provided for Vincent’s welfare in his will. 68

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the Ponce de León faction attempted to oust conversos like Alcázar from their positions of power in the city. They failed only because the Duke of Medina Sidonia persuaded the majority of the aristocracy to back them.70 Diego Ramírez de Villaescusa, the president of the Consejo Real from 1515 to 1525, had come into conflict with other royal officials for attempting to negotiate a compromise between the opposing factions during the Comunero Revolt. When Barlow presented his case for John Malliard, Ramírez de Villaescusa controlled a court where judges from mercantile families were generally considered suspect, as commerce was closely associated with ‘New Christian families’.71 Seen against this background of instability, Alcázar’s clash with the English merchants and his refusal to appear in Valladolid may have had as much to do with Alcázar trying to shore up his own position as an influential but vulnerable ‘New Christian’ or converso, against an even more marginalized group, as it did with Malliard’s will. In this context, the conflict can be seen as a reflection of Seville’s social unease at this time. Conclusion The events surrounding the settlement of Malliard’s will confirm that English merchants were able to accumulate considerable fortunes trading between Spain and the New World during the early decades of the sixteenth century; that they invested in substantial businesses and properties in Seville; and that they had clout when it came to local disputes. These events also suggest that the loyalty of the merchants was to their families in England rather than to their families in Seville. However, although these English merchants were essentially an expatriate group, they were a group enmeshed in Sevillian society to the extent that they took sides with, and were in turn supported by, different factions. Local powerbrokers in Seville accommodated foreign merchants and embraced foreign expertise providing it met their needs and advanced their interests. This flexibility mirrored the working agenda of the courts of both Spain and England at the time. In 1522 the English merchants were valued for the revenues they brought into the Casa and 70 Pike, Linajudos and Conversos in Seville, pp. 19–21, 123–5; Enterprise and Adventure, pp. 17–18; Thomas, Rivers of Gold, pp. 459, 468, 475; Franco Silva, La esclavitud en Sevilla, p. 101; La esclavitud en Andalucía, 1450–1550, p. 77. Alcázar became Treasurer of the Mint. This meant that he benefited from the customs taxes collected by the Casa as well as exporting grain. Although the Andalusian countryside was generally one of the most fertile regions in Spain, little grain was grown. The sudden population growth meant that lack of bread caused social unrest. In 1521 residents of the poor Feria district seized arms from the Duke of Medina Sidonia and taking the green Moorish banner that had been preserved in their local church (hence the name of the uprising ‘de Feria y Pendon Verde’) they ran riot for three days until the armed nobility managed to contain them. He prospered and purchased Diego Colon’s estate on the River Guadalquivir-La Palma. 71 Kagan, Lawsuits and Litigants in Castile, pp. 172, 191.


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their willingness to invest in local industries and supply the Atlantic settlements. However, as the debacle over Malliard’s will indicates, although they were needed, the merchants were sometimes resented: their success, and ultimately their safety, depended on having influence at the highest administrative level rather than simply relying on relationships at the commercial level. In short, the settlement of Malliard’s will provides a snapshot of the status and behaviour of a close-knit group of English merchants, negotiating fortune in Seville at a time when customs, political allegiances and social stratifications were often blurred by fortunes made and lost in New World trade.


Chapter 3

Interlopers in an Intercultural Zone? Early Scots Ventures in the Atlantic World, 1630–1660 Douglas Catterall

Introduction Fluidity has always been one of the most striking features of the Atlantic World, both in reality and as a construct. Yet historians have found it difficult to realize its potential as a field of study, in no small part due to the influence of national histories on research agendas. National and even imperial frameworks can lead to narratives that minimize or ignore the intercultural dimensions of Atlantic lives and histories. Mindful of these difficulties, this chapter follows a group of individuals who left their homeland and, consequently, had to negotiate multiple political and cultural boundaries to achieve success – namely, Scots who settled or were active in Rotterdam between 1630 and 1660. Once there, these migrants became involved in Atlantic ventures of various sorts and built an enclave to support these activities during a pivotal period for Rotterdam’s Scots and for the shape of the Atlantic World. The chapter seeks to establish two crucial points. First, it demonstrates that the institutional reach of European Scots enclaves had an important offshore impact. Rotterdam Scots, most of whom were common sailors or skippers, See, for example, David Armitage and Michael J. Braddick (eds), The British Atlantic World, 1500–1800 (New York, 2002), which smooths away Dutch, French, German, Scots, and Swedish involvements in the Atlantic to produce a narrative dominated by an Englishled First British Empire. Thus, I am not focusing on the more commonly examined activities of Scots investors (and settlers) connected with the Panamanian isthmus, the Earl of Carlisle, the Carolinas, New Jersey, and Nova Scotia. For these, see the following surveys: David Dobson, Scottish Emigration to Colonial America, 1607–1785 (Athens, GA, 1994); David Dobson, ‘Seventeenth Century Scottish Communities in the Americas’, in Alexia Grosjean and Steve Murdoch (eds), Scottish Communities Abroad in the Early Modern Period (Leiden and Boston, 2005), pp. 105–32; Ned C. Landsman, ‘Introduction: The Context and Functions of Scottish Involvement with the Americas’, in Ned C. Landsman (ed.), Nation and Province in the First British Empire: Scotland and the Americas, 1600–1800 (Lewisberg and London, 2001), pp. 15–38; Ned C. Landsman, Scotland and Its First American Colony, 1683–1765 (Princeton, 1985).


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participated in the Atlantic World through the Dutch Atlantic infrastructure as insiders, not interlopers. They formed part of a large labour pool that the Dutch attracted and made use of in enterprises that, while nominally Dutch, required an international labour market to succeed. What made for Rotterdam Scots’ success within that larger framework was their construction of institutions and relationship webs – the Scots Church of Rotterdam; a self-policing lodging house network to supply shelter, credit, and brokerage of employer contracts; and tightly knit personal/commercial networks that managed ties to institutions – that made the Dutch Atlantic, in a sense, their Atlantic. Secondly, this chapter underscores the capacity of the port city or town to organize the Atlantic World. As the case of the Rotterdam Scots demonstrates, ports accreted expertise, resources (human and natural), and institutions that were accessible to outsiders wanting to appropriate Atlantic ventures for their own purposes. Such appropriation, however, was merely one of many mechanisms through which maritime cities organized labour markets flexibly, but effectively, and attracted the concentrations of capital and financial institutions necessary for Atlantic ventures. It is no accident that one of the more successful Atlantic societies in the seventeenth century, the Dutch Republic, took the form of a state of cities, though admittedly it had its failures.

See Jan Lucassen, ‘Labour and early modern economic development’, in Karel Davids and Jan Lucassen (eds), A Miracle Mirrored: The Dutch Republic in European Perspective (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 367–409. The argument I am making places emphasis on relatively proletarian Scots networks and portable Scots institutions, but not as much on Scots ethnicity in processes of imperial appropriation. A number of scholars have already addressed the role of Scots ethnicity in establishing that Scots involvement in the Atlantic was more precocious and more successful than previously suggested and that it sometimes relied on appropriation of larger colonial ventures. Douglas Catterall, ‘Scots Along the Maas, c1570–1750’, in Grosjean and Murdoch (eds), Scottish Communities Abroad, pp. 187–9; Dobson, ‘Seventeenth Century Scottish Communities’; Ned C. Landsman, ‘Nation, Migration, and the Province in the First British Empire: Scotland and the Americas,1600–1800’, American Historical Review 104/2 (1999): 463–75; T.M. Devine, Scotland’s Empire & the Shaping of the Americas, 1600–1815 (Washington, 2003), pp. 1–4, 31–48; Esther Mijers, ‘A Natural Partnership? Scotland and Zeeland in the Early Seventeenth Century’, in Allan I. Macinnes and Arthur H. Williamson (eds), Shaping the Stuart World, 1603–1714 (Leiden, 2006), pp. 233–60; Steve Murdoch & Andrew MacKillop, ‘Introduction’, in Steve Murdoch and Andrew MacKillop (eds), Military Governors and Imperial Frontiers, c1600–1800: A Study of Scotland and Empires (Leiden, 2003), pp. xxv–li; Steve Murdoch, Network North: Scottish Kin, Commercial, and Covert Associations in Northern Europe, 1603–1746 (Leiden, 2007), pp. 207–48. Recent work on New Netherland and Newfoundland underscores the role of cities, towns, and urban culture in shaping European colonial ventures in the Americas. See Jaap Jacobs, New Netherland: A Dutch Colony in Seventeenth-Century America (Leiden, 2005); Janny Venema, Beverwijck: A Dutch Village on the American Frontier, 1652–1664 (Amsterdam, 2003); Donna Merwick, Death of a Notary: Conquest and Change in Colonial New York (Ithaca, 2002); Peter E. Pope, Fish into Wine: The Newfoundland Plantation in the Seventeenth Century (Chapel Hill, 2004).

Interlopers in an Intercultural Zone?

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Atlantic Enterprises and Colonial Ambitions The reliance of European Atlantic activities on smaller entrepreneurs and enterprises emanating from port cities as well as the broader backs of larger institutions has become increasingly apparent in recent years. As a consequence of this reality, new European ventures did not as easily become as exclusive as colonial and imperial narratives sometimes suggest. Peter E. Pope’s recent work on Newfoundland, for example, demonstrates that this plantation began life chiefly as a seasonal and, as he rightly emphasizes, multinational fishery emanating from regional as well as major European port communities located in England, France, and Spain. Colonial Quito, a world away from Newfoundland, also drew, to some extent, on an international cast of characters, albeit few possessed Protestant credentials. As Kris Lane shows, Quito was a colony in which city-to-city as much as colony-to-empire connections held sway, although here ports were joined to villages, mining settlements, and land-locked urban centres. City-to-city or cityto-region relations governed trade and credit flows and market linkages even in the more centrally regulated Spanish empire. When provoked, the local identity these relations fostered could even turn anti-imperial, as when Quito city fathers rejected the attempt by Philip II and his ministers to reform the city of Quito by introducing peninsular officials in the late 1580s. Until the later decades of the seventeenth century, the Chesapeake and the Caribbean also seem to have functioned as settlements with an assumed in-built, multi-national character and with a clear dependence on European cities and towns such as London, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Bristol for goods and labour. In what ways, then, did cities and their inhabitants, whether indigenous or no, become central to the Atlantic? Rotterdam, a latecomer to Atlantic ventures, provides a useful European case study. In the middle of the sixteenth century, Rotterdam was a fairly sleepy town of 7,000 to 8,000 inhabitants, with some exposure to North Sea trade including ties to England and Scotland. The rise of the

Ibid., pp. 12–20, 47–65; Selma Huxley Barkham, ‘The Mentality of the Men behind Sixteenth-Century Spanish Voyages to Terranova’, in Germaine Warkentin and Carolyn Podruchny (eds), Decentring the Renaissance: Canada and Europe in Multidisciplinary Perspective, 1500–1700 (Toronto, 1996), p. 118. Kris Lane, Quito 1599: City and Colony in Transition (Albuquerque, 2002), pp. 58–72, 153–88, 209–12. April Hatfield, Atlantic Virginia: Intercolonial Relations in the Seventeenth Century (Philadelphia, 2004), pp. 39–85; Alison Games, Migration and the Origins of the English Atlantic World (Cambridge, MA, 1999), pp. 72–131, 207–9; Claudia Schnurman, ‘Atlantic Trade and American Identities: The Correlations of Supranational Commerce, Political Opposition, and Colonial Regionalism’, in Peter A. Coclanis (ed.), The Atlantic Economy during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Organization, Operation, Practice, and Personnel (Columbia, 1999), pp. 186–204; Bernard Moitt, Women and Slavery in the French Antilles, 1635–1848 (Bloomington, 2001), pp. 2–29.


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Dutch Republic, however, transformed the city on the Maas through renovating and expanding its port facilities by the second decade of the seventeenth century. The new harbour district provided the context for a much increased foreign presence in the town, including English and Scots migrants hoping to work in its burgeoning Atlantic economy. Rotterdam’s Atlantic adventure properly began when the tobacco trade linked it first to the Chesapeake shortly after Virginia became a permanent colony, and then to the Caribbean. These ties would flourish largely undisturbed until at least the 1660 and 1663 Navigation Acts.10 Shortly after acquiring its links to the tobacco trade, Rotterdam became, in 1621, home to one of the chambers of the Dutch West India Company (the Kamer Maze).11 Finally, though primarily regional Atlantic appendages, Rotterdam developed a large chamber of admiralty that became a major employer of Scots labour; maintained its chief fishery, the Groote Visscherij; added a whaling fishery; and, to support its proto-industrial sectors and provide home-heating, nurtured a coal trade with strong ties to northern England and towns along the Firth of Forth in Scotland.12 All of these sectors required labour, and the Republic, with well under two million inhabitants even at its peak, did not have a domestic labour pool large enough to keep up with the expansion of Rotterdam and its other cities.13 In addressing this labour shortage, cities such as Rotterdam effectively leveraged the Republic’s superior economic power to meet their labour requirements. As Jan Lucassen has shown, the Republic exercised a magnetic pull on the inhabitants of Scandinavia, Scotland, England, Germany, France, and the southern Low Countries – regions on which its port cities and towns would draw for most of the life of the Republic. And, much like Western Europe’s other maritime ports, the Republic’s port towns then re-exported a sizeable number of the newcomers as labourers across a range of enterprises centred in the ‘originating’ ports or nourished by them as in the case of those sent to plantation or settlement colonies.14 If one includes skilled professionals with strong Atlantic-world involvement, such as

Arie van der Schoor, Stad in aanwas: Geschiedenis van Rotterdam tot 1813 (Zwolle, 1999), pp. 74–9, 87–90, 117–36, 166–89, 206–9; Hans Bonke, De kleyne mast van de Hollandse coopsteden: Stadsontwikkeling in Rotterdam, 1572–1795 (Amsterdam, 1996), pp. 27, 77. 10 Hatfield, Atlantic Virginia, pp. 39, 48–51; W.G.D. Murray, ‘De Rotterdamsche Toeback-Coopers’, Rotterdamsch Jaarboekje, 5th series, 1 (1943): 21–33. 11 Henk den Hijer, ‘The Dutch West India Company, 1621–1791’, in Johannes Postma and Victor Enthoven (eds), Riches from Atlantic Commerce: Dutch Transatlantic Trade and Shipping, 1585–1817 (Leiden and Boston, 2003), pp. 80–85. 12 Van der Schoor, Stad in aanwas, pp. 196–200, 209; Bonke, De kleyne mast, p. 26. 13 Jan de Vries and Ad van der Woude, The First Modern Economy: Success, Failure, and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy, 1500–1815 (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 50–51. 14 Jan Lucassen, ‘Labour and early modern economic development’, pp. 367–409.


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the Sephardim, the Republic’s (and Rotterdam’s) reach extended deep into the Mediterranean world.15 Scots in Rotterdam were, then, part of the extensive labour pool on which the Dutch Republic depended, even if one considers the military migrants who fought in the Dutch armies of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Many were mariners or merchants, men with a fairly practical outlook who saw the city on the Maas as one among several Scots enclaves in which they could live and make a career. 16 Their involvement in Atlantic enterprises was a function of the work or, in the case of merchants, trading opportunities available at any given time. For the period from 1630 to 1660, the evidence suggests that, in general, Scots in Rotterdam remained more involved in regional trade than in trans-Atlantic activities.17 That said, studies of European (and non-European) mercantile behaviour have shown that, until the end of the early modern period, merchants operated as generalists, willing to commit their funds to many different types of venture. Scots merchants in Rotterdam were not an exception in this respect.18 Similarly, maritime labour has always been fairly fungible, with sailors in one branch of maritime service, such as regional trades to France, Scandinavia, or the Baltic, being equally capable of serving in the navy or of sailing to the East Indies, Brazil, or the Caribbean. Assuming one possessed the infrastructure to support the families they had left behind, there were always going to be sailors willing to

15 David Swetschinski, Reluctant Cosmopolitans: The Portuguese Jews of SeventeenthCentury Amsterdam (Portland, 2000), pp. 54–101. 16 On Scots military migrants in the Republic see inter alia Hugh Dunthorne, ‘Scots in the Wars of the Low Countries, 1572–1648’, in Grant Simpson (ed.), Scotland and the Low Countries, 1124–1994 (East Linton, 1996), pp. 104–21. On the predominance of maritime migrants among Scots newcomers to Rotterdam, see below. 17 Douglas Catterall, Community without Borders: Scots Migrants and the Changing Face of Power in the Dutch Republic, c. 1600–1700 (Boston and Leiden, 2002), pp. 25–232. 18 Three prominent Scots examples with Rotterdam ties active between 1635 and 1690 are: 1) Mathew Patoun who dealt in soap, linen, hemp, meal, and spices (GAR/ONA 676/87-92/9-2-1653); 2) William Davison, who, as Conservator of the Scottish Nation in the Dutch Republic, had interests in the coal trade, and was also an investor in a Norwegian salt monopoly, the Royal African Company, and trade to the Americas (GAR/ONA/736/74/911-1662; Murdoch, Network North, pp. 194–203, 209–10; 3) Andrew Russell, a factor or professional broker for Scots merchants in Rotterdam, meaning he dealt in a broad range of goods such as textiles, animal products like butter and skins, and coal, but also operated an extensive trade network of his own that included among other things the mining and refining of iron in Scandinavia and trade to the Americas (NAS/RH 15/106/251/2/ 1-101677; NAS/RH 15/106/251/3/1-30-1677; NAS/RH 15/106/251/23/7-9-1677; Murdoch, Network North, pp. 177–86). This variety of interests represented integration and, arguably, risk reduction. See, for example, Christina Dalhede, Handelsfamiljer på Stormaktstidens Europamarknad (Partille, 2001).


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brave a longer or more dangerous journey. As the next section shows, that essential support was in place for Scots sailors in Rotterdam by the 1630s.19 This reality of the individual European’s approach to the Atlantic – that a sizeable number of participants in it had no abiding economic interest in the achievement of larger imperial aims – should not be too surprising. What is more surprising, in fact, is the transition from this attitude to later, more imperially driven ones, especially in the eighteenth century as colonies in the Americas matured.20 Let us now consider how Scots took advantage of their position in Rotterdam to enter the wider Atlantic. Scots Soldiers and Sailors in the ‘Dutch’ Atlantic In terms of employers, the presence of Scots shows up most starkly in records relating to the Rotterdam Admiralty, the Dutch Republic’s oldest (founded in 1586) and a major employer in the city.21 Given the Rotterdam Admiralty’s role in the local labour market, it is an easy task to trace its interactions with the Scots community, mainly through the pay claims or promissory notes that sailors, their families, or those offering them lodging swore out before notaries public. Other maritime activities in which Scots participated, including Atlantic ventures, also become visible through this trafficking in debt, yielding a detailed picture of where Scots worked as well. The place to begin this economic geography, however, is with a basic overview of what employments attracted Scots and in what numbers. The data yield several interesting results, the chief one being that most Scots men were mariners who worked for local employers with occasional ventures into the wider Atlantic. A detailed study of notarial acts for the years 1630 to 1632 determined that in the course of these three years at least 269 Scots (40 women and 229 men) appeared before a notary.22 An analysis of their occupations yielded the following breakdown: 19

Again, some Rotterdam examples to illustrate. The sailor James Brown worked for the Admiralty of the Maas and in the regional trades; the English sailor Derick Smith for the Admiralty and for a merchantman going to the West Indies; Robert Johnson for the Admiralty of the Maas and the Dutch East India Company; Alexander Falconar for the Admiralty of the Maas and in regional merchant marine (database R’damIntermediaireI). For a description of this database, see note 23. 20 Philip Curtin, The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex: Essays in Atlantic History (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 86–97; Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492–1800 (London and New York, 1997), pp. 261–71, 275–306, 344–50, 366–7, 377–83, 396–8, 400, 404–6, 482–503, 506–8; Victor Enthoven, ‘Early Dutch Expansion in the Atlantic Region, 1585–1621’, in Postma and Enthoven (eds), Riches, pp. 17–47. 21 Bonke, De kleyne mast, pp. 18–83 and Van der Schoor, Stad in aanwas, pp. 166–89 and 200–216 discuss Rotterdam’s maritime economy and the place of the admiralty within it. 22 A three-year sampling period was chosen as it is reasonable to expect that even a long distance voyage begun at the beginning of this period would have been concluded within this timeframe, thus accounting for the mobility of the mariner population.


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sailors, 107, with 96 working for the Admiralty on the Maas (39.8 per cent); those offering shelter to sailors, known as slaapvrouwen or slaapbazen, 29 (10.8 per cent); soldiers, 20 (7.4 per cent); army officers, 16 (6 per cent); merchants, 14 (5.2 per cent); artisans and professionals, 10 (3.7 per cent); skippers, 7 (2.6 per cent); naval officers, 6 (2.2 per cent); and labourers and servants, 6 (2.2 per cent). The occupations of the remaining 54 (20.1 per cent) comparers are not specified. If we assume that sailors would have comprised just under half of these individuals, then some 48 per cent (129) of those in the sampled population worked as common sailors, another 5 per cent (13) as captains or skippers, and a further 3.7 per cent (10) as lodging-house keepers who sheltered mariners. In total, then, 56.7 per cent of the people in this sample and 66 per cent of the men were in the maritime world.23 As yet, though, we are speaking only of a three-year sample of notarial acts. Fortunately, contemporary population data on the Scots community in Rotterdam confirm that this sample is representative of the Rotterdam Scots community as a whole. The accepted figure for Rotterdam’s Scots population circa 1642 is between 300 and 400 people. The Classis of Schieland, a regional religious authority in the Dutch Reformed Church, arrived at this estimate in assessing an application by Rotterdam’s Scots to form their own congregation (which naturally included a request for church fabric).24 The 269 individuals analysed are very close to the lower end of the Classis of Schieland’s estimate for the number of Scots in Rotterdam. Not everyone, especially not all women, in Rotterdam’s Scots community would have appeared before a notary during the three-year period, which places the number of Scots represented by the notarial sample well within the range of the Classis of Schieland’s figures. Even assuming that some of the men examined in the notarial sample were transient likely does not cancel out this ‘underreporting’ effect and it is important to note that the network of Scots lodging houses would have substantially reduced the transience rate.25 In short, the figures generated for Scots men’s participation in the maritime labour force are probably trustworthy estimates. It therefore seems safe to conclude that the pool of Scots maritime labour in Rotterdam numbered at least 150 men during 23

Data for these figures were taken from the online calendar (at http://www. gemeentearchief.rotterdam.nl/) of the Gemeentearchief Rotterdam’s (hereafter GAR) Oud Notarieel Archief (hereafter ONA) and from transcriptions of the Rotterdam notarial archives held at the GAR, all of which were used as the raw data for a relational database entitled R’damIntermediaireI. For purposes of this study, the database was expanded to make it more representative of Rotterdam’s Scots population for the years 1630, 1631, and 1632 by searching the Gemeentearchief’s online calendar using the keyword schot% for the years in question and entering the resulting cases into R’damIntermediaireI for analysis. The database was also expanded to cover particular individuals who emerged from this comprehensive analysis over the entire period that the study addresses. 24 GAR/Classis Schieland/5, 10-24-1642; Douglas Catterall, ‘The Rituals of Reformed Discipline: Managing Honor and Conflict in the Scottish Church of Rotterdam, 1643–1665’, Archive for Reformation History, 94 (2003): 199. 25 For more on the effects of this network, see below.

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the first decade of the period under examination. Given the limitations of the source base on which the estimate is based, the number available may have been nearer to or even above 200 men, some being temporary migrants.26 As Scots Rotterdam grew so too did this labour pool.27 Analysis of those involved in regional and Atlantic activities in the 1630s, 1640s, and 1650s suggests that the estimates presented above represented but a proportion of an increasingly large Scots maritime labour pool (perhaps numbering as many as several hundred) active during the later decades.28 This fact taken together with the number of Scots appearing before a notary to demand that wages be paid, either directly to a sailor or, on his behalf, to a relative or to a slaapbaas or slaapvrouw (lodging house proprietor) further confirms that the trends outlined for the early 1630s continued through the end of the period under study. From the beginning of 1633 to the beginning of 1650, Scots, most of them sailors, generated almost 50 notarial acts per year in connection with a wage-related matter. This is only ten below the average for the period from 1630 to 1632, which was about 60 per year, and if one takes the heart of this period when the sources provide the best coverage (1633–1646), the annual average rises to 56 per year, quite close to the 1630–1632 figures. Clearly, Scots activity in Rotterdam’s maritime labour markets was substantial and sustained.29 Unfortunately, the records do not specify the residency of these men. The presence, noted above, of some 29 individuals in Scots Rotterdam circa 1630– 1632 who provided lodging to sailors, however, suggests that sailors who did not call Rotterdam home were also not transients without ties to the city. Instead, Rotterdam’s Scots sailor population divided into those who lived in Rotterdam for long stretches, returning home to Scotland on occasion, and those who considered the city their home. Both groups struck out into the Atlantic and could do so in part because of the infrastructure provided by Scots Rotterdam. 26 More will be known when Andrew Little completes his PhD dissertation, entitled ‘Englishmen and Scotsmen in the 17th-century Dutch Navy’. 27 For the growth of the Scots Rotterdam, see Rab Houston, ‘The Consistory of the Scots Church, Rotterdam: An Aspect of “Civic Calvinism”, c1600–1800’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, 87 (1996): 368. 28 See the discussion of lodging houses below for this. 29 The breakdown of the figures drawn from the Gemeentearchief Rotterdam’s online calendar are as follows: 1630, 45; 1631, 71; 1632, 61; 1633, 42; 1634, 46; 1635, 50; 1636, 66; 1637, 48; 1638, 37; 1639, 54; 1640, 78; 1641, 66; 1642, 69; 1643, 51; 1644, 47; 1645, 47; 1646, 65; 1647, 34; 1648, 11; 1649, 15. These figures were produced by searching the online calendar using the terms Schot% and gage (which means wage). There is some imprecision here in that one may pick up cases of Dutch boats going to Scotland with nonScots crews, for example, and because soldiers are mixed in with sailors, but as most Scots seeking wages were sailors and many ships going to Scotland had Scots crews the effects of these factors will be minimal in my view. The period from 1650 to 1660 was not analysed because the GAR’s online calendar becomes a less powerful tool in that period due to the absence of the notarial acts of notaries like Balthasaer de Gruyter, who did a lot of business with the Scots community in the 1650s.


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Of central importance to this infrastructure was the safety net that allowed mariners (and their families) to survive while they were on shore awaiting another job or away and oftentimes not in receipt of pay. From its founding in 1643, the Scots Church of Rotterdam contributed substantially in this regard, providing temporary relief to sailors or their households with funds from poor relief boxes kept in the homes of its respectable members and from the alms the congregation donated during services. Before the Scots Church of Rotterdam’s founding, of course, any relief would have been purely ad hoc in terms of the Scottish community. Those members of the Scots community who were members of Rotterdam’s Dutch Reformed congregation would almost certainly have sought help there as this was, in fact, still possible for its Scots congregants after the Scots Church of Rotterdam’s founding.30 Lodging houses comprised another crucial part of the network supporting Scots sailors (and those of other nationalities for that matter). Established well before the Scots Church of Rotterdam, they anchored itinerants (mostly but not exclusively sailors) in Rotterdam’s emerging Scots community by permitting them access to lodging, credit, and wage collection services. Moreover, they occupied a niche between various municipal institutions – the Rotterdam admiralty, the Scots Church of Rotterdam, the city authorities – in which sailors could participate as partners and through which they could enter the Atlantic. It is hardly surprising, then, that substantial numbers of Scots ran lodging houses; so far 61 different individuals, couples, or associations of persons have been identified who offered such services to Scots sailors active between 1630 and 1660.31 Their Catterall, Community without Borders, pp. 115–29; GAR/Nederlands Hervormde Gemeente/1/8-26-1643; GAR/SCA/1/8-11-1645; GAR/SCA/1/9-10-1655. Detailed records concerning disbursement of poor relief for the Scots Church of Rotterdam were likely kept in merchants’ account books that have not survived. 31 Apart from separately handled cases, which will be documented individually, conclusions regarding the lodging houses here and in the coming pages rely on an analysis of the R’damIntermediaireI database; the R’damIntermediaireII database (a second notarial database); and the SchotseKerkR’dam database (based chiefly on the Scots Church of Rotterdam’s session-book). The following list provides the names of the lodging house proprietor(s), followed by an indication of any association with the Scots Church of Rotterdam (indicated with SCR), and the areas sailors staying with them worked: 1) William Johnsone, Janet Watson, and a probable second wife Lysbeth Williams (regional and East Indies); 2) Robert Dony (regional); 3) John and Janet Balsum (regional); 4) Robert Jorisz and Mary Turner (regional with two subcontractors Judith Stevens and Janet Thomas); 5) James Tomson (regional); 6) John Aiken and Helen Halson (regional, Atlantic, East Indies) SCR tie; 7) David Pringle (regional); 8) Cristen Jansdr. (regional); 9) Margaret Sandersdr. (regional); 10) Margaret Fransdr. (regional); 11) Thomas Henderson and Ann Glen (regional) SCR tie; 12) David Duncan (regional); 13) Catharin Murray (regional); 14) James Cruck (regional); 15) Anne Adams (regional); 16–17) 2 women named Janet Roberts and the husband of one named Alexander Andries (both serving regional lodgers); 18) John Keyes and Janet Davids (regional); 19) James Cockburn and Janet Hamilton (regional and West Indies) possible SCR tie; 20) Willem Franz. (an Englishman) Janneken Davits (regional); 21) Jan Gipsen and 30

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numbers included established men such as the skipper John Aiken,32 to whom 43 different promissory notes and powers of attorney were made out, mainly between 1631 and 1647, including one from his brother William. Aiken’s career displays several hallmarks of established lodging house proprietors. He had a long career spanning some thirty years and a range of economic activities; he was prominent in the Scots community, serving on the Scots Church of Rotterdam session (consistory) until stepping down in 1653; and he was clearly a more substantial member of Scots Rotterdam given that the Church’s leadership entrusted him with overseeing a congregational poor relief box in his house.33 Robert Dony, William Janneken Davits (regional, West Indies, and East Indies); 22) Catharin Wishart/Jacobs and Peter Watson (West Indies and regional) possible SCR tie; 23) Jacob Ranel/Rannel/Reynolds and Janet Ferguson (Brazil); 24) William Smith and Catharin Kerr (regional and Brazil); 25) George Richman and Cristin Wast (regional and Brazil) SCR tie; 26) Robert Chalmers and Janet Wats (regional and West Indies) SCR tie; 27) George Tomson (regional and West Indies); 28) John Campbell and Barbara Thrid (regional and Greenland) SCR tie; 29) William Beverets/Janet Wast (one case in the notarial database) SCR tie; 30) William Black (regional and Greenland); 31) Thomas Stuart (regional) SCR tie; 32) Barbara Walker/Jacob Reiner (regional case) SCR tie; 33) Janet Roberts/Robert Lawson (regional cases); 34) Margaret Williams and Robert Wright (regional cases) SCR tie; 35) Margaret Williamson (Caribbean); 36) James Gordon and Maria Ford (West Indies and Brazil); 37) Richard Clarkson and Janet Carr (West Indies); 38) David Mitchell/Helen Berrihill (Brazil) SCR tie; 39) John Gray and Elspeth Aiken (regional) SCR tie; 40) Nans Boid (regional) SCR tie; 41) Janet Hall (regional) SCR tie; 42) Henry Stobie/Barbara English (regional) SCR tie; 43) James Sanders (regional) likely SCR tie; 44) Janet Bommen (regional); 45) Janet Rutherford (regional) SCR tie; 46) James Dason (regional) SCR tie; 47) Archibald Johnson and Janet Williams (regional); 48) Janet Williams and John Allan (regional) possible SCR tie; 49) James Henderson (regional) SCR tie; 50) John Davids and Janet Sanders (regional); 51) Janet Roberts and William Roberts (regional); 52) Andrew Hardie and Agatha Ramson (regional); 53) Margaret Johnson and William Sanders (regional); 54) John Dougal (regional); 55) Cristen Morris and John Gray the younger (regional) SCR tie; 56) Helen Davids and William Hibbit (West Indies); 57) Derek Beton and Margaret Willemsdr. (regional); 58) John Fleming (regional); 59) Tomas Brown (regional); 60) John Eson (regional) SCR tie; 61) John Trotter and Lysbeth Williams (regional) likely SCR tie. 32 A note on the naming conventions. The sources used, and especially the Dutch sources, do not spell Scots names consistently. This is because ears used to the Dutch phonetic system were interpreting Scots speech, which could have interesting results. The city of Culross, for example, was often spelled Koures. Where possible therefore a standard Scots version of all Scots names has been generated. 33 On Aiken, see the following: GAR/SCA/1/1643-1660; GAR/ONA/42/57/82/1-61631; GAR/ONA/191/180/224/5-6-1631; GAR/ONA/191/334/439/12-15-1631; GAR/ONA/ 42/140/219 12-15-1631; GAR/ONA/201/4/03/11-20-1637; GAR/ONA/175/139/191 3-301639; GAR/ONA/199/114/208/7-28-1639; GAR/ONA/199/236/408/12-20-1639; GAR/ONA/ 199/245/419/12-24-1639; GAR/ONA/431/14/2-14-1640; GAR/ONA/431/15/2-14-1640; GAR/ ONA/431/152-14-1640; GAR/ONA/431/16/2-14-1640; GAR/ONA/200/217/3-6-1640; GAR/ ONA/200/193/4-19-1640; GAR/ONA/202/148/6-11-1641; GAR/ONA/202/163/6-14-1641;


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Johnson, John Gibson, and Tomas Brown round out the ranks of professional lodging house proprietors within Scots Rotterdam. Although not as active as Aiken in Scots Rotterdam’s public life, they lodged more than 1.7 sailors per year, slightly more than John Aiken’s average of 1.4, and their careers lasted from seven to 15 years.34 Together with John Aiken, they formed the backbone of this crucial support system for Scots maritime labour in Rotterdam. Beyond the professionals, a broad range of individuals in Scots Rotterdam took in Scots not settled in the city on an occasional basis. Among the higher profile inhabitants of Scots Rotterdam who dabbled in the lodging market were John Eson and Henrie Nisbet. Eson earned his bread chiefly as a glover and played a significant role in the politics of the Scots Church of Rotterdam.35 Henrie Nisbet, previously an Edinburgh burgess and likely a merchant by profession, served as a deacon in the Scots Church of Rotterdam, and, like John Aiken, had charge of a congregation poor relief box.36 Given their resources, both men likely had a lodger or two now and again. Two final groups of individuals who provided lodging on an occasional basis emerge from the sources: widows and maritime families. Widows such as Janet Jacobsdr. were one segment of this more everyday group of lodging house keepers. They made use of contacts they had developed over the course of many years managing a household economy that was part of the maritime world.37 Maritime family networks such as the Glen family, the members of which either participated now and then in the lodging-house business or dealt in its credit instruments, played an important role as well. Thomas Glen, a sailor, and his niece, Elspeth Glen, both had a role in Scots Rotterdam’s lodging network. In 1643 Elspeth Glen accepted a promissory note from Henry Parker, an English sailor, and in the same year, Robert Douglas, a Scots sailor, made out a promissory note to the benefit of her uncle Thomas. When, in 1645, Thomas Glen prepared himself to leave GAR/ONA/444/52/10-14-1641; GAR/ONA/202/414/12-4-1641; GAR/ONA/241/107/12-161641; GAR/ONA/202/429/12-19-1641; GAR/ONA/202/287/8-27-1641; GAR/ONA/202/127/ 5-30-1641; GAR/ONA/203/26/1-17-1642; GAR/ONA/203/370/7-1-1642; GAR/ONA/203/ 371/7-1-1642; GAR/ONA/203/258/5-7-1642; GAR/ONA/203/173/3-26-1642; GAR/ONA/ 204/152/1-5-1643; GAR/ONA/204/308/4-24-1643; GAR/ONA/204/318/4-27-1643; GAR/ ONA/205/146/11-12-1643; GAR/ONA/205/359/2-27-1644; GAR/ONA/206/16/4-22-1644; GAR/ONA/241/128/7-21-1644; GAR/ONA/206/299/11-17-1644; GAR/ONA/206/312/11-231644; GAR/ONA/207/286/2-1-1646; GAR/ONA/208/71/8-16-1646; GAR/ONA/208/ 207/ 12-19-1646; GAR/ONA/208/209/12-22-1646; GAR/ONA/208/404/5-23-1647; GAR/ONA/ 208/467/8-24-1647; GAR/ONA/231/291/11-2-1656. 34 R’damIntermediaireI database. 35 GAR/ONA/191/136/170/2-24-1631; GAR/SCR/1/9-30-1644. 36 GAR/SCR/1/2-10-1645; GAR/SCR/1/8-11-1645; GAR/SCR/1/3-6-1648; P. Marshall (ed.), The Diary of Sir James Hope, 1646, vol. 9, Miscellany of the Scottish History Society (Edinburgh, 1958), pp. 167, 231. 37 GAR/ONA/108/107/190/2-14-1631; GAR/ONA/108/148/263/4-24-1631; GAR/ ONA/120/87/179/4-25-1631; GAR/ONA/108/199/336/10-3-1631.

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Rotterdam for the East Indies on the Nieuw Rotterdam, he made out a testament in which he bequeathed his sister Elspeth Glen and his brother William Glen, both of Queensferry (on the Firth of Forth), one-half of his estate. He willed the other half to Margaret Blackader and her husband James [Rowan], probably acquaintances of long standing. He chose not to leave his niece Elspeth Glen in Rotterdam anything, perhaps because he could not trust someone of her reputation; she had been in a scolding match the year before, and would appear before the Scots Church of Rotterdam consistory on three occasions on suspicion of adultery between 1644 and 1646 (after Glen’s departure).38 These examples suggest the existence of an extensive and fairly sophisticated market for credit that could support sailors and other itinerant labourers, such as soldiers, and their families. How then did these mobile labourers gain access to this network when they went overseas? Was it any different from accessing the network for regional trading activities? More often than not, the answer was no. Frequently, the people who offered lodging and credit to those involved in local trades also offered it to those venturing farther afield. Of the 43 promissory notes and powers of attorney made out to John Aiken in connection with his activities as a lodging house master, for instance, five concerned individuals who had sailed to the West Indies.39 Robert Hardie, another Scots lodging-house owner, similarly sent one sailor to Brazil and supported a further two involved in regional activities.40 Nor were these two men alone. Using acts found in the Rotterdam notarial archive, it is possible to identify 15 other lodging houses that supported sailors heading either to the Atlantic (usually the West Indies or Brazil) or the East Indies. Of these 17 lodging houses that had ties to men sailing outside of regional European circuits of trade, only six specialized in the Atlantic in some way and none of these generated many records.41 This does not, of course, exclude the possibility of specialization among other lodging-house owners, especially in the later decades of the seventeenth century where my source coverage is thinner. But given that the Dutch Republic’s access both to Brazil and the West Indies became more restricted after 1650, it is unlikely that Scots lodging houses focused chiefly on the Atlantic after mid-century.42 Rather, this was a flexible network that adapted to the varying needs of those in the Rotterdam Scots community as well as 38 GAR/ONA/95/229/5-29-1642; GAR/ONA/204/419/7-6-1643; GAR/ONA/205/ 145/10-11-1643; GAR/ONA/205/192/12-11-1643; GAR/ONA/205/217/12-15-1643; GAR/ SCA/ 1/ 1644-1646. 39 GAR/ONA/431/14/2-14-1640; GAR/ONA/431/15/2-14-1640; GAR/ONA/431/ 152-14-1640; GAR/ONA/431/16/2-14-1640; GAR/ONA/208/404/5-23-1647. 40 Robbert Hardij: GAR/ONA/286/26/35/3-4-1632; GAR/ONA/200/3/1-8-1640; GAR/ ONA/201/330/3-25-1641; GAR/ONA/201/270/2-26-1641; GAR/ONA/204/144/12-29-1642. 41 These conclusions rely on an analysis of the activities of the lodging houses listed earlier in this section. 42 For the reasons why Dutch access to Brazil declined, especially after 1654, see Mark Meuwese’s contribution in this volume. Access to the West Indies (and to Virginia as well)


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those coming from the Scots feeder ports that sent men and women to Rotterdam. Itinerants in this population usually remained in the North Sea zone and trades connecting Rotterdam to France and the Iberian Peninsula, with some serving the odd stint in the wider Atlantic.43 Maritime historians will recognize in these lodging houses the haunt of that stereotypical port figure, the crimp. No doubt some exploitation did occur, even within the tightly knit Scots community, but the fact that a good number of the Scots lodging-house owners were members of the Scots Church of Rotterdam mitigated this exploitation. Of the owners of the 61 lodging houses discussed above, as many as 24 were either members, or were related to members, of the Scots Church of Rotterdam. Of these, John Aiken and Henrie Nesbit served on its session and the sessioner Andrew DeLap rented a house to another lodging-house keeper.44 This is not to suggest, of course, that members of the Scots Church of Rotterdam were ipso facto more honest – they were not – but they did endure tremendous scrutiny, chiefly by one another, especially where money was concerned.45 Moreover, had the Rotterdam city fathers suspected that members of the Scots Church were acting as crimps, they would likely have reported this fact to the session. The Rotterdam regents, after all, hardly desired to have a destitute population of foreign sailors on their hands. Perhaps equally important is the composition of the lodging-house network, which seems to have consisted, if we include families, of well over 100 individuals, high and low, from professionals to dabblers. To assume that all or even most of the Scots lodging houses in Rotterdam were ipso nomine exploitative would be to assume a conspiracy of impossibly grand proportions. As for those individuals who chose to go abroad (bearing in mind that those discussed here represent a fraction of the number of Scots who went to the ‘Dutch’ Atlantic),46 the majority were sailors who had decided to try their luck on a West Indies voyage, possibly (though the documentation is admittedly thin) after having gained experience in the regional trades. Among those heading west were declined mainly due to enforcement of the Navigation Acts, first passed and implemented in 1650 and1651. 43 R’damIntermediaireI database; R’damIntermedaireII database. 44 The names of the lodging houses with Scots Church of Rotterdam ties are listed above and were drawn from the R’damIntermediaireI database and checked against the SchotseKerkR’dam database. 45 Based on a reading of GAR/SCA/1/1643-1660. 46 Given the thorough coverage of Rotterdam’s notarial archive and the richness of the Scots Church of Rotterdam session-books, the numbers of Scots going abroad from Rotterdam are probably representative, but not complete. Unfortunately, the records for the Rotterdam Chamber of the WIC do not cover the period this chapter addresses, which is also the case for the Middelburg Chamber records. Some Rotterdam Scots likely entered the Atlantic via the Amsterdam Chamber, but a consultation of those sources and related municipal sources for Amsterdam is beyond this study’s scope. My thanks to Dr. Mijers for sharing with me the preliminary results of her archival work on the Scots Atlantic in our several conversations at the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies in the summer of 2004.


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also a few soldiers. Their destination was always Brazil in the source material consulted and their lives there would be far from pleasant. Take the example of William Heer, a Scotsman aged 30, who reported in August 1649 that two of his brothers in arms, Dirck and Jan van der Kerckhoff, had died in the Second Battle of Guararapes, which took place on February 13, 1649. Of the 800 men in their unit, only 50 survived, according to Heer. These men had experienced what would soon be a historical reality – namely, the Dutch loss of Brazil, which was definitive by 1654.47 These Scots sailors (and soldiers), then, can be seen as a smaller version of the sort of migratory colonization that Peter Pope has described in such detail for Newfoundland.48 Those reaching the western Atlantic basin on the strength of support from Scots Rotterdam represented a projection of the enclave’s economic power into the Atlantic, albeit perhaps in service of larger enterprises such as the Kamer Maze of the WIC. Projecting and Planting in the West Indies and Virginia To the stories of these Scots sailors and soldiers we can add those of merchants and others in Scots Rotterdam who participated more fundamentally as architects and settlers in colonial projects between 1640 and 1660 and who now move to centre stage. Two regions will come in for consideration: the Lesser Antilles (especially Martinique, St Kitts, and St Martin) on the one hand, and Virginia (the Southern Side and the Eastern Shore) on the other. Both had become attractive for European settlement in the early seventeenth century – Virginia in the first decade of the 47

In total the number of out-migrants concerned in this paragraph is 36, and the number of people involved (such as lodging-house owners) was 85. The analysis in this section is limited to the period when Scots Rotterdam had developed the greatest capacity for Atlantic ventures, viz. the period during which there was both a Scots Church and a lodging-house network in Rotterdam. The cases used for this paragraph are: GAR/ONA/200/3/1-8-1640; GAR/ONA/83/act no. 78/1-1-1640; GAR/ONA/90/127/823-1640; GAR/ONA/262/521/12-16-1640; GAR/ONA/431/14/2-14-1640; GAR/ONA/ 431/15/2-14-1640; GAR/ONA/431/15/2-14-1640; GAR/ONA/431/16/2-14-1640; GAR/ ONA/431/27/2-14-1640; GAR/ONA/444/21/2-25-1640; GAR/ONA/294/9/3-3-1640; GAR/ONA/200/109/3-5-1640; GAR/ONA/290/98/3-19-1641; GAR/ONA/202/181/6-211641; GAR/ONA/203/4/1-8-1642; GAR/ONA/204/227/2-13-1643; GAR/ONA/155/17/110-1651; GAR/ONA/206/442/3-25-1645; GAR/SCA/1/12-22-1645; GAR/NHG/2/12-221645; GAR/SCA/1/12-29-1645; GAR/SCA/1/2-2-1646; GAR/ONA/208/297/3-21-1647; GAR/ONA/208/404/5-23-1647; GAR/ONA/209/84/11-16-1647; GAR/ONA/209/93/1124-1647; GAR/ONA/209/112/12-8-1647; GAR/ONA/209/172/1-17-1648; GAR/ONA/ 209/441/5-3-1649; GAR/ONA/210/65/6-22-1649; GAR/ONA/212/9/4-6-1651; GAR/ ONA/127/136/8-5-1649; GAR/ONA/210/442/2-22-1650; GAR/SCA/1/7-10-1652; GAR/ ONA/669/221/11-12-1652; GAR/ONA/670/181/10-3-1654. 48 Pope, Fish into Wine, pp. 15–44.


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1600s and the Lesser Antilles in the 1620s – drawing Dutch interest and with it that of Scots in Rotterdam. The Caribbean seems to have been the more open of the two regions for Scots from Rotterdam, with ‘ownership’ of the islands of St Kitts and Martinique remaining in flux through the middle decades of the seventeenth century that this chapter covers.49 It is no accident, then, that the only examples of Scots settlers I have found in the Rotterdam records concern Scots in the Caribbean. From Rotterdam, Scots participation in the Caribbean was modest, but part of the mainstream. John Ker, whom William Burn, Henry Nisbet, and James Wright of Scots Rotterdam listed as a free planter on St Kitts in 1645, shipped 3,840 pounds of tobacco to the Dutch Republic via the English merchant John Robson of Exeter by way of Amsterdam in that same year.50 Similarly, William Smith, son of [Agatha] Forgun and nephew of Robert Forgun, a general merchant in Rotterdam dealing in tobacco among other products and a member of the Scots Church of Rotterdam session, was living in the West Indies in 1654.51 Where in the West Indies Smith resided is not specified, but perhaps he had settled on Martinique or St Kitts, given that his uncle Robert Forgun had purchased tobacco from those islands earlier in the decade.52 William Smith’s presence in the Caribbean represented a significant extension of the Forguns’ Atlantic enterprises, but not one unprecedented for the family; the son of Robert’s brother John, John the Younger, had died in Guinea serving the Dutch West India Company in the 1640s, for example.53 For these cases it is possible to establish definite connections, but many more concern Scots who had contacts with Caribbean planting, though not always in the context of an all-Scots network or enterprise. The case of Robert Bon, a tobaccopipe maker (a typical English trade in Rotterdam) is a useful point of departure.54 In 1640 James Holgatt, Elizabeth Brown, and Robert Houston swore out a declaration at Bon’s behest that 16 of his lodgers – Willem Bock, Jan Haeket, Jan Polijn, Benjamin Mullins, Bartel Goedael, Jan Mulliet van Crieck, Richard Davids, 49 The following give a sense of the efforts to ‘nationalize’ these regions as well as the more fluid realities on the ground: Vincent K. Hubbard, A History of St Kitts: The Sweet Trade (Oxford, 2002), pp. 24–51; Larry Gragg, Englishmen Transplanted: The English Colonization of Barbados, 1627–1660 (Oxford, 2003), pp. 1–86; Hatfield, Atlantic Virginia, pp. 39–109; Schnurman, ‘Atlantic Trade and American Identities’; Dobson, ‘Seventeenth Century Scottish Communities’, pp. 114–31; Murray, ‘De Rotterdamsche Toeback-Coopers’. 50 GAR/ONA/171/89/9-5-1645. 51 GAR/ONA/670/147-149/8-7-1654. 52 GAR/ONA/668/219-220/10-23-1651. This document was an inventory of Robert Forgun’s goods upon the occasion of his marriage to Janet Lin and listed among his effects 350 guilders’ worth of St Kitts and Martinique tobacco as well as 801 guilders in Virginia tobacco. 53 GAR/ONA/90/127/8-23-1640; GAR/ONA/262/521/12-6-1641. 54 On the English in the tobacco pipe craft see Keith Sprunger, Dutch Puritanism: A History of English and Scottish Churches in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Leiden, 1982), pp. 160–61.


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Richard Hardie, John William, Claes Jans van Voege, Thomas Jacks, Edward Bord, Jan Jaques, Jermijn Timmerman, William Robert, and Joseph Gerentin – had left for the West Indies between October and November 1638.55 Determining which of these people was a Scot is difficult, but Scots involvement seems likely given that the comparer Robert Houston was probably the same Robert Houston who was a prominent member of the Scots Church of Rotterdam in its early days.56 A number of the names in the list are also fairly typical for Scots, such as Hardie, Davids, and Jacks. Crieck may also be a Scots place-name. What we do know, however, is that the settlers/servants that Bon had shipped out were a mixture of English, Scots, and Dutch. Another feature of such settlement projects emerges from various notarial acts relating to what appear to be two Scots, English, and Dutch networks with interests in the Caribbean and some associations with one another.57 In 1644, the first of these networks organized a voyage in which 11 of its members (Symon Gordon, Randel Russell, Thomas Iversson, Laurens Liveson, Marguet St Jordin, Thomas Bagbew, Edward Carlisle, William Badcock, John Tomson, John Arnett, and Henry Wooten) paid money to Aelbrecht Cockx, a Rotterdam-based Dutch merchant with substantial colonial interests of his own, to arrange for their passage to St Kitts or Barbados. The fees they paid to Cockx included the transport costs 55

Please note, as in previous cases I have altered those names that seemed to be clear phonetic spellings of English or Scots names. 56 GAR/SCA/1/2-10-1645, 4-3-1648, 4-19-1648, 2-22-1652 reveal Houston’s status as a deacon and also his involvement in several contentious events in the early life of the Scots Church of Rotterdam. 57 The networks were reconstructed from the following notarial acts: GAR/ONA/164/67/95/4-17-1632; GAR/ONA/95/385/1-9-1644; GAR/ONA/86/585/ 1-13-1644; GAR/ONA/86/587/1-18-1644; GAR/ONA/179/131/3-9-1644; GAR/ONA/ 95/385/1-9-1644; GAR/ONA/83/act 93/4-6-1649; GAR/ONA/87/249/5-20-1649 GAR/ ONA/155/3/17/1-10-1651; GAR/ONA/142/275/419/3-11-1652; GAR/ONA/672/217/112-1656; GAR/SCA/1/7-7-1645, 1-12-1646, 5-11-1646, 8-21-1652. The individuals involved in the two networks and their probable ethnicities were as follows: Thomas Dredan (English shipper), Aelbrecht Cockx (Dutch merchant), Symon Gordon (English merchant), Randel Russell (?), Thomas Iversson (?), Laurens Livesen/ Lieuse [Lewis] (Scots?), Marguet St. Jordin (French?), Thomas Bagbew (English), Edward Carlisle (Scots?), William Badcock (English), John Tomsen (?), John Arnett (English), Henry Wooten (English), Theophilis Baynham (English merchant), Abraham Halsted (English merchant), Grietgen Stevensdr (Scots), Jacob Cardon/Gordon (Scots), Vincent Thoburgh (Scots), Laurens Thoburgh (Scots), William Harris (English merchant), James Moorcock (?), Thomas Biddel (English), James Shepherd (Scots or English merchant), Neeltgen Heynrickx (Scots/Dutch?), Willem Sopinus (?),Willem Wesselsen Cruys, chief brewer in Drie Ackeren, Pieter Jansz. Sloting (Dutch broker with strong Scots ties), John Long (?), Peter Long (?), Maritgen Huygen (mother of Neeltgen Hendrickx, Dutch), Lijntgen Huygen Schoonhoven (Dutch), Samuel van der Distel draper (Dutch), John Ferrers (English?), William Preston (?), Robert Rosse (Scots), Robert Tomson (?), Robert Williams (Scots).


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for servants.58 The planter Edward Carlisle, who had lands on St. Kitts, employed two Scots indentured servants in Rotterdam – Vincent Thoburgh and Jacob Cardon or Gordon (both, in fact, Scots names), both likely Scots – whose family hired them out for a term of four years. Whether the young men were expected to return to Rotterdam at the end of their contract is unclear.59 Planters based in the Caribbean retained ties to people in Rotterdam, and especially to those with interests in the Caribbean and Virginia. Thus, when Symon Gordon needed to offer security for a parcel of tobacco that the Rotterdambased English merchant Theophilis Baynham had impounded, he turned to two Rotterdam-based English merchants, William Harris and Abraham Halsted. Harris was part of the second network noted above, which also consisted of Dutch, English, and Scots with colonial interests.60 Given the mixed nature of the consortium in which Gordon was involved, it made sense that one of the men he called on was Harris. His involvement in a multi-ethnic network whose members also shared economic, social, religious, and kinship ties gave him the information and clout necessary to assist Gordon. Harris knew and likely did business with one James Shepherd, a Scots or English merchant, who had married a woman named Neelgten Heyndrickx. Given her remarriage to a likely Scot, Robert Rosse, and the Dutch convention of respelling Scots names, her name was quite possibly a Dutch version of the Scots name Helen Henderson.61 Shepherd and Harris both had investments in the ships or voyages of Thomas Dredan, an English skipper active in the Caribbean who was a member and sessioner of the Scots Church of Rotterdam, and had effectively joined the Scots community. His wife, Margaret Lawson, was a Scot, and he employed Scots maritime labour on his ship. Shepherd 58

On Aelbrecht Cockx, see W.G.D. Murray, ‘De Rotterdamsche Toeback-Coopers’, Rotterdamsch Jaarboekje 5th series, 1 (1943): 24–5, 30–31, 34. For the notarial acts see: GAR/ONA/95/385/1-9-1644; GAR/ONA/86/585/1-13-1644. 59 GAR/ONA/179/131/3-9-1644. The couple in question was Laurens Thoburch and Grietgen Stevensdr., who is listed as Laurens Thoburch’s wife and as mother to Jacob Cardon/Gordon but not to Vincent Thoburch. As the Scots custom of the woman keeping her name was in force in the seventeenth century, we can assume that this was likely a Scots couple as otherwise she would have been named Grietgen Thoburch. 60 GAR/ONA/86/587/1-18-1644. 61 GAR/ONA/87/129/249/5-20-1649. I base this judgment on the fact that while in the records of the Scots Church of Rotterdam we find many women named Helen or Nell, in the Dutch notarial records their names become Dutch, with Helen becoming Neeltgen and the last name often disappearing to be replaced by a patronymic. The case of John Aiken’s wife, Helen Halson, is classic. According to GAR/SCA/1/4-19-1647 John Aiken’s wife was Helen Halson, but according to ONA/208/220/404/5-28-1647 she was named Neltgen Jans[dr.]. Since the cases come so close to one another, we know we are talking about the same woman and yet you would not know this to look at the sources at first glance. In the case of Neelgten Heyndrickx or Helen Henderson the case is complicated by the fact that this women’s mother was called Maritgen Huygen and this is a rather Dutch name though it too may be concealing a Scots name.


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also had investments in the business ventures of Robert Williams, who appears to have been a Scot who began his career as a sailor and had become a skipper by the time of his death in the 1650s.62 Another Scots link ran through Jan Pieter Sloting, a Dutch broker with strong ties to Rotterdam Scots.63 Finally, the same James Shepherd mentioned above may have had connections to the Scots Church of Rotterdam, if he was related to the English merchant John Shepherd. The latter joined the Scots Church of Rotterdam in 1645, remaining a member until 1652, when he requested a demission to enable him to join and support Rotterdam’s English congregation, which was apparently in danger of disappearing for lack of members at that time.64 The participation of middling and well-heeled Rotterdam Scots in planting was not limited to networks such as that to which the shipper Thomas Dredan belonged. Men like Robert Forgun, for instance, were merchants who participated as financiers or purchasers of the products of Virginia and the Caribbean. Forgun, as we have already seen, dealt in tobacco, which meant he had to engage in litigation on occasion when the tobacco he had purchased proved inferior. In 1647, for example, Robert Burt, a merchant and also a member of the Scots Church of Rotterdam, reported to the notary Jan van Aller, that Forgun had complained to him about 53 rolls of good quality Virginia tobacco that he had purchased from Sacharyas Janssen and one Bouckelwaert. The tobacco had allegedly spoiled too rapidly. William Harris, the Rotterdam-based English merchant mentioned above, acted as one of the arbiters assigned to resolve the conflict.65 Other Scots merchants with some involvement in the Caribbean trade included Patrick Gibbeson and John Menzies. Gibbeson, also a member of the Scots Church of Rotterdam, dealt in sugar among other products.66 Menzies, whose business produced few records, frequently found himself in difficult financial circumstances, perhaps due to his involvement in the tobacco trade. The Rotterdam session excluded him from the Eucharist in 1646, ‘because he was at variance with his neighbours, and wold not reconcile with them; and that not only for dettes or maters of money, but for his scolding and publik scandals’; he and his wife seem to have cut ties with the community thereafter.67 In part Menzies’ troubles may have stemmed from his 62

GAR/ONA/83/act 93/4-6-1649; GAR/SCA/1/1-12-1646; GAR/ONA/164/67/95/417-1632; GAR/ONA/672/217/11-2-1656. 63 GAR/ONA/83/act 93/4-6-1649; Catterall, Community without Borders, pp. 35, 53, 200. 64 GAR/SCA/1/7-7-1645, 5-11-1646, 8-21-1652. 65 GAR/ONA/96/226/11-18-1647; GAR/SCA/1/1644-1660. 66 For information on his trading activities in the 1640s, see: GAR/ONA/437/86/5-101645; GAR/ONA/437/115-118/6-20-1645; GAR/ONA/439/110/9-30-1647. For the 1650s, see GAR/ONA/668/passim, GAR/ONA/669/passim. For his ties to the Scots Church of Rotterdam, see GAR/SCA/1/1644-1650. 67 GAR/SCA/1/8-11-1645, 9-25-1645, 10-13-1645, 11-10-1645, 1-12-1646, 1-191646, 1-26-1646, 2-2-1646, 4-13-1646, 5-11-1646; GAR/ONA/437/113/5-10-1645; GAR/ ONA/438/50/3-12-1646; GAR/ONA/438/59/3-20-1646.


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inability to spread risk across a broad network. More typical of Rotterdam’s Scots merchants was Mathew Paton, a very powerful member of the Scots Church of Rotterdam Session and one of the men with whom Menzies had clashed.68 Paton had his finger in many pies, and his network extended far beyond Rotterdam to include the Scots enclave in Elbing, making Paton a participant in the traditional northern Scots stomping grounds.69 To bring the story full circle, the shipper Thomas Dredan traded both to the East (to Gdansk, for example) and to the Caribbean, employing Scots sailors from Rotterdam in the process.70 This brings me to the involvement of Scots from Rotterdam in those areas of Virginia with clear Dutch ties – the Southern Side and Eastern Shore – which would seem to have been negligible. This modest Rotterdam Scots presence in ‘Dutch’ Virginia is largely in keeping with recent research on the general profile of Scots migration to Virginia, which, prior to the 1650s, was not numerically impressive. Moreover, in terms of voluntary migration to the Chesapeake, the primary sort of migration in which Rotterdam Scots participated, this profile remains valid into the eighteenth century. For it was forced migration that first brought larger numbers of Scots to Virginia and other plantations in the Americas. The final collapse of the Covenanter cause in Scotland saw the Cromwellian regime designate several thousand Scots for transport as indentured servants to various destinations in the Americas, including Virginia. Officials in Restoration Scotland also readily resorted to this tactic in punishing political opponents as well as common criminals from 1660 on. Crucially, transported Scots who did arrive in Virginia would not have operated as an independent Scots presence, given the manner of their arrival, their commensurately low social status, and the demographic profile of the population (mostly male), which prevented it from reproducing itself. Scots traders (legal and illegal), a few professionals (especially churchmen), and occasional voluntary migrants (likely a few from Rotterdam) of a less exalted social rank rounded out the numbers of Scots migrating to Virginia either to settle or to transact business.71 68

For Paton’s activities as a sessioner see GAR/SCA/1/1643-1654. GAR/ONA/152/303/11-1-1640; Catterall, Community without Borders, pp. 258–63; Douglas Catterall, ‘At Home Abroad: Ethnicity and Enclave in the World of Scots Traders in Northern Europe, c. 1600–1800’, Journal of Early Modern History, 8/3–4 (2005): 319–57. 70 GAR/ONA/440/73/9-8-1648; GAR/ONA/440/74/9-8-1648; GAR/ONA/440/85/929-1648; GAR/ONA/440/88/10-11-1648; GAR/ONA/440/10-30-1648; GAR/ONA/155/ 17/1-10-1651. 71 See, for example, Dobson, ‘Seventeenth-Century Scottish Communities’, pp. 114– 17; Dobson, Scottish Emigration, pp. 33–7, 55–63; Devine, Scotland’s Empire, pp. 1, 27–36; Bruce P. Lenman, ‘Lusty Beggars, Dissolute Women, Sorners, Gypsies, and Vagabonds for Virginia’, Colonial Williamsburg: The Journal of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation 27/2 (Spring 2005) (October 5, 2008); Michael Lynch, Scotland: A New History (London, 1992), pp. 276–83. Informal conversations with Esther Mijers have also confirmed this picture. 69

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Here and there the sources hint at the possibility of connections between Rotterdam’s Scots (and English) inhabitants and Scots migrating to Virginia in the mid-seventeenth century, chiefly in the form of settlers with Scots names, of the Scots sailors among the crews of ships originating in the Netherlands, and of Rotterdam-based merchants contracting to ship indentured labour from Scotland and elsewhere. The evidence on the Virginia side, which comes from published legal records for Virginia covering the period from 1640 to 1660, suggests Scots settlement. It is, however, far from fulsome in describing the backgrounds of individual settlers, making it difficult to establish their ties to Rotterdam.72 Similarly, it is possible to identify Scots merchants such as John Burnett, who, along with his factors, received a warrant in 1638 as the only Scots merchants who could trade freely in Virginia and had a presence there in the late 1630s. Nevertheless, while the sources reveal Burnett’s ties to Aberdeen, they do not reveal many details concerning his network, which may well have included Rotterdam connections.73 The presence of both Scots settlers and merchants in Virginia is unsurprising as Scots had resided there as early as Jamestown’s founding and continued to migrate there throughout the seventeenth century. Moreover, Scots residing in the Dutch Republic found themselves among their number, with Amsterdam being an identifiable port of origin.74 The evidence concerning Rotterdam ties to Scots indentured labour being shipped to Virginia is the most credible as merchants in Rotterdam did use Scotland as a servant pool. In 1647, for example, the English merchant Thomas Woodward sent 160 Scots servants to Barbados via Leith in one of the ships of Dutch merchant Aelbrecht Cockx, the latter a man with ties to

72 My sources here are as follows: Lower Norfolk County, Virginia Court Records: Book “A” (1637–1646) and Book “B” (1646–1651/2), transcribed by Alice Granbery Walter (1982; reprint, Baltimore, 1994, 1995) pp. 2, 17; Book “B” Lower Norfolk County, Virginia, 2 November 1646–15 January 1651/2, transcribed Alice Granbery Walter (Virginia Beach, VA, 1978); County Court Records of Accomack-Northampton, Virginia, 1640–1645, Susie M. Ames (ed.) (Charlottesville, 1973); Northampton County, Virginia Record Book: Orders, Deeds, Wills, &c., vol. 3, 1645–1651, Howard Mackey and Marlene Hinkley Groves (eds) (Rockport, 2000); Northampton County, Virginia Record Book: Orders, Deeds, Wills, &c., vols 6–8, 1655–1657, Howard Mackey and Marlene Hinkley Groves (eds) (Rockport, 2002). The findings from these sources match the demographic profile of Scots migrating to Virginia as established in Dobson, Scottish Emigration, pp. 28–32; Dobson, ‘SeventeenthCentury Scottish Communities’, pp. 114–17. 73 Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, 1574–1660, W. Noel Sainsbury (ed.) (London, 1860), p. 277; Lower Norfolk County, Virginia Court Records: Book “A” (1637– 1646) and Book “B” (1646–1651/2); cf. Dobson, Scottish Emigration, p. 29. 74 Dobson, Scottish Emigration, pp. 28–30. The appearance of Amsterdam in the records does not come as a surprise as the Scots migrants in question eventually found their way to New Netherland, a colony dominated by Amsterdam On the dominance of Amsterdam within New Netherland see Jaap Jacobs, New Netherland: A Dutch Colony in Seventeenth-Century America (Leiden, 2005).


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Rotterdam’s Scots.75 In keeping with this closer English connection to Virginia, the best Rotterdam connection once again involves William Harris. In February 1650, Harris, as part of a merchant society, is mentioned in the minutes of the Lower Norfolk County court book as having tried to bring three Africans to Virginia as slaves.76 By contrast, no men like David Peebles, who recruited indentured servants in Edinburgh to accompany him to Virginia, surface on the Rotterdam side.77 One possible reason why it is so hard to trace Scots in Virginia in the early colonial period lies in the fluidly polyglot nature of early Atlantic enterprises. A request for naturalization from the mid-1650s gives a concrete example of this reality. The act, dated 1655, requests naturalization for several families: Stocke, Kirke, Lawrence, Tracy, Silvester, Harvey, Lowr van Stodt, Hacke, and Genne. Members of this network had lived in England, France, and the Netherlands and included persons of English, Dutch, and Scots ethnicity, with some having been born in the country from which they drew that ethnicity and others not.78 Obviously with such complicated networks, tracing the presence of Scots in the absence of an enclave is difficult. This act of naturalization is perhaps an indication that, in some cases, networks and practices in the Atlantic were truly Atlantic. Alternatively, in light of the multi-ethnic consortia and networks operating in Rotterdam both to the East and to the West, perhaps the conclusion should be that scholars need to look both to ethnicity and to the other network-building practices that were typical of pre-modern Europe in general and operated simultaneously in the same network. If we consider, for example, the way that merchants of German origin operated in seventeenth-century Sweden, for example, we can see that ethnicity and other kinds of linkages combined people of differing backgrounds into one network. These practices, in turn, made their way out into the Atlantic only to be modified yet again as the cycles of trade and cultural exchange churned away.79

75

Murray, ‘De Rotterdamsche Toeback-Coopers’: 24–5. Book “B” Lower Norfolk County, Virginia, 2 November 1646–15 January 1651/2, p. 150. 77 Dobson, Scottish Emigration, p. 30. 78 Northampton County, Virginia Record Book: Orders, Deeds, Wills, &c., vol. 6, 7–8, 1655–1657, pp. 134–5. 79 Christina Dalhede’s oeuvre reveals that German merchants had close network ties to Dutch and Scots merchants for example. See Christina Dalhede, Viner Kvinnor Kapital. 1600-talshandel med potential (Partille, 2006); Christina Dalhede, Handelsfamiljer på stormaktstidens Europamarknad 1. Resor och resande i internationella förbindelser och kulturella intressen. Augsburg, Antwerpen, Lübeck, Göteborg, Arboga (3 vols, Partille, 2001), and for those who do not read Swedish, Christina Dalhede, Augsburg und Schweden in der Frühen Neuzeit (2 vols, St Katharinen, 1998). 76


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Conclusion Like the Anglo-Dutch-Scots network that requested the right to settle in Virginia in 1655, the activities I have described in this chapter are not the stuff of the great colonial dramas more typical of planting and pioneering. In many ways, one could view the various projects of Scots in Rotterdam as extensions of their existence in that city. Yet, in helping to extend the influence of Rotterdam, Scots there were taking part in projecting the power of an Atlantic port even as they attempted to realize their own aims. These aims were not grandiose and certainly not imperial, though as Michael Braddick has noted, we should not be unsophisticated in how we portray the early modern state’s role in these events by insisting on finding evidence of its overbearing presence everywhere. As he rightly stresses, we should instead see its role as that of a necessary enabler, reducing risk, for example, by organizing infrastructure.80 That said, it seems equally important to stress that the actions of these individuals had as their end individual survival or personal success. In this sense Scots clearly appropriated the Dutch imperial infrastructure for their own ends, as did others working under its auspices. Thus, unlike ventures such as the Darien Scheme, analysed by Mark Horton in this volume, the Scots of Rotterdam clearly did not intend to plant the flag. Like the many fishermen from the Basque Coast, Brittany, Normandy, and the West Country though, they fully intended to wrest what profit they could from the wider Atlantic and adapted institutions and practices to that end.81

80

Personal communication to the author via e-mail, October 2005. Pope, Fish into Wine, pp. 15–20.

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Chapter 4

‘A People So Subtle’: Sephardic Jewish Pioneers of the English West Indies Natalie Zacek

Alexander Hamilton is undoubtedly the most famous scion of the island of Nevis, and the most prominent West Indian colonist in the history of the early national United States. In actuality, Hamilton’s residence in Nevis was brief, limited as it was to the period between his birth in 1755 and his relocation to the Danish island of St Croix ten years later. Few documentary materials exist relating to his life on the island, but a tantalizing fragment remains in the form of an anecdote regarding his early education. Hamilton’s mother, Rachel Faucette Levine of St Kitts, had run away from her allegedly abusive husband, but was unable to obtain his consent to a divorce. Although her subsequent liaison with James Hamilton, a physician and the kinsman of an aristocratic Nevis family of Scots descent, was of long standing, and although most white Nevisians apparently regarded the relationship as legitimate in a social if not a legal sense, the couple’s two children, Alexander and James Jr, were, in the eyes of the Church of England, bastards. As such, the boys could not enrol at Nevis’s only school, which operated under the auspices of the Church, so five-year-old Alexander received his earliest formal education at a Jewish school in Charlestown, Nevis’s capital, which appears to have been a sort of dame school run by an elderly Jewish woman. Not only did Alexander master the rudiments of reading and writing at this ‘Jews’ School’, but he also apparently learned some Hebrew there, and within a few months of his enrolment had memorized and could recite the Decalogue in that language. It may seem surprising that an island colony as small in size and population as Nevis could have been home to a Jewish community large enough to support its own school. However, Jews were a constant presence in the West Indian colonies from the middle of the seventeenth century to the later decades of the eighteenth, a period which saw the beginnings and rapid expansion of the sugar industry in these islands. The economic and social development of the Caribbean, particularly

On the unconventional Levine-Hamilton ménage, see Natalie A. Zacek, ‘Sexual Transgression and Social Control in the English Leeward Islands, 1670–1763’, in Merril D. Smith (ed.), Sex and Sexuality in Colonial America, 1492–1800 (New York, 1998), pp. 190–214. Samuel M. Wilson, ‘Caribbean Diaspora’, Natural History 102 (1993): 55; Forrest McDonald, Alexander Hamilton: A Biography (New York, 1979), p. 8.


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in the islands settled by the English and Dutch, was greatly influenced by the diaspora of Jewish settlers from Brazil in the middle of the seventeenth century. In 1654, Portuguese forces gained control of the Dutch colony of Recife, the centre of the sugar industry of northern Brazil. Among the first signs of the new order was the arrival of a group of Jesuits, whose appearance validated the fear of many Recifeans that the Portuguese intended to import the Inquisition. Many of the colonists of Dutch Recife were Jews who had settled there in order to take advantage of both the economic opportunities and the religious freedom offered by the Dutch administration; their ancestors had been drawn to the Netherlands after the Reconquista of 1492 and the subsequent expulsion of non-Christians from Spain, but within a few generations the Jewish community of Amsterdam had become overcrowded with refugees from the Iberian peninsula, as well as those Ashkenazim who fled poverty and persecution in Poland and Lithuania. With the possibility of inquisitorial persecution looming, these Jewish colonists abandoned Brazil and settled elsewhere in the Atlantic world. The Spanish and Portuguese colonies clearly offered no haven to Jewish refugees, and the increasing hostility of Louis XIV’s France towards non-Catholics both at home and in its overseas possessions forestalled resettlement anywhere in la Nouvelle France. The only places which offered Jews a refuge from religious persecution were the English and Dutch settlements in the Americas, particularly those in the Caribbean, in which the displaced Recifeans’ expertise in the cultivation and commerce of sugar would allow them to re-establish their families and fortunes. Seventeenth-century English attitudes towards Jews, though considerably more accommodating than those of Europe’s Catholic powers, were not particularly welcoming. For Britons, metropolitan and colonial alike, religious tolerance fell far short of a willing acceptance of alien groups such as Jews. Many Englishmen – and women – might have found farfetched William Hughes’s assertion, made in a tract published in 1656, that Jews ‘make it their annual practice to crucifie children ... [and] conspire against City and people’, but they might have deemed more convincing the warning of another pamphleteer, Thomas Papillon, that Jews, though not necessarily a threat to national security, were so culturally and socially alien that it would be impossible to assimilate them into the mainstream Michelle M. Terrell, The Jewish Community of Early Colonial Nevis: A Historical Archaeological Study (Gainesville, 2005), p. 17. In Article One of the Code Noir of 1685, Louis XIV instructed French colonial officials ‘to expel from our islands all the Jews who have settled there; to them, as declared enemies of Christianity, we command to leave within three months from the publication of this edict, on pain of loss of liberty and property’ (reprinted in F.R. Augier and S.C. Gordon, Sources of West Indian History [London, 1962], p. 92). Richard Dunn asserts that Recifean expertise allowed first Barbados and then the rest of England’s West Indian colonies to begin large-scale sugar cultivation. See Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713 (Chapel Hill, 1972), pp. 60–62.

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of English society. After a royal decree of 1190 expelled them, Jews were rarely encountered in England until Oliver Cromwell allowed them to resettle during the Interregnum. A seventeenth-century Englishman was more likely to have met a Muslim, or ‘Moor’, than to have had a personal encounter with a Jew, and in this instance unfamiliarity bred, if not contempt, at least suspicion. By the beginning of the early modern era, the figure of ‘the Jew’ had emerged within English culture as a symbol of immutable otherness. In his posthumously published Second Part of the Institutes of the Lawes of England (1642), the influential jurist Edward Coke described Jews as ‘wicked and wretched men’ who used ‘cruell’ means to enrich themselves and ‘shewed no mercie’ to the true-born Englishmen to whom they owed ‘debts of cruelty’. Although Coke, who died in 1634, probably never encountered a Jew – the very few who lived in England prior to 1655 presented themselves publicly as Spanish or Italian Catholics and practised their faith in secrecy – he was convinced that Jewish nature was eternal and unchangeable, and that it was not necessary to be personally acquainted with Jews in order to know their character. Following their readmission, English distaste for Jews is evident from a number of anonymous broadsides of the early eighteenth century, which attempted to defame the Scots by comparing them to Jews. A 1721 verse which satirized the ‘Caledonian Clans’ opened by inquiring of the reader, ‘Was you ne’er, in a Cabbin/ Confin’d like a religious Rabbin?’, and went on to compare the Jewish clergyman to ‘a Monkey (‘Tis all by Way of Simile)/Imprison’d in a Cage’. Still cruder in its satire was an earlier screed against the Scots, which claimed that the Caledonians were ‘down-right Egyptians by the[ir] Lice’, but that their allegedly miserly nature branded them simultaneously as ‘right Jews in their Hearts’. In the popular imagination, Jews and Scots, though represented by the very different physical stereotypes of the swarthy, hunched Semite and the freckled, gangly Caledonian, both served as representatives of the undesirable qualities of miserliness, avarice, and general untrustworthiness, particularly within the context of commerce and finance. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Scots and Jews tended to be both educated and unlanded, attributes which encouraged their participation in the world of trade and speculation as the sorts of ‘sophisters, economists, and calculators’ Frank Felsenstein, Anti-Semitic Stereotypes: A Paradigm of Otherness in English Popular Culture, 1660–1830 (Baltimore, 1995), p. 40; Daniel Statt, Foreigners and Englishmen: The Controversy over Immigration and Population, 1660–1760 (Newark, 1995), p. 82. Nabil Matar, Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (New York, 1999), pp. 3–4. ‘To ******** *******, Esq.’, in Samuel Keimer, ed., Caribbeana (Millwood, 1978), vol. 2, pp. 54–5; italics in original. Caledonia; or, The Pedlar turn’d Merchant: A Tragi-Comedy, as it was Acted by His Majesty’s Subjects of Scotland, in the King of Spain’s Province of Darien (London, 1700), p. 9. In early modern English parlance, ‘Egyptians’ denoted gypsies.

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whom Edmund Burke would later deplore as bringing about the end of ‘the age of chivalry’.10 Of course Scots were obviously, in the eyes of most Britons, far less foreign and more assimilable than Jews; both groups might have suffered as the subjects of frequent ridicule, but only the latter had their civil rights abridged by law and custom. Popular distaste towards Jews was a constant in eighteenth-century England, and although this hostility might remain dormant for years, it could easily flare up at moments of stress. In the summer of 1753, Parliament passed the Jewish Naturalization Bill, which gave foreign-born Jews the right to own land and ships and to engage in commerce with Britain’s colonies, only to be surprised by a tremendous popular furore. Pamphlets and sermons poured forth depicting Jews as ‘money grubbing, dishonest, cunning interlopers ... blasphemous, clannish, and traitorous’, and Jewish pedlars were attacked in the streets of London.11 Fearing for public order, Parliament quickly repealed the Bill, accepting with reluctance that Britain was not yet willing to extend to Jews the rights of liberty and property which were synonymous with the name of Englishmen. Despite the presence of such powerful undercurrents of anti-Semitism, England was at the time of the Restoration ‘probably the freest European country a Jew could find’, and its West Indian colonies, lacking the resources and in many instances the desire to establish a strong Church of England presence therein, appeared as a potential haven to the dispossessed Jews of Recife.12 Nonetheless, the governments of several of the English islands imposed substantial disabilities upon their Jewish inhabitants. In 1661, only a few years after the onset of the Brazilian Jewish diaspora, a delegation of the merchants of Barbados, at that time the wealthiest colony in English America, petitioned the Lords of Trade and Plantations to bar Jews from participation in island commerce, pleading that ‘the Jews are a people so subtle in matters of trade ... that in a short time they will not only ingross trade among themselves, but will be able to divert the benefit thereof to other places ...’, presumably by constructing tightly knit networks of their co-religionists throughout the Americas.13 Although the majority of Jewish migrants had taken considerable pains to acquire Letters Patent of Denization, which granted them the status of 10 Quoted in Michal J. Rozbicki, The Complete Colonial Gentleman: Cultural Legitimacy in Plantation America (Charlottesville, 1998), p. 124. 11 Dana Rabin, ‘The Jew Bill of 1753: Masculinity, Virility, and the Nation’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 39 (2006): 157, 158. 12 David Brion Davis, Slavery and Human Progress (New York, 1984), p. 100. 13 Report of the Council for Foreign Plantations to the King [Charles II], 24 July 1661, in W. Noel Sainsbury (ed.), Calendar of State Papers: Colonial Series: America and West Indies, 1661–1668 (London, 1880), p. 49. As Nuala Zahedieh has observed, ‘the skill with which Jewish merchants managed to comply with English [trade] regulations, and their success at commerce, combined to cause resentment’ on the part of non-Jewish English colonists. See Nuala Zahedieh, ‘The Capture of the Blue Dove, 1664: Policy, Profits, and Protection in Early English Jamaica’, in Roderick A. MacDonald (ed.), West Indies Accounts (Barbados, 1996), p. 45.


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English subjects and thus the right to engage in trade without violating the provisions of the Navigation Acts, they were subject to still stricter controls in Jamaica, where they were obligated to pay heavy additional taxes as well as being excluded from holding public office and from serving in the militia, both major institutions of masculine prestige and patronage within island society.14 In addition to accepting these disabilities, the Jews of Jamaica also felt it necessary to propitiate the local authorities from time to time by presenting them with what Christian islanders termed ‘Jew pies’, pastry crusts filled with coins, which they hoped would yield them improved treatment, or at least prevent their situation from worsening.15 It was attitudes such as these, in combination with increasing restriction on trade with their friends and kin in the Netherlands and its North American and Caribbean colonies, which encouraged Jewish settlers in the larger English islands, such as the Abudiente, Senior, and Levy Rezio families, to try their luck in the Leeward Islands.16 But these smaller communities were not notably more welcoming to Jews; in 1694, the Antiguan House of Assembly approved a bill which attempted to relegate Jewish islanders to a second-class legal and economic status by forbidding them to engage in trade with slave pedlars and by licensing magistrates to try Jews suspected of criminal activities by using ‘any such evidence as the said Justices shall judge sufficient in their own judgments and consciences’.17 Even in Nevis, home to the largest Jewish population in the Leewards, Jews were the subject of punitive legislation as ‘evil-minded Persons, intending nothing but their own private Gain, and the Ruin of the Poor’, who were known to ‘ingross and buy whole Cargoes of Provisions at a cheap Rate, and to retale them again at excessive Prices, thereby forestalling the Market’. They were also accused of profaning the Christian Sabbath by ‘trading with Negroes … on the Lord’s Day’, participating in the semi-illegal markets which slaves set up on 14 Frank Wesley Pitman, The Development of the British West Indies (New Haven, 1917), p. 27. See also Samuel J. Hurwitz and Edith Hurwitz, ‘The New World Sets an Example for the Old: The Jews of Jamaica and Political Rights, 1661–1831’, American Jewish Historical Quarterly, 55 (1965): 37–56. On the aristocratic and prestigious nature of island militias, see Richard Pares, War and Trade in the West Indies, 1739–1763 (London, 1963). 15 Jacob R. Marcus, The Colonial American Jew (Detroit, 1970), vol. 1, p. 108. 16 Mordechai Arbell, The Jewish Nation of the Caribbean: The Spanish-Portuguese Jewish Settlements in the Caribbean and the Guianas (Jerusalem, 2002), pp. 214, 217. The Abudientes, Portuguese marranos who in the early 1600s emigrated to the Netherlands in order to practise Judaism openly, were described by Lucien Wolf as having ‘ancient lineage, authority in Jewry, literary eminence, financial power, social rank, [and] a posterity distinguished in politics, the army and the Church’. Rowland Abudiente, a London merchant who relied upon his West Indian kin for cargoes, was in 1697 ‘the first Jew to obtain the freedom of the City of London’. See Lucien Wolf, ‘The Family of Gideon Abudiente’, in Lucien Wolf, Essays on Jewish History (London, 1934), pp. 171–2. 17 Quoted in Mindie Lazarus-Black, Legitimate Acts and Illegal Encounters: Law and Society in Antigua and Barbuda (Washington, 1994), p. 25.


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Sundays.18 These misdeeds appeared to threaten both the stability of the institution of slavery and the security of an import-dependent economy, the very foundations of life in these island colonies. Burdened as they were by legal proscriptions and popular prejudices, Jews nonetheless flourished in the English West Indian colonies. The Recifean exiles and their descendants constructed and participated in an extensive network of contacts which connected them with their co-religionists elsewhere in the Caribbean, in the Dutch colony of Suriname, and in the Netherlands, as well as in British North America, particularly New York and Newport. Their extensive experience in the business of sugar cultivation and their familiarity with the languages and commercial practices of the Spaniards and Portuguese allowed them to function as conduits of information, finance, and commerce across the imperial boundaries of the Atlantic world.19 In addition to these valued skills and contacts, Jews also possessed the advantage of their white skins; as the ratio of black slaves rose steadily in relation to the number of white settlers, Jews’ very complexion became a badge of their comparative trustworthiness to their fellow islanders. Their enforced cosmopolitanism might be regarded by English authorities as rootlessness, but at the same time it ensured their loyalty to the English crown and prevented them from falling victim to colonial tensions regarding ethnicity and nationality.20 By 1740, the passage of the Plantation Act by Parliament exempted Jews from the need to take the oaths of supremacy and allegiance, and provided for the naturalization of foreigners who had lived in Britain’s American colonies for seven years, a notable concession which dramatically altered the legal and social structure of colonial British America and allowed both English- and foreign-born Jews to attain a greater degree of inclusion within colonial society. It is difficult to pinpoint the origins of Jewish settlement on Nevis. A few Jews were resident on the island in 1678, when Sir William Stapleton, governor of the Leeward Islands, compiled the colony’s first census. The document described a handful of Nevisians as being ‘Jewes’: Isaac Senior, Abraham Rezio, Solomon Israel, Daniel Mendez, and Rachel Mendez and her three children. A few other individuals whom the census enumerated as slaveowners were most likely Jews, including John Isaac and his wife Judeh, who possessed three slaves, and Solomon Acts of Assembly Passed in the Island of Nevis, from 1664, to 1739, inclusive (London, 1740), pp. 11, 12. As Karen Fog Olwig has noted, Jews in Charlestown, Nevis, ‘were alleged to deal with slaves who sold them stolen goods and thus to practice unfair trade. Similar accusations were made against Jews throughout the West Indies and seem to have been occasioned by the fact that they controlled a large part of the trade on several islands’. See Karen Fog Olwig, Global Culture, Island Identity: Continuity and Change in the Afro-Caribbean Community of Nevis (Chur, 1993), p. 63. 19 Angus Calder, Revolutionary Empire (New York, 1981), p. 317. 20 On the relationship between racism and anti-Semitism, see Pierre Pluchon, Negres et juifs: le racisme au siecle des Lumieres (Paris, 1984). See also David Lowenthal, West Indian Societies (New York, 1972), p. 195, and Marcus, Colonial American Jew, p. 97. 18


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Hayman or Hyman, who held seven. Rowland Gideon and Abraham Abudiente are listed among the passengers on the Phoenix, which sailed from Barbados to the Leewards in November 1679.21 From these few scattered individuals, we can observe the origin of what was to become a sizeable community. By 1688, the numbers of Jews resident on Nevis was sufficient to support a synagogue, a building which has long since disappeared but whose graveyard survives, the tombstones of which provide evidence of the substantial growth of the island’s Jewish population in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.22 In 1724, the Reverend Robert Robertson, a Church of England minister resident for many years on Nevis, estimated that the island’s white population consisted of ‘about seventy householders with their families, being in all (children included) some three hundred whites of which one-fourth are Jews’.23 Although scholars of Jewish life in the West Indies have accepted Robertson’s estimate, which implies that approximately 75 Jews were resident in Nevis by the 1720s, the island census of 1707 lists only six Jewish households, of which only that of the Israel family persists from the 1678 census. But as Mordechai Arbell has emphasized, census data rarely yields a complete picture of reality; in this instance, ‘the census took into account only permanent residents and property owners … the Jewish population fluctuated, shifting between Barbados and Nevis … the existence of a Jewish cemetery … and perhaps a synagogue … show that the Jewish population was much larger than that indicated’.24 Ten of the 25 families whose names appear on the tombstones of the Nevis burial ground had Barbadian connections, and Jewish names occur regularly in the lists of Nevisians re-settling on the island after fleeing French attacks from 1708 to 1711, which implies that some Jews not listed as resident in the census nonetheless owned lands or businesses there.25 Fragmentary evidence suggests that these aforementioned families had known one another on Barbados, and had emigrated to Nevis as a group, linked not only by 21

‘Hotten’s Lists’, reproduced at www.english-america.com, English-America: The Voyages, Vessels, People, and Places, viewed 3 March 2006. 22 Cardozo de Bethencourt, ‘Notes on Spanish and Portuguese Jews’, Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society 29 (1925): 37–8. Zvi Loker states that Nevis’s first synagogue was established by 1671; see Loker, Jews in the Caribbean: Evidence on the History of the Jews in the Caribbean Zone in Colonial Times (Jerusalem, 1991), p. 352. My thanks to Philip Morgan for referring me to this work. 23 Quoted in Wilson, ‘Caribbean Diaspora’: 57; Richard Pares, A West-India Fortune (London, 1950), pp. 24–5. 24 Arbell, Jewish Nation, pp. 219, 220. 25 On 10 November 1712, those taking oaths to re-settle at Nevis included Abraham Bueno de Mesqueta, Sarah Lobatto, Maher Shahel Hashbeth Heath, Isaac Pinheiro, Shakerly and Catherine Israel, Hananiah Arrobas, Raphael Abenduna, Deborah Lobatto, Ephraim Mesqueta, Solomon Israel, and Jacob Senior. See Journal of the Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, February 1709 to March 1715 (London, 1925), p. 383; Arbell, Jewish Nation, p. 217.


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their religion, but more specifically by mercantile links to the great Hanseatic port of Hamburg.26 Although the Jews of Nevis had by the end of the seventeenth century established a number of institutions, including a synagogue, a burial ground, and a school, for their exclusive use, they also participated extensively within the wider white social and commercial life of Nevis, rather than constituting a completely segregated sub-culture.27 In the absence of significant descriptive sources produced by or about members of this community, it is within legal and commercial documents, primarily wills and inventories, that the social and business networks of Nevis’s Jews can be discerned. The will of Haim Abinum de Lima, for example, depicts this Nevisian Jew as being enmeshed in a network of personal and commercial relationships with Jews and non-Jews alike, and which crossed colonial and imperial boundaries. De Lima was open in his profession of Judaism, as is indicated by his wish ‘to be buried after the rites of the people called Jews’, by his philanthropic activity in connection with the Mikve Israel synagogue in the Dutch colony of Curaçao, and by his bequests of a ‘Little Sepher for Sr Eustacia Rodes for the Kaal, [and] the great Sepher for my cousin David the son of Ab[raha]m Piza, senior’.28 But his identity as an observant Jew did not forestall the development of close contacts, and even friendship, with Christian islanders. None of the three men who served as witnesses to his will – William Liburd, John Burke senior, and Adam Brodie – were Jews. This situation might be considered axiomatic; in many instances, island law barred Jews, like other non-jurors, from acting as witnesses to any kind of legal transaction. But Liburd, Burke, and Brodie were men of considerable property and prestige in Nevis, and their apparent willingness not merely to witness de Lima’s will, but also to accept the responsibility of carrying out its provisions and bequests, indicates an instance of a significant degree of Anglo-Jewish amity. Such a responsibility was not a trivial one, particularly in cases such as that of de Lima, who chose to distribute his property among a large number of heirs in St Kitts, Barbados, and Curaçao, and whose estate was therefore complicated and time-consuming to administer.29 That Haim de Lima’s contacts were not restricted to his fellow Jews becomes still clearer through examination of a codicil to his will, which a lawyer drew up while de Lima was visiting London in December of 1765. From this document, Terrell, Jewish Community, p. 143. Ongoing archaeological excavations suggest that Nevis’s synagogue was constructed in the late 1670s or early 1680s; see ‘The Official Homepage of the Nevis Synagogue Archaeology Project’, http://www.tc.umn.edu/~terre011/Synagogue.html. 28 Will and codicil of Haim Abinum de Lima, 27 June 1765 and 2 December 1765, ‘Abstracts of Nevis Wills in the P[rivy]. C[ouncil]. C[ollections]’, in Vere Langford Oliver, Caribbeana (London, 1909–1919), vol. 2, pp. 158–9. The term ‘Sepher’ or ‘Sefer’ refers to any of a number of Jewish sacred books, most commonly the Torah. 29 Will of de Lima, Caribbeana, vol. 2, p. 159. 26

27


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we learn that de Lima was a merchant, or, as he called himself, a ‘shopkeeper’, in Nevis, and that the majority of his clients were non-Jews and included members of some of the island’s wealthiest and most socially prominent families, the prime market for the luxury items he imported from Europe. De Lima’s principal concern in this codicil was that, should he die before returning to Nevis, as he indeed did, his customers would be able to lay claim to the items which he had ordered at their request and for which they had made payment in advance. These items included such ornate and expensive articles as ‘a gold watch and salt cellars belong[ing] to Mr Chaulenger’, a more modest ‘Pinchbeck watch’ belonging ‘to John Springett’, ‘a box with pewter for James Bradlett, esq.’, ‘a pair of stone [i.e. jewelled] earings for Eliz[abe]th Barnes’, and ‘a mahogany case ... 1 silver ladle, knives, etc.’ for John Scarborough.30 Both the nature of the goods ordered and the names of de Lima’s customers show that his clientele was not restricted to the community of his fellow Jews, but included some of the wealthiest residents of Nevis.31 Considerably more elevated than Haim Abinum de Lima in both the economic and social realms was the Pinheiro family. The family’s progenitor, the prosperous merchant and rum distiller Isaac Pinheiro, was born in Spain and became a freeman of New York in 1695, but maintained Charlestown, Nevis, as the headquarters of his rapidly expanding mercantile network.32 Isaac Pinheiro and his family appeared in the 1708 census of Nevis, which listed him as the head of a household comprising two white men, four white women, six black men, and three black women.33 Based upon information derived from Isaac’s will, which was drawn up the following year, we can identify the white members of his household as his wife Esther, their daughters Sarah, Rebekah, and Judith, and their son Moses.34 Nothing in Isaac Pinheiro’s life became him like the leaving of it, insofar as documentary evidence relating to his familial connections, commercial relationships, and material possessions has survived. Pinheiro died in 1710 in the course of a visit to New York, to which he may have travelled in order to carry out his responsibilities as commercial agent to Abraham Bueno de Mezqueta, another 30

Ibid., p. 158. A 1722 inventory of the household goods belonging to the wealthy Pinney family of Nevis listed similar items, including ‘four silver salts’, ‘one large saucespoon’, and ‘one dozen of ivory hafted knives’; see C[olonial]. O[ffice]. 186/1, Minutes of Assembly, Nevis, 1722, National Archives of the United Kingdom (NA). 32 Marcus, Colonial American Jew, vol. 1, p. 99. 33 Oliver, Caribbeana, vol. 1, p. 173. Ownership of slaves was not uncommon among Jewish settlers in the West Indies; Reverend Robert Robertson of Nevis observed that ‘many [Jews] … in the two former islands [St Kitts and Nevis] are Owners of a Number of Slaves’. (Robertson, A Letter to the Right Reverend Lord Bishop of London, from an Inhabitant of His Majesty’s Leeward-Caribbee-Islands [London, 1730], p. 102). 34 ‘Jews of Nevis’, unattributed and undated typescript, Nevis Historical and Conservation Society, Charlestown, Nevis, p. 7. See also Malcolm H. Stern, First American Jewish Families: 600 Genealogies, 1654–1977 (Cincinnati, 1978), p. 250. 31


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Jewish resident of Nevis and a member of a family whose business interests extended throughout colonial British America.35 Perhaps sensing the approach of death and doubting that he would survive the long voyage back to Nevis, Isaac drew up a new will in New York, the provisions of which reveal the extent of both his wealth and his affective relationships. Isaac’s wife Esther was his principal legatee, inheriting ‘all the Houses and Land ... in Charles Towne’. But Isaac’s resources were large enough to allow him to make sizeable bequests to his five adult children and to leave annuities to his father Abraham and sister Rachel in Amsterdam and to his sister Sarah Mendes Goma in Curaçao.36 To serve as ‘Trustees and Overseers of this my Will’, Isaac selected two Nevisians. One was Solomon Israel, a prosperous merchant and a leading figure in the Jewish community. The other was Captain Samuel Clarke, a prominent planter and the commander of the island’s militia.37 The relationship between Pinheiro and Clarke appears to have been an intimate one; not only did the former refer to the latter as ‘my Loving Friend’, but he also bequeathed to him the sum of ‘Tenn pounds currant Money of this Island ... to buy ... a Mourning Sute’, the custom of wearing mourning clothes being reserved to the family and intimate friends of the decedent.38 No less eminent a person than New York governor Rip Van Dam, whom Esther Pinheiro named as ‘my friend’, served as one of two ‘special attornies’ to assist the widow in her role as executor.39 35

‘Jews of Nevis’, p. 3. De Mezqueta appears in 1692 as ‘Mr Abraham Buino Demesquieta’, one of nine Barbadian Jews possessed of ‘houses and plantations on the island’; see Frank Cundall, et al., ‘Documents Relating to the History of the Jews of Jamaica and Barbados in the Time of William III’, Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, 23 (1915): 29. Isaac Pinheiro’s voyage to New York may have been occasioned by the death of Abraham’s brother Joseph, whose estate was valued at several thousand pounds and included ‘plate ... rings, jewels, necklaces ... [and] Five Books of the Law of Moses in parchment with the ornaments of plate belonging thereto’. Isaac Pinheiro appears to have purchased this Pentateuch from Joseph’s heirs; it appears in the inventory of his estate, valued at the vast sum of one hundred and fifty pounds. See Lee M. Friedman, ‘Wills of Early Jewish Settlers in New York’, Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, 23 (1915): 149, and Leo Hershkowitz, ‘Original Inventories of Early New York Jews’, American Jewish History, 90 (2002): 317. Benjamin, another de Mesqueta brother, or perhaps Abraham’s and Joseph’s father, had died in 1683 and been buried at the Chatham Square Jewish cemetery in Manhattan; see The Jewish Community in Early New York, 1654–1800 (New York, 1980), p. 13. 36 Will of Isaac Pinheiro, in Leo Hershkowitz, Wills of Early New York Jews, 1704– 1799 (New York, 1967), pp. 21–4; Stern, American Jewish Families, p. 250. 37 Ibid., p. 24. Solomon Israel also served as a witness to the wills of the vintner George Richardson and the merchant Azariah Pinney, founder of the ‘West-India Fortune’ analysed by Richard Pares; he is notable for being perhaps the only Jew in the English West Indian colonies to have been permitted to serve as a juror, a responsibility restricted by law and custom to members of the Church of England. 38 Marcus, Colonial American Jew, p. 99. I thank Patrick H. Butler IV for his information regarding the customs and meanings related to mourning garb. 39 Friedman, ‘Wills’: 158.


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After Isaac’s death, his widow Esther assumed his place at the head of his commercial network, maintaining and expanding the family’s business interests, primarily through the acquisition of a small fleet of merchant vessels which travelled between New York, New England, Britain, and the Leewards, with an occasional stop at Madeira to take on casks of the wine so popular among West Indian planters.40 Between 1716 and 1718, Esther herself made a series of voyages to the ports of New York and Boston in her 20-ton sloop, the Neptune, exchanging cargoes of sugar, molasses, and other island commodities for New England timber and provisions and European manufactured goods.41 By 1720, Esther was the owner of another vessel, the sloop Samuel, a 25-ton ship with a crew of five, which made several voyages each year between Boston and Nevis from 1720 to 1722. The Samuel ceased to appear in Nevis’s Naval Office records after 1722, implying that it had been lost at sea or that it had been sold to someone off the island, but by the beginning of 1724 it had been replaced in the Pinheiro fleet by the brigantine Esther, a 60-ton vessel which the eponymous Mrs Pinheiro owned in partnership with Jonathan Dowse of Charlestown, Massachusetts, where the ship had been built the previous winter. Initially, the Esther appears to have replaced the defunct Samuel on the Boston-Nevis route, but by 1728, when Ebenezer Hough, another Bostonian, had replaced Dowse as the ship’s co-owner, it began to make far more ambitious transatlantic voyages between Nevis and the ports of London and Cork. Around this time Esther acquired yet another ship, the Abigail, a small brig of 35 tons, which plied the route between Nevis, London, and Madeira.42 The Pinheiro shipping concerns were not large or lucrative in comparison with those operated by such great eighteenth-century trading houses as, for example, that of Perry of London.43 What makes the Pinheiro business notable is the fact that it comprised, in its time, the single largest group of vessels owned by any individual resident of Nevis. Even the wealthy and commercially influential Pinneys of Nevis and Bristol, founders of the ‘West-India Fortune’ discussed by Richard Pares, possessed during the 1720s only a single ship.44 As a participant in both local and transatlantic commerce, Esther possessed influence which stretched beyond the spheres of both her family and Nevis’s Jewish community. Her entrepreneurial activities assured her a place of importance in the mercantile community in which

40 See David Hancock, ‘Commerce and Conversation in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic: The Invention of Madeira Wine’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 29 (1998): 197–220. 41 C.O. 187/1 and 187/2, Naval Office Returns, Nevis, 1720–1729, NA. 42 C.O. 187/1 and 187/2, NA. 43 In 1719, for example, the Perrys imported tobacco from Virginia to England on fifty different vessels in which the firm held shares in varying proportions; see Jacob M. Price, Perry of London: A Family and a Firm on the Seaborne Frontier (Cambridge, MA, 1992), pp. 41–2. 44 Pares, Fortune, p. 128.


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she lived and further allowed her to integrate her family into Nevisian society and, beyond, into the economic life of New England’s shipping industry. The appearance of Samuel Clarke, who, as a substantial planter and commander of the militia, was a pillar of island society, as co-executor and principal mourner of ‘his loving Friend’ Isaac, suggests that the Pinheiro family held a position of respect within the larger white planter society of Nevis. This assertion gains further support from the text of William Smith’s Natural History of Nevis, the only local history of the island to be published during the eighteenth century. In the first of the 11 letters to Cambridge don Charles Mason which comprised the volume, Smith described a recreational outing which took place ‘in the Month of July, 1719’, at which time ‘Mr Moses Pinheiro a Jew and myself, went to angle in Black Rock Pond’, a body of water ‘situate[d] a quarter of a mile or better Northwards from Charles Town our Metropolis or Capital, and about thirty yards distant from the Sea’.45 In this anecdote, we observe a Nevisian who is a Jew engaging in social intercourse with a local resident who was not simply non-Jewish, but was a member of the clergy of the Church of England. Smith lived in Nevis from 1719 to 1724, serving as rector of the Anglican parish church of St John’s Fig Tree, outside Charlestown, before returning to England to take up the well-endowed living of St Mary’s, Bedford.46 As the island’s principal clergyman, Smith possessed considerable social capital; his letters to Mr Mason were replete with references to his extremely active social life among the island’s elite, including his friendships with two wealthy dowagers, Mrs Akers and Lady Stapleton, and with Archibald Hamilton, whose lineage connected him both to the governor of the Leewards and to the Scots Laird of Cambuskeith.47 That Reverend Smith, who mingled in the best society which Nevis could afford, would choose not only to count a practising Jew among his friends but to admit openly to such a friendship shows, as much as the names of Haim de Lima’s clientele and executors or as Esther Pinheiro’s position in the island’s business community, that the Jews of Nevis, despite their consistent endogamy and their sustaining of trans-colonial and transatlantic networks of their co-religionists, were not barred from social or economic participation in the life of the white community of Nevis. Rather, they were linked by ties of commerce and friendship to many of the most prominent local Christian families.

William Smith, A Natural History of Nevis, and the rest of the English Leeward Charibee Islands in America (Cambridge, 1745), p. 10. Moses was the only son of Isaac and Esther Pinheiro. 46 Elsa V. Goveia, A Study on the Historiography of the British West Indies (Mexico City, 1956), p. 34. 47 Smith, Natural History, pp. 62, 111, 191; John Chester Miller, Alexander Hamilton and the Growth of the New Nation (New York, 1964). Lady Stapleton was the widow of a baronet and the daughter-in-law of the former Leeward Governor William Stapleton, and Mrs. Akers was a member of a prominent and well-connected merchant and planter family of St Kitts, Nevis, and London. 45


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‘Linked’, though, is a relative term, as are ‘ties’ and ‘connection’. The small world which Jews constructed for themselves on Nevis was one which was largely parallel to, rather than thoroughly intertwined with, that of gentile islanders. The examples discussed above make it clear that Jews held a place in the commercial and social life of the Leeward Islands, and that they were received with a degree of acceptance and even amity on the part of some local Christians. But what is striking is the extent to which Nevisian Jews lived, by choice or by necessity, in a closed community.48 The Jews of Nevis were entirely endogamous; they married other members of this community or looked to the Jewish enclaves of the Dutch Antilles, Barbados, or the North American mainland colonies for spouses. Endogamy was desirable from the perspective of religious adherence and cultural persistence, but it prevented Leeward Jews from reaping the numerous benefits which could be gained through intermarriage, such as the possibility of acquiring land, money, and political influence through participation in the kinship networks of the ‘great tangled cousinry’ which typified the white elite in Nevis and elsewhere in colonial British America.49 It is noteworthy than Solomon Israel, the only Nevisian Jew to sit upon a jury, and therefore claim the legal and political rights of an Englishman, had married a Christian, an action which encouraged ‘his disassociation from the faith ... and his ability to move within the upper social, political, and economic classes of Nevis’.50 Moses Pinheiro might have gone fishing with an Anglican clergyman, but when he came to take a wife, he chose a Barbadian Jewish woman named Lunah.51 Of course, endogamy did not prevent Nevisian Jews from attaining wealth; individuals such as Isaac Pinheiro and Abraham Bueno de Mezqueta acquired property and business interests which spanned the Atlantic and were both a cause and an effect of their involvement in their own ‘tangled cousinry’ in Europe, North America, and the West Indies.52 It did, however, ensure that Jews would remain outside the formal and informal spheres, those of office-holding and of kinship, which presented those who settled in the Leewards with their most promising opportunities to rise in influence and esteem within local white society. Even the wealthiest Jew could not sit on the Governor’s Council or in the Assembly, or even serve as a juror, a justice of the peace, or a member of the militia, despite 48

Harmannus Hoetink has found a similar pattern in Jewish-Christian relations on the Dutch island of Curaçao; see Harmannus Hoetink, The Two Variants in Caribbean Race Relations, trans. Eva M. Hooykaas (London, 1967), p. 114. 49 The phrase is that of Bernard Bailyn in ‘Politics and Social Structure in Virginia’, in James M. Smith (ed.), Seventeenth-Century America (Chapel Hill, 1959), p. 111. 50 Terrell, Jewish Community, p. 147. 51 Stern, American Jewish Families, p. 250. 52 For example, the families of Abudiente, Abinum de Lima, Arrobas, Israel, Levy Rezio, Mendes, and Pinheiro, recorded as residents of Nevis in the 1708 census, all had kin buried in the graveyard of the synagogue at Bridgetown, Barbados; see E.M. Shilstone, Monumental Inscriptions in the Jewish Synagogue at Bridgetown, Barbados, with Historical Notes from 1650 (Barbados, 1988), passim.


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the fact that adult white males were so few in number on Nevis that the island administration often found it difficult to fill these offices. In times of war, Jews were encouraged to ‘assist and defend Your Majesty’s said Charibbee Islands with the utmost of their Power, Strength, and Ability’, but in less fraught moments, the sole civic responsibility entrusted to them was ‘to behave themselves fairly and honestly amongst us’.53 In this light, even William Smith’s jovial mention of his fishing expedition with Moses Pinheiro looks a bit disingenuous; his description of Moses as a Jew brands his companion with the mark of otherness and inclines the reader to see Smith’s anecdote as displaying either his broad-mindedness in his selection of companions or the exotic nature of Nevisian society. Nevisian Jews’ prosperity, coupled with their apparent willingness to accept a fairly marginal position, allowed them to overcome the force of the most negative stereotypes and to develop some connections of trade and companionship with local gentiles, but these connections were limited and provisional in their nature and extent. The cosmopolitan nature of Jewish identity in the Atlantic world allowed Jews to develop networks of kinship which stretched over thousands of miles and which benefited their participants in their search for marital and commercial opportunities, and allowed the small number of synagogues in the eighteenth-century Americas to flourish in financial and cultural terms and to function as nodes of support and cultural survival. But Judaism marked a boundary more definite than that of even the most radical and alarming deviations within Protestantism, as is shown by the trajectory of Quaker and Huguenot settlement and social integration in the Leewards. Huguenots and Quakers could, and did, distance themselves from their suspect heritage through intermarriage with Anglicans and at least outward observance of Church of England practices. Jews, in contrast, neither desired nor were encouraged to marry outside their faith, and the stamp of otherness marked even those who were less than entirely committed to their religion. Alternative Protestant identities were permeable to processes of Anglicization and Anglicanization in a way which could never be true of Jews in the Leeward colonies. Jacob Marcus, the pioneering historian of Judaism in the Americas, claimed that ‘the typical colonial Jew was true to his heritage because he was not pressed to be untrue to it’, but nor was he in any way encouraged to connect himself to a more general sense of Englishness.54 The apparently rapid disappearance of the Jewish community of Nevis is reflective of the tenuous nature of the relationship between the Jewish population and the wider local community. As the sugar trade began to decline in the final decades of the eighteenth century, and as a series of hurricanes devastated the eastern Caribbean, Jewish islanders, at least some of whom had family connections ‘An Act to repeal a certain Act against the Jews’, The Laws of the Leeward Islands, in Acts of Assembly Passed in the Island of St Christopher; From the Year 1711, to 1769 (St Christopher, 1769), p. 11. 54 Marcus, ‘The American Colonial Jew: A Study in Acculturation’, The B.G. Rudolph Lecture in Judaic Studies, Syracuse University, 1968, p. 19. 53


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in Nevis which stretched back over a century, quickly abandoned the colony in favour of the Anglo-American settlements on the mainland.55 By 1772, there were no longer enough Jews on Nevis to support an actively functioning synagogue. In her recently published study of the Nevis synagogue site, historical archaeologist Michelle Terrell hypothesizes that the Torahs, or ‘Sefers’, mentioned in Haim Abinum de Lima’s will of 1765, were those which had previously been housed within the Nevis synagogue, and that their dispersal symbolized the congregation’s disappearance.56 The apparent assimilability of Quakers and Huguenots offers an interesting contrast to the continued distinctiveness of Jews in Leeward society. All three groups encountered significant opposition and even persecution in seventeenthcentury Britain, wracked as it was by every kind of disorder, and in its empire, yet all succeeded in creating niches for themselves in Leeward society by the early decades of the eighteenth century. Jews, however, remained a self-contained enclave centred upon Charlestown, Nevis. They participated in island commerce and, to a certain extent, in neighbourly rituals of sociability, but, unlike the Quakers and Huguenots, they appear never to have intermarried with Anglican settlers. Nor did they gain a role in the political or military establishments which were a principal source of local prestige and patronage. The divergent fates of Leeward Jews, Huguenots, and Quakers resulted from both the willingness of local society to admit outsiders and the intensity of these outsiders’ desire to seek such admission. It stands to reason that the greater assimilability of the Quakers and Huguenots was the result of the lesser degree of otherness that either community offered to English planter society in comparison with that presented by the Jews. But it is also important to recall that it was Quakers and Huguenots, not Jews, who represented an actual challenge to authority in the Interregnum and the early years of the Restoration. Quakers might be English and Protestant, but they were also rebels against religious and political authority throughout several decades of England’s imperial expansion. Huguenots were Protestant, but French rather than English, representatives of England’s greatest enemy in Europe and the Americas in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Certainly Huguenots and Quakers were on some levels far more assimilable than Jews into the mainstream of Leeward white society, but this assimilability was at least in part the result of their apparent willingness to become part of the larger society, a tendency which few if any Leeward Jews seem to have shared. Societal inclusion resulted from the combination of the ability of a group or an individual to accommodate itself to certain norms and its willingness to do so. In other words, inclusion in a community was the result, not of a completely autonomous decision on the part of one side or the other, but of a negotiation between the two, and neither Jewish nor Gentile Nevisians were willing to enter too far into such a negotiation. In the end, the Jews of Nevis, Arbell, Jewish Nation, p. 221. Terrell, Jewish Community, p. 129.

55 56

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and of other English West Indian colonies, might under certain circumstances be integrated into the wider community, but they would not be assimilated within it. The persistence of anti-Jewish sentiment among seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury Englishmen dovetailed with the communal and self-enclosed tendency of Jewish islanders to create a subtle yet strong sense of cultural distance which both groups were willing to enforce through law and custom alike. In the end, the Jews of Nevis were prototypical pioneers within the early modern Americas, moving between islands and mainland and across imperial boundaries, and leading lives characterized by fluidity and mobility. Perhaps only those who were laid to rest in the Jewish cemetery on Nevis can be described as permanent residents of this small place within the Atlantic world.

Chapter 5

Subjects or Allies: The Contentious Status of the Tupi Indians in Dutch Brazil, 1625–1654 Mark Meuwese

Introduction In March 1645, a small group of Tupi-speaking Indians disembarked from a Dutch West India Company (WIC) vessel at the colonial port city of Recife in the province of Pernambuco in north-eastern Brazil. The Tupi envoys had just returned from a visit to the Dutch Republic where they had met the Heeren XIX, the board of nineteen directors of the WIC. Among the Indian delegates was Anthonio Paraupaba, a leader of the Tupi-speaking Potiguar nation. During their meeting with the Heeren XIX, Paraupaba and his fellow Tupi leaders were granted formal permission to establish a system of self-governance in colonial Brazil. Upon their return to Recife, however, Paraupaba came into conflict with the High Council (the local governing body) over the meaning of the agreement reached with the Heeren XIX. While the High Council interpreted self-governance as an encouraging step towards the integration of the Tupi peoples as subordinate members of the hierarchical colonial society, Paraupaba viewed the instructions he had received from the Heeren XIX as confirmation of Tupi independence. In an official missive to the Company directors, the High Council reported that ‘Antonio Paraupaba, who has arrived with the ship “Amsterdam”, proclaimed that it was Your Excellencies’ intention that no Dutchman should ever again command over them, and he argued that he had received these promises from Your Excellencies, and that they themselves would choose one from among their nation who would rule over them’. The irritated Recife Council did not find any of Paraupaba’s bold proclamations in the letter regarding Tupi policy that they had recently received from the Heeren XIX, and they considered it preposterous and ‘undesirable’ to confer on one of the Tupi leaders ‘the title of king’. Similarly, upon being informed by the High Council of Paraupaba’s assertion, the board of Company directors replied to the Recife councillors that ‘we did not at all authorize them [the Tupi envoys] to do this’. The conflict between Paraupaba and the High Council suggests that the Tupi shrewdly tried to play off colonial officials against metropolitan


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authorities in order to strengthen their position in the emerging Dutch colonial empire in Brazil. The coastal Tupi peoples played a prominent role during the period of WIC rule over north-eastern Brazil from 1630 to 1654. As part of the Company’s ambitious campaign to establish control over the rich sugar-growing provinces of colonial Brazil, the Dutch mercantile company actively sought out alliances with the various Tupi peoples against Luso-Brazilian guerrillas. For their part, the coastal Tupi peoples viewed the Dutch invaders as useful allies in their ongoing struggle against Iberian colonization. Despite the mutual advantages of forging an antiIberian alliance, however, Dutch-Tupi relations were often marred by conflicts and irritations. This fractious relationship was dramatically illustrated by the different Tupi and Dutch understandings of what the legal and political status of the Tupi should be in Dutch-controlled Brazil. As the incident in Recife in March 1645 indicates, Dutch colonial officials in Brazil, Company directors in the Republic, and prominent native leaders and spokesmen held conflicting views about the status of the Tupi peoples. Recent studies by Gregory Evans Dowd and Jenny Hale Pulsipher have shown that debates over the political and legal status of indigenous peoples in the English-speaking North American colonies reveal much about the tensions between natives and newcomers in the New World. According to Pulsipher, the Algonquian-speaking Indian peoples of seventeenth-century New England strongly and forcefully rejected a subservient status in the English Puritan colonies. Likewise, Dowd has demonstrated that the indigenous peoples of the North American Great Lakes region and Ohio Valley were infuriated when British imperial officials no longer treated them as equal diplomatic partners after the British conquest of New France in 1763. This chapter provides a comparative perspective to the AngloAmerican-centred studies of Dowd and Pulsipher by analysing the intercultural and trans-Atlantic dimensions of the 1645 debate over the position of the Tupi in the emerging Dutch Empire in the South Atlantic during the first half of the seventeenth century. Like the indigenous peoples in the English-speaking colonies of North America, the Tupi in Dutch-controlled Brazil insisted upon being treated as equals by the European colonial powers with which they interacted. Additionally, this analysis of Dutch-indigenous relations in north-eastern Brazil demonstrates that indigenous peoples played an influential role in the rise and fall of the Dutch

The first and second paragraphs are based on Dutch National Archives (DNA), Archive of the Old West India Company, 1621–1674 (OWIC), 1.05.01.01: Letters and Papers from Brazil (LPB), Inv. No. 60: General Missive from the High Council in Recife to the Heeren XIX, June 27 1645. See also the Missive sent by the Council on March 24 1645. For the quotation in the second paragraph from the Heeren XIX, see OWIC, Inv. No. 9: Outgoing Letters from the Heeren XIX, July 9 1645. Gregory Evans Dowd, War Under Heaven: Pontiac, the Indian Nations, and the British Empire (Baltimore, 2002) and Jenny Hale Pulsipher, Subjects unto the Same King: Indians, English, and the Contest for Authority in Colonial New England (Philadelphia, 2005).

The Contentious Status of the Tupi Indians in Dutch Brazil, 1625–1654

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colonial empire in the Southern Atlantic. Before discussing the contentious issue of Tupi autonomy in Dutch-controlled Brazil in the mid-1640s, however, the next section first reviews briefly the relationship that developed between the Tupi and the WIC in the preceding two decades. Tupi-WIC Relations, 1625–1644 The Tupi-speaking indigenous peoples who allied themselves with the Dutch in 1625 consisted of various semi-sedentary peoples who lived in the coastal regions of the colonial provinces of Rio Grande do Norte and Paraíba, the most important of which were the Potiguar and the Tobajares. Of these, the Potiguar, or ‘shrimpeaters’ in the Tupi language, had been the more successful in resisting Portuguese colonization. Indeed, although the Portuguese had claimed the entire coast of Brazil since 1500, they did not extend effective military control in Rio Grande do Norte and Paraíba until approximately 1600. Over the previous century, the Potiguar had allied with visiting French traders who, in return for a steady supply of the valuable native brazilwood, provided the Potiguar with iron and metal tools as well as military support against both Indian and Portuguese enemies. To strengthen the intercultural relationship, French traders and sailors lived alongside the Potiguar in their villages, where they sought out female companions. As Portuguese colonization extended northward from the booming sugar province of Pernambuco during the 1570s, violent clashes erupted between Portuguese settlers and the Potiguar and their French allies. After the integration of Portugal and its overseas colonies into the Spanish Habsburg Empire in 1580, the Crown was eager to bring the troublesome northeastern Brazilian borderlands of Rio Grande do Norte and Paraíba under firm control. In a series of wars lasting several decades, the Potiguar and the French were finally defeated by the Portuguese forces. The French traders having been forced out of the region, the Iberian authorities sought to integrate the Potiguar into colonial society. A number of defeated Potiguar warriors, for instance, were recruited as auxiliaries to fight other Indian groups who continued to resist Iberian colonization elsewhere in Brazil; defeated Potiguar warriors were also resettled by Portuguese sugar planters in Pernambuco, where they assisted in the tracking down of runaway African slaves. Additionally, Jesuit missionaries established aldeias or mission villages to which they attracted defeated Potiguar families. A significant number chose to resettle in the aldeias, not only because they sought access to the new sources of spiritual power which the Jesuits represented, but also John Hemming, Red Gold: The Conquest of the Brazilian Indians, 1500–1760 (Cambridge, MA, 1978), pp. 161–73. For the slow progress of Portuguese colonization in the sixteenth century, see also Alida C. Metcalf, Go-betweens and the Colonization of Brazil, 1500–1600 (Austin, 2005), pp. 11–12. For the brazilwood trade and the role of the French in it, see ibid., pp. 57–74.


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in order to escape the aggressive labour policies of Portuguese colonists. By the time of the Dutch assault on Salvador de Bahia, the capital of colonial Brazil, in 1624, many Potiguar had become loyal allies of the Iberian colonizers. However, a considerable number of Potiguar communities continued to resist Iberian rule. In the wake of the Iberian military conquests of Paraíba and Rio Grande do Norte, some Potiguar migrated to the northern province of Ceará, where Portuguese colonization remained marginal. Other defeated Potiguar waited for an opportune moment to challenge Portuguese and Spanish rule. This opportune moment came in the spring of 1625, when a large fleet of more than thirty WIC ships landed at a bay along the Paraíba coast, on its way back from a failed effort to strengthen the Dutch garrison at Salvador de Bahia, which had been captured by a WIC force the previous year. When the WIC fleet commander realized that an even larger Spanish and Portuguese fleet had retaken Salvador de Bahia in May 1625, the Dutch naval force retreated and turned towards the Caribbean, sailing close to the Paraíba coast. On dropping anchor to take in fresh water and supplies, the unsuspecting WIC soldiers and sailors were greeted by the local Potiguar population as liberators. It is possible, of course, that the Potiguar of the Paraíba region believed the WIC fleet, at least initially, to be their returning French allies; it is more likely, however, that they had learnt (either through Indian allies or from the Portuguese themselves) of the recent Dutch attempt to invade the Brazilian northeast coast. The unplanned WIC visit to the Paraíba region in 1625 marked the beginning of a close Dutch-Potiguar relationship. When the WIC fleet left Paraíba for the Dutch Republic in the summer of 1625, Company ships had a group of about twelve Indians on board, including several leaders whose purpose was to formalize and strengthen the Potiguar-WIC alliance against the Portuguese and the Spanish. The Potiguar delegation consisted of individuals who were familiar with dealing with Europeans. Some of the delegates, such as Pieter (Pedro) Poty and Anthonio Paraupaba, had Catholic baptismal names, suggesting that they had lived in one of the region’s Jesuit mission villages. During their five-year stay in the Dutch Republic, the Potiguar envoys supplied the WIC with detailed information about the Brazilian northeast coast, including the complex alliances and animosities that existed among the region’s indigenous peoples. Additionally, the Potiguar For the Potiguar-Portuguese wars, see Hemming, Red Gold, pp. 161–73. For the use of defeated Potiguar as Portuguese auxiliaries, see ibid., pp. 172–3; and Stuart B. Schwartz and Hal Langfur, ‘Tapanhuns, Negros da Terra, and Curibocas: Common Cause and Confrontation between Blacks and Indians in Colonial Brazil’, in Matthew Restall (ed.), Beyond Black and Red: African-Indigenous Relations in Colonial Latin America (Albuquerque, 2005), pp. 84–96. For the short-lived WIC occupation of Salvador de Bahia and the subsequent 1625 visit of the WIC fleet to Paraíba, see F.L. Schalkwijk, The Reformed Church in Dutch Brazil (1630–1654) (Zoetermeer, 1998), pp. 35–7; Henk den Heijer, De geschiedenis van de WIC (Zutphen, 1994), pp. 35–9.


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delegates learnt to speak and write the Dutch language, and even converted to the Dutch Calvinist religion in order to cement closer ties with the WIC. When the WIC launched a second invasion of north-eastern Brazil, attacking the rich sugar province of Pernambuco in 1630, the regional Tupi Indians were initially reluctant to support the Dutch. Despite WIC declarations that Indian slavery would be abolished in Dutch-controlled territory, and notwithstanding the presence of the Potiguar envoys among WIC forces, most Tupi remained neutral: the success of the Dutch invasion was not at that stage assured. Not until the spring of 1635, after the WIC forces had decisively defeated the Portuguese troops in Pernambuco and adjacent provinces, did the majority of Tupi (principally Potiguar and Tobajares from Rio Grande do Norte and Paraíba) come over to the Dutch side. Tupi support for the Dutch was not, however, unanimous: a few thousand Tupi, including Potiguar from Pernambuco, accompanied the retreating Portuguese forces to Salvador de Bahia, from where they continued a guerrilla war against the WIC invaders and their Tupi allies. Thus, the Dutch invasion of north-eastern Brazil intensified the divisions between the Potiguar from Pernambuco and those from Rio Grande do Norte and Paraíba. From 1635 to 1644, WIC policies toward the Tupi were ambivalent. Although the WIC declared the Tupi to be a free people who could not be enslaved, the Company also viewed them as subservient colonial subjects who could be used for a variety of purposes. Because the Tupi had been concentrated by the Portuguese in Jesuit aldeias that were located in colonial territory along the coast, the WIC considered mission Tupi to be potential candidates for Christian civilization and integration into colonial society. The WIC consistently referred to the mission Tupi as ‘Brazilians’ to distinguish them from the ‘Tapuya’ or ‘wild Indians’ who lived in the sertão, the arid backcountry of north-eastern Brazil. Whereas the ‘Tapuya’ lived outside the territorial and jurisdictional boundaries of Dutch-controlled territory, the ‘Brazilians’ lived inside them. Schalkwijk, Reformed Church, pp. 37, 168–9. For the information provided by the Potiguar to the WIC directors in the Republic, see Benjamin N. Teensma, ‘De handgeschreven Braziliaanse roteiros van Hessel Gerritsz en Johannes de Laet’, in Marianne L. Wiesebron (ed.), Brazilië in de Nederlandse archieven (1624–1654): De West-Indische Compagnie Overgekomen Brieven en Papieren uit Brazilië en Curacao (OBP) (Leiden, 2005), pp. 43–56. Ernst van den Boogaart, ‘De Nederlandse expansie in het Atlantische gebied, 1590– 1674’, in Ernst van den Boogaart et al. (eds), Overzee: Nederlandse koloniale geschiedenis, 1590–1975 (Haarlem, 1982), pp. 124–5; Ernst van den Boogaart, ‘De bevolking van Nederlands Brazilië’, in E. van den Boogaart and F.J. Duparc (eds), Zo wijd de wereld strekt (The Hague, 1979), pp. 122–3. Van den Boogaart, ‘Infernal Allies: The Dutch West India Company and the Tarairius, 1631–1654’, in Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen, 1604–1679: A Humanist Prince in Europe and the New World (The Hague, 1979), p. 521. For the distinction between ‘Brazilians/Tupis’ and ‘Tapuyas’, see also Inge Schjellerup, ‘Who were they? The native peoples behind the paintings: the Tupinambá and the Tarairiu’, in Barbara Berlowicz (ed.),

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Following the suggestion from the former Jesuit missionary Manuel de Moraes, who as noted in the Introduction to this volume defected to the Dutch in 1635, the High Council (the WIC government based in Pernambuco) appointed several Company officials and soldiers to serve as administrators for the Tupi who resided in the aldeias. Each aldeia was to be administered by a WIC officer as well as a Tupi leader or headman, the primary tasks of whom were to recruit aldeia residents for military and labour service. In return for services rendered, including the cutting of firewood and brazilwood, the Tupi received payment in the form of weapons, tools, textiles, and other manufactured goods. Additionally, Company officers and indigenous leaders were instructed by the WIC government to prevent the Tupi from being enslaved by the moradores, the Portuguese colonists who resided in Dutch-controlled territory. To coordinate the administration and general well being of the large and widely scattered Tupi population in Dutch-controlled Brazil, the High Council appointed a ‘Commander of Brazilians’. While the WIC officers stationed at the aldeias were usually soldiers or low-level Company personnel, the more prestigious position of ‘Commander of Brazilians’ was reserved for senior military officers or higher-level Company officials. Finally, the High Council hoped to bind the Tupi closer to them by converting those in the missions to Dutch Calvinism. During the 1630s and 1640s, several Dutch Reformed ministers and schoolteachers were active as missionaries in the aldeias. The system whereby European officers were stationed at aldeias often created tensions between the WIC and the Tupi. Although the Tupi were generally supportive of the WIC’s policies because they enjoyed greater freedom than under Portuguese rule, they resented the presence of officers who abused their positions and failed to compensate them adequately. The WIC government frequently received complaints from Tupi leaders such as Poty and Paraupaba against corrupt Company officers. Johan Maurits, the governor of Dutch-controlled Brazil from January 1637 to May 1644, took the Indian complaints seriously, recognizing the strategic value of the Tupi as military allies. To address Tupi grievances, Maurits and the High Council occasionally dismissed European aldeia officers who enriched themselves at the expense of native people. And in June 1641, Johannes Listry, the Commander of Brazilians, withdrew all WIC officials from Tupi villages in an effort to bring to an end continuing Indian complaints about European aldeia captains. Because the Albert Eckhout volta ao Brasil/Albert Eckhout Returns to Brazil (Copenhagen, 2002), pp. 131–46. For the system of Company officers and the ‘Commander of Brazilians’, see Marcus P. Meuwese, ‘“For the Peace and Well-Being of the Country”: Intercultural Mediators and Dutch-Indian Relations in New Netherland and Dutch Brazil, 1600–1664’, Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of Notre Dame, 2003, pp. 220–250. See also José Antônio Gonsalves de Mello, Nederlanders in Brazilië (1624–1654): De invloed van de Hollandse bezetting op het leven en de cultuur in Noord-Brazilië, translated from the Portuguese by G.N. Visser and edited by B.N. Teensma (Zutphen, 2001), chapter 4. See also Van den Boogaart, ‘De Nederlandse expansie’, p. 124.


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‘persons that are captains over the Aldeias of the Brazilians are only interested in using their Brazilians for their own private use’, Listry recommended that the Tupi should in future be governed by ‘persons from their own nation, who will treat their people better, and who will better provide for the general well-being of the Aldeias’.10 However, Listry’s experiment with Tupi self-governance was short-lived. Barely six months after granting the Tupi political autonomy, Listry asked Maurits and the High Council to restore the system of WIC officers in the aldeias. According to Listry, ‘among our Brazilian officers in the Aldeias we find daily great disorder, because they work more on behalf of their own people, do not do any work except brewing strong drinks, and therefore do not have any authority over each other’. Moreover, Listry argued that some native leaders enriched themselves by hiring out their own people as cheap labourers to colonists. Disappointed in the Tupi leadership, in February 1642 Listry requested that Maurits and the High Council ‘appoint in every Aldeia a Dutchman to take care of the daily affairs’. The WIC government responded favourably to Listry’s request and instructed the Commander of Brazilians ‘to look for married Dutchmen who are of mature age and are capable of serving at an Aldeia’.11 Despite Listry’s effort to restore WIC supervision over the mission villages, complaints from the native leadership against corrupt European aldeia captains soon resurfaced. In January 1644, Maurits and the High Council considered ‘the complaints of the Brazilians’ regarding ‘the Dutch Captains of the aldeias’, and dismissed no fewer than three that same day. According to the anonymous Tupi complainants, three WIC officers stationed at three different aldeias had exploited their positions by employing Indians ‘for their profit and [by] keeping them in as much servitude as they have ever been kept’. Ongoing Tupi complaints against corrupt European aldeia officials revealed that the Tupi-Dutch alliance remained problematic. While the Tupi leaders were eager to govern themselves, the WIC government did not fully trust the ability of the native leadership to govern the aldeias.12 The WIC Decision for Tupi Self-Governance, 1644 The ongoing debate regarding the appropriate form of aldeia administration changed again in the spring of 1644, when Maurits and the High Council developed a detailed plan for Tupi self-governance. The WIC government’s decision to grant self-rule was brought about by the recent Indian revolts against the WIC in the northern frontier provinces of Maranhão and Ceará. Both the island-province of 10 DNA, OWIC, Daily Minutes of the WIC Government in Pernambuco (DM), Inv. No. 69: June 26 1641 11 DM, Inv. No. 69: February 17 1642. 12 DM, Inv. No. 70: January 25 1644. See also Meuwese, ‘Intercultural Mediators’, pp. 248–9.

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Maranhão and the neighbouring coastal province of Ceará had originally been marginal Portuguese colonies, distant from the intensively colonized north-eastern sugar provinces. In both frontier provinces, Tupi and Tapuya Indian communities greatly outnumbered the very small Portuguese settler population, and in both the Portuguese relied greatly on Tupi and Tapuya slaves. Shortly after the WIC conquest of the Portuguese fort on Maranhão in November 1641, a smallpox epidemic devastated the local Indian slave population. To satisfy the need for slaves, the WIC government on Maranhão, with the approval of senior Company officials in Pernambuco and the Republic, resolved to purchase Tapuya slaves from Tupi villages on the mainland.13 Because of the great Indian mortality caused by the smallpox epidemic, WIC officials in Maranhão were unable to satisfy their need for slaves with Tapuya alone. Within a short time, WIC soldiers began enslaving their Tupi allies as well. This dangerous and short-sighted policy quickly backfired. In October 1642, large numbers of Tupi and Tapuya warriors, supported by local Portuguese colonists who had remained on Maranhão, joined forces in an assault on the WIC garrison. Although Maurits and the High Council occasionally dispatched troops and supplies to Maranhão, the determined Indians and Portuguese colonists continued their siege throughout 1643. Faced with declining supplies, the WIC garrison of several hundred soldiers finally abandoned the island of Maranhão in late January 1644.14 A similar violent Tupi revolt against the WIC took place almost simultaneously in the neighbouring province of Ceará, threatening the previously amicable relations between the WIC and the sizeable Tupi population. In the late 1630s, following the Dutch conquest of the Portuguese coastal fort in 1637, hundreds of native warriors had supported the WIC campaigns against the Portuguese; and during the Indian-Portuguese siege of Maranhão in 1642–1643, some two hundred Tupi warriors from Ceará aided the Dutch in their attempt to relieve the Maranhão garrison. However, many Tupi in Ceará became increasingly suspicious of the Dutch. First, the smallpox epidemic that had raged in Maranhão had also disastrously affected local Indian communities in Ceará in 1642; secondly, WIC officials in the province needlessly provoked the Tupi by forcing their Indian allies 13 For the Portuguese and Dutch colonization of Ceará, see Rita Krommen, Mathias Beck und die Westindische Compagnie: Zur herrschaft der Niederlaender im kolonialen Ceara (Cologne, 2001), chapters 3–4 (accessible on the web at: uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/ aspla/download/arbeitspapiere/krommen.pdf); Ernst van den Boogaart and Rebecca Parker Brienen, Information from Ceará from Georg Marcgraf (June–August 1639) Dutch Brazil 1 (Petropolis, 2002). For Dutch policies toward the Indians in both provinces, see Mello, Nederlanders in Brazilie, chapter 4. See also Van den Boogaart, Zo wijd de wereld strekt, 94, items 82 (Maranhão) and 83 (Ceará). 14 On the evacuation of the WIC garrison from Maranhão in January 1644, see LPB, Inv. No. 60: Item No. 10: General Missive from the WIC Government in Brazil to the Heeren XIX, February 13 1645. See also Van den Boogaart, Zo wijd de wereld strekt, 94, item 82.


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to work in the local salt pans; and finally, Ceará Tupi who had served in Maranhão on behalf of the Dutch did not receive their promised material compensation. In December 1643, the entire WIC garrison of Ceará was wiped out by the Tupi.15 Faced with rebellions in both Maranhão and Ceará, Maurits and the High Council were rightly concerned that the Tupi population of the aldeias in the north-eastern provinces would also resort to violence if they perceived themselves to be mistreated by the WIC. In this context it was an ominous sign for the WIC government that the earlier mentioned smallpox epidemic of 1642 also ravaged the aldeias. Although the mortality rate caused by the 1642 smallpox epidemic is unknown, two censuses of the mission Tupi taken by WIC officials suggest a dramatic population decline between 1635 and 1645. While the total population of the aldeias was estimated to be almost 10,000 in 1635, by 1645 the mission Tupi had been reduced to about 3,500 people. Given the known effects of smallpox on indigenous peoples elsewhere in the Americas during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it is probable that a significant proportion of the reported population decline is attributable to the 1642 smallpox epidemic. Thus, in an attempt to preempt unrest in the aldeias caused by epidemic disease and Indian rebellions in Maranhão and Ceará, the WIC government granted self-governance to the Tupi.16 One further reason for the WIC government’s decision to grant more autonomy to the Tupi in the spring of 1644 lies in the changed political and economic situation in north-eastern Brazil. Despite the Indian rebellions in Maranhão and Ceará, the WIC had significantly expanded its colonial empire in north-eastern Brazil and West Africa by 1644. Following the sudden restoration of Portuguese independence from Habsburg Spain in 1640, the WIC had quickly made use of the diplomatic confusion to capture weakly defended Portuguese positions in Brazil and Angola in 1641. Since Portuguese Brazil was economically dependent on the importation of African slaves from Angola, the WIC believed that their capture of Luanda, the slave-trading centre in Angola, would eventually force the Portuguese to surrender the rest of Brazil to the Company. After Portuguese officials in Salvador de Bahia signed a truce with the WIC in July 1642, on the instruction of the new Portuguese king, Company directors believed that their colony in northeastern Brazil was now secure. As an indication of their optimism, as well as an expression of their financial concerns, WIC directors recalled a large number of Company troops from Brazil in 1643.17 Krommen, Mathias Beck und die Westindischen Compagnie, pp. 40–44. On the aldeia population, see Schalkwijk, Reformed Church, pp. 170–71. For smallpox and indigenous American depopulation in the period 1500–1700, see Suzanne Austin Alchon, A Pest in the Land: New World Epidemics in a Global Perspective (Albuquerque, 2003). 17 For the Dutch conquests in Brazil and West Africa in 1641, see Charles R. Boxer, The Dutch in Brazil, 1624–1654 (Oxford, 1957), pp. 100–11. See also Den Heijer, Geschiedenis van de WIC, p. 77. For Portuguese-Dutch relations in Europe and the Atlantic in the early 1640s, see Evaldo Cabral de Mello, De Braziliaanse affaire: Portugal, de Republiek der 15

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The expansion and consolidation of the WIC Empire in the southern Atlantic had an impact on Tupi-WIC relations in two key ways. First, the truce between the WIC and the Portuguese considerably reduced the need for Tupi allies to supply soldiers to the Dutch on a regular basis. Secondly, since Angolan slaves were seen as much more reliable agricultural workers than the semi-sedentary Tupi, the capture of Luanda enabled the WIC to rely increasingly on Angolan slaves rather than on Indian labourers in colonial Brazil.18 Although the Tupi were still valued by the WIC government as a police force to track down runaway African slaves and as a strategic auxiliary army, the dramatically improved political and economic circumstances in Brazil made Maurits and the High Council more attentive to Tupi demands for self-rule after 1642. The WIC government’s decision to grant self-governance to the aldeias also coincided with Maurits’ recall to the Republic. It is possible that Maurits developed the plan for Tupi self-governance after he unexpectedly received instructions from the Company directors in September 1643 to give up his governorship. Maurits had always recognized the strategic value of the Tupi and he had consistently advised of the need to treat their native allies fairly if the WIC wanted to maintain their support. In his political testament, written shortly before his departure from Brazil in May 1644, Maurits warned that ‘because the tranquillity and control of Brazil partly depends on the friendship with the Brazilians, one has to keep them in their natural state of freedom’. By supporting Tupi self-governance, Maurits hoped to secure amicable Tupi-Dutch relations in Brazil for the future.19 Because Company directors in the Republic needed formally to approve the plan for Tupi self-rule, Maurits invited several prominent native leaders to accompany him to the Netherlands where they could personally meet with the Heeren XIX to discuss the Dutch-Tupi alliance. By inviting Indian leaders to visit the Republic, Maurits also hoped to impress the Tupi with the military and economic power of the Dutch. According to a contemporary Dutch source, upon the departure of Maurits from Brazil on May 10, 1644, ‘the Brazilian people dispatched five from their own who would travel at the same time, in order to see the Netherlands and the Prince of Orange (whose name means everything to them), and to relate to their kinsmen the state of our country and customs’. Except for Paraupaba, the identities of the envoys is unknown. In addition to the five Tupi envoys, several Verenigde Nederlanden en Noord-Oost Brazilië, 1641–1669, translated from the Portuguese by Catherine Barel (Zutphen, 2005), chapter 1. 18 For the explosive growth of the WIC slave trade from Luanda after 1642, see Van den Boogaart, ‘Nederlandse expansie in het Atlantische gebied’, p. 130. 19 For the quotation from Maurits, see DNA, Archive of the States-General (ASG), 1.01.04, inv. nr. 5757 (liassen WIC, 1643–1644): 21. I want to thank Dr. B.N. Teensma for this reference. Maurits was most likely recalled by the WIC directors because they viewed the governor’s expenses in Brazil as too extravagant. For Maurits’ governorship in Brazil and the growing irritation among WIC directors about Maurits’ extravagant spending, see Boxer, Dutch in Brazil, chapter 4.


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‘Tapuya’ from outside the Dutch-controlled territory also accompanied Maurits. It is unclear how the Tupi leaders interpreted the invitation to accompany the former governor to the Republic and to meet with the WIC directors. However, since Paraupaba had already visited the Republic from 1625 to about 1630, he probably understood Dutch and was likely familiar with the authority and status of the WIC directors. Paraupaba may therefore have viewed the invitation as an opportunity to strengthen his status as a loyal ally of the WIC.20 While Paraupaba and the other Tupi leaders travelled to the Republic to receive from the WIC directors’ confirmation of the right to self-governance in Brazil, the High Council in Pernambuco simultaneously warned the Company directors about the ‘uncivilized’ nature of Paraupaba and the other Indian spokesmen. In a letter addressed to the Heeren XIX, which may have been sent along with the same fleet that carried Paraupaba and Maurits to the Republic, the High Council warned its superiors about the lack of ‘civilization’ displayed by Paraupaba and Pieter Poty. Reporting on the lack of Christian and cultural progress shown by the two Potiguar, the Council wrote that ‘one indeed concludes that Pieter Potti and Antonio Paripaba, whose education in the fatherland [during the 1620s] had been so expensive for the WIC, live in as savage and wicked a manner as the other Brazilians’. The timing of the expression of an opinion this strong is remarkable. Just as the WIC government in Brazil granted the Tupi more autonomy in order to maintain their support, the High Council expressed its disillusionment with the progress towards ‘civilization’ made by the Tupi leaders.21 The WIC Plan for Tupi Self-Governance, 1644–1645 Despite the warning, Paraupaba and the other four Tupi diplomats apparently behaved in a manner considered civilized enough to meet with the Company directors. In a meeting with the Heeren XIX in Amsterdam in late November 1644, the Tupi received an official document which outlined the system of Tupi self-governance. The document, entitled ‘Letter of Freedom for the Brazilians’, stated that the aforementioned Brazilians request the privilege to appoint and nominate from among their own nation judges and governors, just as is the case with other judicial courts, and [these are to] be selected by the High Council, to the satisfaction of those [the High Council], who will protect them [the Tupi] at all 20 Caspar Barlaeus, Nederlandsch Brazilië onder het bewind van Johan Maurits, Grave van Nassau, 1637–1644, trans. and ed. from the original Latin edition of 1647 by S.P. L’Honoré Naber (The Hague, 1923), pp. 395–8. For documentary evidence that Paraupaba was part of the Tupi team that went to Holland, see LPB: Inv. No. 60: General Missive from the WIC Government in Pernambuco to the Heeren XIX, June 27 1645. 21 LPB, Inv. No. 59: Missive from the WIC Government in Pernambuco to the Heeren XIX, May 10 1644.

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Bridging the Early Modern Atlantic World times against the evil designs of the Portuguese; and these judges and governors will be treated similarly to other judicial courts and will swear an oath of loyalty and execute all that the aforementioned High Council will demand.22

At the same time, the board of Company directors continued to view the Tupi as a people who remained subordinate to Dutch colonial rule. The Heeren XIX reiterated in the meeting with Paraupaba that ‘the Brazilians by our [Dutch] nation and its subjects would be held and treated as free subjects’, but ‘will remain obeying and subject to our laws and ordinances’. Although the Tupi could not be enslaved and were granted the right to govern themselves and to organize their own courts, it was clear that their ‘freedom’ was limited. Instead, Company directors considered this native group as ultimately dependent on Dutch colonial law and government. ‘Freedom for the Brazilians’ would be a system of limited and controlled self-governance.23 As noted above, Paraupaba’s claim to have been appointed ‘king’ over the Brazilians on the envoys’ return to north-eastern Brazil in March 1645 led to much commotion and confusion among the High Council in Brazil and the Company directors in the Republic. Whilst it is not entirely clear why Paraupaba sought to become supreme leader or ‘king’ of all the Tupi, his attempt to become paramount ruler should not necessarily be seen as a self-interested strategy to increase his power at the expense of his fellow kinsmen. While motivations of individual gain and access to valuable European goods may certainly have been a factor, the evidence suggests that Paraupaba sought at the same time to use his position as ruler to protect the Tupi community against European exploitation. These two motives do not necessarily contradict each other. Paraupaba could gain both personal enrichment and prestige and, simultaneously, increase his status among his own people by furthering the goals of Tupi autonomy from the Dutch. Paraupaba’s surprisingly bold attempt to challenge so openly the Recife authorities and the Heeren XIX suggests how confident he felt as an intercultural negotiator who was familiar with the intricacies of the Dutch colonial empire.24 After the High Council rejected Paraupaba’s bid, WIC officials wrote to their superiors that they would implement the programme of Tupi self-governance as described in the ‘Letter of Freedom for the Brazilians’. Instead of one ‘Indian king’, however, the Council constructed a system of three Tupi regidors, or civic 22 DNA, ASG, 1.01.04 (Liassen WIC), Inv. No. 5757, II: D-941-942: ‘Copy of the Letter of Freedom for the Brazilians’, November 24 1644. 23 ASG, ‘Copy of the Letter of Freedom for the Brazilians’. 24 For Paraupaba’s claim and the response of the High Council, see LPB, Inv. No. 60: General Missive from the High Council to the Heeren XIX, June 27 1645. A similar claim by the Tupi to select one central Indian leader is also mentioned by the High Council in LPB, Inv. No. 60: General Missive from the High Council to the Heeren XIX, March 24 1645. For the response of the Heeren XIX, see OWIC, Letters from the Heeren XIX, Inv. No. 9: July 6 1645.


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magistrates, who would be required to confer with the ‘Director of Brazilians’ prior to taking any decisions. In order to execute this policy, the Recife councillors ordered Johannes Listry, then Director of Brazilians, to convene a council with all those individuals who wished to be considered for appointment as representatives in the new judicial and governmental structure. This meeting was held some time between late March and early April 1645 in Tapisseria, a mission village in Pernambuco. During the summit, a group of twenty prominent Tupi leaders, among whom were Poty and Paraupaba, worked with Listry on the details regarding the selection and appointment of Indian magistrates.25 The Dutch system of indirect rule over the Tupi was a curious mixture of Dutch and Iberian colonial policies. The court system that was drawn up at the Tupi convention was closely modelled on the existing district courts in Dutch-controlled Brazil. Each province and large town was administered by courts consisting of several magistrates, or schepenen. The schepenen were appointed by the High Council from a list of candidates drawn up by free settlers from each province or town. The Director of Brazilians and the High Council formed three Tupi courts for the provinces of Paraíba, Rio Grande, and Itamaracá. Like the European colonists, the Tupi had to nominate a list of candidates for the three district courts. Interestingly, however, the High Council did not use the Dutch term schepenen for the Tupi magistrates but instead the Spanish term regidor. In Spanish America, the term regidor referred to local Indian administrators who functioned as political intermediaries between Spanish colonial officials and the Indian population. In Dutch Brazil, the regidors (regidores in Spanish) fulfilled a similar function for the Recife government. The three regidors were the most senior Indian magistrates who dealt directly with Listry and other Dutch colonial officials.26 Poty and Paraupaba were two of the three candidates selected by the Tupi for the positions of regidors – the former for the district of Paraíba; the latter for the district of Rio Grande. The third candidate was Domingo Fernandes Carapeba, a distinguished warrior who represented the Tupi villages located in the province of Itamaracá. The candidacies of Poty and Paraupaba strongly suggest that their talents as cross-cultural negotiators who were familiar with the WIC government made them useful and valuable in the eyes of their kinsmen. By nominating Poty and Paraupaba for these important positions, the Tupi signalled their wish to be led by regidors who had experience of interacting – and negotiating – with the Dutch colonial government.27 25 For this meeting, see OWIC, DM, Inv. No. 70: April 11 1645. While the High Council approved the appointment of the Tupi candidates in Recife on April 11 and 12, Listry and the Tupi candidates had discussed all the details during their meeting in the aldeia in Gojana between March 30 and April 3 1645. 26 For the system of regidores in Spanish America, see Steve J. Stern, Peru’s Indian Peoples and the Challenge of Spanish Conquest: Huamanga to 1640 (Madison, 1993), pp. 92–3. 27 See DM: Inv. No. 70: April 11 1645. Teensma erroneously believes that Carapeba is the same as Antonio Paraupaba. See Teensma’s note in Mello, Nederlanders in Brazilië,

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Since the candidates nominated by the Tupi had to be approved by the High Council and the Director of Brazilians, however, the WIC government reserved the right to reject Poty and Paraupaba. Because of the recent complaints expressed by both Listry and the High Council regarding the failure of both individuals to live up to Dutch expectations of what constituted ‘civilized’ behaviour, the High Council had good reasons to avoid placing the two Potiguar leaders in the influential position of regidors. Yet despite their reservations, the High Council and Listry formally recognized the appointment of both Poty and Paraupaba at the special council held in Pernambuco between April 10 and 13 1645. Why, then, did the Recife councillors support the nomination of two men whom they viewed as uncivilized? Ironically, due to their unique familiarity with both the Dutch language and the WIC organization, Poty and Paraupaba probably remained two of the very few Tupi leaders with whom the High Council could effectively communicate. Additionally, by appointing them to positions that brought the two Potiguar leaders in frequent contact with the High Council, the WIC officials could exercise firmer control over their activities.28 Even as they sanctioned the appointments of Poty and Paraupaba, the WIC government nevertheless made it clear that they did not fully trust either man. During the special council held in mid-April, the Council required the Tupi leaders to swear an oath of loyalty to the WIC in return for which they would receive a sealed ‘Letter of Freedom for the Brazilians’, signed by the Heeren XIX, outlining their peoples’ new rights and duties. Instead of issuing one letter each to the three regidors, however, the Council issued only one sealed letter. Neglecting Poty and Paraupaba, the WIC officials handed the ‘Letter of Freedom for the Brazilians’ to Domingo Fernandes Carapeba, and specifically instructed him to take good care of it. As the distrust of colonial officials toward Poty and Paraupaba suggests, the High Council continued to have their doubts about the reliability of the two Tupi leaders.29 Tupi autonomy during the Portuguese-Dutch War for Brazil, 1645–1654 Unfortunately, the outbreak of a major Portuguese guerrilla war against the Dutch colonial government in May 1645 prevents us from assessing how the system of Tupi self-governance worked in practice. The rebels consisted of moradores who increasingly resented the Dutch occupation, Portuguese colonists from Salvador de p. 176, footnote 111. As we will see, they were clearly two separate individuals. Unfortunately, it is not known whether Carapeba spoke Dutch, but since the two other regidors spoke Dutch, it is possible that Carapeba was at least familiar with the language as well. 28 DM, Inv. No. 70: April 12 1645. Significantly, during their meeting with the High Council in which they were confirmed in their nomination as regidors, the High Council provided the Tupi leaders with cloth and money. Perhaps by showering them with prestigious goods the High Council also hoped to bind the two leaders closer to them. 29 DM, Inv. No. 70: April 12 1645.


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Bahia who had never accepted the truce of July 1642, and a considerable number of mulattoes, Afro-Brazilians, and Tupi who had remained loyal to the Portuguese. Secretly encouraged by the Portuguese king, the Portuguese-Brazilian rebels swiftly captured several strategic WIC forts in the spring of 1645. The ineffectiveness of the WIC response to the popular Portuguese rebellion is attributable in large part to the fact that the Company directors, in a bid to reduce costs, had withdrawn a significant proportion of troops from Brazil in 1643–1644. After several months of intense fighting, the multi-ethnic guerrillas effectively surrounded the Dutch in Recife, the capital of the Dutch colony. Although the latter were able to maintain control of the coastal regions of Rio Grande and Paraíba with the military support of their Tupi allies, frequent incursions by guerrilla forces turned north-eastern Brazil into an unstable borderland.30 During the decade-long conflict between the Portuguese and the Dutch in the northeast, however, Tupi leaders and Company officials occasionally continued to clash over the legal and political status of the Brazilian Indians in the Dutch colonial world. One incident between the Tupi leaders and the High Council in the summer of 1652 reveals that the issue of Dutch colonial jurisdiction over the Tupi remained contentious. In July of that year, Paraupaba openly challenged Dutch authority when Company officials attempted to execute three Indians of the Potiguar group from Rio Grande for the killing of a number of Tapuya Indians. Colonial judicial officials viewed the killing of the Tapuya as a serious crime because these Indians were also allied with the Dutch. Since the High Council attempted to maintain alliances with as many indigenous groups as possible in the war against the Portuguese guerrillas, the murder of several Tapuya by the Potiguar peoples from Rio Grande threatened the system of intercultural alliances that the Dutch had carefully built in Brazil.31 The response to the Tapuya murders reveals that the Recife councillors viewed the Potiguar suspects as subservient military allies who were subject to Dutch colonial law. Paraupaba, conversely, considered the Dutch attempts to sentence his kinsmen as an infringement of Tupi sovereignty. To emphasize the seriousness of the crime and to appease their Tapuya allies, Dutch colonial officials sentenced the three Potiguar suspects to death. Before the public execution was to take place at Fort Ceulen, the Company fort on the Rio Grande coast, however, Paraupaba intervened. According to Peter Hansen Hajstrup, a German-Danish soldier in Company service, Paraupaba threatened colonial officials by indicating that ‘a state of hostility would exist between them [the Tupi] and our nation’, if the Dutch proceeded with the execution. The colonial authorities responded to Paraupaba’s threats with a similar threat of military force, forcing the Potiguar leader to back 30

For an excellent overview of the Portuguese-Brazilian rebellion of 1645, see Boxer, Dutch in Brazil, chapter 5. 31 For this incident, see Frank Ibold, Jens Jaeger, and Detlev Kraack (eds), Das “Memorial und Jurenal” des Peter Hansen Hajstrup (1624–1672) (Nuemuenster, 1995), pp. 98–100.


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down: Paraupaba clearly did not want to disrupt the alliance with the Dutch upon which the Potiguar depended for military and material support.32 Unable to stop the execution of his kinsmen, Paraupaba instead accused the Dutch of punishing the Potiguar suspects more severely than European Company personnel guilty of similar crimes. Clearly, Paraupaba’s accusation was made more out of frustration rather than based on an accurate understanding of Dutch colonial justice in Brazil. Like Dutch justice in the Republic and elsewhere in the Dutch overseas world, legal courts of the West India Company often sentenced Company personnel to death for capital crimes such as murder. Unfortunately, Hansen did not report how Company officials responded to the accusation. Although Paraupaba’s intervention ultimately failed, his actions demonstrate that the Tupi leaders continued to challenge Company policies which treated the Tupi as subjects of the Dutch colonial order.33 It is noteworthy that after the WIC surrendered its colony in Brazil to the Portuguese in January 1654, Paraupaba appears to have accepted the idea that the Tupi were subjects of the Dutch state. In the summer of 1654, he arrived in The Hague to petition the States-General for military and material aid on behalf of the remaining Tupi allies of the Dutch in Brazil. Paraupaba had travelled to the Republic because he correctly anticipated that the Portuguese would not be lenient towards Indians who had supported the Dutch. Pieter Poty, for instance, was tortured and executed by the Portuguese following his capture in 1649. Unable to return to his homeland, Paraupaba lived in exile in the Republic together with his wife and some of their children. However, because the petitions were probably ghost-written or co-authored by WIC officials who supported the re-establishment of a Dutch colonial presence in Brazil, the portrayal of the Tupi as ‘good loyal subjects’ reveals more about the self-serving attempts by Dutch colonial interest groups to regain Brazil than they do about Paraupaba’s personal views. When the States-General did not take action in support of the Tupi, Paraupaba and the colonial interest groups who favoured a new invasion of the territory petitioned the States-General for a second time. In April 1656, Paraupaba and his Dutch supporters again emphasized that the Tupi were a ‘loyal Brazilian Nation’ that had always obeyed Dutch colonial rule.34

32

Ibid., pp. 98–100. Ibid., pp. 98–100. 34 Paraupaba’s petitions have recently been published and edited by Lodewijk Hulsman, ‘Brazilian Indians in the Dutch Republic: The Remonstrances of Antonio Paraupaba to the States General in 1654 and 1656’, Itinerario, 29/1 (2005): 51–78. For the first quotation, see p. 56; for the second quotation, see p. 64. For this episode, see also Mark Meuwese, ‘Powerless yet Resourceful: Brazilian Indians as Political Refugees in the Dutch Republic, 1654–1657’, in T.J. Broos, M. Bruyn Lacy, T.F. Shannon (eds), The Low Countries: Crossroads of Cultures (Muenster, 2006), pp. 83–92. For Poty’s death, see Schalkwijk, Reformed Church, pp. 210–11. 33


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No matter how glowingly Paraupaba and his Dutch supporters described the loyalty and subservient status of the Tupi, however, the States-General did not supply any significant aid to the Potiguar and other Tupi groups who had been allied with the Dutch in Brazil. Although some provinces, as well as a faction within the West India Company, were eager to embark on a new invasion, the influential province of Holland in the States-General was unwilling to invest more funds and resources in the costly adventure that had bankrupted the WIC. Not long after having submitted his second request to the central assembly of the United Netherlands, Paraupaba died of unknown causes. Although his wife Paulina successfully petitioned the States-General to travel to the Caribbean, her husband was probably buried somewhere in the Republic in the summer of 1656.35 Conclusion Paraupaba’s death symbolized the end of the complex relationship between the north-eastern Brazilian Tupi peoples and the Dutch during the seventeenth century. Although both sides needed each other as allies in the struggle against the Iberian powers, each had different expectations of the other’s role in the relationship. The Tupi viewed the relationship with the Dutch as an alliance between equals. In the Tupi view, the Dutch did not have legal prerogative to exercise political and legal power over Indians. The Dutch, however, viewed the Tupi as a subordinate people who had limited legal and political rights. Because the Dutch and the Tupi needed each other as strategic partners in Brazil, Tupi leaders and Dutch colonial authorities in Brazil and the Republic constructed a compromise in the form of limited self-rule for the Tupi. Despite this mutual accommodation, both sides continued to contest the status of the Tupi in the Dutch colonial order. The Potiguar leader Paraupaba played an influential role in this contestation. Using his skills as an intercultural diplomat, Paraupaba attempted to assert more autonomy for himself and his people by playing off colonial and metropolitan governments against each other, as evidenced by his claim to have received the title of ‘king’ from the Company directors when he returned to Brazil from the Dutch Republic in March 1645. Although Paraupaba failed in this attempt, the High Council continued to rely on his valuable intercultural skills and appointed him to the position of regidor. Surprisingly, the outbreak of the Portuguese popular revolt against Dutch colonial rule in 1645 did not bring the Tupi and the Dutch closer together. During the Portuguese guerrilla war which ultimately led to the defeat of the Dutch in Brazil, the Tupi and the Dutch continued to argue over the legal position of the former in the colony. Instead of bringing the two sides closer together, the 35 Meuwese, ‘Powerless yet Resourceful’, pp. 88–9. For the refusal of Holland and the States-General to invest in a new Brazilian adventure after 1654, see Boxer, Dutch in Brazil, chapter 7.

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Portuguese uprising in Brazil instead revealed dramatic tensions in the Tupi-Dutch relationship. In the larger context of early modern European overseas expansion, the struggle over the status of the Tupi in Dutch Brazil ultimately shows that, even when indigenous peoples and European colonizers established close alliances, the relationship was never stable but always fraught with tensions.

Chapter 6

‘To Transmit to Posterity the Virtue, Lustre and Glory of their Ancestors’: Scottish Pioneers in Darien, Panama Mark Horton

Thus wrote back to Scotland the council of the newly formed colony of New Edinburgh on the Atlantic coast of Panama on 29 December 1698, conveying the hopes and ambitions of an entire nation, where many believed this attempt to create an overseas colony would restore the economic fortunes of the country. As things turned out, in a very short time, this colony, set up by The Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies on the Darien Isthmus of Panama, became one of the more tragic episodes in Atlantic history. With the death of around 1,500 of the original 2,800 colonists, the abandonment, capture, or shipwreck of eleven of the Company’s fourteen ships, and the loss of some £400,000 of Scottish capital, the ‘Darien Scheme’, as it has come to be known, is viewed as a turning point in Scottish history. The tragedy touched the lives of many Scottish families, through The extensive secondary literature on the Darien scheme includes Frank Cundall, The Darien Venture (New York, 1926); George Pratt Insh, The Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies (London and New York, 1932); Francis Russell Hart, The Disaster of Darien: The Story of the Scots Settlement and the Causes of its Failure, 1699– 1701 (Boston and New York, 1929); John Prebble, The Darien Disaster (London, 1968); Christopher Storrs, ‘Disaster at Darien (1698–1700)? The Persistence of Spanish Imperial Power on the Eve of the Demise of the Spanish Habsburgs’, Economic History Quarterly, 29/1 (1999): 5–38; Ignacio Gallup-Díaz, The Door of the Seas and the Key of the Universe: Indian Politics and Imperial Rivalry in the Darién, 1640–1750 (New York, 2004); Douglas Watt, The Price of Scotland: Darien, Union and the Wealth of Nations (Edinburgh, 2007). For estimates of the size and death rates of the first expedition (respectively, 1,200 colonists, with about 300 deaths in Darien, and a further 350 on the way home), see Prebble, Darien, p. 113, and Watt, Price of Scotland, p. 156. The second expedition carried around 1,200 men and 100 women, of whom around 460 died in Darien, and a further 112 when the company’s flagship, the Rising Sun, sank off Charleston on 3 September 1700. The relief expedition had 300 colonists, of whom around 150 died. See Watt, Price of Scotland, p. 193. Francis Borland, Memoirs of Darien (Glasgow, 1715), gives the total death rate as 2,000, which may be closer to the actual numbers. For the biography of the Company’s ships, see Prebble, Darien, pp. 326–8. The nominal capital of the company was £398,085 10s, although 2.6 times the actual cash that was raised from investors, Watt, Price of Scotland, p. 221.

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Figure 6.1 Location of Scottish Colony on the Atlantic Coast of Panama

the loss of either their original investment in the scheme, or of relations at sea or in the swamps of Darien. It provided the political climate in which the Act of Union could be passed in 1707, and which as part of the agreement between England and Scotland, reimbursed the Darien stockholders with significant profit from English funds. For a discussion on the financial arrangements of the Union and the reimbursement of the stockholders, see Watt, Price of Scotland, pp. 219–42.

Scottish Pioneers in Darien, Panama

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The origins of the Darien scheme lay in the experiences of William Paterson. A lowland Scot born in 1658, in the parish of Skipmyre, near Dumfries, into a modest farming family, Paterson spent some of his adolescent years in Bristol, before moving to the Caribbean during or shortly before 1673, where he settled in Port Royal, Jamaica, between 1673 and 1681. It is probable that he was in Jamaica when news of the successful pirate expedition to the South Seas, which showed that an overland route across the Panama isthmus was possible through Darien, reached the island. On his return to London Paterson set about promoting the idea of a free trade colony on the mainland of Central America that would enable the Pacific route to China and the East Indies to be exploited. As it was perceived to be a threat to the monopoly of the East India Company, Paterson was unable to find backers in London, and eventually turned to his native Scotland to support the venture. The Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and Indies was established by an Act of the Scottish Parliament in 1695, and while its remit was to trade and to establish colonies in Africa, Asia, or America not possessed by any European sovereign or state, Paterson saw it as a vehicle to establish his Darien colony. The South Seas buccaneer expedition of 1680–81 not only influenced Paterson, but also provided one of the classic descriptions of an indigenous native American community living in Central America. Before its publication in 1699, its author, Lionel Wafer, was secretly brought to Edinburgh and his unpublished account of the lush landscape and friendliness of the Indians was influential in persuading the Company to select Darien in 1697. Wafer was a surgeon who had accompanied the buccaneers. Having set out on the return journey across the Isthmus with William Dampier in April–May 1681, he was, however, wounded, and mid-way across left to recover among the indigenous population, remaining on the Isthmus for three months. The Darien scheme has attracted significant scholarship over the years, on account of the voluminous documentation that survives, both in Scotland, but also in contemporary Spanish sources. Many of the primary documents – at least on the Scottish side – have now been published. The political and economic context Andrew Forrester, The Man who Saw the Future: William Paterson’s Vision of Free Trade (New York, 2004), pp. xv–xvi; David Armitage, ‘Paterson, William (1658–1719)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, accessed 29 May 2008. The main accounts of the expedition across the isthmus are contained in John Esquemeling, The Buccaneers of America (New York, 1987). For that of Captain Sharp, see pp. 257–83, and for the journal of Basil Ringrose, pp. 289–312. Forrester, Man who Saw the Future, p. 31. Lionel Wafer, A New Voyage and Description of the Isthmus of America (London, 1699), remains one of the most detailed accounts of the Darien Indians and is especially valuable as it contains detailed drawings of their houses and attire. See also Prebble, Darien, pp. 106–8. J.H. Burton (ed.) The Darien Papers (Edinburgh, 1849); George Pratt Insh (ed.), Darien Shipping Papers: Papers relating to the ships and voyages of the Company of Scotland trading to Africa and the Indies 1696–1707 (Edinburgh, 1924); Hart, The Disaster of Darien; Saxe Bannister (ed.) The Writings of William Paterson, Founder of the Bank of

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of the venture, its contribution to the Act of Union in 1707 and its role in the formation of early modern Scotland has also been the subject of major recent reassessments. What has been less well studied, and is the focus of this chapter, is what actually happened on the ground in Panama – specifically the experience of the individuals who took part in establishing the colony, the decisions they made, and the ways in which these hindered their survival. Archaeological Perspectives An archaeological engagement with the Scots colony provides a perspective that cannot be found in the documents alone. Whilst there are a number of official reports and letters, surprisingly few first-hand eyewitness accounts survive. Those that were published after the failure of the colony were written to support a particular viewpoint – whether it was a political denouncement of the Scottish regime, or to promote a Presbyterian view of human failing.10 Nevertheless, a small number of personal letters and diaries have survived, which give an insight into the worsening conditions experienced by the colonists, and provide a useful context for understanding the archaeological evidence. The archaeological ‘narrative’ provides a useful and alternative view of the colony and its failings. A second contribution which archaeology makes is that it provides the geography in which to understand the documentary record. Most of the standard narratives and analyses of the colony and the causes of its failure have been written by historians and others who have never been to the site, and who cannot properly evaluate the claims and observations. While it is clearly impossible fully to revisit those seventeenthcentury conditions, the experience of living on the site for as many months as many of the colonists did, does allow a better contextualization of the material and a fuller understanding of why the colony failed. The archaeological approach is based on an understanding of the whole landscape of the Scots colony, and our original survey in 1979,11 which involved site location over a wider area, including that of the River England (3 vols, New York, 1968, reprint of 1859 edition); Rosemary Gibson (ed.) The Darien Adventure (Edinburgh, 1998). Two recent studies to coincide with the 300th anniversary of the Act of Union are: Michael Fry, The Union, England, Scotland and the Treaty of 1707 (Edinburgh, 2007), and Allan I. Macinnes, Union and Empire: The Making of the United Kingdom in 1707 (Cambridge, 2007). 10 Borland, Memoirs of Darien; Walter Herries, A defence of the Scots abdicating Darien: including an answer to a Defence of the Scots Settlement there (Edinburgh, 1700). 11 Mark Horton, Caledonia Bay, Panama 1979. Report on the archaeological project of Operation Drake (London, 1980). Further work was done on the site in 1982 by Operation Raleigh, which included some excavation in the area of the Spanish siege camp and investigations of the Olive Branch site, including lifting of one of the ship’s cannon. In 2004, I returned to the site to film a TV documentary (Darien, Disaster in Paradise, BBC2,


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Aglatomate, where the earlier Spanish settlement of Acla was located. The maritime survey included the use of magnetometry to locate wreck sites including the Olive Branch, one of the resupply ships that sank in the harbour in July 1699. In addition to site location, we have been able to study in detail the main Scottish defences and settlement of Fort St Andrew. Here, not only are there earthwork remains of the ramparts and moat, but also scatters of material culture – ceramics, glass, beads, metal objects – which remained undisturbed on the surface close to where they were abandoned 300 years ago. Excavations have also been possible of both the fortifications and the internal levels, revealing post-hole constructed buildings within the fort.12 Remarkably for a colony of such short duration – the colonists were actually ashore for only 12 months – there was much to discover and considerable archaeological material both on the surface, and in stratified contexts. This is unusual for Atlantic colonies, which are either extremely elusive, or whose remains are buried below later occupations. In this chapter, I will discuss how the archaeological evidence throws new light on the colony, how it was organized on the ground, and how it fitted into its wider landscape. The success of the colony depended on three interactions – with that of the natural environment, with the Spanish, and with the indigenous population. It is probably correct to say that they managed all three badly, but also fair to emphasize that the archaeological evidence helps us principally to understand the first two of these interactions and what problems and difficulties arose. ‘The harbour was capable of containing a thousand sail of the best ships in the world.’13 Two expeditions were sent for the purpose of establishing a colony in Darien between 1698 and 1700, with a re-supply mission that never landed in 1699. The first colony involved five ships that had been fitted out in Edinburgh and arrived off Golden Island14 on 31 October 1698, having left Scotland on 18 July. The long voyage had been very debilitating – it took nearly three weeks just to clear Scotland – and there had been 44 deaths before the ships reached Central America. The Company planned a plantation, initially with 1,200 settlers – all 10 July 2004) and used the opportunity to conduct further excavations and survey, returning again briefly in 2005 on the occasion of a major exhibition of the finds and documents in Panama City; see The Darien Adventure/La Aventura del Darien (Panama, 2005). 12 Horton, Caledonia Bay, pp. 9–10. 13 Inch, Darien Shipping Papers, p. 82. 14 Golden Island was also the rendezvous for the pirates to begin the South Seas expedition in 1680, and is adjacent to the Acla pass over the mountains that they probably used to cross to the Pacific. See Esquemeling, Buccaneers, p. 299. The island has a very distinctive shape, and differs from the other islands along the San Blas coast that are low-lying fossil coral reefs. It was a natural landmark and seems to have been used as a favourite rendezvous for pirates and buccaneers, although, being waterless, was unsuitable for settlement.

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volunteers but with little experience beyond Scotland; one-third were discharged highland soldiers. All had been promised 50 acres of land and a plot in the new town. The company had also fitted out their ships with trade goods – the utility and desirability of which are questionable – in the belief that ships would call at this remote colony, which was of course well out of the way of any of the Caribbean sea-routes. The goods included woollen bonnets, wigs, stockings, hats, clay pipes, brandy, shoes, and even combs.15 Tools were included to build the huts and to farm the fields but, importantly, no seeds to sow, and critically no gold or money to buy local supplies when their own provisions failed or ran out. The first and major blunder of the colonists was the fateful decision to settle in the bay, now known as Puerto Escocés, a long and narrow harbour that faced north-west into the prevailing wind direction, with two reefs at its entrance to further hinder navigation. Captain Pennecuik, the commodore of the fleet, had been instructed simply to sail to ‘the isle called the Golden Island ... and there make a settlement on the mainland, as well as the said island if proper, as we believe, and unpossessed by any European nation or state in amity with his Majesty’.16 To Pennecuik, the coast opposite Golden Island seemed entirely suitable for the new colony. Almost immediately upon arrival on 1 November, local Indians approached the fleet; and on the next day, their chief, Andreas, came aboard and friendly relations were discussed. During these conversations it was confirmed that there was no permanent Spanish occupation in the area. Andreas appears to have thought that this was a pirate expedition, with designs on the South Seas;17 it is likely that he was the same man who had guided the buccaneers over the Isthmus in 1680. On 3 November, Pennecuik began his reconnaissance of the region. Rather than choosing the more suitable abandoned site of Acla, a town occupied by the Spanish between 1516 – c1560,18 and at the end of the pass which crossed the continental divide into the Pacific, he made directly for a large bay that lay to the south-east. Here, with great enthusiasm, he later reported to the Company that ‘The harbour was capable of containing a thousand sail of the best ships in the world. And without trouble, wharfs may run out to which ships of the greatest burthen may lay their sides and unload’. He saw that a peninsula of land that jutted out into the harbour could be defended by a sea-ditch, and so defend the harbour, where a ‘single company of men might stand off an army’. The decision to establish the colony here was rapidly taken and the fleet moved in on 4 November.19 Pennicuik evidently believed that he had found a paradise on earth, and his descriptions were almost poetic: the ‘streams sprung in bubbling joy from the feet of cedars’. In reality, however, they were arriving at the very end of the rainy season, 15 These are listed in the cargo lists that were meticulously compiled, for example that of the flagship, the St Andrew, National Library of Scotland (NLS), Adv. Ms 83.4. 16 Insh, Darien Shipping Papers, pp. 64–5. 17 Ibid., p. 81. 18 Horton, Caledonia Bay, pp. 12–19. 19 Insh, Darien Shipping Papers, p. 82.


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and these streams would soon dry up, leaving the only reliable water source across the bay, a haul by boat, into a bay, known as the ‘watering bay’ with a gap through its enclosing reef of only a few yards that itself is difficult to navigate through the Atlantic swell.20 The harbour had two deadly reefs located in the very centre of the inward passage, and one such rock claimed the Unicorn as she sailed in for the first time; although rescued, the vessel was badly damaged. The key problem of the harbour was the prevailing wind direction. In November, winds are generally light and variable and blow off the land, but by December, the trade winds set in as a steady force 4–5 from the northwest – directly into the harbour. Not only did this create a substantial swell, but also made it impossible to leave under sail. Their boats were effectively trapped in the harbour, while the very occasional visitors sensibly anchored off Golden Island and took small boats to the colony. The chosen bay also had much poorer connections with the mountains behind. At the end of the bay is a large swamp fed by three small streams, and few paths inland. The main pass over the mountains follows the River Aglaseniqua, and this can only be reached by sea, by following the coast northeast for five miles. During the dry season, much of this five-mile sea passage is exposed to the full Atlantic swell, making the journey uncomfortable and dangerous. The defensibility of the harbour was also an illusion, as the western side of the entrance has a rugged cliff, known as Pink Point, where access was difficult, with no flat area on which to mount a cannon. Despite the resolution to build a battery here in the early days of the colony, it was never started, and there is no archaeological trace of any construction. According to one eyewitness, Walter Herries, to place a battery here ‘would puzzle all the engineers in Europe to plant a gun on it that would do any service’.21 The harbour was to be defended from only one side, where three batteries were mounted on the promontory that formed Fort St Andrew. If the Scots had chosen to settle where the Spanish had earlier built Acla, five miles up the coast, they would have had both a water supply, and a usable and potentially defensible harbour. ‘The most healthful, rich and fruitful countries upon earth’ In early December, the weather changes significantly for the better along the Atlantic coast. While between April and November there is significant rainfall of upwards of 5m with daily rainstorms, during the four-month dry season there is very little rain and a steady northerly wind. Indeed, for such an exceptionally wet place, this dry season results in water shortages, as many of the rivers and streams dry up, while the areas where they flow into the sea become either swampy or blocked by sandbars. However, the main menace for anyone living on the coast are the insects – mosquitoes and sandflies – of which the latter are the most prevalent. 20 This is shown on a chart of the bay, drawn up during the first expedition and preserved in the Leven papers in the National Library of Scotland, and reproduced in Insh, Company of Scotland, facing p. 129. 21 Herries, Defence.


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The insect problem is that normally given by the Kuna as the reason why they live on offshore islands and rarely on the shore itself. The early reports sent back from the colony and received in Scotland were all written in optimistic tone. It was the beginning of the dry season, and the streams were still running, while the trade winds kept the biting insects to a minimum. Indeed, as this was a great national enterprise, the colonists were quick to describe their new home as a utopia. The first real news was sent out on 29 December 1698, via a friendly ship from Jamaica. The official report of the council reported that ‘in fruitfulness, seems not to give place to any in the commercial world’. Lists of the many fruits are given: ‘nay there is hardly a spot of ground here, but what may be cultivated for even upon the very tops and sides of the hills and mountains there is commonly three or four foot deep of rich earth without so much as a stone to found therein’. The council added that the colony was ever yet the likeliest means that ever yet presented towards enabling our countrymen to revive, recover and transmit to posterity the virtue, lustre and wonted glory of their renown’d ancestors, and to lay the foundation of wealth and security and greatness to our mother kingdom for the present and succeeding years.22

A ceremony was held on 28 December, formally establishing the colony ‘in one of the most healthful, rich and fruitful countries upon earth’. Parts of a journal sent back by one of the colonists shortly afterwards, and communicated to the Royal Society in London,23 echoed the optimism of the council report. The harbour, it said, may be ‘made impregnable and there are bounds enough within it, if it were all cultivated, to afford 10,000 hogsheads of sugar every year. The soil is rich, the air good and the temperature, the water is sweet and every thing contributes to make it healthful and convenient’. The anonymous colonist described turtles, manatees, and fish from the ‘bigness of the salmon to that of a perch’, and enumerated many other of the local fauna – monkeys, wild deer, Indian rabbits, wild hogs, parrots of many kinds, as well as partridges, pheasants, and a kind of turkey. The ‘place’, he added, ‘affords legions of monstrous plants enough to confound all the methods of botany ever hitherto thought upon’. The indigenous population being ‘very civil and sagacious’ and, he concluded, ‘we are now in a posture of defence against all the Spanish force in America’. One of the pamphlets published in Edinburgh, was ‘A letter, giving a description of the Isthmus of Darian (where the Scots colonie is settled) from a gentleman who lives there at present’ which was also written about this time and may well have left 22

Letter from the Council in Caledonia to the Company of Scotland, 28 December 1698, National Archives of Scotland (NAS), GD406/1/6489. Quoted in part in Gibson, Darien Adventure, p. 12. 23 Dr Wallace, ‘Part of a journal kept from Scotland to New Caledonia in Darien, with a short account of that country’, Philosphical Transactions of the Royal Society, 22 (1700): 536–43.


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on the same ship. This source provides a glowing list of the products of the land, the game that could be hunted and the tobacco that could be planted. It also refers to the local goldmines located only two miles away, and to the friendly attitude of the native inhabitants, one local chief reportedly agreeing to ‘solemnly promise to defend us to the last drop of his blood against all our enemies’.24 A manuscript map held in the British Library25 gives a useful snapshot of the nascent colony after only a few months. The commentary on the map includes a surprising claim that gold had actually been found. Apparently when digging for stones to make an oven, ‘a considerable mixture of gold was found in them’. Yellow flecking in the local granite that outcrops at this point is visible as iron pyrites or fool’s gold. This map also shows the beginnings of Fort St Andrew, and to the south, the new settlement of New Edinburgh. New Edinburgh One of the archaeological puzzles was where all the colonists were to be settled. Much of the early correspondence was sent from ‘New Edinburgh’, which is shown on the manuscript map on the east side of the bay, where six schematic buildings are located to the south of an area of ‘morais’. This area on the ground comprises a narrow strip of land around 30m wide, with a steep cliff behind. The area widens where a seasonal stream flows down from the hills, and at this location is the small temporary Kuna village of Sukunya, which had around 20 huts in 1979, but fewer than 5 in 2006. The archaeological survey attempted to establish if there were any traces of the site of New Edinburgh. In 1979 five test pits were excavated at this putative site, but no Scottish material was found.26 In 2006 some further work was done at the much reduced village site of Sukunya, but again no evidence was found for any occupation. The site of New Edinburgh may have been chosen initially because of the small seasonal stream that flows through the village, but at the north end, there was a mangrove swamp and the whole area was unhealthy. William Paterson was clear that this place was neither fit to be fortified, nor planted, nor indeed for men to lye upon …We were upon clearing and making huts upon this improper place near two months, in which time, experience, the schoolmaster of fools – convinced our masters that the place now called fort St Andrew was more proper for us.27

24

Edinburgh, 1699. British Library Add. MS. 5415.g.9. This was used by H. Moll in 1735 to show ‘the Scots settlement in America called New Caledonia 1699’ and is the best known printed map of the colony, with copy version in NLS, EMW.b.2.2. 26 Horton, Caledonia Bay, p. 9. 27 Burton, Darien Papers, p. 181. 25


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It seems that if huts were built here, they were never occupied, and by January everything was transferred to Fort St Andrew. Indeed, the very narrow strip of land available for the settlement would have made conditions extremely cramped, and it would have been hardly possible fully to accommodate the 1,400 colonists. Fort St Andrew While the effort to clear and plan the new settlement of New Edinburgh was largely wasted,28 it seems that the creation of Fort St Andrew became a major preoccupation of the colonists. Pennecuik had recognized that defending this small peninsula that jutted out into the harbour was critical to the nascent colony’s security. It appears that circa January 1699 the decision was made to concentrate both the settlement and the fort at a single location that could be defended easily from both the sea and the land; work commenced in constructing a moat and palisade along the neck of the peninsula as well as battery platforms to face out into the harbour and to protect the ships that lay at anchor in the lee of the fort.29 As a place to settle, the site of Fort St Andrew was little better than New Edinburgh. The base rock was fossil coral, which when exposed was very irregular and difficult to cross. About one-third of the total area of 25 hectares had this exposed coral and about two-thirds were sandy soils. The land surface was flat and low lying – little more than 0.5m above sea level – while there were significant areas of swamp inside the fort which acted as breeding grounds for insects. To the west was a large mangrove swamp – the ‘morais’ shown on the British Library map that must also have been a major source of mosquitoes and sandflies. The site had no water supply of it own, although a small stream fed this swamp and would have been a source of water in extremis. The archaeological evidence suggests that considerable effort was expended in creating the huts for the colonists.30 These were of earthfast/post-hole construction, which could be built in the sandy soils of the fort’s interior. In general the postholes were around 300mm in diameter and up to 750mm deep; all the buildings were square or rectangular, although the plan of no complete building has been recovered. Two post-holes, close to a large scatter of glass beads (possibly indicating the location of the one of the storehouses) were much larger. The only stone building to be constructed by the colonists was an oven. This is shown on the British Library map on the south side of the fort, and was located and excavated in both 1979 and 2006. It had a diameter of 3.8m and comprised a circular 28

The British Library map perhaps refers to this in its legend, ‘wood increases here Prodigiously for tho’ many scores of Acres were cleared, yet in a few months after it was so overgrown as if no body had been there’. 29 The Leven chart shows the location of these anchorages. See Insh, Darien Shipping Papers, p. 129. 30 Horton, Caledonia Bay, pp. 9–10.


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Figure 6.2 Excavation of the Communal Oven wall of granite with an internal rammed floor of coral.31 On the west side was a small step, possibly indicating the entrance or stoke hole. The superstructure did not survive, although the scatter of bricks in the vicinity strongly suggested that it had a brick dome. These bricks are of particular interest as they are identical to examples found at the earlier Spanish site of Acla, where they had been used to construct a defensive tower in the early sixteenth century. If this was the source of the bricks for the Scottish oven, it could be indicative of good relations with the indigenous population, who might have known about this structure and themselves quarried it for its bricks for their own hearths. Alternatively, of course, the Scots may have found them on their own.32 The early date of the oven – given its appearance on the British Library map – suggests that it was an attempt at communal organization by the colony, where it may have been used to bake bread. Part of the reason behind the move of the colonists from New Edinburgh into the relative safety of Fort St Andrew seems to have been the increased Spanish threat to their survival. The first military engagement was with a detachment of 31

Ibid., fig 7. Pennecuik recorded that they went to the ‘river Agara’ (i.e. Aglaseniqua) with two of his fellow captains on 26 November 1698, to search out the grove of Nicaragua wood, that was mentioned by Wafer, and which would, ‘with 300 men cut down so much in six months as should defray the whole charge of the expedition’. This river is close to the location of the earlier Spanish tower, and they may have found the bricks there, although there is no mention of this in his journal. See Insh, Company of Scotland, pp. 132–3; Insh, Darien Shipping Papers, p. 90. 32


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approximately 500 soldiers sent across the Isthmus from Panama and successfully repelled on 6 February 1699.33 However, the impact of this confrontation was to convince the colonists that they needed to build effective defences. These comprised three batteries facing out into the harbour, and a palisade comprising four bastions, made from earth and linked by a rampart, fronted by a rock cut moat, defending the landward side. The total length of moat to be dug was over 200m, and the moat itself was 6m wide, and 2.5m deep, and the material was piled behind to form the ramparts. The Scots planned to mount around 30 cannon on these defences, possibly even bringing into service the experimental leather guns that they had also brought from Scotland.34 The engineer was Captain Thomas Drummond, a grenadier of Duke of Argyll regiment, who had been involved in Glencoe, and was a ruthless taskmaster. The construction of these defences was to prove backbreaking. We located examples of the chisels and wedges that they employed to break the coral rock. In one letter, a colonist, Roger Oswald, complained of how they worked by daylight, with ‘hatchet, wheelbarrow, pickaxe, shovel, fore hammer or any instrument the case required … sometimes working up to the headbands of the breaches in water at the trenches’. Apparently, if a man was sick and unable to work he was denied his victuals for the day: ‘Our bodies pined away and grew so macerated with such allowances and hard work that we were like so many skeletons’.35 Looking at the surviving remains of the ramparts and canal, the scale of the labour involved can be clearly understood. In a series of letters from one of the colonists, George Douglas, recently located in the National Archives of Scotland, the deterioration of conditions can be followed as these fortifications were being constructed.36 On 17 February he wrote about the Spanish skirmish, and the valuable trading goods that they had, and that the fort was ‘near out red’. On 15 March, they were ‘still digging their ramparts and digging our fossies, which will not be ended these 6 months incoming’ and wishing daily for the second equipage to arrive. But by 10 April, ‘our fortifications are not done as yet, neither will be these twelve months’. He also wrote about the internal disagreements in the colony, and rather touchingly asked for garden seeds to be sent out, including radishes, neaps, onions, leeks, sallow and colewort: ‘If the second equipage come up not shortly, its feared we will fall short of provisions’. This is the last letter from Douglas, of whom we hear no more, and it can be only be assumed he died at the colony. A survey of these fortifications suggests that the construction became progressively poorer. The northerly section is much more substantial and comprises two bastions and a central section of rampart or battery, which still survives up to 2 m in height. The moat in front was cut through the solid coral. The top of the rampart contained regularly spaced cannon emplacements – six in the northern Prebble, Darien, pp. 171–2. Listed on the cargo lists of the St Andrew, NLS, Adv. Ms 83.5. 35 Quoted in Prebble, Darien, pp. 184–5. 36 NAS, GD446/39/14, GD446/39/15, GD446/39/16. 33

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bastion, and five in the battery area. The second bastion (which was excavated in 1979) contained traces of three further emplacements, an entrance-way, a small guardhouse, and the post-holes forming the palisade. From this point the ramparts were much less substantial, and comprised a third bastion forming a barbican type entrance between the second and third, another length of rampart and a small bastion by the shore37. At present the visible ditch runs as far as the second bastion, although Herries commented that the ‘neck of land was cut through to let the sea encompass the new city and fort’.38 The Leven chart, drawn up during the first expedition, shows details of the whole set of fortifications, including the four bastions,39 suggesting that the scheme was largely completed during1699. Life in Fort St Andrew The colonists seem to have been largely preoccupied with the construction of these defences, building their huts, and unloading their trade goods, and rarely leaving their settlement. By this stage, the death rate was reportedly running at about 10 a day, with several hundred graves in the cemetery – which we did not manage to locate on the ground, but probably lies immediately outside the fort where there was sufficient shallow ground in which to bury. After the first expedition had abandoned the colony in June 1699, Juan Delgado, a Spanish visitor sent to inspect what remained shortly after the Scots had left, reported that there were 100 huts, a fort with 24 embrasures, and a cemetery consisting of 400 graves outside the fort, in neat rows.40 He burned the remains of the settlement, and left the colony for the jungle to reclaim. Delgado could have added that the demoralized colonists had also left quantities of trade goods behind – the excavations located large quantities of clay pipes, brandy bottles, and glass beads. The clay pipes in particular could be identified as having been brought by the first expedition as they were supplied by the Edinburgh pipemaker Paul Colquhoun.41 A large scatter of these pipes was found to the north of the oven, probably a barrel of pipes simply left on the shore when the colony was abandoned. There were also surprising numbers of brandy bottles, although no attempt appears to 37

The extent of this swamp may be larger now than it was at the time of the Scots. There are Kuna traditions of a large wave that completely covered the coast in around 1890, which resulted in greater mangrove encroachment and possibly partly washing away the earth mounds. There are differences between the shape of the bay now and that surveyed in 1854 by HMS Scorpion. 38 Herries, Defence, p. 53. 39 Insh, Company of Scotland, p. 129. The Leven chart shows the landing places of the Caledonia, Unicorn and St Andrew. 40 Prebble, Darien, p. 202. 41 M.C. Horton, D.A. Higgins, and A. Oswald, ‘Clay Pipes from the Scottish Darien Colony (1698–1700)’, in P. Davey (ed.) The Archaeology of the Clay Tobacco Pipe, X, Scotland (Oxford, 1987), pp. 239–52.


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have been made – despite the colony running out of food – to plant any crops, except experimentally (yams, Indian corn, and Jamaica Pease were tried). Turtles were one source of food, but the colonists may have been too weak to take to their boats to hunt them, although a few turtle bones were found in domestic levels in the fort. The food, being nearly a year old, was rotten, and insufficient to feed even the depleted numbers. The indigenous population, initially keen to help the Scots survive, are unlikely to have been willing to share their own food supplies, which would have been limited at this time of year, and would not in any case have been sufficient for the large number of colonists. This no doubt accounts for the arguments said to have broken out between the colonists and the ships, whose crews stayed in the harbour, and who were accused of holding back food, and of planning to desert the colony and the colonists.42 The excavations suggest some of the material belongings of the colonists – few of which were documented in the various ships’ manifests. Remarkably, the colony used very few ceramics – only twelve sherds of Scottish pottery were found, but some imports, including German Westerwald and Frechen stoneware, and a sherd of Staffordshire trailed slipware were located.43 Most of the pottery from the site comprised Spanish olive jars and majolicas, probably from the temporary Spanish occupation in April 1700, and indigenous pottery, possibly from an earlier use of the site in late pre-Columbian times as well as from later occupation. More telling were the personal objects, which included a decorated bronze bowl stamped with an inscription NURNBERG, around 20 dress buckles, and a portable bronze sundial. Abandonment of the First Colony Whilst the colonists were awaiting fresh supplies and volunteers to replace those dying in ever-increasing numbers, on 18 May news reached Darien of a proclamation by the Governor of Jamaica that no English vessel or subject was to assist the Scots.44 The English had long opposed the Company, and this was the last straw for the settlers. This was the rainy season, with torrential rain falling for several hours a day. At least 300 of the original colonists had died and, with the proclamation, the colony could be abandoned with some honour. Plans were made for evacuation: they seem to have been in such a poor state that they left most of the stores behind. On 22 June, they warped the boats out of the harbour, and the fleet left for Jamaica: it is likely that quite a few of the colonists remained there; approximately six stayed behind in Darien itself.45 The remnants, when they reached New York, were said to have ‘looked rather like skelets than men’.46 Of the five ships that set sail, only the Caledonia returned to Scotland. Prebble, Darien, pp. 188–9. Horton, Caledonia Bay, fig 6. 44 Issued 8 April 1699, NLS, Adv. Ms 83.7.4, f 161. 45 Borland, Memoirs of Darien, p. 26. 46 George Horne’s diary, NAS, GD1/891/2. 42

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The much hoped-for relief had left Scotland in May 1699, a few weeks after the first optimistic letters of the colony had been received back in Edinburgh: 300 more colonists set out on two ships, the Olive Branch and the Hopeful Binning. They arrived in July, only to find the colony abandoned. While waiting to decide what to do, the Olive Branch went up in flames after some brandy was spilt below decks and sank close to her moorings; the wreck could still be seen when the second expedition arrived in 1700.47 The wreck was located in 1979 and partly excavated in 1982, when a cannon was raised from the site.48 Finds from the site included iron objects, lead piping, stoneware, slate, and Scottish clay pipes, but most of the site remains deeply buried under silt. There was also a large quantity of animal bone, possibly from salt beef, that was stored in barrels. The remains of the Olive Branch are of particular interest as the ship’s manifest survives, as do the receipts for the suppliers of the various commodities, allowing for a correlation between the archaeological and documentary evidence.49 The Archaeology of the Second Expedition The second, and larger, relief expedition was being planned to reinforce what was thought to be an already thriving colony. Led by the commissioned flagship of the Company built in Amsterdam, the Rising Sun, the fleet of four ships and 1,300 colonists and sailors, including over 100 women, set sail from the Clyde on 18 August 1699. News of the failure of the first expedition had not yet reached Scotland, although rumours were certainly circulating. The ships arrived on 30 November, to find, according to one of the ministers, Francis Borland, ‘nothing but a vast howling wilderness, the colony deserted and gone, their huts all burnt, their fort most part ruined, the ground which they had cleared adjoining to the fort all overgrown with weeds; and we looked for peace, but no good came, and for a time of health and comfort beheld trouble’.50

Another minister, Alexander Shields, wrote back to the Kirk session, describing unpassable woods, vast desolations never frequented by man ... The land itself is pleasant fruitful and rich, if only we had means to subdue it and skill to improve it. But wanting these we are a poor graceless shiftless and heartless company, labouring under all disagreements ... no provisions but what we brought from Scotland, which is now musty, rotten old and salt, and yet like to be very soon

Borland, Memoirs of Darien, p. 28. Horton, Caledonia Bay, pp. 10–11. 49 NLS, Adv. Ms 83.5.8 50 Borland, Memoirs of Darien, p. 30. 47 48


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exhausted; which if we get no supply speedily from Scotland will reduce us to the greatest extremity.51

After a week of indecision, men were put ashore to rebuild the colony on the site of Fort St Andrew. A letter from the council of the second expedition gives some idea of the scale of the colony as it was rebuilt in 1700: we have been busy as possible since our arrival in getting hutts built, whereof we have got 72 for planters each 12 foot long and 10 foot broad; and 15 huts for officers 30 foot long and 16 foot broad. Also we have built two storehouses ... and otherwise repaired the guardhouse.52

It seems that the rebuilt colony was on the same scale as the first – the 89 huts are close to Delgado’s estimate of 100 huts for the first expedition. Borland confirms that in addition to the new huts, they built ‘two very good ware houses for their provisions for here is a great plenty of very good timber fit to build withall’;53 most likely they had landed some of their stores into these new buildings. The archaeological survey located scatters of glass beads, and on excavation they were next to much larger post-holes than had been found elsewhere on the site that may have formed the walls of these storehouses. Borland also speaks of how they made some reparations about the fort. The one person who could have completed the defences to a reasonable standard was Thomas Drummond, who had designed them originally, and who had heroically returned from New York, but he was arrested by the council and confined to a cabin, eventually managing to leave the colony in February.54 However, the rumours of an impending Spanish attack finally persuaded the Scots to defend themselves properly. They landed four cannon to act as a defence for Fort St Andrew and to rebuild the defences.55 The completed arrangements are shown on a Spanish military engineer’s map,56 drawn up during the final siege in April 1700, and which corresponds closely to the archaeological evidence on the ground. The long landward defences, as well as the three seaward batteries, meant that the few cannon were thinly spread, and indeed none are actually shown in position on the Spanish map. Much of the defence of the colony must have been by musket fire. Registrar General of Scotland OPR453/9, quoted in Gibson, Darien Adventure, p. 17. Burton, Darien Papers, p. 209. 53 Borland, Memoirs of Darien, p. 33. 54 Prebble, Darien, pp. 237–8, 244–5, 264–5. 55 One of the mysteries is what happened to the cannons from the first expedition. Delgado saw only embrasures, so it can be assumed that they either loaded them back on their ships, or discarded them into the harbour. The Kuna recovered one cannon from the site and this is now in the village square at Mulutupo. 56 AGI Mapas y Planos, Panama 119. 51 52


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Figure 6.3 Fort St Andrew: Topographic Survey of Earthworks and Archaeological Evidence A substantial Spanish force had indeed landed on 1 March at Carreto,57 a small bay 10 km south east of the colony and a combined land and sea attack was mounted against the Scots.58 A base camp was established at Carreto, and the forces were moved by boat to the base of the peninsula,59 and from there to surround Fort St Andrew. The Spanish map shows the siege works around Fort St Andrew, some of which were probably never actually built. From the fort, the Scots sent out small parties to challenge the Spanish advance, but inside the women and civilians awaited their fate. The mortality rate reached approximately 16 a day, and Borland described how ‘death on all hands stared in the face, indeed most of us had the 57

A detailed account from the Spanish side was kept by the commander, General Pimienta, translated and printed in Hart, The Disaster of Darien, pp. 353–93. 58 Borland, Memoirs of Darien, p. 63. 59 A later map shows a rampart to have been built across the neck of the peninsula as an outer defence. There is no archaeological trace of this today, and it was not defended by the Scots during the well-documented Spanish advance: ‘An exact draught of the gulf of Darien’ by Mount and Page (1745) reproduced in John Seller, The English Pilot, the Fourth Book (London, 1753).


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sentence of death in ourselves … they believed there was not a people in the world in more calamitous and deplorable circumstances that we were in at this time.’60 The Spanish army placed a battery on a small headland adjacent to the Fort, and were able to fire directly into the settlement.61 Traces of their forward base-camp are also visible as low earthworks in an area of flat ground north east of Fort St Andrew.62 How grim the conditions were at the end can also be gauged from the archaeological evidence. The Spanish forces were able to capture the modest water-supply that lay immediately outside the fort and defended their control with a small battery, the low crescent-shaped earthworks which survive. This stream can never have been a substantial source of water, but with the Spanish fleet controlling the harbour, venturing out by boat to the watering bay would not have been an option. A pathetic attempt was made to dig a well inside the fort, and this was located and excavated in 2004. Borland reported that the water in this well was ‘but puddle brackish and most unwholesome … and this exceedingly increased our affliction’.63 A small number of cannon balls, pieces of canister and chain shot were found during the survey, which probably arrived during the Spanish bombardment. There were also a large number of musket balls, many of which had been fired. Most telling were the balls,which appear to have been crudely made, and seem to have been made on-site. Spreads of molten lead were found in a number of places on the surface, and it is likely that the colonists were melting down their lead and pewter vessels to manufacture extra shot with which to defend themselves. The Scots had no option but to capitulate on 31 March, agreeing to leave the colony on 12 April. They were in such a weak condition that the Spanish had to assist their boats out of the harbour. The fleet fared little better than the first expedition, with two ships being lost in a hurricane off Charleston on 3 September 1700. Although the Scots had left the site, the Spanish left a garrison of 30 soldiers behind at Fort St Andrew to ensure that they did not return. There was a surprising amount of archaeological evidence for their presence as well. The garrison occupied ‘one of their gates and the bastion to their fort’ – clearly indicating that they moved into the main entrance defences of the fort.64 In this area an iron spur was found. Other pieces of Spanish equipment included a sword hilt and a mule shoe. There were also quantities of Spanish pottery including majolica pottery from the Panama kilns, and spreads of olive jar fragments. The final visit by the Scots took place in June 1700, when a supply ship, the Margaret of Leith, arrived

Borland, Memoirs of Darien, p. 65. The battery is shown on the Spanish map, but no trace remains on the ground, as it was probably a very temporary affair. 62 This was investigated in 1982 during the Operation Raleigh expedition to the site. 63 Borland, Memoirs of Darien, p. 65. 64 Hart, Disaster of Darien, p. 390. 60 61


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in the harbour and found the Spanish in possession.65 She let off a token salvo of cannon fire, and then returned to Jamaica. The Spanish occupation may have lasted less than a year. The archaeological evidence suggests that at this point the indigenous population moved to occupy the site as well as that of the Spanish base camp, presumably taking advantage of the cleared ground. Two distinctive types of pottery were found; the commonest were large storage jars with linear bands of finger-impressed decoration of a type that were still made by the Kuna in San Blas in 1927,66 but was probably a long-lived style. Sherds of fine thin-walled red slipware were also found, which is similar to pottery found in the excavations at Old Panama in seventeenth-century levels.67 Conclusions An archaeological perspective on the Darien colony cannot alone resolve wider historical questions as to why the colony failed or whether it could ever have succeeded. However, it does provide insights both into the experiences of the individuals who established and lived in it, and into what they achieved – which was on a substantial scale by the standard of other pioneer colonies. The fortifications to create Fort St Andrew explain why so much labour was expended to defend themselves, rather than to create the fields and plantations that would have enabled them to survive without relying on either food from Scotland or from the indigenous population. Shortages of food – and indeed the archaeological evidence of only rare bone-finds from occupation levels, despite the quantities of salt beef on board the ships – seem to have been a constant problem. The colonists believed that they were being sent to a place unoccupied by any European power, yet almost immediately upon arrival they set about defending their new colony, while the choice of location was largely chosen because of its defensibility. Paterson’s dream of a Scottish Central American entrepôt never came close to realization. Not only was the colony not properly located at the end of the Acla pass over the continental divide – it was some 5 km away – but there is little evidence that the nascent colony had any real interest in exploring the route. In the early days, some of the Indian villages that lay further up the rivers were investigated, and the mythical grove of Nicaragua wood was sought out, but the only real expedition took place in the closing weeks of the colony, when Captain Alexander Campbell of Fonab led a party of Indians and Scots to attack the Spanish outpost, guarding the route over the mountains at Toubacanti.68 The fact Prebble, Darien, p. 303. S. Linné, Darien in the Past: The Archaeology of Eastern Panama and North Western Colombia (Gotëborg, 1929). 67 Unpublished. 68 Alexander Nisbet, A System of Heraldry, Speculative, and Practical with the True Art of Blazon (Edinburgh, 1816), p. 197; Hart, Disaster of Darien, pp. 136–7; Insh, 65

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that this assault was possible overland from the Atlantic onto the Pacific side of the watershed might in better times have led to further reconnaissance. Indeed as late as the mid-nineteenth century, it was believed that there was a possible route for a sea-level canal in the Darien region,69 leaving from the area of the Scots colony. Even Paterson did not give up the notion that this route was possible. On his return to Scotland in 1699, the most lucid and oft-quoted statement of his ambition was published in 1701 in A Proposal to Plant a Colony in Darien. Trade will naturally circulate and flow all the treasures, wealth and rich commodities of the Spacious South Seas…. Trade will increase trade and money will beget money. Thus this door to the seas and key to the universe with anything of a reasonable management will of course enable its proprietors to give laws to both oceans and to become arbitrators of the commercial world.70

Of course, a route was eventually built across the Isthmus, but much closer to the original mule trail that carried the Spanish bullion to the Atlantic port of Portobello. The Panama Railroad, the first transcontinental railway, opening in 1855, provided a permanent link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and had a significant impact on the development of world trade, coinciding with the development of auxiliary steam ships and the settlement and development of Pacific-facing countries and regions such as Australia and California. The Panama Canal closely followed the route of the railway, although there were also explorations in Darien for alternative routes during the nineteenth century.71 In Panama City today, it is fitting that William Paterson is remembered in the Canal Memorial as one of the founders of the idea of a transcontinental link that forms such a vital part of world trade and economy. The Scottish pioneers in Darien may not have succeeded in their own lifetime, but the idea behind their scheme helped make the modern world.

Company of Scotland, pp. 188–92. 69 Edward Cullen, The Isthmus of Darien Ship Canal (London, 1853), p. 14. 70 Bannister, Writings, vol. 1, p. 159; Prebble, Darien, p. 12. 71 Commander T. Selfridge, Explorations and Survey for a ship canal (Washington, 1871).

Chapter 7

Controlling Traders: Slave Coast Strategies at Savi and Ouidah Kenneth G. Kelly

From the middle of the seventeenth century to the end of the nineteenth, the Bight of Benin was a key node in the web of trade and other relations that created the Atlantic world, and home to a succession of small African states that, among other activities, engaged in trade with representatives of a number of European nations. Large-scale trade came later to the region than to the neighbouring Gold Coast, and the trading states of Hueda and its successor Dahomey profited by developing a unique relationship with their European trading partners that was characterized by a significant degree of control by African elites. The trade conditions imposed by the rulers of Hueda and later by Dahomey demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of the dynamics of interaction that were poised to change as the nature of Atlantic world interactions gradually shifted from commercial to colonial relationships. A significant factor in structuring the unique trading relationships enjoyed by Hueda and Dahomey was the ongoing and permanent presence of representatives of several European trading nations. In contrast to the trading environment in many locations elsewhere along the West African coast, where traders and local African polities were engaged in one-to-one trade partnerships, the Hueda and Dahomey elite created increased competition, permitting a greater degree of African control over trade.

The archaeological research at Savi and Ouidah lying at heart of this chapter has been encouraged by Professors Merrick Posnansky (UCLA) and Alexis Adandé (Université Nationale du Benin), and aided by numerous individuals in Benin and the United States who volunteered their time and expertise. The historic archaeological research at Savi has been supported primarily by the Direction de la Patrimoine Culturelle (République du Benin); the Département d’Histoire et d’Archéologie of Université Nationale du Benin; the University Research Expedition Program (UREP), University of California; the International Institute of Education Fulbright Research Abroad program; the UCLA Department of Anthropology; the UCLA Friends of Archaeology; and the College of Liberal Arts Scholarship Support Grant, University of South Carolina. Many thanks are due to Mme Rachida de Souza, Directrice de la Patrimoine Culturelle, the staff of the Musée d’Histoire de Ouidah, and the Agomadje family for invaluable assistance and friendship. Without the support and cooperation of the elders and people of Savi, this research could not have been conducted. Cécile Kelly contributed valuable helpful comments on the text.

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This chapter examines the strategies utilized by the Hueda and, combining archaeological evidence from Savi (the Hueda capital) and historical documentation, considers the consequences of these actions for both Africans and Europeans. Archaeological and historical data pertaining to Ouidah, the trade town which succeeded Savi, also facilitate the examination of responses adopted by Dahomey to the continued presence of European trading nations. The relationships engendered by the developing Atlantic world led to a diverse array of outcomes: the combined use of archaeological and historical data pertaining to Savi and Ouidah provides an opportunity to explore the manifestations of that interaction. The Setting The Hueda and Dahomey states were present in the Bight of Benin region from at least 1660 to the end of the nineteenth century. The earliest European accounts of the Bight of Benin refer to the kingdom of Ardra or Allada in the region between the mouths of the Volta and Niger rivers (Figure 7.1). This unusual environmental area, known as the Dahomey Gap, is characterized by the penetration of wooded savannah vegetation nearly to the coast, in contrast with the dense rainforest found west of the Volta, and east of present-day Lagos. The significance of this vegetation type for the pre-European contact period is uncertain, but it is likely that the more open vegetation facilitated trade movement from the coast to the interior. Undoubtedly this was a factor contributing to the great numbers of captive Africans who departed the continent from Savi and Ouidah. It may also have been significant in permitting inland settlements such as Ouidah and Savi to observe European ship traffic with greater ease. Certainly, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the open country encouraged cavalry raids into the region from Oyo to the northeast. The geomorphology of the coast along the Allada kingdom also played an important role in the subsequent development of European trade. Between the Volta and the Niger, the coast is generally East-West trending, with a barrier beach built up in front of a shallow, continuous coastal lagoon system, which provided pre-European canoe-based transport corridors parallel to the coast. The lack of necessity for ocean voyaging, coupled with the treacherous surf and relative lack F. De Medeiros (ed.), Peuples du Golfe du Benin (Paris, 1984); Robin Law, Ouidah: The Social History of a West African Slaving ‘Port’, 1727–1892 (Athens, OH, 2004). Robin Law, The Slave Coast of West Africa, 1550–1750: the impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade on an African society (Oxford, 1991). Williams Smith, A New Voyage to Guinea (London, 1744, reprinted 1967). J. P. Chauveau, ‘Une histoire maritime africaine est-elle possible? Historiographie et histoire de la navigation et de la pêche africaines à la côte occidentale depuis le XVe siècle’, Cahiers d’Etudes africaines, 26/1–2 (1986): 173–235; Robin Law, ‘Between the Sea and the Lagoons: the interaction of maritime and inland navigation on the precolonial Slave Coast’, Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines, 29/2 (1989): 209–37.

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Figure 7.1 Bight of Benin: Modern States/Historic States of food resources available from the sea, led the coastal peoples to rely on the lagoons and farming. As a result, societies of the coastal region lay at the extreme periphery of African trade networks (the African World) which were oriented to the interior and the trans-Saharan trade. After their initial ‘discovery’ of the Bight of Benin, Europeans generally avoided the region for over 150 years due to the lack of any protected anchorage as well as the unavailability of gold, which was one of the primary reasons for the initial development of European trade with Africa. The few European excursions to the Slave Coast that did take place in the sixteenth century were primarily directed to obtaining slaves that could be exchanged for gold and ivory on the Gold Coast. However, by the middle of the seventeenth century, the rising demand for enslaved Africans in the expanding plantation economies of the Americas created new opportunities for the societies of the Bight of Benin. As European traders began visiting the Slave Coast in ever-increasing numbers, the power arising from new trade opportunities upset existing power dynamics, resulting in the societies of the coast (Hueda foremost among them) being able to throw off their tributary relationships to inland powers, and to consolidate their participation in the Atlantic economy. Thus, by the 1670s, approximately, the Hueda state became a frequent destination for slave traders from France, England, Holland, and Portugal. With Law, The Slave Coast of West Africa, p. 127.


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the advent of dramatically increased European trade, the Hueda capital Savi ceased to be peripheral and instead moved into the spotlight as a regional centre of great importance. Indeed, the slave trade became so important at Savi and Ouidah that roughly 10 per cent of all Africans exported into slavery passed through these towns, and during the early eighteenth century perhaps 50 per cent of all slaves destined to the Americas were embarked at Ouidah. For nearly 60 years the Hueda were able to maintain an active commerce with multiple European trading partners and ensure their own political autonomy. By the 1720s, however, the wealth and power the Hueda had achieved were attracting attention from their neighbour to the north, as the developing Atlantic world extended its impact over an ever-broader region. Dahomey, centred approximately 100 km inland, had begun an expansionist phase under the leadership of King Agadja, who understood that wealth and power came not just to those who participated in the slave trade, but particularly to those who controlled it.10 Agadja led Dahomey in a military campaign that defeated Allada in 1724 and, three years later, on March 9 1727, secured access to the sea by conquering the Hueda and destroying the capital town of Savi. Dahomey continued the Hueda strategy of encouraging the permanent establishment of several European trading partners, particularly the French, Portuguese, and British, each of which maintained fortified trading establishments in Glewhe, closer to the sea than Savi, yet still some 4 km from the shore.11 Under the control of Dahomey a vibrant slave trade continued at Glewhe (modern Ouidah) for more than a century, until the gradual abolition of the slave trade and slavery by the British, and later the French, Brazilians, and Cubans.12 As the slave trade declined, efforts to develop the socalled legitimate trade in agricultural products, particularly palm oil, were underway, but this trade was never as lucrative as the trade in people.13 Law, Ouidah, p. 30 Law, ‘Between the Sea and the Lagoons’; Law, The Slave Coast of West Africa; David Ross, ‘The Dahomean middleman system, 1727–c1818’, Journal of African History, 28/3 (1987): 357–75. Law, The Slave Coast of West Africa; Ross, ‘The Dahomean middleman system’; J.C. Monroe, The Dynamics of State Formation:The Archaeology and Ethnohistory of Pre-Colonial Dahomey, Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 2003. 10 David Henige and Marion Johnson, ‘Agaja and the Slave Trade: Another Look at the Evidence’, History in Africa, 3 (1976): 91–126; Law, The Slave Coast of West Africa; Monroe, The Dynamics of State Formation; David Ross, ‘The Anti-Slave Trade Theme in Dahoman History: An Examination of the Evidence’, History in Africa, 9 (1982): 263–71. See, however, I. A. Akinjogbin, Dahomey and its Neighbors 1708–1818 (Cambridge, 1967). 11 Ross, ‘The Dahomean middleman system’: 359–60. 12 Ibid., 369. 13 Robin Law, ‘Introduction’, in Robin Law (ed.), From Slave Trade to ‘Legitimate’ Commerce: The Commerical Transition in Nineteenth-Century West Africa (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 1–31.


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Throughout the period discussed in this chapter, Savi and Ouidah were key points in the web that made up the Atlantic world. The historical and archaeological evidence from Savi and Ouidah, coupled with the work of historians such as John Thornton, Ira Berlin, and Paul Gilroy, demonstrate that African participants in the slave trade were not ignorant of the wider world in which they were active.14 Rather, some Africans, such as those referred to as Atlantic Creoles by Berlin,15 knew a great deal about the Atlantic world, some having voyaged as ship’s crew, or served as linguists or employees of European traders. There were even slaves of African descent who either decades or generations after their enslavement returned to West Africa, frequently becoming traders themselves.16 In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Ouidah was home to a large Lusophone community of arrivals from Brazil.17 Indigenous responses to colonial encounters: the case of the Bight of Benin As important trade nodes in the Atlantic world, Savi and Ouidah provide an ideal context in which to investigate the ways particular actors and their actions led to unique political and economic manifestations. The ways in which African elites in Hueda and Dahomey controlled the arena of trade and interaction to ensure continual local African autonomy are fascinating and in many ways unexpected, although not if we consider Gil Stein’s notion of trade diasporas and their marginality.18 The identification and exploration of these strategies demonstrate that applying to earlier periods uncritical perspectives that assume the imbalance of power that favoured European colonists in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries is misguided, and the findings of such analyses erroneous.19 These expressions of 14

Ira Berlin, ‘From Creole to African: Atlantic Creoles and the Origins of AfricanAmerican Society in Mainland North America’, William and Mary Quarterly, 53/2 (1996): 251–88; Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Cambridge, MA, 1998); Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge, MA, 1993); John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World (Cambridge, 1992). 15 Berlin, ‘From Creole to African’. 16 Edna G. Bay, ‘Protection, Political Exile, and the Atlantic Slave Trade: History and Collective Memory in Dahomey’, Slavery and Abolition, 22/1 (2001): 42–60. 17 Robin Law, ‘The Evolution of the Brazilian Community of Ouidah’, Slavery and Abolition, 22/4 (2001): 22–41; Alain Sinou, Le Comptoir de Ouidah: Une ville Africaine singulière (Paris, 1995). 18 Gil J. Stein, ‘From Passive Periphery to Active Agents: Emerging Perspectives in the Archaeology of Interregional Interaction’, American Anthropologist, 104/3 (2002): 903–16. 19 M. Dietler, ‘Consumption, Agency, and Cultural Entanglement: Theoretical Implications of a Mediterranean Colonial Encounter’, in James G. Cusick (ed.), Studies in Culture Contact: Interaction, Culture Change, and Archaeology (Carbondale, 1998), pp. 288–315.


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indigenous autonomy can help shatter stereotypes, as ‘groups frequently act with assured self interest … such actions may be reactions … or they can be broadly innovative and not merely last-ditch attempts to preserve the status quo’.20 Archaeological and Historical Research It is easier to understand the strategies of the Hueda and Dahomey states and their peoples to the advent of European trade if the period of significant and active slave trading between 1660 and the early nineteenth century are divided into two unequal time periods. The first of these segments logically corresponds to the span of the Hueda state, from circa 1660 to 1727. In the wider Atlantic world, this period corresponds to the rapid expansion of slave-based production in Brazil, North America, and the Caribbean, as sugar production expanded in Barbados, Martinique, and Guadeloupe, and as Jamaica (1655), South Carolina (1670), and Saint Domingue (c. 1700) became important agricultural colonies. This is also the period in which the networks and knowledge of the Atlantic Creoles in the cultural exchange waned as the web of slavery was cast ever wider in Africa. Furthermore, this period sees the coastal Hueda society shift from being a periphery of both the Atlantic and African worlds, to a key node in each. As we move from the first to the second period, during which slavery and the slave trade increasingly became the foundation upon which European colonial wealth rested, we are able to identify some of the diverse ways in which African states responded to European trade enterprises. Hueda and Dahomey developed one set of strategies, whereas Elmina, Gorée, and others chose other alternatives. The second period extends from 1727 to the first decade of the nineteenth century, and corresponds to Dahomey’s conquest and incorporation of Hueda territory, and a political and economic base emphasizing the slave trade. The latter years of this period saw the first arrivals of Afro-Brazilians at Ouidah and the growth of an increasingly multiethnic community. Archaeological data have great potential to inform about the adaptations and transformations of African societies during the period of the developing slave trade. We know virtually nothing about the societies of the region prior to the arrival of European traders along the West African coast. In the absence of documentary sources, archaeology enables us to reconstruct many aspects of the lives of these groups, including settlement patterns, trade networks, subsistence strategies, and social organization. Even after European traders arrived and were able to compile first-hand accounts and descriptions of the societies they encountered, archaeological evidence still provides information of a different 20

Kenneth G. Kelly, ‘Indigenous Responses to Colonial Encounters on the West African Coast: Hueda and Dahomey from the 17th Through 19th Centuries’, in Claire L. Lyons and John K. Papadopoulos (eds), The Archaeology of Colonialism (Los Angeles, 2002), p. 7.


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kind about the societies in question. For example, while archaeological data are generally poorly suited to chronicling short term events, they are well suited to supplying insights into longer-term changes that may have been obscure to contemporary actors. Archaeological data can also provide information about aspects of past societies that, for a variety of possible reasons, were not deemed sufficiently significant for chronicling by contemporary observers. Furthermore, the anthropological interpretation of archaeological data such as architecture and settlement pattern can suggest alternative meanings to those attributed by contemporary observers. Another strength of historical archaeological data is that it is well suited to addressing questions of chronology through the analysis of material culture of known date ranges. For example, certain types of ceramics, bottles, glassware, tobacco pipes, and beads have known production ranges, and their presence or absence on an archaeological site may indicate when a particular site was occupied. This discussion of Hueda’s and Dahomey’s articulation with the Atlantic world is based on the archaeological data derived from a long-term project I directed over six field seasons between 1991 and 1999. Archaeological evidence relevant to the first period (1660–1727) is derived from excavations at Savi which I conducted during the same period.21 This research included locating the site of Savi, abandoned since 1727, delineating its boundaries, and excavating a variety of elite and commoner contexts in the central area of the town. Archaeological evidence relevant to the second period (1727 to early nineteenth century) derives from excavations undertaken in 1991 and 1992 within the Portuguese fort and in quarters in and adjacent to the site of the British fort and the central market in Ouidah.22 Because the archaeological data come from a variety of contexts in urban and present-day rural settings, the nature of the data for each site is distinct. Period One: 1660–1727 The period of Hueda prominence is currently the era best studied from a variety of perspectives. Through careful comparison and contrast, archaeological and documentary data together provide a variety of insights into the strategies the Hueda developed to facilitate their trading relationship with European nations. A number of important historical studies of the region have been conducted, 21 Kenneth G. Kelly, ‘Transformation and Continuity in Savi, a West African Trade Town: An Archaeological Investigation of Culture Change on the Coast of Benin during the 17th and 18th Centuries’ (Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1995); Kenneth. G. Kelly, ‘The archaeology of African-European interaction: investigating the social roles of trade, traders, and the use of space in the seventeenth and eighteenth century Hueda Kingdom, Republic of Benin’, World Archaeology, 28/3 (1997): 351–69; Kenneth. G. Kelly, ‘Indigenous Responses to Colonial Encounters’, pp. 96–120. 22 Ibid.


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especially by Robin Law, that develop a document-based narrative history of the region.23 Also available are published and unpublished collections of official and unofficial company correspondence between Africa-based traders and European headquarters. Published first-hand accounts provide further detail.24 These accounts come principally from Dutch, English, and French sources, the authors usually slave ships’ captains or trading company representatives. Some of these are quite well known, and include Willem Bosman, Jean Barbot, Jean-Baptiste Labat, William Smith, and William Snelgrave, among others. Although they frequently cribbed material from earlier accounts, they nonetheless strove for accuracy in their accounts as they were usually written with the goal of improving future commercial interactions on the coast.25 In addition to written sources, there is also a corpus of graphic documents, consisting of architectural plans and maps, and views of Hueda ceremony, daily life, and structures – depictions of life and landscape which frequently portray details that simply were not noted in written accounts. This document-based understanding of Hueda society is complemented by archaeological data recovered during excavations at Savi between 1991 and 1999.26 These data have provided information permitting more complex and anthropological interpretations of Hueda actions than would be possible using documents alone.

Law, The Slave Coast of West Africa; Law, Ouidah. W. Bosman, A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea, Divided into the Gold, the Slave, and the Ivory Coast (London, 1705); A. Dalzel, The History of Dahomy, An Inland Kingdom of Africa (London, 1793); P.E.H. Hair, Adam Jones, and Robin Law (eds), Barbot on Guinea: the Writings of Jean Barbot on West Africa 1678–1712 (2 vols, London, 1992); J.B. Labat, Voyage du Chevalier des Marchais en Guinée, isles voisines et à Cayenne, fait en 1725, 1726 et 1727 (Amsterdam, 1731); Robin Law, ‘A Neglected Account of the Dahomian Conquest of Whydah (1727): The “Relation de la Guerre de Juda” of the Sieur Ringard of Nantes’, History in Africa, 15 (1988): 321–38; Law, ‘Between the Sea and the Lagoons’; Robin Law (ed.), Correspondence of the Royal African Company’s Chief Merchants at Cabo Corso Castle with William’s Fort, Whydah, and the Little Popo Factory, 1727–1728: An Annotated Transcription of Ms. Francklin 1055/1 in the Bedfordshire County Record Office (Madison, 1991); Robert Norris, Memoirs of the Reign of Bossa Ahadee, King of Dahomy, an Inland Country of Guiney (London, 1789, republished 1968); Thomas Phillips, ‘A Journal of a Voyage made in the Hannibal of London, Ann.1693, 1694’, in A. Churchill and John Churchill (eds), Collection of Voyages and Travels (6 vols, London, 1732), vol. 6, pp. 173–239; Smith, A New Voyage to Guinea; William Snelgrave, A New Account of Some Parts of Guinea and the Slave Trade (London, 1734). 25 Kenneth G. Kelly, ‘African History/African Archaeology: Towards an Understanding of the Social Consequences of European/African Trade in West Africa’, Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 4/3–4 (1997): 353–66. 26 Kelly, ‘The archaeology of African-European interaction’; Kelly, ‘African History/ African Archaeology’; Kelly, ‘Indigenous Responses to Colonial Encounters’; Neil L. Norman and Kenneth G. Kelly, ‘Landscape Politics: The Serpent Ditch and the Rainbow in West Africa’, American Anthropologist, 106/1 (2004): 98–110. 23 24


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Historical evidence demonstrates that the Hueda underwent numerous transformations as a result of the arrival of European traders on the coast of the Bight of Benin. Principal among these is the genesis of the Hueda state itself. Historical accounts make no reference to Hueda prior to the growth of the slave trade in the 1660s and 1670s, after which Savi and Hueda enter the documentary record.27 However, archaeology has been able to shed some light on the question of Hueda origins, through the excavation of a range of contexts in the centre and periphery of Savi (Figure 7.2). To date, virtually all excavated contexts within the 4-km diameter town site have yielded evidence of artefacts either of European origin or influence, indicating that the entire town was occupied during the period of active participation in the European trade. Of these, the most widespread are smoking-related artefacts, either imported pipes of Dutch origin, or smoking pipes of ‘local’ or African manufacture and design. As tobacco was a major trade item, and was definitely introduced from the Americas as probably was smoking,28 the presence of tobacco pipes that date to the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries indicate that the residents of all quarters of the central town had access to these goods. Conversely, the dearth of excavated locales without evidence of European trade strongly suggests that the town of Savi was either non-existent or substantially smaller in the era before the slave trade began to grow. Thus, substantial urbanization at Savi appears to coincide with Hueda independence and increased trade opportunities.29 Archaeological evidence from many parts of West Africa demonstrates that urban centres were a part of the cultural landscape prior to the advent of the slave trade.30 However, as archaeological and historical evidence suggests that coastal Benin was not home to densely settled populations prior to European trade, we must consider that the process of ‘urbanization’ of many coastal regions, and the concomitant political transformations that centralization of population and power brought, was a significant consequence of participation in the Atlantic world. It is likely that the growth of population and power led to experimentation with existing ideologies of leadership and authority, and that these were adapted to changing circumstances, such as an increasing multiethnic community; new sources of wealth and administrative power potentially diversified, dispersed, or expanded the elite classes. For example, on the Slave Coast, Hueda and Dahomey both developed new high-ranking positions charged with overseeing the European presence.31 The Law, The Slave Coast of West Africa, p. 127. John Edward Philips, ‘African Smoking Pipes’, Journal of African History, 24 (1983): 303–19. 29 Kelly, ‘Transformation and Continuity in Savi’; Kenneth. G. Kelly, ‘Long Distance Trade and State Formation: The Archaeology of the Hueda State, Benin, West Africa’, Paper presented at the 14th Biennial Conference of the Society for Africanist Archaeologists, Syracuse, NY, 1998. 30 David M. Anderson and Richard Rathbone (eds), Africa’s Urban Past (Oxford, 2000). 31 Law, The Slave Coast of West Africa, p. 207. 27 28

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Figure 7.2 Central Site Area Excavations


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expansion of trade also led to the growth of a palace-level bureaucracy, as has been archaeologically demonstrated in Dahomey by Cameron Monroe.32 In addition to political transformations, economic transformations took place in Hueda society as a result of the growth of trading opportunities. Prior to the development of the Atlantic trade, the Hueda held a marginal place in regional economic systems. The pre-European contact economy of the region was largely subsistence based, although some lagoon products, such as salt and dried fish, were exported to neighbouring groups in the interior.33 The arrival of Europeans with their demand for captive Africans radically changed this economic base. First and foremost, the growth of the trade in enslaved people generated considerable wealth for some segments of society who were able to mobilize capital and the contacts required to obtain captives from the interior, and to sell them to European traders at Savi. The introduction of new products such as tobacco led to the development of new craft production, such as tobacco pipes. Additional items of African production, often overlooked from a trans-Atlantic perspective, also comprised a significant portion of new trade opportunities. European traders at Savi consistently expressed a demand for ‘Whydah’ cloths, which although known throughout West Africa for their quality were not actually manufactured by the Hueda, but were obtained in trade from Yoruba peoples to the northeast.34 As demand for these cloths increased, production is likely to have increased to keep pace with demand. Although we do not at present have the archaeological evidence to explain the strategies employed in the Yoruba region to produce more cloths, it is possible that these included new artefacts associated with spinning and weaving, dyeing, and increased fibre production. In other parts of the world increased demand for products was met through strategies such as increased specialization in production, increased demands for the product through tribute or taxation, centralization of production, and so forth. Other frequently overlooked ramifications of the growing slave trade at Savi had broad impacts on the Hueda populace as a whole. While it can be convincingly argued that participation in and profit from the slave trade was largely restricted to a limited segment of Hueda society (elites, such as the king and nobles, and other high-ranking individuals), the Atlantic trade generated many other opportunities.35 Demand for agricultural products reached new peaks as Hueda and European slave dealers required provisions for the captives in their charge. Furthermore, the long voyages across the Atlantic to the slave-based economies of Brazil, the Caribbean, and the southeast United States required substantial stocks of food and Monroe, The Dynamics of State Formation. J. Rivallain, ‘Le sel dans les villages côtiers et lagunaires du Bas Dahomey: sa fabrication, sa place dans le circuit du sel Africain’, West African Journal of Archaeology, 7 (1977): 143–69. 34 Robin Law, ‘Ethnicity and the Slave Trade: “Lucumi” and “Nago” as Ethnonyms in West Africa’, History in Africa, 24 (1997): 205–19. 35 Law, The Slave Coast of West Africa. 32 33


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other provisions, all of which had to be obtained on the West African coast. This demand translated into opportunities for Hueda commoners to profit by producing surplus foods, particularly yams and the introduced and rapidly accepted maize. If we accept that an average of 10,000 captives were sold from Hueda annually,36 and that ships required provision for at least a two-month voyage, Hueda farmers were faced with an annual demand for food that greatly exceeded local needs. This quantity does not include the provisions required for feeding captives during the bulking period, while they awaited transhipment. This provided considerable incentive for farmers to adopt high-yielding crops, such as maize, that were relatively easy to grow and store. The result of this demand was such that in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, visitors to Savi were consistently struck by the intensity of agriculture, with observers remarking that there was little untilled land, and that the environment resembled a well-tended park, rather than bush with occasional interspersed cultivation as is the case today.37 Despite the difficulties of preservation in the humid tropics, archaeological evidence of this agriculture, in the form of carbonized maize and millet grains dating from early eighteenth century deposits, has been recovered from several loci in Savi. It is also likely that the introduction of maize into the region and, later, manioc or cassava in the late eighteenth century, may have contributed to substantial population growth, as these two crops are more suited to the region than the indigenous cultivars such as yams, millet, and sorghum.38 The introduction of new crops also suggests possible transformations in labour and gender relationships as traditional relations of production evolved to incorporate the new materials. Further evidence of the active nature of Hueda-European contact is seen in the particularly interesting archaeological evidence of some of the ways in which the Hueda elite ‘made sense’ of the European ‘trade diaspora’ and the opportunities they presented.39 Rather than simply assume that the European presence was imposed upon the Hueda due to some innate European ability to dominate, we must carefully examine the context of this encounter, and the choices made by the Hueda. We must ask why, in contrast to the clearly defensive structures at other trade posts that demonstrate that they were outposts in a hostile world, the Europeans at Savi never fortified their quarters. The answer is simply that the Hueda did not permit it.40 Hueda leaders made the choice to permit European traders to operate at Savi and we can see that decision-making process in the manifestation of the trading establishments. The Hueda were certainly aware of the ramifications of trade contacts with Europeans elsewhere on the coast where permanent European forts Ibid., pp. 164–7; Law, Ouidah, p. 30. R. Law, ‘The Evolution of the Brazilian Community of Ouidah’, Slavery and Abolition, 22/1 (2001): 22–41. 38 Stanley B. Alpern, ‘The European Introduction of Crops into West Africa in Precolonial Times’, History in Africa, 19 (1992): 13–43; Kelly, ‘Long Distance Trade and State Formation’. 39 Stein, ‘From Passive Periphery to Active Agents’. 40 Kelly, ‘The archaeology of African-European interaction’; Law, Ouidah. 36

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controlled coastal settlements (recall the lagoon-based trade and communication system extending from the Niger to the Volta rivers, making the Hueda and their neighbours part of a much wider world, and the issue of Atlantic Creoles).41 The Hueda were interested in engaging in commerce on their own terms, rather than on those imposed from outside, as was the case for Africans along the Gold Coast. The ways in which archaeological evidence shows how the Hueda materialized their control over the trading encounters are seen in the Hueda use of material culture to communicate their power.42 The physical location of the European trading lodges most readily demonstrates this. The unfortified lodges were required to be built adjacent to the principal Hueda palace complex, in the centre of the 4-km diameter town. Archaeological research has demonstrated that the palace and lodges were together encircled by a ditch system that isolated the sources of political and economic power from the rest of the town of Savi. It was not uncommon in West African town planning to isolate the elite district within a walled or ditched (or some combination thereof) precinct, physically demonstrating the separation of elite and commoner.43 It is fascinating that at Savi, the Hueda elite chose to compel the Europeans to settle within that precinct. Clearly, this represents Hueda efforts to negotiate the complexity of the European presence by symbolically associating the Europeans (or more likely their trade and wealth potential) with the Hueda elite. Yet the Hueda also recognized the potential conflicts of such a relationship and took pains to ensure that the Europeans recognized their subservient status. Not only were they prohibited from fortifying their lodges, but the lodges were built for them by the Hueda, and were regarded by all the European traders as distinctly inferior accommodations. For example, there is compelling evidence that the Hueda elite commandeered bricks and other architectural materials imported by the Europeans and intended for their use, to use in the palace structures. Archaeologically this has been reflected in the fact that, thus far, survey and excavation have failed to reveal definitively the lodges of the Europeans, whereas the much more substantial and massive structures of the palace have been identified and partially excavated.44

41

Law, ‘Between the Sea and the Lagoons’; Berlin, ‘From Creole to African’. For a fuller discussion, see Kelly, ‘Transformation and Continuity in Savi’, and Kelly, ‘The archaeology of African-European interaction’. 43 Babatunde Agbaje-Williams, ‘Oyo Ruins of NW Yorubaland, Nigeria’, Journal of Field Archaeology, 17/3 (1990): 367–73; D.A. Aguigah, ‘Recherches archéologiques & historiques à Notse & Tado: résultats & perspectives’, in D.A. Kuevi, and D.A. Aguigah (eds), Actes de la Quinzaine de l’Archéologie Togolaise 10 Janvier–4 Février, vol. 1 (Lomé, 1989); N.O. Quarcoopome, ‘Notse’s Ancient Kingship: some archaeological and art-historical considerations’, African Archaeological Review, 11 (1993): 109–28; Norman and Kelly, ‘Landscape Politics’. 44 Kenneth G. Kelly, Peggy Brunache, and Neil L. Norman, ‘Archaeological Fieldwork at Savi, Republic of Benin: The 1999 Season’, Nyame Akuma, 52 (1999): 2–10. 42

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Second Period: 1727 to early nineteenth century The period of African-European interaction at Savi came to an end in the spring of 1727, when an increasingly powerful Dahomey finally completed its conquest of the states that lay between it and the sea. In 1724, as a result of instability introduced through European trade in slaves and other commodities, Dahomey defeated Allada, its immediate neighbour to the south, and three years later attacked the Hueda in a successful effort to eliminate the other ‘middlemen’ and obtain direct access to European trade, the local source of wealth and power. As a consequence of this campaign the town of Savi was destroyed, and as indicated in contemporary accounts, thousands were killed, and thousands more were captured and sold as slaves.45 With the destruction of Savi, the headquarters of the European trading missions were transferred to Glewhe (albeit under the control of the Tegan, appointed by the king of Dahomey), the village where the Hueda had earlier permitted Europeans to establish fortified storehouses.46 Dahomey’s goal of monopolizing regional trade was demonstrated by the conciliatory attitude expressed towards the protection of the European forts.47 These establishments grew to be called forts, fortified not so much as protection against the local Africans, but as a precaution against the extension of inter-European hostilities to the African mainland: their defensive position was untenable for any length of time, being located over 4 km from the ocean, with the lagoon system lying between the sea and their extraordinarily outnumbered garrisons. In recurring warfare between Dahomey and Hueda that continued until 1743, the town of Glewhe surrounding the forts suffered greatly, with various quarters being ‘razed’ and ‘pillaged’ and the inhabitants ‘massacred’.48 Thus, the village of Glewhe remained largely deserted, so that the European ‘forts stood isolated in uncultivated countryside’.49 It was not until the late 1730s that Dahomey permitted African settlement to resume adjacent to the forts.50 As all commerce was now centred here, the settlement grew rapidly, becoming known as Ouidah, after the Hueda state until recently present there. Dahomey chose to follow the precedent established by Hueda and closely controlled the European presence in a variety of ways accessible through archaeological and historical approaches. However, in contrast to the Hueda, Dahomey did not locate the European headquarters under the palace walls, but adopted the opposite approach, restricting Europeans from the capital town of Abomey, located about 100 km inland – except for the Annual Customs where the Europeans were shown off. Instead, Dahomey materialized its control of the 45 Law, ‘A Neglected Account of the Dahomian Conquest of Whydah (1727)’; Snelgrave, A New Account of Some Parts of Guinea. 46 Law, Ouidah, p. 61. 47 Law, The Slave Coast of West Africa, pp. 302–5. 48 Law, Ouidah, p. 69. 49 Ross, ‘The Dahomean middleman system’: 360. 50 Ibid.


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traders by requiring the Europeans to remain in Ouidah, where they were subject to extensive surveillance by a Dahomean garrison that had been established since the 1740s.51 Their interaction with the Dahomean elite was facilitated by a high-level bureaucrat, called the ‘captain of the whites’ or the Yovogan. The Yovogan permitted the Europeans to fortify their trading establishments, suggesting somewhat less direct day-to-day control over the Europeans in Ouidah, although distance from the sea and the presence of military garrisons were continual reminders of the tactical weakness of the European position. The arrest and execution by the Dahomeans, in 1729, of Charles Testefolle, the director of the English trading mission, in response to his having encouraged Hueda rebels to re-conquer their lands demonstrates that the Europeans were at the mercy of the Africans.52 Other examples abound, including the Dahomean expulsion of six different directors of the Portuguese trading missions,53 and the capture and ransoming of European ship captains and traders at other ports.54 Indeed, as Ross notes, for the first century of Dahomean trade, ‘no other West African people kept the slavers so firmly in their place for so long’.55 Another difference between the circumstances at Savi and those at Ouidah was the development of a new kind of town in the Bight of Benin region. Along the Gold Coast and in the Senegambia, multiethnic communities had been developing for at least a hundred years, due to the longer time-span of the European presence.56 The settlement of the new town of Ouidah in the 1730s initiated a period marked by increasing ethnic diversity.57 This is probably due to several factors, one being the growth of the European trading establishments and their requirement of a permanent workforce. These workers were not always local Hueda or Dahomean people, but frequently came from settlements adjacent to other European trading forts elsewhere on the West African coast. As a result, Ouidah was home to a number of individuals from the Gold Coast who were either employed by the forts directly, or who offered their services to the Europeans on a freelance basis, such as the Gold Coast canoemen who brought goods through the surf between ship and shore.58 Furthermore, it is likely that, as on the Gold Coast or in Senegambia, European men stationed at the Ouidah forts entered into physical relationships 51

Ibid., 362, 366–7. Law, The Slave Coast of West Africa, p. 304; Law, Ouidah, p. 56. 53 Pierre Verger, Bahia and the West African trade: 1549–1851 (Ibadan, 1964), p. 14. 54 Ibid., p. 27. 55 Ross, ‘The Dahomean middleman system’: 375. 56 C.R. DeCorse, ‘Culture Contact, Continuity, and Change on the Gold Coast: AD 1400–1900’, African Archaeological Review, 10 (1992): 163–96; C.R. DeCorse, Archaeology of Elmina: Africans and Europeans on the Gold Coast, 1400–1900 (Washington DC, 2001); Peter Mark, ‘“Portuguese” Architecture and Luso-African Identity in Senegambia and Guinea, 1730–1890’, History in Africa, 23 (1996): 179–96. 57 Law, Ouidah, p. 69. 58 Law, Correspondence from the Royal African Company’s factories at Offra and Whydah; Law, Ouidah, p. 75. 52

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with African women, and that the issue of such unions were considered distinct (either by themselves, or by others, or both) from local people.59 While these relationships probably occurred in the Hueda capital of Savi, the placement of the trading lodges within the palace complex militated against the establishment of quarters adjacent to the lodges that would have been populated by staff, slaves, and offspring from the traders’ lodges. The gradual resettlement of the area by Hueda people who had made their peace with Dahomey also contributed to the multi-ethnic nature of Ouidah.60 As a result, by the second half of the eighteenth century, Ouidah had become the third largest Dahomean town after the capital Abomey, with a population estimated to number between 6,000 and 8,000 individuals.61 Further indications of the perceived social differentiation of the town are found in the report on Ouidah dating from 1776 by the Abbé Bullet.62 This report contains a reproduction of what is possibly the only map of Ouidah dating from the eighteenth century. This depiction clearly separates Ouidah into the African town, and three other quartiers (neighbourhoods; the text on the map describes them as ‘camps ou villages’) or ‘villages’, each associated with a particular European trade fort. The degree to which these ‘towns’ were ascribed distinct ethnic identities is addressed in Law’s extensive ethnohistoric research that traces the origins of these, and subsequent quartiers, to distinct ethnic groups, some of which were local (i.e. Hueda) and others of more distant origin (i.e. Gold Coast).63 These quartiers were substantial in population, as it is reported that the quartier adjacent to the old French fort had a population of 1,200 people living there in the 1840s.64 Evidence from the mid-nineteenth century suggests that something more like a dependent relationship existed between the quartiers and the forts, as the trader then in residence was understood to be able to compel service from the ‘town’ inhabitants.65 Clearly, this second period of European interaction on the African coast raises particularly interesting questions about social processes of ethnogenesis and identification. Limited archaeological research has been conducted in several locations of Ouidah that correspond to areas of the ‘villages’ located on the 1776 map with the aim of seeking any differences between one quartier and another 59 Ray A. Kea, ‘Plantations and labor in the south east Gold Coast from the late eighteenth to the mid nineteenth century’, in Law (ed.), From Slave Trade to ‘Legitimate’ Commerce, pp. 119–43; Larry W. Yarak, ‘West African Coastal Slavery in the Nineteenth Century: The Case of the Afro-European Slaveowners of Elmina’, Ethnohistory, 36/1 (1989): 44–60. 60 Law, Ouidah, pp. 69, 73–5. 61 Ibid., p. 73. 62 S. Berbain, ‘Le Comptoir français de Juda (Ouidah) au XVIIIe siècle’, Mémoires de l’I.F.A.N., 3 (1942). 63 Law, Ouidah, p. 75. 64 Sinou, Le Comptoir de Ouidah, p.107. 65 Elisée Soumonni, ‘The compatibility of the slave and palm oil trades in Dahomey, 1818–1858’, in Law (ed.), From Slave Trade to ‘Legitimate’ Commerce, pp. 78–92.


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Figure 7.3 Ouidah: Approximate Location of Archaeological Excavations (Figure 7.3).66 Artefacts of imported and local origin dating to the mid- to lateeighteenth century have been recovered, but they do not appear to have been in particularly good associations, limiting the conclusions that can be reached. For example, locally manufactured pottery and pipes have been recovered that are visibly distinct from earlier pottery at Savi. It is probable that this variation is due to Dahomean decorative and potting practices supplanting those common among the Hueda, and not clearly identifiable with any ‘ethnic’ or quartier differences. Or it may be that the changing nature of economic organization resulted in pottery and other artefact production being increasingly centralized and standardized. Yet another possibility is that Ouidah pottery could be distinct from that produced elsewhere in Dahomey, and thus be indicative of a distinct identity. As archaeological research expands into other regions of Dahomey it will be possible to compare pottery from different parts of the historic state. It was also thought that imported materials such as ceramics, pipes, or glassware would perhaps be identifiable by national origin, and would reflect closer economic ties between fort 66 Kenneth G. Kelly, ‘Change and Continuity in Coastal Benin’, in C.R. DeCorse (ed.), West Africa During the Atlantic Slave Trade: Archaeological Perspectives (Leicester, 2001), pp. 81–100; Kelly, ‘Indigenous Responses to Colonial Encounters’.


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and ‘village’; this could not, however, be demonstrated at Ouidah. Adding a further layer of complexity, during much of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the Portuguese traded almost exclusively in tobacco and gold, and not in European manufactured goods that can be identified and traced to national origins. Indeed, the artefacts recovered during archaeological excavation at Ouidah stand in marked contrast to the artefact assemblage Christopher DeCorse recovered from the African town at Elmina, one of the principal trade castles of the Gold Coast. DeCorse observed that of more than 100,000 artefacts excavated from the African town adjacent to the fort, over half were of European origin.67 Instead, at Ouidah (and at Savi) European imports comprise a very small proportion of the total number of artefacts recovered. In all time periods, locally manufactured materials predominate in virtually every form, with the only exceptions being tobacco pipes and beads. Even so, beads are far more numerous at Elmina than at Ouidah. Thus the differences in the archaeology of the towns of Ouidah and Elmina suggest very different processes of adjustment to the European presence with towns like Elmina developing distinct identities founded in part upon their embracing an Atlantic Creole identity.68 In contrast, Savi, and to a lesser extent Ouidah, appear to have maintained identities less transformed by their participation in the Atlantic world. The above-mentioned changes in African pipe form and pottery decorations also contrast with the Elmina sample. DeCorse and others remark that throughout coastal Ghana (the historic Gold Coast) pre-European contact and post-European contact pottery can be distinguished by a decline in the variety of forms and decorations among the latter.69 This is not the case at Ouidah. Despite its generally fragmentary nature, a remarkable lack of diversity in form as well as a notable lack of decoration characterize earlier pottery from Savi. A limited range of decorative techniques is seen, including some wavy line incisions, punctates, and red paint or slip, but these are by no means common. The assemblages from later eighteenth century contexts at Ouidah are characterized by very different pottery, most of which is decorated, smudged, or burnished. The latter two techniques have yet to be recorded at Savi, despite the excavation of over 50,000 sherds. Furthermore, although the assemblage from Ouidah is small, there is little to suggest a radical departure in the range of forms present from the range seen at Savi. Both collections are relatively poor in diversity of forms.70 In regard to African-made tobacco pipes, which are such a rich source of information on the Gold Coast, little 67

DeCorse, ‘Culture Contact, Continuity, and Change on the Gold Coast’: 181. Kelly, ‘Change and Continuity in Coastal Benin’; Kelly, ‘Indigenous Responses to Colonial Encounters’. 69 J.O. Bellis, ‘A late archaeological horizon in Ghana: proto-Akan or pre-Akan?’, in E. Schildkrout (ed.), The Golden Stool: Studies of the Asante Center and Periphery (New York, 1987), pp. 36–50; DeCorse, ‘Culture Contact, Continuity, and Change on the Gold Coast’; P.C. Ozanne, ‘Notes on the Early Historic Archaeology of Accra’, Transaction of the Historical Society of Ghana, 6 (1962): 51–70. 70 Kelly, ‘Change and Continuity in Coastal Benin’, pp. 88–91. 68


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can definitively be said for Ouidah collections from the eighteenth century. The eighteenth-century contexts from Ouidah have yielded very few African tobacco pipes, and those that have been recovered are highly fragmented and incomplete, limiting the ability to reach any conclusions.71 Unlike at Savi, excavated archaeological data at Ouidah have not provided a wealth of information on the African manipulation of Europeans; however, the built landscape of Ouidah speaks powerfully about the ways the Europeans were controlled. The three European fortified warehouses were initially isolated from the adjacent African settlement. Immediately north of the European forts, physically blocking the way to Abomey and the interior, were the twin pillars of Dahomean authority: namely, the compound of the Yovogan and the military garrison. Equidistant between the French and British forts, Dahomey relocated the shrine to Dangbe, the serpent deity that had been at Savi. These places clearly established Dahomey ownership in the case of the shrine, and Dahomey authority in the case of the Yovogan and military camp.72 There is great potential for further archaeological work at Ouidah to make important contributions to our understanding of the interactions between the European traders, Dahomey, and the adjacent quarters. The locations of the French and English forts are known and a directed programme of research on those sites would yield significant information. Both forts were surrounded by moats, which are now filled in. It is very likely that excavation of these moats, in particular the moat surrounding the English Fort William, will provide information about the lifeways of the inhabitants of the forts, as well as those living outside the walls, in the ‘villages’. These excavations could then be contrasted with archaeological assemblages from other parts of Ouidah. In 1992, very limited exploratory excavations were conducted north of Fort William, in an area that corresponds to the African town on the 1776 map (quartiers Ahouandjigo and Fonsarame, and adjacent to the marché Zobé), and south of the fort in the ‘English town’ (quartier Sogbadji). The results of this testing, while insufficient due to the very small sample size to shed much light on questions of ethnic identity among others, did demonstrate the feasibility of successful archaeological excavation in the old town itself.73 Conclusion The archaeological and historical investigation of the responses of the Hueda and Dahomey states to the continued presence of European traders from the 1660s to the nineteenth century demonstrates a significant degree of continuity in an era of considerable change. Furthermore, an overarching theme of negotiated response can be seen. These African societies actively engaged European interaction and evaluated 71

Ibid., pp. 94–5. Kelly, ‘Indigenous Responses to Colonial Encounters’. 73 Kelly, ‘Change and Continuity in Coastal Benin’. 72


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solutions best suited to the challenges presented by the new trade opportunities. Economic opportunities were not simply embraced without consideration of the long-range impact they would have; instead, to the best of their abilities, individuals chose courses of action that were logical in the light of the available information. The history of African-European interaction at Savi and Ouidah is a history marked by a clear understanding of power and authority, with everyone present recognizing that the Hueda and Dahomey elites possessed this power and authority.74 Archaeological research has further shown that models of African-European interaction cannot be developed for one region, or time, of African history and exported wholesale to other places and periods. A comparison of the results of DeCorse’s work75 has clearly indicated that in spite of broadly similar patterns of trade and eventual colonial administration, the specific responses of local African people to the presence of European traders at Elmina were very different from those explored by the Hueda and Dahomey people and governments. It appears that a generalized move towards greater political centralization and complexity coincided with the beginning and subsequent growth of the Atlantic trade. However, at this point it is not possible to determine whether the responses of rigid control and strict supervision by Africans as exhibited by Hueda and Dahomey were more the ‘norm’ than the position of greater European power seen at Elmina. The answer to that question will only be apparent when archaeological research is conducted in other settings of European-African interaction. The greater concentration of archaeological work at the site of Savi has permitted many more conclusions to be drawn about how the Hueda manipulated the European presence to their distinct advantage.76 However, even at Savi, further archaeological research geared towards better understanding the dynamic relationship between Hueda elites and European traders remains a priority. Additionally, excavations of commoner housing will contribute to increasing our knowledge of the impact of the presence of European traders and the growth of the slave trade on the population of Savi at large. Certain goods, products, and behaviours introduced by the trans-Atlantic trade were widely accepted in Hueda society as indicated by tobacco pipes, but the extent to which they penetrated to the core of daily life remains unclear. The place of the town of Savi in its regional network deserves exploration. 74

Robin Law, ‘King Agaja of Dahomey, the Slave Trade, and the Question of West African Plantations: The Embassy of Bulfinch Lambe and Adomo Tomo to England, 1726– 32’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 19/2 (1991): 137–63; Eveline C. Martin, The British West African Settlements, 1750–1821 (London, 1927); Stein, ‘From Passive Periphery to Active Agents’. 75 DeCorse, ‘Culture Contact, Continuity, and Change on the Gold Coast’; Christopher R. DeCorse, An Archaeology of Elmina: Africans and Europeans on the Gold Coast 1400– 1900 (Washington, 2001). 76 Kelly, ‘Transformation and Continuity in Savi’; Kelly, ‘The archaeology of AfricanEuropean interaction’; Kelly, ‘Indigenous Responses to Colonial Encounters’.


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It is clear from archaeological and historical research at Savi, Ouidah, and Elmina that we can no longer accept simplistic notions of what culture contact ‘did’ to Africa. Instead, we must be open to much more complex interpretations of human behaviour, interpretations that give individual actors in the past credit for their own actions. None of the active agents involved in this intercultural interaction, whether Portuguese, English, Hueda, Dahomean, or other, was a powerless pawn of grand historical events. By seeking to understand the reactions of people to others, we enrich the history of the trans-Atlantic trade, Africa, and that of the African diaspora.


Chapter 8

Walking the Tightrope: Female Agency, Religious Practice, and the Portuguese Inquisition on the Upper Guinea Coast (Seventeenth Century) Philip J. Havik

Introduction This chapter seeks to shed new light on an issue which has, until recently, been largely neglected by Africanists, historians and anthropologists alike – namely, the Portuguese Inquisition in Africa. The Inquisition archives in Lisbon, which contain more than 45 thousand trials and an incalculable number of denunciations covering a period of three centuries, are a veritable researcher’s treasure which, as a recent conference on Africans and the Inquisition showed, is finally beginning to attract sustained attention, especially on the part of young scholars. In the 1930s, a first attempt at writing a History of Portuguese Expansion erroneously held that the earliest trials of the Portuguese Inquisition relating to Africa dated back to 1626. In the 1970s a Portuguese naval historian, Avelino Teixeira de Mota, who had worked in the colonial service of what was then Portuguese Guinea in the 1950s, hinted at the existence of documentation that illustrated denunciatory

The author wishes to thank the Research School for African, Asian and American Studies (CNWS) of Leiden University and the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) in Lisbon for their generous financial support. The upsurge of interest in the subject was evident at the ‘Inquisição e África’ conference, organized by Dr. Francisco Bethencourt and the author, which was held at the Cultural Centre of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Paris in 2003. The papers are published in the Revista Lusófona de Ciência das Religiões, 3/5–6 (2004): 29–173. António Baião, Hernani Cidade, and Manuel Múrias, História da Expansão Portuguesa no Mundo (3 vols, Lisbon, 1937–1940), vol. 3, pp. 97–106. The first modern references made to its activity in the Atlantic region date back to the early twentieth century when the archives began to be studied. See, for example, António Baião A Inquisição em Portugal e no Brasil: subsídios para a sua história (Lisbon, 1921).


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activity in the Cape Verde islands and the Guinea coast in the sixteenth century. It was not until scholars re-examined the issue in the late 1990s, however, that it became clear that the Inquisition actually began its work in Africa in the 1540s, soon after the establishment of the Lisbon court in 1536, and thereafter developed an intense activity that lasted well into the eighteenth century. Recent studies demonstrate just how active the Inquisition was in the area during the sixteenth and especially during the seventeenth century. The testimonies of Africans who became entangled in the labyrinth of the Santo Ofício in the Cape Verde islands, the Guinea coast, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Angola constitute a key source for the reconstruction of the social history of coastal African societies and their interaction with the Atlantic world. Accordingly, this chapter takes a closer look at Inquisition files on the Guinea Bissau region from an anthropological perspective, focusing particularly on the agency of Christianized Africans, both women and men. The tropes contained in inquisitorial sources are first placed in the local context of sixteenth and seventeenth century communities based in and around trade settlements. Evidence from denunciations and trials in which African women were accused of conducting ‘African rites’ and witchcraft is then scrutinized, with a special focus on the trial of Crispina Peres, a Christianized African woman originating from one such settlement on the Guinea coast. Finally, the evidence relating to its trading community is discussed against the broader background of female and male agency, in order to gain a better understanding of the processes of cross-cultural interaction and transculturation taking place in an Afro-Atlantic context.

Avelino Teixeira da Mota, Alguns Aspectos da Colonização e do Comércio Marítimo dos Portugueses na África Ocidental nos sécuolos XV e XVI (Lisbon, 1976). Teixeira de Mota was the first to study Inquisition files regarding the Guinea coast. See, for example José da Silva Horta, ‘Africanos e Portugueses na Documentação Inquisitorial de Luanda e Mbanza Kongo’, in Actas do Seminário Encontro de Povos e Culturas em Angola (Lisbon, 1997), pp. 301–21. See also Selma Pantoja, ‘Inquisição, Degredo e Mestiçagem em Angola no século XVIII’, Revista Lusófona da Ciência das Religiões, 3/5–6 (2004): 117–36. Filipa Ribeiro da Silva, ‘A Inquisição em Cabo Verde, Guiné, São Tomé e Príncipe (1536–1821): contributo para o estudo da política do Santo Ofício nos territórios africanos’, Unpublished MA Dissertation, Universidade Nova, Lisbon, 2002; and Tobias Green, ‘Masters of Difference: creolisation and the Jewish presence in Cabo Verde (1497–1672)’, Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of Birmingham, 2006. Both dissertations are fundamental for an understanding of the Portuguese Inquisition’s intervention in Africa and for the local, regional, and Atlantic contexts in which it operated. The concept of transculturation was developed by the Cuban sociologist Fernando Ortiz in the 1940s, who employed it to signify cross-cultural interaction as an ongoing reciprocal process. See Fernando Ortiz, Cuban Counterpoint: tobacco and sugar (Durham, NC, 1995). More recently, Mary Louise Pratt rekindled Ortiz’s approach with regard to the appropriation and reinvention of imported culture and cultural symbols by communities

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Gendered Tropes of African Societies: the Inquisition and Coastal Communities Institutional sources produced by administrative officials and Roman Catholic clergy during the first two centuries of contact were concerned principally with the activities of ‘Cristãos Novos’ or ‘New Christians’, persons of allegedly Sephardi origin who had fled the Peninsula for the relative safety of the Atlantic. Generally, these subjects were Portuguese nationals, born in the Iberian Peninsula, male and active in commerce. Reporting on their trafficking and heresies intensified once captaincies and bishoprics were established in Guinea and the Cape Verde islands from the second quarter of the sixteenth century. Given that the number of residents along the African coast actually born on European (here Portuguese) soil remained very small throughout the pre-colonial period, these sources referred to a tiny minority. Reporting from these outposts of empire was carried out by the privileged few able to read or write European languages, namely, officials, traders, and priests, who long exercised a virtual monopoly in this respect. The archives of the Inquisition are no exception, but for one important aspect, that is, the transcription of statements taken in loco in the course of hearings led by missionaries representing the Inquisition. On a par with the devassas or enquiries carried out on the spot by secular officials, the denunciations and minutes of trials conducted against individuals are amongst the most useful ‘internal sources’ on the populations of coastal settlements. Interestingly however, enquiries and Inquisition trials involved men and women from all walks of life, both Europeans and Africans, free and enslaved persons, officials, traders, clergy, and healers. Because they contain data on the inhabitants of Portuguese possessions overseas, these documents provide important insights into their identities, relations, connections, activities, and personal views. Additionally, because the aim of such enquiries was to ascertain the crimes of the accused and to gather evidence from witnesses, these reports lift the veil on the nature of everyday life in these far-flung locations. Unlike the devassas, which were first undertaken in the 1620s, the earliest Inquisition trials relating to the Guinea coast date back to the 1540s, just a few years after the Lisbon Inquisition was established. Together with denunciations made about the activities of traders on the periphery. ‘Transculturation’, she states, ‘is a phenomenon of the contact zone’. See Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London and New York, 2001), p. 6. See Charles Becker, ‘Reflexions sur les Sources de l’Historie de la Sénégambie’, in B. Heintze and A. Jones (eds), European Sources for Sub-Saharan Africa before 1900: use and abuse (Stuttgart, 1987), pp. 147–65. For the concept of ‘internal sources’ produced locally in or by African societies, see ibid., pp. 148–52. Although distinctions should be made between ‘inside and outside points of view’, the author does not take into account the role of the ‘filhos da terra’ or children of the land, i.e. Africans born in trade settlements, and their key contributions to reporting from these locations. The first auto de devassa on the Guinea coast was carried out in 1622 in the port of Cacheu, and it concerned the illicit activities of the capitão mor or highest ranking resident

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and priests regarded as suspect, these documents provide a unique body of data on the development of coastal locations and their populations at a time of far-reaching change. The population of coastal trade settlements was composed of a large number of slaves, free Africans, and a small number of Europeans. The forcible conversion of Sephardi in Portugal in the early sixteenth century (hereafter referred to as ‘New Christians’), many of whom had been expelled from Castile in second half of the 1400s (where they were labelled as ‘conversos’), triggered an influx of Europeans into the West African region. Fleeing from persecution they fanned out across the Cape Verde islands and along the Guinea coast in search of new opportunities. While continuing to practise their traditions far from the watchful eye of metropolitan authorities, they settled in trading posts along the Petite Côte (the area between what is now Dakar and the Gambia River), and the region known as the ‘Rivers of Guinea of Cape Verde’ (between the Gambia and the Scarcies rivers, the latter in Sierra Leone). By establishing connections with their kin in Spanish and Portuguese America and the Caribbean, as well as in northern Europe, their networks soon spanned the Atlantic. Denunciations to, and trials conducted by, the Portuguese and Spanish Inquisitions testify to the presence of Sephardi slave traders in Lima, Cartagena, Curação, Maranhão (northern Brazil) as well as the Cape Verde islands, Guinea, Saõ Tomé, and Angola. Given that the Guinea region was one the first areas of Eur-African contact, it figures prominently in these sources until the late seventeenth century, when the Portuguese presence diminished as a result of European competition. Sephardi traders, who formed an important part of the first wave of lançados and tangomãos (renegade, private trader-settlers), were seen as one of the main stumbling blocks both to Portugal’s economic and political expansion, and Christian proselytizing in the region.10 Most denunciations, therefore, relate to ‘New Christians’ – also called ‘Crypto Jews’ – and their descendants. Of the over 600 denunciations made to the Lisbon Inquisition with regard to the Guinea coast from 1536 to 1700, over half dealt with accusations involving New Christians.11 While the first accusations against New Christians are recorded in the mid-1540s, the vast majority of denunciations of ‘Judaism’ occurred during the second half of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth century. Although secular and missionary sources officer who had ordered the trafficking of free Africans and a relative of the Pepel djagra or chief of the ancestral area or tchon under his authority. Diogo de Lima, Cacheu, 14-6-1622, AHU, Conselho Ultramarino, Guiné, Cx.1. 10 Whilst secular authorities sought to curb the commercial transactions by these private traders, who by trading directly with African suppliers were seen to undermine the Crown’s trade monopoly, the Roman Catholic hierarchy was keen to convert African dignitaries to counter the advance of Islamic preachers in the region. See Philip J. Havik, ‘Missionários e Moradores na Costa da Guiné: os padres da Companhia de Jesus e os tangomãos no princípio do século XVII’, Revista Studia, 56/7 (2000): 223–62. 11 Da Silva, ‘A Inquisição’, p. 159.


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emphasize their acculturation in the Guinea and Sierra Leone area, their presence in the ports of the Petite Côte, such as Joal and Portudal, and Cacheu is typically associated with the continuation of Sephardi traditions.12 The first trial against purported crimes committed by New Christians dates back to the middle of the 1560s. It reveals the presence of lançados operating from the Cacheu River (then Rio de São Domingos) in ports such as Buguendo and Cacheu.13 These tradersettlers were typically men, many of whom originated from the south of Portugal, mainly from towns and villages in the Alto-Alentejo. Many of those denounced in the seventeenth century had left Portugal for the African coast after the general pardon decreed in 1604.14 A second category of denunciation, concerning blasphemy, also on the whole targeted men. The third category, however, relating to ‘African rites’ and witchcraft (approximately 12 per cent of the total), typically focused on women. These were mainly directed at free, Christianized African women from trade settlements, who were accused of worshipping idols, using amulets, and practising indigenous ceremonies and customs in order to cast spells, provide cures, and tell the future. The earliest allegedly superstitious acts which were regarded as crimes, for having been committed by baptized Christians, were denounced in the Guinea region in the 1560s. They were ascribed to a baptized African woman named Maria Dias, who lived in the port of Buguendo on the Guinea coast, and used amulets to cure illnesses.15 Other contemporary sources indicate that the use of amulets or mezinhas was common in the region on account of the Islamicized murus or marabouts of Mandinga (Mandé) extraction who made and sold them to communities inhabiting littoral regions. Travel accounts and religious missions reported on the influence of the travelling Mandinga priests, who after their pilgrimage to Mecca offered nominas or gris-gris throughout the region.16 These amulets in the form 12 Ibid., pp. 181–7. Denunciations emphasized a number of behavioural aspects, such as daily and weekly worship, compliance with the Jewish calendar, resting on the Sabbath, circumcision, nutrition and culinary traditions, dress and song, as well as funerals. 13 IANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, processo 233, 1563–4, against a ship captain, Mestre Diogo, accused of blasphemy and Judaism. 14 Many Sephardi had fled Spain after the establishment of the first inquisitorial tribunal in Seville in 1480 and their expulsion in 1492, settling across the border in the Beira, Alentejo and Algarve regions in Portugal. Those mentioned in denunciations often originated from towns such as Portalegre, Cabeça de Vide, Arraiolos, Crato and Montemoro-Novo. While African dignitaries were called upon to expel any New Christians from their lands, the bishop of Cape Verde threatened residents of Cacheu with excommunication if they refused to denounce gente da naçaõ with whom they traded. However, missionary clergy indicated that African chiefs refused to arrest their suppliers and clients, and that the latter protected each other. See Da Silva, ‘A Inquisição’, p. 192. 15 IANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, processo 233, 1563–4, against Mestre Diogo. See also Da Silva, ‘A Inquisição’, vol. 2, p. 58. 16 Manuel Álvares, Etiopia Menor e Descriptção Geografica da Provinica de Serra Leoa (Lisbon, 1616), chapter 3. These bixerins or marabouts, he states, run Coranic schools

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of leather pouches worn around the neck, arms, or tied with strings around the torso contained suras or verses from the Koran which served to protect the person wearing them from danger, disease, injury, or death. Thus they were called guarda di kurpu in Guinean Creole or Kriol, meaning ‘body guards’ or ‘body protectors’. In the Luso-Atlantic context the pouches came to be known as bolsas de mandinga or mandinga for short, but in an adapted form and content, often containing all kinds of ritual objects or writing based upon Christian or ‘pagan’ prayers and/ or scriptures. The ‘witch doctors’ who sold these pouches were identified not as African marabouts, but rather as mandingueiros, who were active on both sides of the Atlantic, in the Iberian peninsula, in West Africa (specifically Angola), as well as South America and the Caribbean.17 Besides the active presence of the Islamicized murus, coastal societies also had their own healers, the djambakós, who were and still are key figures in communities such as the Felupe/Djola, Bañun, Pepel, Balanta, Bijagó, Biafada and Nalú communities with ancestral roots in the region.18 In the area under consideration here – that of the upper Cacheu River – Felupe, Bañun and Pepel healers were key local actors who maintained close links with the ancestral spirits or iran. Their services were in great demand, not only to cure diseases but also to provide physical or spiritual protection and to carry out cleansing and divinatory rituals. They produced potions as well as amulets which could be used to cure a variety of common illnesses as well as for protection against mau odjadu (from the Portuguese mau olhado or evil eye). During ceremonies or rónias, animals would be slaughtered and libations made with the aid of brandy around chinas or idols, which pertain to the lineage or to the community. As the denunciations of the deviant behaviour of New Christians waned, the accusations of witchcraft and African rites increased significantly from the 1640s.19 (madrassas) where they teach the Islamic creed to ‘boys who will afterwards serve as clerics …’. Amongst the Mandé or Mandinga, the almamy acts as the religious leader of the villages, visiting the schools and mosques in the area under his jurisdiction. 17 See Daniela Buono Calainho, ‘Africanos Penitenciados pela Inquisição Portuguesa’ and Selma Pantoja, ‘Inquisição, Degredo e Mestiçagem em Angola no século XVIII’, Revista Lusófona de Ciencia das Religiões, 3/5–6 (2004): 47–63 and 117–36; Francisco Santana, Bruxas e Curandeiros na Lisboa Joanina (Lisbon, 1996); James Sweet, Recreating Africa: culture, kinship and religion in the African-Portuguese world (Chapel Hill and London, 2003); Roger Sansi-Roca, ‘The Fetish in the Lusophone Atlantic’, in Nancy P. Naro, Roger Sansi and David H. Treece (eds), Cultures of the Lusophone Black Atlantic (New York and London, 2007), pp. 19–40. 18 For an overview, see António Carreira, ‘Símbolos, Ritualistas e Ritualismos ânimofeiticistas na Guiné Portuguesa’, Boletim Cultural da Guiné Portuguesa 16/63 (1961): 505–39. 19 By that time, those New Christians who wished to continue to practise their faith had concentrated in the ports on the Petite Côte such as Portudal and Joal, without interference from the Inquisition. See Da Silva, ‘A Inquisição’, pp. 163–7, 179–80. For a recent discussion of Afro-Sephardi interaction, see António de Almeida Mendes, ‘Le Rôle de l’Inquisition en Guinée: vicissitudes des presence juives sur la Petite Côte (XVe–XVIIe


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This shift reflects the measure of acculturation of Europeans and their descendants and the rise of Afro-Atlantic strata on the West African coast. It was also associated with the growing importance in the slave trade of coastal ports such as Cacheu as the Cape Verde islands lost their pivotal position in the trans-Atlantic routes. The heightened need for accurate information as a result of competition on the Guinea coast prompted officials, traders, and missionaries to delve deeper into specific local contexts. Besides the so called ‘Luso-Africans’ or ‘Eur-Africans’ who were known to trade with European competitors, communities of baptized Africans also became the target of the attention of the Portuguese and Spanish Inquisitions. Recent studies of published and archival sources regarding the relations between inhabitants of coastal trade settlements and surrounding African societies show that it is possible to reconstruct their evolution in the Guinea Bissau region from the sixteenth century onwards.20 The most notable feature of the Inquisition documents discussed below is that they turn their attention to the mainstay of the population of coastal ports such as Cacheu, formed by Christianized Africans, the Kriston, described as ‘Cristãos por ceremonia’ (ceremonial Christians) or as ‘Cristãos da terra’ (locally-born Christians) in Portuguese sources. They were composed of ‘common people and persons in employment, all of them free persons, who maintain themselves by their daily work and wages, being carpenters, sailors, and men in other sea-going trades’.21 Whilst the men were wage-earners, serving as pilots, sailors and artisans, women would typically act as traders and healers in their own right. The tungumás or free women from trade settlements were already singled out in sixteenth-century travel accounts for accompanying private traders on their voyages. The evidence gathered during the hearings for the trial against one such tungumá from the port of Cacheu in the Guinea Bissau region shows just how influential these women were at intra- and inter-community level.22 Indeed, the women who testified in trials held during the 1650s and 1660s were the first to provide such detailed information on these towns and their female inhabitants. As siècles)’, Revista Lusofona de Ciência das Religiões, 3/5–6 (2004): 137–55; Peter Mark and José da Silva Horta, ‘Two Early Seventeenth Century Sephardic Communities on Senegal’s Petite Côte’, History in Africa, 31 (2004): 231–56; and Tobias Green, ‘Further Considerations on the Sephardim of the Petite Côte’, History in Africa, 32 (2005): 165–83. 20 See George E. Brooks, Eurafricans in Western Africa: commerce, social status, gender and religious observance from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century (Athens, OH, and Oxford, 2003), and Philip J. Havik, Silences and Soundbites: the gendered dynamics of trade and brokerage in the pre-colonial Guinea Bissau region (Muenster and New Brunswick, 2004). 21 Manuel Álvarez, Ethiopia Menor e Descriptção Geográphica da Província de Serra Leoa (Lisbon, 1616), chapter 4. 22 Founded in the sixteenth century by private traders, the trade settlement of Cacheu or Caticheu, on the mouth of the São Domingos or Cacheu River, is located in Pepel territory. By the mid 1600s, the port had between two and three thousand inhabitants, including slaves. Apart from a few Europeans and mulattoes, most were free and captive Africans of a variety of ethnic origins.

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we have seen, until that time inquisitorial enquiries had focused exclusively upon male private traders and their alleged ‘New Christian’ heresies. By the mid-seventeenth century, the presence of free Kriston strata along the coast in settlements such as São Domingos, Buguendo, Bichangor, Cacheu, Farim and Geba was regarded as a threat by both the Portuguese Crown and Church. The emergence of autonomous Kriston communities, whose members originated from African societies living in the vicinity of these entrepôts, was seen as a new factor in the increasingly complex political and religious situation in the region, due to their kinship relations with surrounding African societies, who were at the same time key clients and suppliers of the Atlantic market. The presence of free women in trade settlements who maintained intimate relations with traders and officials in Portuguese praças or fortified towns, as well as boasting kin links with the heads of ruling African lineages, caused authorities to perceive them as a ‘fifth column’ that undermined strategic Portuguese interests in the region, and as a source of religious and moral deviance.23 The next section directs attention to the complexity of these social relations and in particular to the role of women in the Cacheu area, in the north of what is currently Guinea Bissau. Wenches and Witches: Female Agency and Religious Persecution The Inquisition’s particular focus on Afro-Atlantic communities and Christianized Africans in the Guinea region should be considered both within the context of local competition and rivalries in trade settlements, and as a corollary of the activities of Franciscan missionaries – who replaced the Jesuits – from the 1650s. With renewed vigour, the latter set out to convert the gentio or ‘heathen’, and to combat the use of shrines and superstitious behaviour. Zealous missionaries actually provoked tensions within African societies by insisting on the removal of shrines from their communities.24 Notably, the most vociferous protests were made by Bañun women who, in vain, intervened in order to halt the process. Just like Buguendo, the town of Guinguim was an important port for the transaction of slaves, hides, and beeswax, where traders from Cacheu negotiated directly with Bañun chiefs. 23 Sources indicate that relations between private traders and ‘criadas’ (maidservants) or ‘lavadeiras’ (washerwomen), euphemisms for mistress or concubine, were a common phenomenon. See for example, Álvarez, Ethiopia Menor, chapter l, and Francisco de Lemos Coelho Duas Descrições Seiscentistas da Guiné (1669/1684), Damião Peres (ed.) (Lisbon, 1990), p. 147. 24 See the case described by a Franciscan missionary with regard to conversion of the Bañun djagra or chief of the town of Guinguim on the right bank of the Cacheu River, who ordered the removal of a shrine where a chapel was being built, only to face opposition from the population. Frei André de Faro, ‘Relação de Frei André de Faro sobre as Missões da Guiné (1663–4)’, in António Brásio, Monumenta Missionaria Africana, series two (Lisbon, 1991), vol. 6, pp. 178–257 and 192–7.


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The first signs of heightened tensions between the metropolitan Inquisition on the one hand, and the female members of Christianized communities on the other, surface in the Guinea region in the 1650s. A Kriston woman from Farim, upriver from Cacheu, was accused by an official and wealthy trader, as well as by other inhabitants, of being a witch and making a ‘pact with the devil’, having allegedly caused the death of children by means of spells. Although she confessed to being a witch and using spells, the papers containing the statements of witnesses never arrived at the Lisbon Inquisition, so that a trial never took place.25 At the time, the visitador-geral (inspector-general) of the Portuguese Roman Catholic Church in the Guinea region, with the collaboration of missionaries of the Franciscan order and with the support of the then governor of Cape Verde, actively denounced the purported activities of female ‘witches’ or feiticeiras in trade settlements.26 It is significant in this respect that the ‘female connection’ surfaced in the course of a trial against a Catholic priest of Capeverdean origin who was based in the town of Farim.27 Accused of maintaining promiscuous relations with women, and of soliciting sexual favours during confession, both with free women and female slaves, the said priest was presented as an example of morally reprehensible conduct. Taking their confession in his residence rather than the church, he was said to organize festive occasions with the participation of both ‘heathen’ and Kriston women, while also openly keeping mistresses, including married women. Although the accused was eventually acquitted, the trial – in which Franciscan priests including the visitador-geral acted as representatives of the Lisbon Inquisition – provided them with a wealth of information on the situation in Guinean praças such as Cacheu and Farim.28 Subsequently, denunciations focused on the town of Cacheu and surrounding settlements, which at the time was the main Portuguese slave port in West Africa. In these documents Kriston women who are referred to as ‘black Christians’ are identified as key intermediaries, not only in the context of the barter trade in the region, but above all in a cultural and religious context. During the seventeenth 25 During his visit to Guinea in 1697, the bishop of Cape Verde conducted new hearings in an attempt to reopen the case against Antónia Dias. IANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, Livro de Denúncias, 266, 1657 and 1697. New denunciations which accused her of killing a number of children in Farim by means of diabolical spells did not, however, lead to a trial, given that the accused and many witnesses had since died. 26 The visitador in question, who also trafficked slaves, was charged by the Crown in 1656 with repairing fortifications at Cacheu, which brought him into conflict with local traders. See the correspondence of Gaspar Vogado, in Brásio, Monumenta, vol. 6, pp. 72–4, 159–60, 171–2. The governor of Cape Verde at the time, Pedro Ferraz Barreto, was an official informant, or familiar, of the Lisbon Inquisition. 27 IANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, Processo 8626, Luis Rodrigues (1662). 28 The accused had already been denounced and condemned for similar practices on the Capeverdean island of Santiago and exiled to Farim. His mother was Capeverdean and his father was related to the Portuguese nobility. Ibid.


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century more than twenty Kriston women were accused of conducting some form of African rites in statements made to inquisitorial inspectors, inquisitors, and Franciscan missionaries by a variety of local informants.29 The marked presence of free women in trade settlements is confirmed by an Inquisition trial held in the 1660s against Crispina Peres, a free African woman or tungumá from Cacheu, for allegedly performing ‘African rites’, seeking the assistance of witch-doctors, and taking recourse to superstitious ‘heathen’ rituals.30 The trial against Crispina Peres or Ña Crispina31 as she was known locally, who had been born in Cacheu of a Guinean mother and a Portuguese father, is particularly significant for what it reveals about the rituals and religious symbolism practised by Afro-Atlantic communities, and the key role women played as cultural mediators in the local community. Ña Crispina’s mother, father, and husband, as well as members of the latter’s family, had already been mentioned in connection with the case against the Capeverdean priest referred to above. Her father, Rodrigo Peres, also known as ‘Prego Velho’ (old nail in Portuguese), was from the Azores, but he had settled on the coast and traded from the towns of Geba and Farim. Her mother, Domingas Pessoa, was a Christianized woman of Bañun extraction whose parents came from the town of Guinguim on the Cacheu River, and were also baptized. Crispina was baptized in her parents’ home, her godfather being a ‘white’ trader, while a Kriston woman, who had herself been instructed in the faith of the church of Cacheu, acted as her godmother.32 The question of kuñadundadi, having in-laws, was also important, given that they usually reflected alliances based upon clientship (kamaradia) and patronage.33 Ña Crispina confessed to being illiterate, and was unable to make herself understood in Portuguese, speaking Kriol (Guinean Creole). Over the years, she had travelled on her father’s vessels during his trading sorties along the coast and its many rivers, between the Petite Côte and Sierra Leone. She married a former capitão-mor of Cacheu, Jorge Gonçalves Francês, a wealthy trader whose father had been denounced to the Inquisition for being a ‘particularly rebellious Jew’.34 As his own father had, Crispina’s husband became 29

On the activity of the Inquisition in the region, the hearings, and the trial in question, see Philip J. Havik, ‘La Sorcellerie, Acculturation et le Genre: la persecution religieuse de l’Inquisition portugaise contre les femmes africaines converties en Haute Guinée (XVIIe siècle)’, Revista Lusófona de Ciência das Religiões, 3/5–6 (2004): 99–116. 30 IANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, Processo 2079, Crispina Peres (1664). 31 The term ‘Ña’ is derived from the Portuguese ‘senhora’ or lady, and used widely in Guinean – and Cape Verdean – Creole in order to respectfully depict a person of certain wealth and standing in an urban context. 32 IANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, Processo 2079, Crispina Peres (1664), fols 267–72. 33 A well-known Kriol proverb states that: ‘Kasamento i kaba, mas kuñadadia ka kaba’, freely translated as ‘marriage might not last, but the relation with in-laws will’. 34 Crispina’s father-in-law was Álvaro Gonçalves Françês, who was born in 1572 in the Alentejo region (Cabeça de Vide) in Portugal. He lived in Cacheu as well as in Joal on the Petite Côte, where he traded with the Dutch, English and French; Diniz Eanes da


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governor of Cacheu, and was also known for his good contacts with ‘foreign’ traders from rival nations such as Holland, England, and France. During the enquiry into the rituals and beliefs of Kriston cosmology, witnesses emphasized the role of tungumás in shrine worship, healing, spells, and divination. Described as a devilish cult, their customs were said to be deeply rooted in local animist and Muslim traditions, while retaining superficial Christian characteristics. At the same time, a variety of ritual objects such as pots and pans were identified, including chinas or shrines, amulets, and pouches, as well as herbs and potions, all of which appeared as commonly-used objects for purposes of cure and/or protection against a variety of ailments and afflictions. Witnesses confirmed the widespread use of palm wine and alcoholic spirits with which shrines and other ritual objects were blessed. In addition, sacrificial animals such as cows, goats, and chickens, as well as snakes, were often mentioned in connection with spiritual powers and material enrichment. Ceremonial dances or batuques and funerals or chûr were also said to form part of the settlements’ cultural traditions. On the Upper Guinea coast, almost all accusations of ‘witchcraft’ referred to healing or divination rather than actual witchcraft, an important distinction which was characteristically blurred in the doctrine and hearings of the Santo Ofício. The case against Crispina Peres is largely based upon what with hindsight might be termed a ‘misreading’ of practice, but which formed part of a contemporary pattern of interpretation of the occult without however constituting a doctrine. Generally, the line between divinely inspired healers and devilish quacks was sharply drawn until the mid-eighteenth century.35 The term ‘African rites’ was indiscriminately applied to all these cases without specifying their precise, local origins; similarly, the shrines venerated by inhabitants of Cacheu and neighbouring villages were rarely described in any detail. By cross-checking sources, however, one finds that the wooden and earthenware objects referred to in the Peres trial as ‘pots and pans’, for example, also appear in descriptions of those used by the Bañun living on the right bank of the Cacheu River.36 When one of the priests acting as inquisitor in the hearings for Fonseca, Cacheu, 24-10-1635, AHU, Conselho Ultrmarino, Guiné, Cx. 1. He probably left for the Coast in the 1610s, and trafficked slaves between the Guinea coast and Cartagena, assuming different identities on account of inquisitorial persecution. See Green, ‘Masters of Difference’, chapter. 3. He died on the Guinea coast in 1641, leaving his estate in the hands of close relatives also accused of being New Christians. 35 See José Pedro Paiva, Bruxaria e Superstição num País sem Caça as Bruxas, 1600– 1774 (Lisbon, 1997), pp. 362–3. Since its inception, the Portuguese Inquisition gained a broad knowledge of existing practices in the metropole, where popular beliefs commonly, like in the rest of Europe, embraced magico-religious phenomena. The Inquisition and the Roman Catholic clergy identified their practitioners as ‘curadores’, ‘mezinheiros’, ‘saludadores’ or ‘feiticeiros’. 36 On references to the Bañun in early travel and missionary sources, see Charles de Lespinay, ‘Territoires et Droits en Afrique Noire: essai d’anthropologie du droit foncier en milieu rural’, Unpublished PhD Dissertation, Paris, Université de Paris X, 1999. At the time,

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the trial against Crispina Peres visited the Bañun djagra or ‘king’ of Guinguim across the river, he remarked upon receptacles in which the blood of chickens, rice flour, palm wine and other substances were mixed together for ‘ceremonies and other diabolical purposes’.37 Given Crispina Peres’ origins (her mother, as noted, was a Kriston of Bañun descent), the presence of these ritual objects in her house was used to incriminate her for practising ‘African rites’ and witchcraft.38 With regard to ‘heathen’ shrines – that is, chinas or rónias – their location in the Kriston ward of Cacheu – the Vila Quente (or Hot Town) – elicited strong condemnations from locally-based clergy. Jesuit missionaries had previously described the way in which shrines were worshipped by neighbouring Bañun villages, where, prior to going to war, villagers offered ‘the nastiest things such as the feathers of cocks, and their blood, or that of other animals, over which they pour palmwine, […] and sprinkle and daub it over the sacrifice’. Possible misfortune could thereby be avoided, but if it failed to have the intended effect, a ‘witch’ would be called in to mediate a favourable outcome with the ‘devil’.39 During the trial, it was said that all tungumás such as Crispina Peres worshipped shrines and sent their slaves to visit them. Allegedly, they paid for consultations with local ‘witch-doctors’ in order to determine the causes for their kin falling ill, and to identify the witch who was ‘eating’ them – who had, essentially, provoked the affliction.40 Some alleged that they also had personal shrines made by natives in neighbouring communities, with their slaves usually acting as go-betweens.41

the Kasa kingdom in what is now the lower Casamance, was the most influential political entity in the region. See also Jean Boulègue, ‘L’Ancien Royaume du Kasa (Casamance)’, Bulletin de l’Institut Fondamentale de l’Afrique Noire, 42/3 (1980): 475–86, and George E. Brooks Landlords and Strangers: ecology, society and trade in Western Africa 1000–1630 (Boulder, 1993), pp. 87–95. 37 ‘Relação de Frei André de Faro sobre as Missões da Guiné (1663–4)’, pp. 178– 257. One of the the Bañun djagras, together with his children and slaves, was eventually baptized by Spanish Capuchins. See Mateo de Anguiano, Missiones Capuchinos en África (Madrid, 1957), p. 118. Notably, one of his sisters was also baptized, illustrating the abovementioned missionary ‘matrilineal’ strategy. 38 That these objects could also be used for the preparation of dishes, ointments and candles was ignored in testimonies. 39 Alvarez, Ethiopia Menor, chapter 4. 40 IANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, Processo 2079, Crispina Peres (1664). For an account of the means by which witchcraft was and is combated by the Bañun, see Jean Girard, Genèse du Pouvoir Charismatique en Basse Casamance (Sénégal) (Dakar, 1969), pp. 148–61. 41 Although the minutes of the said trial are not very clear on the subject, chinas generally refer to collective (i.e. pertaining to village or tabanka), house (pertaining to residential compound or moransa) or personal shrines. Shrines were also distinguished in accordance with the status of individual, i.e. shrines for adult men and for married women.


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When a ‘heathen’ died, Kriston inhabitants of the town as well as Catholic priests normally took part in the funeral or chûr, accompanied by shrines or idols.42 Repeatedly, witnesses mention Pepel, Bañun and Felupe djambakós or healers who were commonly called in to the town in order to cure a variety of ailments. Indeed, Crispina Peres’ husband was said to have asked his nephew to fetch healers to treat him when he fell ill – allegedly after having been poisoned by his wife. It was also said that she had married her husband by means of ‘diabolical arts and witchcraft’ with the aid of local ‘shamans’.43 When one of Crispina’s daughters became ill owing to the ‘evil eye’, she allegedly made her drink ‘red water’, a toxic substance made from tree bark, which was commonly used in ceremonies to identify witches or detect signs of witchcraft.44 One of the healers summoned slaughtered a chicken, and ordered one of the house slaves to pour its blood into the sea to placate the bad spirits. The accused stated that the most prominent traders and slave holders of the town, as well as Catholic priests, all resorted to native healers and shrines to cure themselves of illness.45 Some witness statements also reproduced hearsay regarding a giant snake or cobra iran that Crispina Peres and her husband kept in a hut where they stored goods, which had been brought in by djambakós from a nearby village.46 It was 42 IANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, Processo 2079, Crispina Peres (1664). Funeral ceremonies are described in connection with the different peoples living on the Upper Guinea coast in a number of seventeenth century sources. See for example Álvarez, Ethiopia Menor, chapters 6 and 7 on the Bañun. During the ceremonies, which would last for several days, animals were slaughtered whose blood was then poured over the grave. See the description of Pepel tchûr or funeral in Avelino Teixeira da Mota (ed.), As Viagens do Bispo D. Frei Vitorinao Portuense a Fuiné e a Cristianização dos Reis de Bissau (Lisbon, 1974). 43 At the time, the Bañun were famous for their healing powers: ‘some of them are expert herbalists … some cures are so striking and are performed so rapidly that they are of interest to those most learned in the art of medicine’, in Álvarez Ethiopia Menor, pp. 27–8. 44 The accused said that one her friends, a woman from the Cape Verde islands, had treated her daughter according to (unspecified) methods used in the archipelago. For red water ceremony or jurménta di água bermedju using the extract of the bark of the mancône tree, see, for example, André Álvares de Almada, Tratado Breve dos Rios de Guiné do Cabo Verde (Lisbon, 1964), pp. 65–6, here among the Cassanga, neighbours of the Bañun in the Lower Casamance. Those who died drinking it were thought to be witches; those who did not were free to go. In the present case, slaves pertaining to her household stated that witches had ‘eaten’ the girl, a Creole expression indicating the common belief that directly correlated pathologies with problems in the spiritual realm. 45 Throughout the trial, the accused refused to confess or admit any guilt, on account that everybody, priests included, used these methods. Coming to her defence, her husband petitioned the Lisbon tribunal of the Inquisition, stating that there were no European physicians in Cacheu, and that he himself had requested and obtained permission from the local vicar to cure himself of an ailment. 46 The accused stated that another tungumá from the town had advised her to do so, but that she had refused. The use of snakes for the purpose of defending property and other

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supposed to bring them luck and ample profits on their trading voyages.47 It was also for this purpose that cows were slaughtered in front of these huts, where all traders in the town stored their wares. A further practice involved the tungumá sprinkling palm wine over certain mounds of termites, called baga-baga in Creole, with the intent of guaranteeing safe passage to kin on their maritime sorties. Additionally, witnesses confirmed the practice whereby the masts of ships were sprinkled with the blood of cows or goats, as well as palm wine, flour, and maize, in order to guarantee a safe and successful voyage.48 Ña Crispina was said to have ordered such a ceremony to be performed on one of her husband’s vessels before its departure; she confirmed that such rituals were carried out by all local traders.49 The origins of this ceremony can be traced to the Bijagó living on the islands off the coast who, according to slaves who performed the ritual, considered ‘the masts to be gods of the whites’. At the same time, these rites were associated with the slave trade, just like those that the Bijagó performed before embarking upon their coastal raids.50 The evidence also shows that Islamicized Mandinga marabouts or murus who ‘travelled native kingdoms in the region’ frequented the homes of free women such as Crispina, for which they charged considerable fees; Ña Crispina was said to spend substantial sums on their services. The Mandinga murus sold amulets and pouches, the bolsas de mandinga in Portuguese or guarda di kurpu in Guinean Creole, mentioned above, which were and are still commonly used by West African peoples. They contained excerpts from the suras of the Koran and other religious symbols, and were worn as necklaces or tied with straps around the body. material interests points towards traditions pertaining to the Pepel, in whose territory or tchon Cacheu was located; as long as the snake was kept safely (e.g. in the hut), the person in question would get rich as long as the cobra-iran did not set eyes upon him or her. See Carreira, ‘Símbolos, ritualistas e ritualismos ânimo-fetichistas na Guiné Portuguesa’: 505–39. 47 The said snake could change into human form, and protect assets and persons from unwanted attacks and witchcraft. The iran do matu or the iran segu (Python sebae), invested with supernatural powers, appears in West African oral traditions and is a common feature of Kriston allegories. In Guinea, its capacity for metamorphosis is proverbial as well as its punishment of women for perceived infractions of social mores. See Teresa Montenegro and Carlos de Moraes, Djunbai: stórias de Bolama e do outro mundo (Bolama,1979). 48 Shipwrecks were attributed to water demons, which needed to be pacified by a variety of rituals. 49 IANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, Processo 2079, Crispina Peres (1664), fols 308–11. 50 On Bijagó culture, see Almada, Tratado Breve, pp. 87–92; Álvarez Ethiopia Menor, chapters 9 and 10; Francisco de Lemos Coelho, Duas Descrições Seiscentistas da Guiné (Lisbon, 1990), chapter 7; Mateo de Anguiano, Missiones Capuchinas en África, II: Missiones al Reino de la Zinga, Benin, Abda, Guinea y Sierra Leona (Madrid, 1957), p. 134. Bijagó ritual involves female diviners or Okinka who break an egg and sprinkle salt water over the canoe, as well as the slaughtering of animals such as cows before departure. Other contemporary sources also mention the use antelope and bulls’ horns, as well as palm wine.


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Missionary sources refer, for example, to ‘various amulets’ that the Bañun were known to use in their wars. Travelling Mandinga bixerins or marabouts would make ‘nóminas’ or pouches which contained ‘various relics’ and ‘offer (them) in all these provinces’ after having made the hajj to Mecca. ‘Some amulets are used on robes, others on shields, some go round the neck, others on the arm, and so on’.51 Statements taken during the trial confirm the common use of these leather pouches in trade settlements, sold by the murus, to ward off bad spells (futis), evil eye (mau odjadu), or bad luck (mufunesa). Indeed, the cleric who initially denounced Crispina Peres and other tungumás from Cacheu had himself used similar methods to treat an ailment.52 Ña Crispina, in fact, insisted that everyone, whether religious or the Cacheu notables, consulted the djambakós as well as shrines for cures.53 Decoding Gendered Afro-Atlantic Encounters: A Reappraisal The importance of the statements and evidence gathered during the trial lies in that they reveal the existence of an identifiable set of Afro-Atlantic cultural practices and beliefs shared by the inhabitants of Portugal’s principal port on the Upper Guinea coast. The witnesses and the accused also eloquently illustrated the bonds that tied the community to neighbouring African societies in general and the processes of transculturation that had taken place in these locations. Murus and djambakós were frequent visitors to the town, which called upon them for a variety of cures and rituals. Significantly, the involvement of free Kriston women and men included Afro-Atlantic moradores or notables whose services were procured by the inhabitants of the town. Moreover, while testimonies given during the trial show the crucial role played by women in the town, they also provide evidence of male agency. Tungumás like Ña Crispina ultimately emerge as the archetypical exponents of the magico-religious role attributed to women in the settlement. Ambrósio Gomes, an important and wealthy trader from Cacheu who shared the status of ‘New Christian’ with Crispina’s husband, Jorge Gonçalves Françês, undoubtedly epitomizes male agency in this respect. Gomes, an archenemy of Gonçalves Françês, was a key witness at the trial: his contribution was a centrepiece of the accusations made against his rival and his Kriston wife. Gomes was also, however, an active participant in the networks that linked Cacheu’s

51 Álvarez, Ethiopia Menor, p. 11. For other seventeenth century descriptions of Mandinga guarda or gregories, see Richard Jobson, The Golden Trade (Amsterdam and New York, 1968), pp. 50–51. On the issue of religious representations with regard to the Gambia region, see Peter Mark, ‘Fetishers, “Marybuckes” and the Christian Norm: European Images of Senegambians and Their Religions, 1550–1760’, African Studies Review, 33/2 (1980): 91–9. 52 IANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, Processo 2079, Crispina Peres (1664), fol. 327. 53 Ibid., fol. 314.


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population with other Afro-Atlantic communities in the region, as his complicated relationship with Crispina Peres’ family clearly shows.54 The fact that Ña Crispina sent for him when she was in labour demonstrates the extent to which his curative skills and his counsel were sought and appreciated in the town. But on a more personal level, the trial illustrates the close relations that existed between himself and his client. Gomes stated that he knew the family very well and had often visited the household, and that he was also well acquainted with their slaves, some of whom had worked for him in the past. In his testimony, he reported that Ña Crispina and her daughter publicly wore charms, and that she had called in healers to cure her daughter. The intermediary in this case had been one of Gomes’ own aunts, who lived in Cacheu but came from the Cape Verde islands and whose relatives included Mandinga healers. Crispina Peres, in her defence, lifts a tip of the veil on the likely origins of his craft, which he in all likelihood learned from Mandinga murus and from his mother, a Kriston of Bijagó descent who lived in the nearby trading port of Guinguim. Teodosia Gomes, a widow known locally as Mãe Gomes, and a member of the tungumá network, was a well-connected figure in the ports on the Cacheu River. She was reputed to worship a powerful shrine in the form of an ant-hill which she consulted whenever her son went on a venture in order to give him god-like power.55 However, she was also often approached in order to persuade her son, Ambrósio, to administer remedies. On a number of occasions Ña Crispina called upon her for help, for example when her daughter fell ill as a result of an evil spell, and when she experienced complications whilst in labour. First asking a woman friend for help, the latter in turn contacted Mãe Gomes, who sent her son over to Ña Crispina’s house.56 The detailed description of his methods contained in the trial documents reveal the importance attached to the guardas which are clearly identified as having a Mandinga origin. Acting as an authentic djarar-lá or healer, Ambrósio Gomes wound white and black cotton straps round her waist and arms after having soaked them in a potion which she drank to ease her labour pains. Having given birth successfully, she paid him visits in order to have similar straps wound around her son’s arm until he was able to walk freely.57 In her statements Ña Crispina 54

Ambrósio Gomes (1621–1679) was born of a New Christian father from Arraiolos in the Alentejo region in Portugal, and an African mother from Cacheu. He spent part of his childhood in Portugal and became the ‘wealthiest man in Guinea’, owning ‘lots of slaves’ and being ‘much feared by neighbouring African kings, making peace or war’. Pacheco de Mello, commander of Cacheu, 30-6-1671, AHU, Conselho Ultramarino, Guiné, Cx. 2. 55 IANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, Processo 2079, Crispina Peres (1664), fols 106–7. 56 The friend in question, Maria Mendes, was related to a Mandinga muru, who was also called to Ña Crispina’s house when her daughter fell ill. Although he applied the same cure with aid of gris-gris, it was not successful. 57 IANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, Processo 2079, Crispina Peres (1664), fols 302–3. Mandinga murus still use similar white and blue straps which they previously bless with an


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confirmed that Ambrósio Gomes, who stood at the head on an influential trading lineage or gan in Cacheu, used the same black and white cotton straps in order to protect himself against any possible wounds received in battle. Other residents confirmed that Gomes wore guarda strapped to his body, just like the Mandingas did, showing that it was common knowledge, as well as accepted practice. Ña Crispina added emphatically that ‘almost all the native Kriston of the town of Cacheu wear them’, that is, ‘the men who go to war and the women when they give birth’.58 The fact that the same Ambrósio Gomes was married to Bibiana Vaz de França, a highly influential tungumá and trader who was to lead a rebellion against the commander of Cacheu in the 1680s, provides a backdrop to the cross-cultural and gendered context of Afro-Atlantic communities on the Guinea coast.59 The names of many Cacheu-born traders are mentioned in contemporary religious and secular documentation. Newly-appointed commanders in Cacheu often found themselves unable to cope with the latter’s passive and active resistance. The local trading community did not hesitate to file complaints against officials sent from Lisbon and their constant interference in commercial affairs. In conjunction with Ambrósio Gomes, Jorge Gonçalves Francês, and other principal traders of Cacheu, they signed a petition to the Portuguese Crown complaining about the visitador geral who was to denounce Crispina, a Capeverdian by birth, for failing to carry out construction work on the fortification of Cacheu. In the same document they also lamented the lacklustre Portuguese trade on the coast, the empty coffers of the local treasury, and the need to trade with other nations, such as Spain, in order to make a living.60 At the same time, the governor of Cape Verde and traders based in the archipelago’s capital, Ribeira Grande, accused the homens de nação (Sephardi and New Christians) of actually being in control in Cacheu, complaining that they denied them access to the supply of slaves exported from the port. Allegedly, the principal traders of Cacheu were constantly quarrelling with the local commander, and essentially acted on their own accord, without showing any respect for, or paying customs duties to, the Crown.61 At the time, Cacheu traders were trading directly with Spanish possessions in the Caribbean and South America and had appropriate potion. Extracts made from the leaves of certain plant species, for example from the brimstone bush (Morinda geminata) and wild custard apple (Annona senegalensis), were and are still administered to pregnant and lactating women. 58 Ibid., fol. 304. 59 Ña Bibiana’s heroic exploits – she held the commander of Cacheu prisoner in her residence in Farim, upriver from Cacheu, for over a year in 1684/5 – are still revered amongst the Christianized families of Cacheu. See Havik, Silences and Soundbites, pp. 162–72. 60 Manuel Paços de Figueroa, commander of Cacheu, 22-5-1655, AHU, Conselho Ultramarino, Guiné, Cx. 1. 61 João Homem de Menezes, governor of Cape Verde, Santiago, 23-4-1656, AHU, Conselho Ultramarino, Cx.1. Locally, like his arch-rival, Gomes supported the brotherhood of Nossa Senhora do Rosário, which constituted the cultural core of the Kriston community.

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officially been exempted from paying duties in the Cape Verde islands for transAtlantic slave exports. Thus, seen against the background of broader commercial competition, political infighting, and the complex social make-up of the town, the intense activity of the visitador-geral – and of other Portuguese dignitaries – which eventually led to Nã Crispina’s trial gains additional relevance. The intertwining of religious and secular interests is evidenced by the fact that in the period from the 1640s to the 1660s both a governor of Cape Verde and a commander of Cacheu were familiares or official informants of the Portuguese Inquisition. The latter also repeatedly denounced Jorge Gonçalves Francês, his father and relations, as well as Ambrósio Gomes, in dispatches to the royal court in Lisbon, for apparently wanting to ‘annihilate’ him.62 Yet it is significant that while male residents such as these, who were branded as New Christians and even as healers, were not brought before the Inquisition, a woman like Ña Crispina was. Indeed, Ambrósio Gomes, Jorge Gonçalves Françês, and his father, were all appointed commanders of Cacheu, and Gonçalves Françês even received the Order of Christ. The reports submitted by the visitador-geral to Lisbon indicate that, emulating contemporary currents of thought in Europe, women – because they stood closer to nature – were seen as the weak link in the human chain, especially when it came to issues associated with faith. Kriston women in general were described as heretics and witches, given their propensity to adherence to or performance of ‘African rites’. Among the witnesses and officials – most of whom were men – there was a clear consensus regarding the close proximity of the free women of Cacheu to the ‘gentio’ or heathen. According to the priest in question, ‘Crispina Peres bore the name of a Christian but was in fact still a native heathen and followed their laws’.63 In comparison, his opinion about her husband almost resembled an apology: although Jorge Gonçalves Françês was aware of these circumstances, he consented to them for wanting to please his wife. The visitador-geral suggested that despite his efforts to denounce these crimes of witchcraft, superstition, and idolatry, they had gone unpunished for too long and that an example should be set for the community as a whole. In her defence, the accused argued that while such beliefs and practices were regarded as a crime in Portugal, this was not the case in Guinea,64 thereby implying that instead of attributing blame to her alone for supposedly ‘heathen’ beliefs and practices, the community as a whole should stand trial. Although Crispina Peres, who never actually confessed to her ‘crimes’, was condemned, it was for heresy and apostasy, rather than witchcraft or idolatry. In the end, her lack of instruction in the ‘mysteries of the faith’ to which her husband had referred in his appeal, allowed her to return to Cacheu, much weakened by 62 One of Gomes’ cousins who was condemned by the Lisbon Inquisition for ‘Judaism’ had also allegedly conspired against the commander of Cacheu in the 1640s. 63 Gaspar Vogado, IANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, Processo 2079, Crispina Peres (1664), fol. 26. 64 Ibid., fol. 326.


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her ordeal in the Inquisition’s dungeons. Clearly, the Portuguese Inquisition, like the secular authorities, was unable to exercise effective control – and lacked the means to do so – over a community which was well-entrenched, and had gained a virtually unassailable position as traders in the town and the Guinea Bissau region more generally. In fact, the trial was more akin to a Pyrrhic victory given that it further undermined Portuguese influence at a time when its position had already been weakened after decades of Spanish domination. The coup staged by Crispina’s contemporary, Bibiana Vaz, twenty years later was to illustrate graphically Portugal’s loss of power in the region, confirming the rise of Afro-Atlantic strata in what was then the country’s main foothold on the Upper Guinea coast. The trial against Crispina Peres reveals a fascinating collage of traditions and beliefs in a town which was inhabited by a surprisingly diverse population. ‘Portuguese’ and ‘Christian’ in name only, the town of Cacheu was profoundly influenced by the surrounding communities such as the Felupe/Djola, Bañun, and Pepel, and also by the Mandinga further upstream. But it also illustrates the capacity of Christianized Africans to incorporate the ‘diabolical’ customs and rituals of their ‘ethnic’ peers and neighbours and to integrate them into their own hybrid culture. Despite the impression created by a variety of reports and the trial hearings that the culprits caught up in the maelstrom could be identified, the population at large, including free Africans, healers, and slaves, formed part of larger Afro-Atlantic community. As a result, the lines drawn in the metropole between ‘New Christians’, ‘Old Christians’, and ‘ceremonial Christians’, most of whom were born and raised in these coastal towns, appear to be imaginary rather than real in this unique Afro-Atlantic universe sustained by common magicoreligious beliefs and practices which were deeply anchored in bonds of crosscultural relatedness.


Chapter 9

Slaves, Convicts, and Exiles: African Travellers in the Portuguese Atlantic World, 1720–1750 James H. Sweet

In 1728 in the city of Porto, Portugal, an African slave named Pedro José fixed a sword on the ground with the sharpened end of the blade facing toward the sky. Aligning his body with the sabre, he took a running leap and dived on top of it. Miraculously, the sword did not penetrate his body or do him any other harm; it merely bent under his weight. What might have seemed like an act of suicidal desperation was actually the culmination of a business transaction that occurred with some frequency throughout the Portuguese Atlantic world. All over the Portuguese Atlantic, and especially in the public plazas of Portugal’s major cities, Africans and their clients tested the efficacy of various charms and talismans against knives, swords, and even guns. Prior to his leap of faith, Pedro donned around his neck a cloth bag filled with unknown substances, tied with a cord. Well satisfied that these substances would protect him should he be stabbed in a street fight, Pedro paid one cruzado (480 réis) to the manufacturer of this amazing shield, another African slave named José da Costa. In exchange for this cash payment, José gave Pedro one of the most powerful protective talismans known in the Atlantic world – the bolsa de mandinga. By the early 1700s, the bolsa de mandinga was the most widely used talisman in the Portuguese-African diaspora and could be found in such far-flung places as Bahia, Madeira, Luanda, Mazagão, and Goa. Like the one acquired by Pedro José, most bolsas consisted of a piece of leather or cloth filled with various substances – herbs, roots, sticks, rocks, hairs, feathers, animal skins, powders, and relics from the Catholic Church. These pouches were then tied with a string or cord, usually around the neck, but also around the wrist, waist, ankle, forearm, or other parts of the body. Depending on the combination of substances in the pouch, bolsas could protect from masters’ beatings. Others could assure success in gambling or games of chance. Still others could aid slaves in their attempts to flee their masters. But

Arquivo Nacional de Torre do Tombo (ANTT), Inquisição de Coimbra, Processos, No. 7840.


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by far the most common form of bolsa was one that protected the wearer from fists, knives, and gunshots. The case involving Pedro José and José da Costa was merely one link in a vast network of bolsa producers and consumers in Portugal during the early decades of the eighteenth century. Over a period of three years between 1728 and 1731 the Portuguese Inquisition tried at least five Africans for producing bolsas. Dozens more were implicated in the trials. This chapter aims to unravel this web of mandingueiros, and to demonstrate how enslaved Africans forged communities that permeated the Portuguese Atlantic world, from Ouidah, to Pernambuco, to Rio de Janeiro, to Cape Verde, to Porto, and beyond. Perhaps more importantly, it shows how certain ideas that were constructed in the Atlantic World came to be associated with deviance, evil, and colonial resistance, none of which could be tolerated in the metropole. The eighteenth-century purge of mandingueiros, however, proved to be a futile and contradictory attempt to eradicate from Portugal those ideological ‘evils’ that emanated from the very colonial world the Portuguese created. When José da Costa sold his bolsa to Pedro José in 1728, he added yet another strand to a web of African men who traded mandingas in the Portuguese Atlantic World. Indeed, two years before, in 1726, José da Costa had himself purchased a bolsa de mandinga from a slave named Luís de Lima. In turn, Luís de Lima, born in Ouidah (present-day Benin), originally purchased his bolsa more than seven years earlier in Pernambuco from a slave named Francisco. The bolsa, made of green velvet cloth, contained a small altar stone (pedra d’ara), three Catholic prayers, and the bone of a deceased person. In his confession in October 1729, Luís de Lima admitted that he took pieces of each of the objects in this bolsa in order to construct the one that he sold to José da Costa, charging him one cruzado for his services. Whether José da Costa split these items further to make the bolsa for Pedro José is unclear. Nevertheless, the four-person link from Francisco, to Luís de Lima, to José da Costa, to Pedro José, as the bolsas passed from Pernambuco to Porto, emerges clearly from the testimony, demonstrating the proliferation of bolsa knowledge across the Atlantic World. Indeed, this network of mandingueiros was even more extensive than Luís de Lima’s confession suggests. In addition to José da Costa, Luís de Lima named 25 other slaves with whom he conspired to manufacture and/or distribute mandingas in and around Porto. Of these 25, at On the history of bolsas de mandinga in the Portuguese Atlantic, see James H. Sweet, Recreating Africa: Culture, Kinship, and Religion in the African-Portuguese World, 1441– 1770 (Chapel Hill, 2003), pp. 179–85; Laura de Mello e Souza, The Devil and the Land of the Holy Cross: Witchcraft, Slavery, and Popular Religion in Colonial Brazil, trans. Diane Grosklaus Whitty (Austin, 2003), pp. 130–41. For Portugal, see Daniela Buono Calainho, ‘Jambacousses e Gangazambes: Feiticeiros Negros em Portugal’, Afro-Ásia, 25–6 (2001): 141–76, especially 164–7. The pedra d’ara was a piece of marble with an internal compartment filled with the relics of martyred Catholic saints. It was believed to hold magical powers necessary for the transubstantiation of bread and wine during Holy Communion.

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least 18 had once lived in Brazil. Two were the slaves of Englishmen; two more worked on board merchant ships. In short, nearly all of the slaves named in these cases were products of an overlapping, interconnected, and ‘entangled’ Atlantic World. If the Brazil-Porto mandinga nexus was as vibrant as Luís de Lima describes it, we can be assured that the Brazil-Lisbon one was even more so. It was in Lisbon, in fact, where the first mandingas were publicly demonstrated as early as 1672. Moreover, Lisbon was the primary destination of merchants and colonial officials returning to Portugal, often with their slaves in tow. Among those who were named as Luís de Lima’s co-conspirators in Porto was one Manuel da Piedade. The slave of a ship captain who had previously lived in Bahia, Pernambuco, and various Portuguese villages, Piedade ran away from his master in Porto and fled to Lisbon, where he continued to manufacture and sell mandingas until his arrest in March 1730. While in Lisbon, Piedade may have encountered two other well-known mandingueiros, José Francisco Pereira and José Francisco Pedroso, both of whom were also arrested in the city that same year. Pereira and Pedroso were born in Ouidah and enslaved in Brazil before being carried to Lisbon. The slaves of two brothers, there they worked together closely in the manufacture and sale of bolsas. Like Luís de Lima in Porto, they apparently formed part of a much broader network in the city: between them, Pereira and Pedroso named more than half a dozen accomplices in Lisbon, all of whom had ties to Brazil. Moreover, Pedroso

ANTT, Inquisição de Coimbra, Processos, No. 1630 (Luís de Lima). On the entangled worlds of the Atlantic, see Eliga H. Gould, ‘Entangled Histories, Entangled Worlds: The English-Speaking Atlantic as a Spanish Periphery’, American Historical Review, 112/3 (2007): 764–86. The episodes outlined in this chapter build on Gould’s idea of colonial and imperial entanglements; however, they go one step further in emphasizing the African impetus for these entanglements. In the same edition of the American Historical Review where the Gould article appears, there is another by Jorge Cañizares Esguerra, in which he laments: ‘If the category of Atlantic is to mean anything, it ought to include Africa, but there seems to be no room for this often overlooked fourth continent in most new versions of the Atlantic’. In a small way, this article builds on both Gould and Cañizares-Esguerra. See Cañizares-Esguerra, ‘Entangled Histories: Borderland Historiographies in New Clothes?’, American Historical Review, 112/3 (2007): 787–99. The quote is on p. 794. See Sweet, pp. 181–2. ANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, Processos, No. 9972 (Manuel de Piedade). Other cases of slaves being accused of carrying mandingas in Lisbon during this period include: ANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, Processos, No. 4260 (Processo of Joseph, single slave of Antonio Marques Gomes, jailed September 23, 1730); ANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, Processos, No. 15572 (Denunciation of Francisco, slave of João Ruiz do Valle, May 2, 1735); ANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, Novos Maços, Maço 27, No. 41 (Denunciation of Antonio de Sousa, slave of João de Freitas, January 6, 1733); ANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, Processos, No. 16722 (Denunciation of Matheus, slave, August, 7, 1731).

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claimed that there were many other mandingueiros in Lisbon whose names he could not remember. While the sheer number of slaves working together as mandingueiros in Portugal might seem intriguing enough, it becomes all the more so when we consider how ideas were shared across the Atlantic. Mandingas flowed back and forth across the Atlantic in an uninterrupted stream – bought and sold, borrowed and shared. Portuguese slaves, in particular, hungered for the magical powers of Brazil, a space where the social and cultural terrains were often dominated by the enslaved and heavily influenced by Africa. Accordingly, it was believed that Afro-Brazilian remedies were the most effective in addressing the difficulties of enslavement. The most obvious conduits to the powers of Brazil and Africa were those who actually hailed from those places. Thus, when José Francisco Pereira first arrived in Lisbon from Rio, he was immediately set upon by black men who ‘harassed him … so that he would give them mandingas’, believing that ‘he must have brought some from [Brazil]’. If Portuguese slaves could not access directly the sources of Brazilian magic, then they had to be satisfied with the prescriptions and remedies that emanated from there. Luís de Lima claimed that he taught two slaves in Porto a ritual to protect them from their masters’ beatings. As proof of the ritual’s authenticity, Luís announced that a slave in Alagoas, Brazil, taught him the ritual, which consisted of chewing on a particular root in the master’s presence after committing some dereliction of duty.10 If Brazil was seen as a crucial node in the world of magical talismans, then Africa was understood to be the original source of these objects. On one occasion, a slave named Ignácio arrived in Porto from Pernambuco. Shortly after, he shared with Luís de Lima a mandinga that he brought with him. Luís was particularly impressed by the blue and white bead, which he described as ‘truly Cape Verdean Mandinga’.11 Though a cryptic reference, Luís seemed to be making a distinction between mandingas coming from Brazil and those more ‘true’ or authentic ones which came from the Upper Guinea coast and its associated islands. Indeed, the very name ‘mandinga’ gives us some clue as to the alleged origin of the most authentic of these powerful talismans. While Europeans, Native Americans, and other peoples used similar pouches far back in their early histories, the proliferation of bolsas in the eighteenth-century Portuguese Atlantic was attributed primarily to Africans from the so-called Guinea and Mina coasts. The Portuguese term ‘bolsa de mandinga’ probably emerged in the first decades of the seventeenth century to describe the pouches offered by Islamic teachers in West Africa, especially in the territories of the ethnic Mandinga on the Upper Guinea coast. As early as 1606, Jesuit Father Balthezar Barreira ANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, Processos, No. 11767 (José Francisco Pereira) and Processos, No. 11774 (José Francisco Pedroso). ANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, Processos, No. 11767. 10 ANTT, Inquisição de Coimbra, Processos, No. 1630. 11 Ibid.


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noted that the Mandinga used pouches containing scripts from the Koran to entice people to convert to Islam.12 Similarly, in 1656, it was reported that the ‘Negro Mandingas’ were accustomed to tying cords around various parts of their bodies for good luck, ‘and they have them for their relics’.13 The first report of mandingalike bolsas outside of Africa dates to the early 1670s. In 1672, a slave named Manuel was accused of tying a pouch around his wrist to protect himself from knives and daggers in Lisbon. Manuel publicly challenged soldiers to stab him, and he even attempted to involve a priest in laying a wager as to the effectiveness of his talisman. Reportedly, Manuel performed similar stunts when he was earlier enslaved on the island of Madeira.14 By the early eighteenth century, these pouches were commonly known as bolsas de mandinga, or simply mandingas, in the Portuguese colonial world, and they were understood to be the peculiar domain of Africans and their descendants. The ‘diabolical’ nature of these mandingas was inherent in the name, which associated them directly with Africa. This is not to say, however, that bolsas emanated from a homogenous cultural tradition. On the contrary, in addition to the Islamicinfluenced bolsas from Upper Guinea, there were gbo (empowered objects) from the Fon/Gbe-speaking regions of Benin that also took the form of substances from the natural world tied in bundles around the neck, wrists, or arms.15 Similarly, Portuguese Catholics continued to wear ritually empowered objects, including scapulars and Agnus Deis around their necks.16 However, the distinctions between these varied traditions collapsed along racial and ethnic lines so that bolsas de mandinga represented a peculiar form of diabolical African superstition. When in 1700, a Cape Verdean slave was accused of selling bolsas in Lisbon, the denouncing priest noted that, ‘One presumes the likelihood of a pact with the Devil [since] the said bolsas come to him from his homeland … and it is quite safe to presume the frequency of fetishism that there is among that caste of people’.17 In short, bolsas were a well-known magical medium, but the bolsas manufactured and used by Africans were a particularly evil form, created in alliance with the Devil himself. As such, they were more appropriately labelled ‘mandingas’, clearly indicating their African provenance and their danger. The Portuguese Inquisition reacted decisively against this perceived threat; between 1701 and 1730 mandinga cases

ANTT, CSJ, Maço 68, no. 119. One can find similar descriptions of Mandinga pouches in Richard Jobson, The Golden Trade; or, A discovery of the River Gambra, and the golden trade of the Aethiopians (London, 1623; reprint, New York, 1968), p. 67. 13 ANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, Processos, No. 2079. 14 ANTT, Inquisição de Lisbon, Cadernos do Promotor, No. 51, Livro 248, fols 283–285v. 15 On the various forms of gbo utilized in Benin, see Melville J. Herskovits, Dahomey: An Ancient West African Kingdom (2 vols, Evanston, 1967), vol. 2, pp. 256–88. 16 On the similarities between bolsas de mandinga and Catholic forms, see Souza, The Devil and the Land of the Holy Cross, p. 131. 17 ANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, Cadernos do Promotor, No. 72, Livro 266, fols 77–91. 12

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represented 57 per cent of all denunciations and criminal trials against Africandescended defendants accused of ‘magical’ practices.18 While we could easily conclude that these were just the racist machinations of the Catholic Church, the purge of African mandingueiros had much deeper social and political implications. If we consider the ends to which bolsas were put, it becomes clear that they were used in the broadest sense for ‘good luck’. But ‘luck’ is a subjective concept, determined by social and cultural contexts. White Portuguese used bolsas to prevent pregnancies, to win at gambling and other games of chance, to attract members of the opposite sex, and so on. Africans also used bolsas for these purposes, but the real ‘evil’ of mandingas lay in the fact that ‘luck’ might aid Africans in all manner of ways to thwart slavery and the slave trade. As we have seen, mandingas were most commonly used for protecting against weapons, especially knives. The public spectacle of enslaved Africans balancing their bodies on the business ends of swords might undermine the authority of slave masters, in the sense that a slave who believed that knives could not penetrate his body was unlikely to fear anything his master could unleash upon him. Enslaved Africans, moreover, believed that mandingas had other virtues more directly related to undermining their enslavement. In Porto, for example, an African named Joseph, the slave of an Englishman, requested that Luís de Lima and José Luís prepare him a mandinga that would allow him to run away from his master.19 When this mandinga failed, he returned to Luís de Lima and requested a different mandinga that would compel his master to sell him. This one apparently succeeded, as Joseph was sold to a more compassionate master. Similarly, in the mines of Brazil in the 1730s, an African slave named Manuel dos Anjos was shackled and chained, but because of the virtue of his mandinga, he was able to break the chains and run away with the shackles still attached. When he was captured and jailed in Rio de Janeiro, Manuel claimed that he was able to escape from jail because of the strength of his mandinga, which allowed him to break the bars of his cell.20 Mandingas were also thought to protect slaves from punishment. In Porto, José da Costa used a mandinga to protect himself when he decided to return a piece of clothing that he had stolen from his master. On another occasion, José used a different mandinga to protect himself from punishment when he returned to his master’s home late at night. During the same time period, in Lisbon, the slave master João de Freitas bound his slave, Antonio de Sousa, and gave him many lashes with 18 This period represented the high point in mandinga accusations against Africandescended defendants. See Calainho, ‘Jambacousses and Gangazambes’: 149, Table 2. 19 Other cases that speak to the virtues of mandingas in helping slaves run away include: ANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, Processos, No. 15628 (Lisbon, 1737, mandinga that had ‘the power to open doors’); ANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, Processos, No. 502 (Bahia, early 1740s, bolsa de mandinga given to slave by a runaway slave, claiming it was good for ‘freeing the pagan from the land’). 20 ANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, Cadernos do Promotor No. 99, Livro 292, fols 12– 12v (1732).


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the whip. Because of the power of his mandinga, Antonio responded with animated contempt, taunting his master and claiming that he could not be hurt.21 Finally, it was believed that mandingas had the power to control natural elements like the wind, crucial in the execution of the sail-driven slave trade. When in 1738, for example, the African Domingos Álvares was being transported from Pernambuco to Rio de Janeiro, the doldrums halted the ship’s progress down the coast; certain that Domingos was the source of this evil, the ship’s captain ordered him tied to the mast of the ship and whipped. Upon removing his clothing, the captain discovered a bolsa de mandinga; he ordered it immediately burned and the ashes thrown into the sea. Shortly thereafter, the winds resumed and the ship continued on its journey.22 Clearly, Africans and their descendants utilized the magical power of mandingas in order to either escape enslavement or ameliorate their condition. But the fear of bolsas exhibited by ship captains, slave masters, and the Inquisition demonstrates just how deeply implicated the Portuguese were in the proliferation of these magical ideas. As noted, bolsas existed in early modern Europe prior to the slave trade. Although their use was banned by the Catholic Church from as early as the Middle Ages as ‘superstitious’, Europeans resisted such prohibitions. The use of amulets containing animal parts, herbs, stones, and coins persisted well into the period of the Enlightenment.23 By 1700, in the public plazas of Portugal, whites were just as likely to purchase bolsas from Africans as were other Africans. Some of these Portuguese carried their bolsas to Africa, where they passed them on to other Africans. In 1714, for instance, a Portuguese soldier, Antônio Dias, travelled from Portugal to Luanda and then on to Massangano, where he gave a bolsa to the Angolan freedman, Vicente de Moraes. Dias claimed that the bolsa could ‘free one from dangers’. Doubting the efficacy of the Portuguese man’s claims, Moraes put the bolsa around the neck of a stray dog before shooting it several times with his pistol. The dog was said to have remained unscathed throughout the incident, leading Moraes to conclude that ‘the bolsa was Mandinga’. Moraes later used the bolsa to protect himself when he was stabbed by a Portuguese man in an altercation. He claimed that when he opened the bolsa, it contained some orations in Latin, a small Agnus Dei, and ‘a green thing that he did not recognize’.24 Clearly, Moraes’ bolsa contained elements sanctioned by the Catholic Church, as well as ones that were not. Similar blending of traditions occurred in Brazil, where there were reports that Portuguese priests in Pernambuco distributed pieces of consecrated host to their parishioners so that they could place them in their bolsas.25 21

ANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, Novos Maços, Maço 27, No. 41 (January 6, 1733). ANTT, Inquisição de Coimbra, Processos, No. 7759. 23 For example, in 813 the Third Council of Tours prohibited carrying the bones of dead animals or empowered herbs to protect from illness and accidents. See Souza, The Devil and the Land of the Holy Cross, p. 131. 24 ANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, Processos, No. 5477. 25 ANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, Cadernos do Promotor, No. 79, Livro 272, fols 397–397v. 22

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But it was this very belief in the power of bolsas to bring good luck that created difficulties for the Portuguese when African slaves utilized similar talismans for their own ends. By using magical talismans to challenge the social and economic order, Africans inspired a decisive transformation from ‘bolsas’ to ‘mandingas’, and from ‘superstition’ to ‘diabolical evil’. Thus, the purge of mandingueiros in eighteenth-century Portugal should be seen not so much as a response to rooting out heresies against the Church, but rather as an attempt to maintain the social and economic order, especially in the metropole, where colonial challenges, let alone Africans ones, were simply intolerable. The turn from ‘bolsas’ as ‘superstition’ to ‘mandingas’ as ‘diabolical evil’ was rife with ideological contradictions that could only serve to reinforce the perceived power of African magical talismans. Moreover, by taking a widely recognized popular Portuguese form and reinventing it as ‘Mandinga’, the Inquisition affirmed the reality of overlapping African, Brazilian, and Portuguese cultures in the metropole. Colonialism had arrived on Portuguese shores and penetrated into the fabric of daily life. Ironically, the very institution whose goal it was to stamp out heresy probably reinforced its African variants in Portuguese villages and towns, not only at the ideological level, but also through its mechanisms of ‘justice’. The Inquisition brought accused Africans to trial in the cities of Lisbon, Coimbra, and Évora, sometimes remitting them all the way from Brazil (as indeed from the Guinea Coast, as Philip Havik shows in this volume). It also punished the guilty by exiling them to small, under-populated Portuguese villages like Faro, Castro Marim, Sylves, and Bragança.26 Thus, someone like Domingos Álvares, the man accused of controlling the wind with his bolsa de mandinga, was exiled to Castro Marim, from whence he proceeded to walk more than 300 miles across the Algarve, divining and healing along the way. He was prosecuted yet again by the Inquisition and exiled to Bragança, spreading his malevolent African ideas to yet another region of the metropole. While the slave trade had the predictable outcome of turning Brazil into a colonial ‘purgatory’ where ‘syncretism was one of the faces of hell’, the Portuguese never imagined that the diabolical ideas of Africans could thrive in Portugal itself.27 By the eighteenth century, however, merchants and traders working in the Atlantic ensured that Brazilian, and even African, ideas would reach Europe’s shores. But the proliferation of these African ideas was never a foregone conclusion in the metropole: after all, nowhere were Africans more

26 For Faro, see ANTT, Inquisição de Évora, Processos, No. 4333 (Gracia Maria, Angolan, 1724); for Castro Marim, ANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, Processos, No. 252 (Luzia Pinta, Angolan, 1744); for Sylves, ANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, Processos, No. 502 (João da Silva, Angolan, 1752). 27 On the idea of Brazil as a place populated by sinful people, firmly stuck between Portuguese ‘paradise’ and African ‘hell’, see Souza, The Devil and the Land of the Holy Cross, p. 87.


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than ten per cent of the Portuguese population.28 That Africans sought one another out and formed networks is testimony not only to the desire of Africans to free themselves from enslavement, but also to the tenacity of trans-Atlantic relationships. The contradictions of Portugal’s colonial enterprise also facilitated African resistance. Predictably, Africans adopted those elements of Portuguese popular culture that were useful for them, especially where these overlapped with their own understandings. As Africans naturalized popular ‘superstitions’ like the bolsa, the Portuguese had little choice but to render bolsas ‘diabolical’, especially when they publicly undermined the power upon which slavery and colonialism rested. However, there was a price to pay. Ultimately, by redefining bolsas as ‘heresy’ and ‘witchcraft’, the Portuguese infused Africa into their own popular beliefs, affirming the power of mandingas and linking the cultures of Africa and Brazil to those of the metropole. Indeed, by the middle decades of the eighteenth century, the word ‘mandinga’ had so thoroughly penetrated Portuguese metropolitan thought that the actual presence of Africans, as principal instigators, was no longer required to invoke the mandinga’s ‘diabolical’ meaning. In 1750, for example, in the Portuguese village of Gaia, across the Douro River from Porto, a 16-year-old boy named João Luís Pederneira denounced the sailor, João de Santiago. One day during the Easter holidays, Santiago appeared at the house of Pederneira’s father, where he asked the teenage boy to stab him in the chest with a sword. Amazed that the sword did not penetrate, the young man asked Santiago how this was possible. Santiago pulled up his shirtsleeve and revealed a black bead ‘shaped like a small lemon’, surrounded by red beads ‘that seemed to be coral’, all tied together around his upper arm. When the young Pederneira asked where Santiago found this magical talisman, Santiago replied that he had brought it from Brazil. Several days later, Pederneira asked to borrow the talisman from Santiago. Wrapping it around his arm, the young man asked his Portuguese-born slave, José, to stick him with a knife. As he began to do so, Pederneira immediately felt the pain and, fearing serious injury, called off the experiment. Returning the talisman to Santiago, he reported that it was ineffective. To this Santiago responded that in order for the bead to work its magic, he needed to say some words of invocation, which he knew, but would not share with the teenage boy. Upon hearing that the bead required secret prayers in order to catalyse its power, Pederneira confessed that he ‘immediately understood it was mandinga and diabolical pact’. Eight months later, in December 1750, he denounced Santiago to the Inquisition. In the intervening period, Santiago had absented himself from Portugal, reportedly aboard a ship bound for Pernambuco. Inquisitorial prosecutors in 28

At the height of the slave trade to Portugal in the sixteenth century, approximately ten per cent of Lisbon’s population was enslaved, the majority of them Africans. In the south of Portugal, only 5.5 per cent of the population was enslaved. AC de CM Saunders, A Social History of Black Slaves and Freedmen in Portugal, 1441–1555 (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 50–58, 63–72; Jorge Fonseca, Escravos no sul de Portugal, séculos XVI–XVII (Lisbon, 2002), p. 28.

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Coimbra attempted to pursue him, questioning numerous people ‘coming from Pernambuco and other cities of Brazil’. Some witnesses claimed that Santiago worked in Bahia; others said he lived in Pernambuco; still others reported that he fled to the Spanish Indies. Several more ‘affirmed that he was dead’. After the passage of several years without any word of his whereabouts, even his family in the vicinity of Porto assumed that Santiago was indeed dead. Finally, in 1765, after an exhaustive 15-year search, the inquisitors closed their case on João de Santiago, unable to locate the offending mandingueiro anywhere in the Portuguese Atlantic world.29 The Inquisition’s lengthy and fruitless pursuit of Santiago across the Atlantic span was a microcosm of Portugal’s inability to harness and control many aspects of its imperial project. Santiago’s diabolical mandinga was first born in the minds of Portuguese missionaries proselytizing among Islamic Africans on the Upper Guinea coast in the early seventeenth century. From there, these magical talismans spread with the slave trade to all corners of the Portuguese colonial world, proliferating especially in Brazil. The mandinga crystallized as an archetypical African form of evil in the network of dozens of enslaved mandingueiros who bought, sold, traded, and shared ‘bolsas de mandinga’ in Africa, Brazil, and Portugal during the first decades of the eighteenth century. Finally, by the 1750s, the idea of the mandinga was so completely naturalized to Portugal that even a 16-year-old boy in the small village of Gaia knew to invoke it as shorthand for the Devil’s work. The general form and function of the mandinga remained consistent across time and space, and its associations with Africa and Brazil never seemed to waver. Nevertheless, the fact that the mandinga became such a thoroughly Portuguese metropolitan idiom demonstrates that colonialism was never a one-way street. As the Portuguese colonized Africans and Brazilians, they also colonized themselves, even at the very heart of the empire.

29 ANTT, Inquisição de Coimbra, Cadernos do Promotor, No. 107, Livro 401, fols 329–47.

Chapter 10

The Life of Alexander Alexander and the Spanish Atlantic, 1799–1822 Matthew Brown

The Spanish Atlantic Was there such as thing as a Spanish Atlantic? If there was, then its history resists most conventional Atlantic periodizations. José C. Moya argues that ‘the concept [of the Atlantic] is applicable more to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries than to previous or later periods’. By foregrounding Latin America in his account of the modernization and the transformation of the Atlantic world he provides a useful corrective to the Atlantic-side weaknesses of C.A. Bayly’s interpretation of the ‘birth of the modern world’. Moya argues that the divergence of Spanish America from the conventional storyboards of Atlantic history should not lead us to bury the concept of the Atlantic, but rather to define its shape and its borders more accurately by tracing the trajectories of migrants, sojourners, capital, and material goods. Other scholars focusing on Latin America have also questioned the wisdom of an Atlantic perspective. Christopher Schmidt-Nowara argues that ‘one must employ a different sense of the Atlantic World as a coherent space, one that is more multisided and interactive than the model that focuses on

I wrote an early draft of this paper as a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, and presented it to the Colston Research Society Symposium ‘Pioneers, Adventurers and the Creation of the Atlantic World’ interdisciplinary conference on 23–25 September 2005. I am grateful to Natasha Carver and Caroline Williams for their comments on earlier drafts. I thank Robert Bickers for first encouraging me to think critically about Alexander Alexander for a panel on ‘Empire Lives’ for the Anglo-American conference to have been held in London on 8 July 2005. On the periodization of Spanish American history, see Eric Van Young, ‘Was there an Age of Revolution in Spanish America?’, in Victor Manuel Uribe Urán (ed.), State and Society in Spanish America during the Age of Revolution in Spanish America (Wilmington, 2001), pp. 224–39. José C. Moya, ‘Modernization, Modernity and the Trans/formation of the Atlantic World in the Nineteenth Century’, in Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra and Erik R. Seeman (eds), The Atlantic in Global History 1500–2000 (Upper Saddle River, 2006), p. 179. C.A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World: Global Connections and Comparisons, 1780–1914 (Oxford, 2004).

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the implantation of Old World institutions and cultures in the New’. In this chapter I test Moya and Schmidt-Nowara’s observations by following the biography and writings of one apparently Atlantic adventurer, Alexander Alexander. When Napoleon Bonaparte’s armies crossed the Pyrenees in 1807 they triggered a fundamental reconfiguration of what has been called the Iberian Atlantic, opening a new era, as unheralded republics, constitutions, and nations (or at least, aspirations to nationhood) entered the scene on both sides of the ocean. As historians such as Bayly and François-Xavier Guerra have suggested, it is impossible to separate what happened in Spain and the Hispanic world at this time from events elsewhere in Europe and its imperial worlds. When Joseph Bonaparte became King of Spain in 1808, the crisis of legitimacy across the Spanish colonies created a vacuum of authority, precipitating the movements that were to result in the independence of all but two of Spain’s colonial territories in the Americas (Cuba and Puerto Rico remained under Spanish rule until 1898). The impetus for resistance and rebellion in Spanish America was drawn from Paris, London, and Washington, but also from Haiti, Russia and West Africa. Atlantic journeys, models, commerce, and geopolitics shaped the direction the continent took in the next half-century. In some areas, formal Spanish colonialism was thereafter replaced by British informal empire. With the exception of the great ‘liberators’ such as Simón Bolívar, the agents of these changes have generally received less attention from scholars than the structural alterations in the political economy of the region. But worlds do not reconfigure themselves: change takes place as a result of the movement of people, products, and ideas across borders and geographical obstacles. During the colonial period in Spanish America, missionaries brought new ideas about religion; viceroys Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, ‘Continuity and Crisis: Cuban Slavery, Spanish Colonialism, and the Atlantic World in the Nineteenth Century’, in Cañizares-Esguerra and Seeman (eds), The Atlantic in Global History, p. 213. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World; François-Xavier Guerra, Modernidad e independencias (Madrid, 1992). Peggy Liss, Atlantic Empires: The Network of Trade and Revolution, 1713–1826 (Baltimore, 1984); Julius Sherard Scott III, ‘The Common Wind: Currents of Afro-American Communication in the Era of the Haitian Revolution’, Unpublished PhD Dissertation, Duke University, 1986; John Thornton, ‘African Soldiers in the Haitian Revolution’, Journal of Caribbean History, 23 (1980): 59–80. J.R. McNeil, ‘The End of the Atlantic World: America, Africa, Europe, 1770–1888’, in Alan Karras and J.R. McNeil (eds), Atlantic American Societies: From Columbus through Abolition (London, 1992), pp. 246–65; Kenneth Maxwell, ‘The Atlantic in the Eighteenth Century: a Southern Perspective on the Need to Return to the “Big Picture”’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th Series, 3 (1993): 209–36; Jeremy Adelman, Republic of Capital: Buenos Aires and the Legal Transformation of the Atlantic World (Stanford, 2002). Matthew Brown (ed.), Informal Empire in Latin America: Culture, Commerce and Capital (Oxford, 2008).

The Life of Alexander Alexander and the Spanish Atlantic, 1799–1822

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brought new concepts of political governance; and merchants brought ships that carried away raw materials and returned laden with new products.10 Social and economic change resulted from the local encounters with these newcomers, whether they stayed for a lifetime or only long enough to re-stock their ships. In the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the activities and interests of Britons who travelled to Hispanic America became increasingly numerous and visible. The British ‘informal empire’ was geographically limited and ideologically patchy like the Spanish colonialism that preceded it. Its Atlantic dimensions are therefore best understood through the reconstruction of imperial networks, rather than seen as a monolithic ‘empire’ consisting only of designated areas on a map.11 John Elliott has shown how a comparative perspective across and between empires can provide great insight into the nature of change in the Atlantic world. Elliott demonstrates that a single analytical field that crosses imperial frontiers is essential if we are to comprehend any individual colonial experience, and imperative to understanding the legacy of colonialism on Europe itself.12 Concepts such as the ‘Iberian Atlantic’, ‘Francophone Atlantic’, ‘British Atlantic’, or ‘Danish Atlantic’ will be meaningless unless they are considered as networks superimposed upon one another and intermeshed between each other. If the Atlantic is to be useful as a single analytical field, then it must be one in which heterogeneity is acknowledged and interrogated; siphoning off individual national elements for specialized study does little to advance our understanding. Indeed, having overcome the restrictions placed on historiography by the national prism, and working, in Antoinette Burton’s phrase, ‘after the imperial turn’,13 there is something appealing about limiting our histories to the lands upon which the Atlantic Ocean lapped. Thinking in terms of an Atlantic world can certainly be useful when considering, for example, the changes that occurred in Spanish America in the period 1790–1821, particularly with regard to the physical journeys of individuals who exerted some influence on the events of the period. The Atlantic, after all, was the only ocean on which George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson ever sailed; the 10 Robin Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery 1776–1848 (London, 1988). With particular regard to the Francophone Caribbean, see Laurent Dubois, A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean 1787–1804 (Chapel Hill, 2004). 11 This is the approach adopted by many recent historians of the British imperial world, and the interpretation is summarized in David Lambert and Alan Lester (eds), Colonial Lives across the British Empire: Imperial Careering in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 2006). For an innovative exploration of these networks in Britain’s ‘informal empire’ in Argentina, see Charles A. Jones, ‘Finance, Ambition and Romanticism in the River Plate, 1880–1892’, in Matthew Brown (ed.), Informal Empire in Latin America, pp. 124–49. 12 J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492– 1830 (New Haven and London, 2006). 13 Antoinette Burton (ed.), After the Imperial Turn: Thinking with and through the nation (Durham, NC, 2003).


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same was true of Spanish American leaders of the Río de la Plata, such as Bernardino Rivadavia, Manuel Belgrano, and Juan Manuel de Rosas. It was, moreover, a transformative space, in which identities were worked out and hardened, in which formative and comparative experiences took place, and upon which new futures were imagined and enacted.14 However, the Atlantic did not hold all the historical actors of this period: Washington and Rivadavia were exceptions rather than typical. José de San Martín and Simón Bolívar sailed the Pacific as well as the Atlantic; the last Spanish viceroys learned their strategies in the Philippines as well as in Europe. In the process of independence in Spanish America, the Atlantic, Pacific, and Mediterranean worlds meshed together. Through discussion of the published and unpublished writings of one Scottish adventurer, Alexander Alexander, this chapter will explore the Atlantic transformations of one individual. It closes with some observations regarding the wider relevance of such a case study. The Historical and Cultural Context It is commonplace to think that only Spaniards went to Spanish America during the colonial period; that the Inquisition and staunch border and trade controls kept foreigners away for three centuries after 1492. Tamar Herzog has shown that this was not the case; non-Spaniards travelled to Spanish America and were often welcomed into colonial society on account of their perceived utility to communities.15 Indeed, throughout the eighteenth century imperial manoeuvring and warfare brought Britons to Spanish America in increasingly large numbers. The siege of Cartagena in 1742–3 during the War of Jenkins’ Ear was one such instance; the capture of Havana in 1763 during the Seven Years’ War was another. These brief encounters, conducted under the shadow of warfare and open hostility, allowed little opportunity for cross-cultural exchange or understanding, and often served to perpetuate existing stereotypes and misunderstandings. The region came to be used as an exotic comparison against which to measure the successes (or not) of British colonialism elsewhere. This is most apparent in the realm of literature, where authors such as Daniel Defoe and Tobias Smollett adapted stories of Britons who travelled into the Spanish empire, in order to reflect on the challenges facing British nationhood in Europe, and its imperialism in the Americas.16 The island of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, first published in 1719, was set in the mouth of the River Orinoco on Venezuela’s Atlantic coast and was based on Alexander Selkirk’s real-life adventures on an island off Chile’s Pacific coast, but the novel Tamar Herzog, Defining Nations: Immigrants and Citizens in Early Modern Spain and Spanish America (New Haven, 2003). 15 Ibid. 16 There is of course a European dimension to this work ‘about’ Europe but inspired or set in Spanish America; Voltaire’s Candide (1759), much of which is set in Buenos Aires and Paraguay, neither of which the author had visited, being the most celebrated. 14


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makes no mention at all of the continent that loomed beside. Tobias Smollett’s Roderick Random focuses primarily on the consequences of the 1742 siege of Cartagena on British troops, which the author witnessed as a seaman, but it contained no description at all of Cartagena or its hinterland, as Smollett never left his ship. The novel’s denouement takes place in Buenos Aires and Paraguay, where Smollett finds an ending to unite his protagonist’s family in wealth and happiness. Away from the genre of fiction, this period also saw the writing of one of the most famous and influential British interpretations of Spanish America, this time written by someone who never even saw the continent’s coastline – this book was William Robertson’s History of America (1777). In the eighteenth century, the Spanish and British Atlantics were intertwined by the movement of ideas as well as peoples, driven by warfare and constant comparison through the prism of national pride.17 The British and Spanish imperial worlds continued to be interlaced in other ways through the late colonial period (1780–1808), even when metropolitan officials sought to tighten control over colonial possessions. British-dominated contraband flourished between Jamaica, Trinidad (Spanish until 1797), and ports on the tierra firme (Spanish mainland) such as Riohacha, Santa Marta, and La Guaira. News of the struggle for independence in North America reached rebels in the South through the developing medium of newspapers; the successful rebellion of slaves in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, and the creation of the independent republic of Haiti upon its ruins, had considerable repercussions across the Caribbean and the Atlantic world.18 In the same period, travellers and travel writing became increasingly popular amongst metropolitan readerships. Developments in printing presses enabled Europeans to renew their understanding of Hispanic and Portuguese America through reading histories and travel accounts, new and old.19 In addition to Robertson’s widely discussed History of America, there were many publications and translations written by individuals who had actually crossed the Atlantic. In 1806 the travel accounts of Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa were first published in English.20 The writings of Alexander von Humboldt, first published in English in 1814, rediscovered America for the new century, reinventing it as a land of jungle, plains, and mountains that needed to be scientifically measured, described, and incorporated into the international

17 In addition to Elliott, see Anthony McFarlane, The British in the Americas 1492– 1815 (London, 1994), particularly pp. 284–315. 18 David Geggus (ed.), The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World (Columbia, 2001). 19 See Ivan Jaksic (ed.), The Political Power of the Word: Press and Oratory in Nineteenth-century Latin America (London, 2002), particularly François-Xavier Guerra’s chapter. 20 J. Juan and A. de Ulloa, Voyage to South America: Describing at Large the Spanish Cities, Towns, Provinces, on that Extensive Continent (London, 1806).


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world.21 According to Mary Louise Pratt, Humboldt blazed a trail for the ‘capitalist vanguard’, the European adventurers who followed him and whose interests lay in exploitation rather than exploration. In the words of Jean Franco, these were the ‘missionaries of capitalism’, who wrote travel accounts ‘destined for the desks of directors of British companies, heralding investment and the subjugation of Latin American polities to debt and the dictates of northern business, often pre-supposing and enacting a neo-colonial trajectory’.22 There were other travellers who offered more sympathetic accounts of Spanish America, of course: the novelist Richard Vowell in Venezuela, for example, or the Scottish wife of a Spanish diplomat, Fanny Calderón de la Barca, whose narrative of her time in Mexico in the 1830s remains readable and informative today.23 The other key change that accompanied the increased circulation of knowledge about Spanish America in Europe was the dramatic increase in the numbers of non-Spaniards who chose to travel to Spanish America (although it was not until 1840 that the number of European arrivals outnumbered that of African slaves).24 Between the first declarations of independence in the Hispanic world, triggered by Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of the Iberian Peninsula in 1807–08 and the crisis of legitimacy that this occasioned, and the final expulsion of Spanish forces from mainland America in 1826, over 7,000 Britons, Irishmen, Germans, Poles, Frenchmen, and other Europeans crossed the Atlantic to join the forces fighting for independence under the leadership of Spanish Americans such as Simón Bolívar Ricardo Cicerchia, Journey, Rediscovery and Narrative: British Travel Accounts of Argentina, 1800–1850 (London, 1998), p. 2. On Humboldt and Juan and Ulloa, see Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, How to Write the History of the New World: Histories, Epistemologies, and Identities in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World (Stanford, 2001); Jason Wilson, ‘Introduction’, Alexander von Humboldt, Personal Narrative of a Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent (London, 1995). 22 Jean Franco, ‘A Not-So-Romantic Journey: British Travelers to South America, 1818–28’, in Mary Louise Pratt and Kathleen Newman (eds), Critical Passions: Selected Essays (Durham, NC, 1999), pp. 133–46. For a critique of this interpretation, see Matthew Brown, ‘Richard Vowell’s Not-So-Imperial Eyes’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 38/1 (2006): 95–122, in which I suggested an ‘alternative canon’ of British imperial travel writing about Latin America from this period, to complement the ‘missionaries of capitalism’ studied by Pratt and Franco, and suggesting Vowell, Alexander Alexander and E.L. Joseph, the Trinidadian author of Warner Arundell. See also Fernanda Peñaloza, ‘Appropriating the “Unattainable”: The British Travel Experience in Patagonia’, in Matthew Brown (ed.), Informal Empire in Latin America, pp. 149–72. 23 For Vowell, see Brown, ‘Not-so-imperial-eyes’; for Calderón de la Barca, see June Hahner (ed.), Women Through Women’s Eyes: Latin American Women in NineteenthCentury Travel Accounts (Wilmington, 1998). 24 The 1840 figure comes from Phillip Curtin, ‘Europe and the Atlantic World’, in Jeremy Adelman (ed.), Colonial Legacies: The Problem of Persistence in Latin American History (New York, 1999), p. 25. On Africans and the Atlantic world, see most notably John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World 1400–1680 (Cambridge, 1992). 21


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and José de San Martín. Such a large number of individuals were bound to be more diverse than a simple parade of capitalists in search of business opportunities. Some fought, while others fled at the first sign of fighting. Some had their prejudices confirmed, while others were surprised at the disharmony between what they had read about the people who lived in Spain’s American colonies, and the individuals and societies they encountered on their travels. Some adventurers died not long after arrival, while others made their homes and families in Spanish America and became Colombians, Venezuelans, or Bolivians.25 Among those adventurers who served under Simón Bolívar was Alexander Alexander, a Scot who had prior experience in Ireland, India, and the Caribbean against which to compare the Spanish American societies he encountered between 1816 and 1822. Similar pre-Atlantic experiences, if such we can call them, were not uncommon for the adventurers who served under Bolívar: archival sources demonstrate that many British and Irish mercenaries had seen service in the formal British empire before they reached Spanish America. War Office Papers held in The National Archives in Kew tell us that men such as Edward Carroll, James Cooney, and Thomas Flatters had all served between four and six years in the West Indies before joining the mercenary expeditions in 1819. James Jordan was discharged in Ceylon in late 1819; William Ryan was discharged at St. Helena; and Thomas Francis in Mauritius, having previously served in Hindustan.26 All went on to serve under Bolívar in Venezuela. There, they were kept awake by fear of being eaten by the ‘tigers’ – an animal not found in the Americas – that were rumoured to have eaten stray soldiers with ‘hardly any other vestige of them remaining’ but their bones.27 Like many of his fellow adventurers, Alexander Alexander had lived an imperial life, crossing oceans and moving from colony to

25 On this subject, see Matthew Brown and Martín Alonso Roa (eds), Militares extranjeros en la guerra de independencia. Nuevas perspectivas (Bogotá, 2005); and Matthew Brown, Adventuring through Spanish Colonies: Simón Bolívar, Foreign Mercenaries and the Birth of New Nations (Liverpool, 2006). 26 Records from The National Archives (NA) War Office Papers were compared with military records from the Archivo General de la Nación in Bogotá and the Archivo General de la Nación in Caracas. The results are discussed in more detail in Brown, Adventuring through Spanish Colonies, and the database from which the results are taken is posted online for consultation at www.bris.ac.uk/hispanic/latin/latin.html. 27 Charles Brown, Narrative of the Expedition to South America which sailed from England in 1817, for the service of the Spanish patriots: Including the Military and Naval Transactions, and ultimate fate of that expedition: Also the Arrival of Colonels Blosset and English, with British troops for that service, their reception and subsequent proceedings, with Other Interesting Occurrences (London, 1819), p. 99; Howell (ed.), Life of Alexander Alexander, vol. 1, p. 73. The database cited above reveals many adventurers from across the British Empire – men entered their places of birth in military registers as ‘Calcutta’, ‘Bengal’, ‘Asia’ as well as ‘the West Indies’ and ‘Jamaica’.

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colony. These experiences shaped the way he acted in Spanish America when he arrived there in 1816.28 Alexander Alexander and John Howell Alexander Alexander (born 1782, died some time after 1830) was the illegitimate son of a wealthy Scottish merchant who was cast out into the world at the age of fourteen, sent to work as an overseer on slave plantations in Curaçao, in the Caribbean. For the purposes of this analysis, I divide his life into three periods: a first Atlantic journey to Curaçao followed by a second intended but aborted Atlantic journey to Quebec (encompassing the period 1800–1801); then an imperial journey in the service of the British Army in Ceylon, England, and Ireland (18081814); and a third and final Atlantic journey to the Caribbean and Spanish America (1816–1822). Each journey began and ended in Scotland; each Atlantic journey was characterized by a longing to return home, and each return home brought new disappointment and disillusion with Scotland. The narrative life ended only when Alexander spent seven months in jail in Scotland, during which time he wrote his life story. On his release he met the writer and editor John Howell (1788–1863),29 who turned the manuscript into the form in which it was published in Edinburgh in two volumes in 1830. What became of Alexander Alexander after the publication of his life story is as yet unknown. John Howell was himself a remarkable character. He was the inventor of flying machines, submarines, and bookbinding equipment. By the time he met Alexander Alexander he had already had some success as the author of The Journal of a Soldier of the 71st Regiment (1819), The Life of John Nicol, Mariner (1822), and The Life of Alexander Selkirk (1829). His literary method, as Tim Flannery explains, consisted of ‘befriending old soldiers and sailors, then spending months writing down or editing their life stories’.30 There were claims that his work was financed by the anonymous charity of Mrs Ann Scott, Walter Scott’s mother.31 For The Life of Alexander Alexander Howell claimed to have spent every morning over a period of fourteen months on the ‘above 4,000 folio pages’ of the original, correcting and editing the work with the author: ‘Every page of the work was read

28 For a series of biographical discussions of these ‘imperial careers’, see Lambert and Lester (eds), Colonial Lives. My own contribution to the volume, Brown, ‘Gregor MacGregor: Clansman, Colonizer and Conquistador’, in ibid., pp. 32–57, explores the several Atlantic journeys of another Scottish adventurer who joined Simón Bolívar’s armies. 29 For biographical details on Howell, see A.P. Woolrich, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 30 Tim Flannery, ‘Introduction’, The Life and Adventures of John Nicol, Mariner (Edinburgh, 2000), p. 4. 31 Woolrich, ‘John Howell’, ODNB.


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to him, for his correction and approval, and I proceeded with the narrative’.32 Of Alexander, Howell wrote that ‘It has never been my fortune to converse with a person endowed with a more tenacious memory or a greater regard for truth. … He is a man according to my own heart; he will not sacrifice one iota of truth to give effect to an incident’.33 The Life of Alexander Alexander is not an unproblematic source.34 The literary interventions of John Howell were considerable, meaning that the ghost-writer’s style often threatens to overwhelm the ‘authorial’ voice. Some sections of the narrative, for example the lengthy descriptions of corporal punishment in the British Army, seem to reflect the interests of Howell as a middle-class 1830s Liberal, as much as Alexander’s concerns. The accuracy of some of the dialogue presented in the book is also open to question, given that it was written from memory and transcribed over a decade after the events it described took place. As in the case of Marco Polo and his facilitator Rustichello, it is often impossible to distinguish between the writer and his ghost.35 Since the original manuscript is now lost, we cannot know when or where Howell’s interventions were most prevalent. Yet despite these uncertainties, historians of Venezuelan and Colombian independence have for several decades used the Spanish translation, La Vida de Alexander Alexander, escrita por el mismo, ed. Jaime Tello (Caracas, 1975), to complement their traditional sources for their subject.36 I have my own reservations about some of the factual details of The Life of Alexander Alexander, yet I share these historians’ confidence in the overall veracity of the account. The biographical details of Alexander Alexander’s life which I found in the War Office papers in The National Archives in Kew serve to corroborate that section of the account. Howell, ‘Preface’, The Life of Alexander Alexander, vol. 1, p. iv. Ibid., p. vi. 34 In this sense, then, the autobiography of Alexander Alexander, like those of other Howell protégés such as John Nicol and the anonymous ‘soldier of the 71st Regiment’ prefigured the ‘testimonio’ literary genre in Latin America made famous by such writers as Rigoberta Menchú in the late twentieth century, in which a literary or academic professional takes on the life story of a poorly educated individual who has lived an interesting and illustrative life, and casts and shapes it into an accessible literary form ‘in their own words’ in order to make broader and deeper points about life and society. See John Beverley, ‘“Through All Things Modern”: Second Thoughts on Testimonio’, Boundary 2, 18/2 (1991): 1–21. 35 My thanks to the anonymous Ashgate reader for his insightful comments on this section. The Marco Polo / Rustichello relationship is discussed in John Larner, Marco Polo and the Discovery of the World (New Haven, 1999). 36 Jaime Tello (ed.), La vida de Alexander Alexander, escrita por el mismo (Caracas, 1975). For a recent historian’s use of the Spanish translation, see Clément Thibaud, Repúblicas en armas. Los ejércitos bolivarianos en la Guerra de Independencia (ColombiaVenezuela, 1810–1821) (Bogotá, 2003), particularly pp. 384–5. For reasons of space, La vida de Alexander Alexander contains only the segments perceived by the editor as being directly relevant to the process of Independence in Venezuela, and omits entirely the wider imperial and Atlantic contexts studied here. 32

33


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In The Life of Alexander Alexander, the protagonist’s travels throughout the world were catalysed and defined by his search for an individual identity, a reaction to his illegitimate birth and his lack of a meaningful relationship with either father or mother. He bore his illegitimacy as a stigma – ‘often has a doubt crossed my young mind if I was of the same race as other children’,37 and he looked back on his first years in Greenock, before he was estranged from his mother, as ‘when I first mixed with the world and there I was truly happy’.38 John Howell wrote in his Preface to the text that most of the manuscript detail that he omitted from the published autobiography was family-related. Very early in the life-story, therefore, the protagonist sailed from Greenock to Cork, and then on to the Dutch island of Curaçao. The First and Second Atlantic Journeys, 1800–1801 The first Atlantic journey – from Scotland to Ireland to the Caribbean – was to have been the making of Alexander, providing him with experience, profit, and love: Atlantic networks were to transform him into a successful imperial Briton. Scotland, of course, was closely linked to empire in the late eighteenth century, in particular to the West Indian colonies and plantations, and Alexander’s first Atlantic journey should be seen within that context.39 This first attempt, beginning in 1800, proved a disappointment, however, while his failure to secure an advantageous Atlantic marriage triggered his return to Scotland after just a year away. Further disappointment at home – provoked by his father’s refusal even to countenance supporting him – led to his decision to seek to improve his fortunes in Quebec, but immediately after embarking on a ship at Port Glasgow on 8 April 1801, Alexander was consumed by uncertainty about his future. Taunted by the ‘mischievous pranks’ of ‘common sailors’, who perceived him to be a ‘down at luck gentleman’, he abandoned ship on the west coast of Ayrshire and swam to shore.40 The second attempt proving an even greater failure than the first, Alexander had few options, and after trying his luck first in Scotland, and then in England – another unhappy quest – he eventually enlisted, reluctantly, in the British Army. Short though his first sojourn in the Americas was, it was nevertheless a transformative one in a number of ways. One of his first encounters with the New World, in 1800, is a key moment in the book. Awaking in Curaçao for the first time, Alexander wrote that The Life of Alexander Alexander, vol. 1, p. 1. Ibid., p. 14. 39 Alan Karras, Sojourners in the Sun. Scottish Migrants in Jamaica and the Chesapeake, 1740–1800 (Ithaca, 1992); Douglas Hamilton, ‘Patronage and Profit: Scottish Networks in the British West Indies, c1763–1807’, Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of Aberdeen, 1999. 40 The Life of Alexander Alexander, vol. 1, p. 62. 37 38


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Nature looked beautiful, clothed in a richness of verdure I had never witnessed. … I felt comparatively happy. At this moment I heard, at the other side of the house, a sound as of the cracking of a whip, mixed with the complaints of a person in pain. I went to the window, where I saw a negro man stretched upon the ground, and another negro flogging him upon the buttocks, while a white man stood over him, and counted the lashes, directing the punishment, and the other applied the whip … This appeared, to my inexperienced mind, more strange than anything I saw, for the idea of the East and West Indies was always joined with riches in my thoughts; here I saw the people more poorly dressed than those I had left behind.41

Alexander claimed that he wept tears of sympathy, but, given complete freedom in carrying out his work as overseer, he quickly shed his initial compassion towards the slaves and ‘there [being] no one to control me […] by the lash the work was done, and the people kept in subjection. As things were, we could not proceed without it’.42 In Alexander’s thinking, gradually being forged by his imperial experiences, physical enforcement of strict racial hierarchies became integral to ‘getting things done’, in slavery just as they would be later in the military. In Curaçao, Alexander found himself at an obvious intersection between British, Dutch, French, and African Atlantic worlds. He socialized with young French ladies on the estates, hoping to make one fall in love with him, but was constantly rebuffed because of his inexperience in such matters as culture, music, and dance. Rejected in love, his time in Curaçao became marked also by tensions relating to empire, status, and identity. On one occasion, when Alexander hit a female slave and caused her nose to bleed, a quarrel erupted with a French colleague in which such tensions bubbled rapidly to the surface: Words arose, I spoke in English for the sake of volubility, the French not coming readily to me. He, not comprehending what I said, bawled out ‘Parlez Francais?’ ‘Non, non’ I replied, ‘I will speak English, my country language’. With the most ineffable scorn mixed with rage depicted on his face, he said ‘Your country? You no country’, [and I responded] ‘yes I have a country, and a good country!’43

It was this exchange that spurred Alexander’s later desire, when enlisting in the British Army, to seek to improve his status in order to enable him to return to Curaçao, but he was determined to come back ‘as a gentleman’.44

41

Ibid., vol. 1, p. 21. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 42. 43 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 46. Note that here Alexander refers to English, not British, soldiers. 44 Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 69–70. 42

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Army and Empire: 1808–1814 Alexander’s aborted Atlantic journey to Quebec was followed by the second stage of his imperial career, extending roughly from 1802 to 1815, which took place within the explicitly imperial context of British Army postings, in England, Ireland, and then in Asia. Private Alexander Alexander’s military papers can be found in the War Office section of the National Archives in Kew, and they corroborate the account in The Life of Alexander Alexander of his service in the imperial army.45 He enlisted on 24 April 1801 in the 6th Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Artillery, under the command of General Phillip Martin, in Phillip Devonford’s company. Before travelling to India, Alexander served in the army in England. Here he experienced the contempt that society showed for its soldiers: ‘Soldiers were hated and despised, insulted and loaded with the foulest epithets – in our different billets looked upon and received as if we had carried pestilence, robbery and pillage with us’.46 Of his period of service in the army, Alexander spent four years and 94 days in the East Indies, being promoted to the rank of Bombardier in 1808. He signed his documents very fluently. When he was finally discharged at the Woolwich barracks, on Christmas Eve 1814, he was aged 32, and was said to have developed ‘chronic hepatitis which renders him unfit for service’. The physical description given in the discharge papers – ‘five feet seven inches [tall], brown hair, brown eyes, brown complexion’ – is not inconsistent with the portrait on the frontispiece of The Life of Alexander Alexander.47 Service in the British Army opened Alexander’s eyes in many ways, as he saw his preconceptions about British superiority overturned repeatedly, with ‘men every day punished with a severity I had never beheld exercised on the slaves’ in Curaçao.48 Of the vessel on which his company was sent to India, he said that it ‘was very much crowded, and we were packed together like negroes in the hold of a slave ship’.49 They were stationed in Ceylon. At no stage during this period of his narrative did Alexander refer to Britain, or anyone British, in a remotely favourable light. He struggled to reconcile his experience of a decadent and barbarous imperial army that survived only by flogging its most vulnerable members, with the favourable impression that he developed of the local people. It encouraged him to question (but not to give up) the belief in the superiority of white men over others, which had been inculcated in him in Scotland and in Curaçao. Alexander was full of praise for the different peoples he encountered in Ceylon, particularly some of the East India Company’s native troops, whom he compared 45 Alexander’s discharge papers (1814) from the British Army are in The National Archives in the War Office Papers, WO 97/1210/117. 46 The Life of Alexander Alexander, vol. 1, p. 213. 47 The frontispiece is reproduced in Brown, Adventuring through Spanish Colonies, p. 62. 48 The Life of Alexander Alexander, vol. 1, p. 87. 49 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 98.


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with Greeks and Romans. They were ‘all tall and well-proportioned men, wellfeatured, of a light bronze colour, natives of Delhi. They were well-conducted, moral, honest, and sober; the most faithful of troops upon duty – in every respect superior to the Europeans on these points’.50 Yet notwithstanding the light in which he portrayed some of the people with whom he came into close contact during this time, Alexander retained a belief in the importance of racial hierarchies. When locals transgressed these boundaries he was unsympathetic: ‘[In Ceylon] nothing appeared to give the natives more pleasure than to get the European soldiers flogged. … Often, when I saw their wicked ways, have I fervently wished that I had their dingy hides in the West Indies’.51 It was in Ceylon that Alexander realised that the British Empire had failed to fulfil his hopes and desires for advancement and status. He was disillusioned and sank into drinking and cursing: ‘I resembled [more] a ferocious beast untamed in his cage, than a human being. … My comrades perhaps swore from bad habit and thoughtlessness; I from the real bitterness of a spirit dissatisfied with itself, with the world, and all around it’.52 He married a local woman, who remained unnamed in his narrative. As Alexander recounted it, the relationship grew not out of affection or even of a desire for social advancement in native society, but rather out of his need for a personal nurse to guide him back to health. He admitted beating and whipping his wife to keep her under his control. This was not a happy time: ‘Ceylon, where, in pain and disease, I spent the prime of my life, for nought’.53 He dreamed of ‘the cool refreshing breezes of Scotland’ and left his wife and his garrison in October 1810. After unsuccessfully seeking the patronage of distant relations elsewhere in the military hierarchy in India, he arrived back in London in August 1811.54 Crossing Boundaries and Fractured Identities: 1816–1822 In London after his eventual discharge from the army in 1814, Alexander found his life ‘so utterly hopeless’55 – even the ‘common poor’ insulted him for having been a soldier – that he joined a ship sailing for the West Indies. As on previous occasions, questions of status disconcerted Alexander from the very start of the journey. This time they were complicated by race as well. When, during the 50

Ibid., vol. 1, p. 166. For a splendid discussion of British attitudes to the East India Company’s native troops, see G.J. Bryant, ‘Indigenous Mercenaries in the Service of European Imperialists: The case of the Sepoys in the early British Indian army 1750–1800’, War in History, 7/1 (2000): 2–28. 51 The Life of Alexander Alexander, vol. 1, p. 128. 52 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 141. 53 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 181. 54 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 187. 55 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 245.


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passage, he was accused of theft by a Portuguese man, Alexander responded that two black girls on board should be searched before he was, regardless of the fact that he was travelling in steerage and they were not: ‘I added that it was a disgrace in him [the captain] to bring a reproach upon his colour, by his bare insinuation’. Alexander fumed that the captain was privileging status based on class, rather than race.56 The ship arrived in the West Indies in early 1815. Once again Alexander had the sense that empire was not fulfilling its promises to him; he felt old and, because of his relatively advanced age, also prejudiced against, as opportunities were not readily forthcoming.57 Eventually he found work on a slave plantation on the mainland of tierra firme, in Demerara, where he returned to his earlier occupation as a slave overseer. Comparing this experience with his time in Curaçao, Alexander was shocked at the liberties allowed to slaves, and he found their impertinence and unruliness extremely uncomfortable. After two years he left Demerara, and travelled on foot through British Guiana, and into Venezuela – control over which was then being disputed by Spain and its rebellious colonial subjects.58 The journey through Guiana to Venezuela was a transformational moment; the autobiography thereafter changes markedly in tone. In contrast to the depression and anger of his period working on imperial slave plantations, here there were smallholdings peopled by ‘the children of ease and plenty [where] a perpetual spring reigned’.59 Alexander felt optimistic that his luck would turn and that his adventures in the Spanish colonies would be rewarded. The indigenous peoples he saw on passing into Venezuela had ‘an air of dignity … a gift of nature, arising from independence’.60 He noted that ‘they [the indigenous people] resemble the Asiatics in more points than any people I ever saw; so much so that I really thought myself once more in Ceylon’.61 But having travelled to Angostura from Demerara along with other potential soldiers tempted by the offers of good pay, Alexander was of little practical use to Bolívar’s army, instead spending his time milling around with other British officers awaiting orders which never came: ‘I attended no person, neither did my duty, not having the language’.62 Instead he observed the local people, remarking that the inhabitants of the Venezuelan island of Margarita were ‘loyal’, ‘committed to the cause’, ‘naturally abstemious’, and healthy and industrious.63 56

Ibid., vol. 1, p. 257. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 262. 58 Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 337–9. 59 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 4. 60 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 7. 61 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 8. 62 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 25. 63 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 138. It was on Margarita that Alexander met Gregor MacGregor who warned him not to expect too much of his new republican comrades because of the severe limitations on resources. Ibid., vol. 2, p. 163, and p. 231 for a later encounter. For an account of MacGregor’s career and his writings, see Matthew Brown, ‘Inca, Sailor, Soldier, 57


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Alexander viewed his first experience of Spanish America within the paradigm of the marvellous and fantastic, as first set out by Christopher Columbus and the conquistadores. Writing of the first campaigns against Spanish rule, he noted that ‘the capture of Caracas was the El Dorado of our hopes. … It was said that Bolívar had millions of dollars hidden in the ground in Caracas’.64 Indeed, during this second Atlantic period of Alexander’s life we can detect subtle shifts in subjectivity, and the increasing privileging of dreams and fantasies in his interpretation of reality. In response to his encounter with Bolívar’s army of whites, blacks, mestizos and pardos all wearing second-hand British army uniforms purchased from opportunistic entrepreneurs, Alexander reflected that ‘when I would rouse myself from melancholy dreams, and [saw] the negroes, Creoles and Indians, dressed thus, it looked as if they had returned from ransacking Britain, and I was prisoner to a horde of barbarians’.65 This picture encapsulated the way that Alexander’s imperial British identity had been shaken to its core by his unplanned enlistment in a republican army seeking freedom from colonial rule in a region of marked racial and cultural diversity. Race was absolutely fundamental to Alexander’s anxiety about identity in Spanish America, just as it was for other British observers in this period, such as Robert Semple, who wrote that the mixture of races was ‘a source of endless corruption, to which are joined a climate inducing indolence and voluptuousness, and the total absence of all refined methods of passing the time away’.66 Alexander was particularly astonished by the sight of black officers commanding their white subalterns: To see this often made me grasp my sword, and stamp in fury on the ground; and I blush when I say it, no other nation was so degraded for no other soldiers would serve under officers of colour. … It was too much to see the pride of Europe, English soldiers, degraded so low in a foreign land.67

It was his ‘melancholy dreams’, triggered by racial diversity and egalitarianism in the armed forces, that created Alexander’s discomfort, and provoked his decision to seek further opportunities outside military service. He justified his exit, as did many departing mercenaries, by referencing the ‘cruelty and violence’ perpetrated by Bolívar’s army: ‘much as I had seen of wanton and extravagant flogging for trivial faults in the British Army, my soul could not brook this’.68 Alexander’s next stop was again as an overseer on a slave plantation, this time near Santa Marta, on King: Gregor MacGregor and the early nineteenth-century Caribbean’, Bulletin of Latin American Research, 24/1 (2005): 44–71. 64 The Life of Alexander Alexander, vol. 2, pp. 68, 95. 65 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 96. 66 Robert Semple, Sketch of the Present State of Caracas; including a journey from Caracas through La Victoria and Valencia to Puerto Cabello (London, 1812), p. 121. 67 The Life of Alexander Alexander, vol. 2, pp. 101–2. 68 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 98.


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Colombia’s Caribbean coast, but he had become so fearful that slaves would break in and attack him in his bed, that he had to move on again. He unsuccessfully sought work in Jamaica, before returning to try his luck in Venezuela once more.69 Perhaps he thought that things could not get much worse. They did. When Alexander left Bolívar’s army for the second time, in late 1821, it was not after military victory or defeat, or through illness like so many of his fellow soldiers. He left after suffering complete humiliation. Separated from his unit he found himself stuck in a marsh during a storm, fearing he would die, until he was rescued by a small group of peasant farmers who happened to cross his path.70 They asked him who he was and he replied in his faltering Spanish: ‘I stood still and answered “Un pobre, perdido, enfermo, triste, frio, hambre, fatigar, Inglis Colombiano Republicano teniente con un burro [sic]” [“a poor, lost, sick, sad, cold, hunger, tire[d], Eng-lish Colombian Republican lieutenant with an ass”]’. They all laughed. His military and physical incapacity, not to mention his poor grasp of the Spanish language, having been exposed publicly in front of low-status rural Hispanic Americans, Alexander travelled on to Barranquilla by canoe in April 1821, and then left the town on another ass which he struggled to control, fearing that the woody landscape through which he rode ‘was bewitched, or my evil genius dwelt in it’.71 By this stage the very modes of travel served to undermine Alexander’s dreams of adventure: these ass scenes are reminiscent of Don Quijote’s chivalric horseback adventures. In early May 1821, Alexander left Spanish America once more, working his passage to Jamaica where he found everything expensive and the people unfriendly: no sooner had he arrived, he longed for ‘the Spanish Main, where money went a long way and every door was open to the traveller’.72 He drifted between the Caribbean islands for half a year before returning, once again, to Venezuela, to search (unsuccessfully) for back-pay or a pension from the now victorious Republican army. It was in this period that the key themes of The Life of Alexander Alexander came together as Alexander sought to make sense of his Atlantic and imperial travels. Before making his now customary return to Scotland, poor, ill, and disillusioned as ever, in late 1821 Alexander climbed the mountain range that separates the port of La Guaira from the Venezuelan capital, Caracas. At the top of the mountain pass he contemplated that the scene was grand beyond description; but my heart could not enjoy it. I felt sad and desolate; a chilling sensation came over me, more benumbing than I had ever felt. I thus sat alone, far above the horizon, as if I had been a being of a different race, and had no connexion with any man below. I never felt so much alone … this state of melancholy abstraction.73

69

Ibid., vol. 2, p. 243. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 186–90. 71 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 237. 72 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 243. 73 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 272. 70


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In this reflection Alexander encapsulated the final failure of his Atlantic journeys. Whereas previous adventurers in Venezuela had found, or had claimed to find, meaning, enlightenment, masculinity, and imperial purpose through climbing mountains and ‘possessing’ landscapes,74 Alexander found only despair and emptiness. The grand romantic expanse of nature could not fulfil him; indeed it only served to cause him to think of the racial divide that separated him from other men in Spanish America, and which prevented him from understanding or feeling comfortable in the social reality of the new nations. This mountain-top insight inspired Alexander to quote Psalm 54, ‘O, that my soul had the wings of a dove, that might fly away and be at rest’.75 After a subsequent period spent in hospital in Caracas, alongside many of the veterans of the 1821 Battle of Carabobo that had secured Venezuelan independence from Spain, Alexander noted that ‘the country being now free, they [the new government led by Bolívar] cared no more about us, and were anxious to get us away’.76 Alexander left hospital on 19 December 1821. For two months, he worked as a clerk in a store in La Guaira belonging to a company of North American merchants. In February 1822 he sailed to St Bartholomew on a privateer, then in March to St Kitts, then Tortola, and from there to Port Glasgow in April 1822. Commenting on ‘how strange had been’ his ‘fate’, Alexander wrote of returning from the West Indies as completing a circle, after twenty-two years of ‘misery and frustrated hopes’.77 Throughout The Life of Alexander Alexander, Scotland had been the axis upon which the Atlantic world rotated. Home was a place to which Alexander repeatedly returned seeking improved family relations, new prospects, or a position. He never expressed any pride in his Scottish birth: on being asked on encountering a distant relation while serving in the British Army in Asia ‘What countryman are you?’, he replied ‘a Scotsman; but my heart told me I had no country – no one that cared for me’.78 Scotland had given him nothing but reasons to seek a better life elsewhere. He went on a search for his mother in 1822, but even this became a ‘cheerless wandering’.79 His Atlantic and imperial travels were brought to an end by ill-health (‘I offered to go abroad, or do anything I was fit for …[but] I lived like a hermit’80) and Alexander was eventually sent to jail for public disorder offences, first in Irvine and then Ayr.81 It was during those seven months that he 74 For one emblematic case, see Matthew Brown, ‘Soldier Heroes and the Wars of Independence in Colombia’, Hispanic Research Journal, 7/1 (2006): 41–56. 75 The Life of Alexander Alexander, vol. 2, p. 272. 76 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 283. 77 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 309. 78 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 191. 79 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 317. 80 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 320. 81 This was punishment for breaking the terms of the agreement forbidding him from seeing his father. He was ‘worthless and a vagrant’. Ibid., vol. 2, p. 323.


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wrote his manuscript. Scotland and family provided the framework for Alexander’s travels and his identity, yet neither created a comfortable or secure identity for the traveller. Like that of the Uruguayan poet Mario Benedetti (born 1920), his was a disconsolate patria whose only hold on his heart was to keep drawing him back from the travels that distracted him.82 The networks upon which he moved were those of empire. Conclusion Alexander Alexander lived an imperial life as well as an Atlantic life. He crossed the Atlantic four times seeking opportunity. Like other British subjects in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, he sought advancement through empire, and during the latter years of his travels, he attempted to exploit the fragmentation of Spain’s colonial rule amidst the opportunities created by the slowly coalescing forms of authority that replaced colonialism. His story confirms something of Bernard Porter’s argument that the British empire was of little relevance to the lower-classes at home, ‘except as a place of exile of last economic resort, or worse if they were reduced to serving (and dying) as soldiers there, which was not likely to warm them to it as an idea’.83 Yet if the formal empire was a place of last resort (which it frequently was for Alexander) then Latin America, the ‘informal empire’ and the Atlantic world were places beyond the original imperial ‘pull’ which catalysed Alexander’s travel, and also beyond the frame of Porter’s analysis. Porter’s focus on ‘domination’ as the primordial aspect of imperialism means that his analysis understandably centres overwhelmingly on the formal empire.84 Alexander’s imperial experiences were by no means ‘absent-minded’; rather, his travels in the circum-Caribbean put him on the periphery of Britain’s imperial world, constantly producing tensions between various loyalties, identities, affiliations and opportunities. Indeed his life and his story demonstrate the value that an Atlantic approach can have, stretching beyond the compartmentalizing tendencies of imperial history. Alexander’s Atlantic travels through the shifting arenas of colonies, nations, and metropoles constantly affected his relationship to the land of his birth, Scotland, the imperial power under whose hegemony he travelled, Britain, and the Mario Benedetti, ‘Noción de patria’, Antología poetica (Bogotá, 2000), pp. 71–4. Bernard Porter, ‘What Did They Know of Empire’, History Today, 54/10 (2004): 42–8. 84 Bernard Porter, The Absent-Minded Imperialists: Empire, Society and Culture in Britain (Oxford, 2004), p. 313, also p. 283. See also Andrew Thompson, The Empire Strikes Back? The Impact of Imperialism on Britain from the Mid-Nineteenth Century (London, 2005). For an attempt to bring the two approaches back together through a focus on varying degrees of sovereignty, see Andrew Thompson, ‘Afterword’, in Brown (ed.), Informal Empire in Latin America, pp. 229–41. 82 83


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way that he carried himself as a man. But the Atlantic dimension of Alexander’s life was just that – an Atlantic facet of a life that was lived imperially and with concerns about race and status that transcended geographical regions. If any consistent identity emerges from Alexander’s autobiography, it is neither ‘Atlantic’ nor ‘Scot’ nor ‘Briton’, but rather that of an individual whose low self-esteem was repeatedly confirmed by the buffeting of events and imperial experience. Alexander’s Scottishness was defined by a longing for rural images of simplicity and fulfilment – running streams, low suns, verdant hills – which was constantly denied him by a lack of success in personal and family relationships. Alexander’s Britishness was one of aspiration, of promised opportunity in the imperial and Atlantic worlds which was denied him by circumstance and health breakdown and the unfair prejudice shown by metropolitan society towards its imperial soldiers. Alexander’s Atlantic experience was one of thwarted opportunities and subverted dreams. These shocks repeatedly sent him reeling back across the imperial networks that had brought him across the ocean, back through slave plantations, merchant activity, Scottish ports and towards the folded arms of his unwelcoming family. This spiral of descent left him finally in jail in Ayrshire, where he considered his experience and sought solace in autobiography. The life-story of Alexander Alexander illustrates the ways that the histories and geopolitical trajectories of Spanish America were disorientating for many non-elite Atlantic observers and participants. While colonial racial hierarchies did remain largely intact once the dust from the Wars of Independence had settled,85 the convulsive mixture of the language of liberation with a diverse and predominantly mixed-race population caused anxiety and bewilderment across the Atlantic and within the French, Spanish, Portuguese and British imperial worlds.86 Rather than being the ‘vanguard of capitalism’, adventurers like Alexander Alexander were swept (and sometimes dragged) along in the wake of a sea of revolution, diplomatic manoeuvring and commercial ventures that they could barely comprehend. Their own identities were correspondingly fractured and unstable. The Atlantic dimension of Spanish American Independence was fundamental to Alexander Alexander’s involvement in it and memories of it, just as it was for many other participants. Simón Bolívar’s travels to Paris, Rome and London made him into the Liberator that he became on his return to Venezuela, for example.87 The diplomatic and geopolitical situation in the Caribbean and the Atlantic shaped the revolutionary movements to an extent that the Pacific never did. Spanish Americans valued the opinions and the contributions of individuals who crossed Aline Helg, Liberty and Equality in Caribbean Colombia 1770–1835 (Chapel Hill and London, 2004). 86 For this climate of anxiety and expectation regarding liberty and independence, see David Geggus (ed.), The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World (Columbia, 2001). 87 Tomás Polanco Alcántara, Simón Bolívar (Caracas, 1994), is particularly good on this aspect of Bolívar’s life. 85


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the Atlantic to share in their struggle; in Venezuela, as Elias Pino Iturrieta and Pedro Calzadilla have shown, the mirada del otro (literally: The Other’s Gaze) became an important mirror against which the newly independent states and nations were judged.88 European adventurers founded families in the 1810s and 1820s in Colombia, Venezuela and Bolivia that stretched into the highest political and social circles, affecting the formulation of national identities and becoming part of them. Atlantic networks of commerce, politics and kinship shaped their lives. The Atlantic did not constrain these lives. For Alexander Alexander, just as for Simón Bolívar and José de San Martín, the Atlantic frame of study is insufficient. Alexander compared conditions in Asia and Ireland, in the Caribbean and Spanish America. The ways that he viewed and described indigenous peoples, slavery, and elite groups were preconditioned by his experiences in colonial sites outwith the Atlantic world. The same insight can be applied to other nineteenth century Latin American figures, such as Francisco de Miranda who developed in Imperial Russia some of his most important thoughts regarding Spanish American Independence.89 Throughout the nineteenth century, the Atlantic was just one of the channels through which anti-colonial movements in Cuba and the Philippines communicated.90 Further research into the trajectories of migrants and adventurers might help us to understand better what the Atlantic really meant to those who travelled across it.

Elias Pino Iturrieta and Pedro Calzadilla (eds), La mirada del otro: viajeros extranjeros en la Venezuela del siglo XIX (Caracas, 1996). See also the treatment accorded to John Devereux in Venezuela, discussed in Brown and Roa Celis (eds), Militares extranjeros. 89 Karen Racine, Francisco de Miranda: A Transatlantic Life (Wilmington, 2003). 90 Benedict Anderson, Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination (London, 2005). 88

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Index Abomey, 164, 166, 169 Abudiente, Abraham, 103 Abudiente, Rowland, 101 n.16 Acla, 135, 136, 137, 141 Act of Union (1707), 132, 134 Africans (see also slaves; slave trade) as diplomatic emissaries, 9, 10 as students, 9 Agadja, King of Dahomey, 154 Aglaseniqua River, 137, 141 n.32 Aglatomate River, 135 Aiken, John, 83 n.31, 84, 85, 86, 87, 91 n.61 Akan, 21 Alcázar, Francisco del, 58, 66, 68, 71, 72 aldeias in Brazil, under Dutch administration, 118, 119, 121, 122 under Portuguese administration, 115, 117 Alexander, Alexander and British army, 30, 210, 212, 214–15 and empire, 209, 212, 213, 214, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221 and identity, 212, 213, 217, 220, 221 and John Howell, 210–11, 212 and racial hierarchies, 30, 213, 214–15, 216, 217, 221 and Scotland, 210, 218, 219, 220, 221 and slavery, 213, 216, 218 family background, 212 in Curaçao, 212–13 in Demerara, 216 in Simón Bolívar’s army, 209, 216, 217, 218 in Spanish America, 216–19 Allada and European trade, 152, 164 king of, 9 kingdom of, 152, 154 Amsterdam Jewish community in, 17, 98, 101 n.16

Andreas, 136 Angola, 10, 174, 176, 178 Dutch in, 121, 122 Archaeology, xiii–xiv, 28, 29, 134–5, 149, 152, 156–7 Ardra (see also Allada), 152 asiento trade, 13 Atlantic Creoles, 7–8, 155, 156, 163 Awoku, Latévi, 9 Axim Portuguese factories in, 7 baccalao, 52, 53 n.110 Baccalaos (or Baccallaos), 47, 48 baccallà, 52 Bahia, 9, 116, 117, 121, 127, 193, 195, 202 Bailyn, Bernard, 1, 3, 12, 109 n.49 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 51, 54 Bañun, 178, 180, 182, 183, 184, 185, 187, 191 Barbados, 20, 21, 90, 94, 100, 103, 104, 109, 156 Barbot, Jean, 158 Barlow, Roger, 57, 59, 60–61, 62, 66–7, 68, 69, 71, 72 Barreira, Balthezar, 196–7 batuques, 183 Bayly, C.A., 203, 204 Belgrano, Manuel, 206 Belon, Pierre, 38, 53 Benedetti, Mario, 220 Berlin, Ira, 7–8, 9, 155 Bight of Benin (see also Dahomey; Hueda; Ouidah; Savi), 9, 151, 152, 153, 155, 159, 165 Bijagó, 178, 186, 188 black rice, 12 n.50 Bogotá (see Santa Fe de Bogotá) Bolívar, Simón, 204, 206, 208, 209, 217, 219, 221, 222 bolsas de mandinga and Catholic Church, 197–8, 199

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and Portuguese Atlantic, 29–30, 193–202 and Portuguese Inquisition, 194, 197–98, 199, 200, 201–2 and slave resistance, 198, 199, 200, 201 as heresy, 30, 200, 201 as protection, 29, 178, 183, 193, 197, 198–9 as witchcraft, 30, 201 contents of, 178, 186, 193, 197, 199 used by Europeans, 30, 187, 199 Bon, Robert, 89, 90 Bordeaux and cod fishing, 35, 36, 54 Borland, Francis, 145, 146, 147, 148 Bosman, Willem, 158 Bragança Africans in, 200 Brazil Dutch in (see also Dutch Brazil), 17–20, 28, 83–4 n.31, 86, 87–8, 98 113–30 Jesuits in, 18–19, 98, 115, 116, 117 religious toleration under Dutch rule, 17–20 Bridges, Sir John, 59, 60 n.16 Bridges, Thomas, 57, 59, 60, 61, 63, 65, 66, 68, 71 Bristol cloth industry, 61 Grammar School, 59 soap production, 64 buccaneers, 133, 135 n.14, 136 Bueno de Mezqueta, Abraham, 105, 109 Burke, Edmund, 100 Burnett, John, 94 Burt, Robert, 92 Cabot, John, 22, 47 Cabot, Sebastian, 59, 63 cacaotl (see also chocolate), 25 Cacheu Afro-Atlantic practices in, 180–191 Christianized (Kriston) community of, 174, 177, 179, 180–91 and kin relations 180, 182, 189 Cristãos Novos (New Christians) in, 175, 176, 177, 180, 187, 189, 190, 191 Jews in, 175, 176, 177, 189

Mandinga influence in, 177–8, 186–7, 188–9 religious practices in, 177–8, 180–91 slaves in, 176, 184, 185, 186, 188 Cadiz English interests in, 63 Caldeira, Fr António, 18 Calderón de la Barca, Fanny, 208 Caledonia, 143 n.39, 144 Campbell, Alexander, 149 Canary Islands English interests in, 63 Genoese interests in, 63 sugar production, 63 Cape Verde Islands and Portuguese Inquisition, 173–4, 181, 190 New Christians in, 175, 176, 177 n.14, 189 Carabobo, Battle of, 219 Caribbean Jewish community in (see Jews) multi-ethnic networks in (see also contraband), 77, 89–92 Carreto, 147 Cartagena contraband trade, 14 foreign traders in, 14, 176 Siege of (1742–3), 206, 207 Cartier, Jacques, 47, 49 Castile legislation concerning foreigners in, 62 n.25 soap, 64 Cataño, Leonardo, 64, 65, 70 Ceará assault on WIC garrison, 121 Indian slavery, 120 rebellion against Dutch, 119–20, 121 smallpox, 120 ‘charter generation’, 7, 11 Chesapeake (see also Virginia), multi-ethnic networks in, 77 chinas, 178, 183, 184, chocolate consumption in Europe, 23–6 consumption in Mesoamerica, 23–6 flavourings, 26

Index chûr, 183, 185 Clarke, Samuel, 106, 108 Cockx, Aelbrecht, 90, 94 cod (see also cod livers, cod tongues, cod tripes, consumption) consumption in Europe, 23 consumption in France, 34–56 and colonization, 34–5, 45–6, 49–50, 54–5 and fasting and abstinence, 42, 43, 44–5, 52, 56 and French culture, 26, 54–5 and French national identity, 26, 55–6 and recipes for, 41, 47, 52 cod fishery (see also Newfoundland) Basque fishing fleets, 35–6 English fishing fleets, 37–8 French fishing fleets, 35–7 Spanish fishing fleets, 37–8 cod livers/cod liver oil, 52 n.107, 54 cod tongues, 52, 53, 54 cod tripes, 51, 52, 54, 56 Coimbra Inquisition, 200, 201–2 Coke, Edward, 99 Colchester cloth industry, 61 Colombia (see New Granada) Columbian Exchange, 10–11 Commander of Brazilians, 118, 119 Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies, 28, 131, 133 Comunero Revolt (1520), 71–2 consumption (see also cod, chocolate, tobacco) and the body, 26, 34–5, 45–6, 51 and colonization, 34–5, 45–6, 49–50, 54–5 and culture, 34, 55–6 anthropology of, 33, 34 contraband in Caribbean, 13–17, 20, 207 in Massachusetts, 12 in Spanish colonies, 13–17, 20, 207 conversos (see also New Christians), 57, 66, 71, 72, 176

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Coro Afro-Curaçaoans in, 16–17 creolization, 8 Cristãos da terra (see also Kriston), 179 Cristãos por ceremonia (see also Kriston), 179 Cuisinier françois, 41, 47, 52 Curaçao as entrepôt, 15, 16 Catholic clergy in, 16 Jews in, 20, 21, 104, 106, 109 n.48, 176 links with Spanish mainland, 15–17 slaves in, 16–17, 213, 214, 216 smuggling networks, 15–17, 20 Dahomey (see also Ouidah) and conquest of the Hueda, 154, 164 and slave trade, 154, 156, 164–5 and trade with Europeans, 151, 154, 155–56, 164–9 strategies vis-à-vis Europeans, 152, 154, 155–6, 164–5, 166–7 Dampier, William, 133 Dangbe, 169 Darien archaeology, 134–5, 139–45, 148–9 indigenous population (see also Kuna), 133, 135, 138, 141, 144, 149 Scots settlement of, 131–50 as utopia, 138–9 cemetery, 143 communal oven, vii, 139, 140, 141, 143 disease, 131, 143, 147–8 flora and fauna, 138–9 food shortages, 136, 144, 149 fortifications, 28, 135, 137, 139, 140, 141–3, 146, 147, 148, 149 mineral wealth, 139 trade goods,135, 136, 140, 142, 143, 146 women settlers, 131 n.2, 145, 147 Spanish positions, 134 n.11, 143, 148 Spanish recapture of, 146, 147, 148, 149 Darien Scheme, 28, 96, 131, 133 Defoe, Daniel, 206 DeLap, Andrew, 87 Delgado, Juan, 143, 146

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De Lima, Haim Abinum, 28, 104–5, 108, 109 n.52, 111 Desliens, Nicolas, 49 Dieppe School, 48, 49–50 djambakós, 178, 185, 187 Douglas, George, 142 Dredan, Thomas, 90 n.57, 91, 92, 93 Drummond, Thomas, 142, 146 Dutch Brazil Jewish diaspora from, 98, 100 Jews in, 17–20, 98, 100 loss of, 19–20, 88, 98, 128 Portuguese re-capture of, 19–20, 98 and arrival of Jesuits, 98 Portuguese Revolt, 19, 126–7, 129 relations with indigenous populations (see also Potiguar; Tupi), 113–30 religious toleration in, 17–18, 19, 98 sugar industry, 17, 18, 98, 115, 117 East India Company, 133, 214 Edict of Villiers-Cotteret (1539), 55 eel consumption in France, 41, 42 Elliott, John, 13, 205 Elmina archaeology compared with Ouidah, 168, 170 Dutch in, 12 Portuguese in, 7 ethnogenesis, 166 Farim, 180, 181, 182, 189 n.59 Faro Africans in, 200 feiticeiras, 181 Fernandes Carapeba, Domingo, 125, 126 Fernández de Enciso, Martín, 59 fishery (see cod fishery; Newfoundland) Florida Africans in, 8 Forgun, Agatha, 89 Forgun, Robert, 89, 92 Fort St Andrew (Darien), 28, 135, 137, 140–44, 146, 147, 148, 149 Fort William (Ouidah), 169 France cod consumption, 34–56

cod fishery (see Newfoundland) Franciscans in Guinea region, 180, 181, 182 Franco, Jean and ‘missionaries of capitalism’, 208 Franklin, Benjamin, 205 García, Ana, 60, 71 Gastaldi, Jacopo, 50 gbo, 197 Geba, 180, 182 Ghana (see also Gold Coast), 168 Gibbeson, Patrick, 92 Gideon, Rowland, 103 Gilroy, Paul, 155 Glaberrima use by maroons, 11 use by slaves, 11 Glewhe (see also Ouidah), 154, 164 Gold Coast (see also Elmina) and European trade, 151, 153, 163, 168 multi-ethnic community in, 165 Golden Island, 135, 136, 137 Gomes, Ambrósio, 187–9, 190 Gomes, Teodosia (Mãe Gomes), 188 Gonçalves Francês, Jorge, 182, 187, 189, 190 Gorée, 156 Grand Bank, 37 n.22, 49, 50, 55 gris-gris, 177, 188 n.56 Groote Visscherij, 78 Guadalquivir River, 58, 72 n.70 Guajira peninsula, 15 Guajiro peoples links with Curaçao, 15 Guararapes, Second Battle of (1649), 88 guarda di kurpu (see bolsas de mandinga) Guerra, François-Xavier, 204 Guinea Bissau (see also Cacheu), 174, 179, 180, 191 Guinea Coast (see also Cacheu), 29, 174, 175, 176, 177, 179, 183, 187, 189, 191, 196, 202 Guinguim djagra of, 180 n.24, 184 Gulf of Mexico commercial activity in compared with Newfoundland, 22–3, 37–8

Index Gulf of St Lawrence commercial activity in compared with Gulf of Mexico/ Caribbean, 37–8 hake consumption in France, 38, 39 Hamilton, Alexander, 97 Hamilton, Archibald, 108 Hamilton, James, 97 Hamilton, James Jr, 97 Hardie, Robert, 86 Harris, William, 90 n.57, 91, 92, 95 Hayman (or Hyman), Solomon, 103 Heeren XIX (see also WIC) and the Dutch-Tupi alliance, 113, 122, 123, 124, 126 Hernández, Beatriz, 27, 57, 62–3, 66, 67, 68, 71 Herrera, Sancho de, 62, 63 n.27, 68 Herries, Walter, 137, 143 herring consumption in France, 38, 39, 40, 44 Hispaniola, 63, 64 Hitchcock, Robert, 37 Hopeful Binning, 145 Howell, John and Alexander Alexander, 210–11 as inventor, 210 as writer and editor, 210–11, 212 compared with Rustichello, 211 Hueda (see also Ouidah; Savi) agricultural production, 161–2 and slave trade, 152, 154–5, 161–2 and trade with Europeans, 151, 153–63 archaeology, 157, 159, 162–3 conquered by Damohey, 154, 164 origins, 159 pre-contact economy, 152–3, 156, 161 strategies vis-à-vis Europeans, 152, 155–8, 162–3 Humboldt, Alexander von, 207–8 indentured labour, 91, 93, 94, 95 indigenous populations (see Native Americans) Inquisition (Portuguese)

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and Christianized Africans (Kriston), 174, 177–91 and Jews, 19–20, 98, 175–7 and mandingueiros, 194–202 iran, 178, 185, 186 n.47 Isaac, John, 102 Isaac, Judeh, 102 Israel, Solomon, 102, 103 n.25, 106, 109 Isthmus of Panama, 131, 138, 150 overland route across, 133, 136, 142, 150 Itamaracá, 125 Jamaica contraband trade with Spanish America, 13–14, 207 Jews in, 20, 21, 101 Jamestown Scots in, 94 Jefferson, Thomas, 205 Jesuits in Brazil, 18–19, 98, 115, 116, 117 in Guinea region, 180, 184, 196 Jewish Naturalization Bill, 100 Jews and sugar production, 97, 98, 102 as slaveowners, 102, 105 n.33 endogamy, 108, 109, 110, 111 English attitudes towards, 98–102, 112 compared with Scots, 99–100 expulsion from Iberian Peninsula, 98, 176, 177 n.14 French attitudes towards, 98 in Amsterdam, 17, 98, 101 n.6 in Antigua, 101 in Barbados, 20, 21, 100, 103–4 in Cacheu, 175, 176, 177, 189 in Curaçao, 20, 21, 104, 106, 176 in Dutch Brazil, 17, 18, 19–20, 98, 101, 176 in England, 99, 100 legislation concerning, 102 in Jamaica, 20, 21, 101 in Nevis (see also Nevis), 20, 97–112 in New Netherland, 20 in New York, 105, 106 in Spanish America, 15–16, 176 in Suriname, 20, 21, 102 in Tucacas, 15–16

256


kin networks, 21, 100, 102, 108, 110 legal restrictions on, 100, 101–2, 104, 109–10, 111 mercantile networks, 20, 100, 102, 104–6, 107 philanthropy, 104 social networks, 20, 102, 104–5, 106, 108 Juan, Jorge, 207 Judaism (see also Jews) and memorialization rituals, 21 Kamer Maze, 78, 88 Kriol, 178, 182 Kriston (see also Cacheu; women), 29, 179–91 Kuna, 138, 139, 143 n.37, 146 n.55, 149 Labat, Jean-Baptiste, 158 lançados, 176, 177 La Rochelle and cod fishing, 36 La Varenne, 41, 47, 52 Law, Robin, 3, n.13, 8, 158 Lescarbot, Marc, 48 n.86, 50, 51 Leven Chart, 140 n.29, 143 ling (see stockfish) Listry, Johannes, 118–19, 125, 126 Lopes, Mattéo, 9 López de Herrera, Pedro, 57, 62, 66, 68 Luanda Dutch capture of, 121, 122 Madeira wine trade, 107 Malliard, Ana, 27, 57, 62, 63, 66, 68 Malliard, John, 68, 69, 71, 72 Malliard, Thomas, 27, 57, 59, 60, 61, 62–3, 64, 65–9, 70, 71, 72 Mandinga, 29, 177–8, 186–7, 188–9, 191, 196–7 mandingas (see bolsas de mandinga) mandingueiros and Portuguese Atlantic, 178, 194–202 Mann, Kristin, 3 n.13, 8, 10 marabouts (see murus) Maranhão assault on WIC garrison, 121

Indian slavery, 120 rebellion against Dutch, 119–20 smallpox, 120 Marco Polo and Rustichello, 211 Margaret of Leith, 148 Marseille and cod trade, 39 Martinique Dutch activity in, 88–9 Massachusetts sugar imports, 12, 107 Maurits, Johan, 18, 19, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123 Medina Sidonia, dukes of, 58, 63, 66, 71 Melgar, Alonso de, 64, 65 Menchú, Rigoberta, 211 n.34 Mendez, Daniel, 102 Mendez, Rachel, 102 Menzies, John, 92–3 mezinhas, 177 Mintz, Sidney, 34 n.4, 46 Miranda, Francisco de, 222 Montaigne, Michel de, 44 Montchrétien, Antoyne de, 37 moradores, 118, 126, 187 Moraes, Manuel de, 18, 118 murus, 177, 178, 186, 187, 188 Nantes and cod fishing, 37, 38 Napoleon Bonaparte, 204, 208 Native Americans in Brazil (see also Potiguar; Tupi), 113–30 in Darien, 133, 135, 138, 141, 144, 149 in Mexico, 23–5 in New England, 114 in Ohio Valley, 114 Navigation Acts, 78, 101 Nevis English-Jewish relations, 104–5, 106, 108–9, 110 Jewish cemetery, 103, 104, 112 Jewish school, 97, 104 Jewish synagogue, 103, 104, 111 Jews in (see also Jews)

Index compared with Huguenots and Quakers, 110, 111 slaves in, 101–3, 105 n.33 sugar industry, 97, 102 New Caledonia, 139 n.25 New Christians (see also conversos) in Brazil, 18–19 in Cacheu, 29, 175, 176, 177, 178, 180, 187, 188 n.54, 189, 190, 191 New Edinburgh, 131, 139–40, 141 Newfoundland cod fishery Basque fishers in, 35–6 English fishers in, 37–8, 77 French fishers in, 35–7, 39, 52, 54, 55, 77 Portuguese fishers in, 37–8 Spanish fishers in, 37–8, 77 maps of, 48, 49–50 rituals of consumption, 50–51, 55 New Granada (Colombia) contraband trade, 14–15, 207 independence, 14, 204 and foreign mercenaries, 208–9, 216–19, 221–2 New Netherland Jews in, 20 Scots in, 94 n.74 slaves in, 8 Nisbet, Henrie, 85, 89 nominas (see gris-gris) Nova Scotia cod fishing at, 22 Nuñez, Florentina, 60 Olive Branch wreck of, 134 n.11, 135, 145 Orinoco River and Robinson Crusoe, 206 Ortiz, Fernando and transculturation, 174 n.7 Oswald, Roger, 142 Ouidah (see also Hueda) Afro-Brazilians in, 10, 156 and trade with Europeans, 9–10, 164–71 archaeology, 167–71 compared with Elmina, 168, 170 Brazilianization of, 10, 155

257 Europeans in and African women, 9, 165–6 trading establishments in, 9, 157, 165, 166, 167 multi-ethnic community of, 10, 165, 166, 167

Panama (see Darien) Panama Canal, 150 Panama Railroad, 150 Papiamentu, 17 Paraguaná peninsula (see also Tucacas), 15 Paraíba (see also Potiguar; Tobajares; Tupi) indigenous population of and Iberian colonization, 115–16 under Dutch rule, 117, 125, 127 Paraupaba, Antonio, 28, 113, 116, 118, 123–9 Parkhurst, Anthony, 37 Paterson, William, 133, 139, 149, 150 Paton, Mathew, 93 Pedroso, José Francisco, 195–6 Pennecuik, Robert, 136, 140, 141 n.32 Pepel, 178, 185, 191 Pereira, José Francisco, 195, 196 Peres, Crispina (Ña Crispina), 29, 174, 182–91 Peres, Rodrigo, 182 Pernambuco (see also Dutch Brazil) Dutch capture of, 17 sugar industry in, 17, 18, 98, 115, 117 Perry of London, 107 Pessoa, Domingas, 182 Petite Côte, 176, 177, 178 n.19, 182 pidgin, 7 Pinheiro, Esther, 105, 106, 107, 108 Pinheiro, Isaac, 28, 103 n.25, 105, 106 n.35, 108, 109 Pinheiro, Moses, 108, 109, 110 Pinneys (Nevis and Bristol), 107 Plantation Act (1740), 102 Pléiade, 55 Porto and bolsa production and distribution, 30, 193, 193–5, 196, 198 Portobelo, 14, 150 Portocarrero, Inés, 65 Portugal

258


bolsa producers and consumers in, 193–202 slaves in, 193–202 Potiguar (see also Tupi) and Dutch Calvinism, 116–17 as allies of Dutch, 113, 115–30 as allies of French, 115, 116 as auxiliaries/allies of Portuguese, 115, 116, 117, 127 as guests in the Dutch Republic, 28, 113, 116, 122–3, 128 defeated by Portuguese, 115 Dutch attitudes towards, 123, 126 resistance to Portuguese, 114, 115, 116, 127 Poty, Pieter (Pedro), 116, 118, 123, 125, 126, 128 Pratt, Mary Louise and ‘capitalist vanguard’, 208 and transculturation, 174 n.7 Printed books and chocolate, 24–5 and tobacco, 23–4 Protestants Huguenots and Quakers, 110–11 compared with Jews, 110–11 Puerto Escocés, 136 Quito, 16, 77 Rabelais, François, 51 Ramusio, 48, 50, 53 Reales Almonas (Triana), 64, 65 Recife Portuguese re-capture of, 16 n.68, 19, 98, 128–9 regidors in Dutch Brazil, 124, 125, 126 religious identities in Cacheu, 177–8, 180–91 in Dutch Brazil, 18–20 in Suriname, 21 Rezio, Abraham, 102 rice African, in Americas, 11 Asian, in Americas, 11 Rio Grande do Norte (see also Potiguar; Tobajares; Tupi)

indigenous population of, 115 and Iberian colonization, 115, 116 under Dutch rule, 19, 117 Rising Sun, 131 n.2, 145 Rivadavia, Bernardino, 206 Robertson, William, 207 Rondelet, Guillaume, 53 rónias, 178, 184 Ronsard, Pierre de, 55 Rosas, Juan Manuel de, 206 Rotterdam Admiralty, 78, 80, 81, 83 and Brazil, 79, 86, 88 and Caribbean, 79, 86, 87, 88 and Chesapeake, 78, 88 and coal trade, 78 and tobacco trade, 78, 89, 91, 92 and trade with northern Europe, 77, 78, 79, 93 and West Indies trade, 86, 87, 88 English Congregation, 92 labour market in, 76, 78, 79, 80–82 Migrants in English, 78, 89, 90–91, 92 Jewish, 79 Scots (see also Scots), 75–96 multi-ethnic consortia in, 89–92, 94–5, 96 Scots Church, 76, 83, 84, 85, 87, 91, 92, 93 Rouen and cod fishing, 35–6, 46 Russell-Wood, A.J.R., 5 Saint-Malo fishing fleet, 36–7, 39 salmon consumption in France, 39, 42, 52 Sampson,Richard, 69 sankofa, 21 San Lucar de Barrameda Church of St George, 62 San Martín, José de, 206, 209, 222 sardines consumption in France, 39, 40, 44 Sativa, 11 Savi (see also Hueda)

Index archaeology, 155, 157, 159, 162–3, 167, 168, 169 conquest by Dahomey, 154, 164 European presence in, 153–4, 161 European trading establishments, 162–3 smoking pipes, 159, 161 schepenen in Dutch Brazil, 125 Scots as indentured servants, 91, 93, 94, 95 compared with Jews, 99–100 enclaves, 75–6 in Darien,131–50 in Dutch Caribbean, 88–93 in Nevis, 97 in Rotterdam, 75–96 and Dutch Reformed congregation, 83 Scots Church, 76, 83, 84, 85, 87, 91, 92, 93 support networks, 76, 81, 83–6 women, 80, 81, 85–6, 87, 91 n.61 in Virginia, 88–9, 93–6 Selkirk, Alexander, 206, 210 Semple, Robert, 217 Senegambia and European trade, 165 multi-ethnic community of, 165 Senior, Esther, 21 Senior, Isaac, 102 Sephardic Jews (see Jews) Seven Years’ War, 206 Seville cabildo, 67, 71 chocolate consumption in, 25 conversos in, 57, 66, 71–2 English merchants in, 57–73 and local industries, 63–64, 65–6, 69–70 and slave trade, 62, 64–5 and soap trade, 64, 65, 68, 69, 70 and trade with Spanish America, 58, 59–60, 61 n.18, 62, 64, 69 Genoese merchants in, 60, 61, 63, 64, 70 and trade with Spanish America, 60, 63 slaves in, 62, 64, 65, 70 soap trade, 58, 62, 64, 69, 70

259

trade with northern Europe, 59, 60, 61, 64, 69, 70 trade with Spanish America, 58–9, 60, 66 Shields, Alexander, 145 Sierra Leone, 176, 177, 182 Slaves and African foodstuffs, 11–12 and Atlantic world, 3, 4, 6–8, 10–12, 29–30, 151–71, 193–202 and rice production, 11–12 in Africa, 9, 153, 154, 166, 176, 179 n.22, 181, 184, 185, 186, 188, 191 in Brazil, 9–10, 115, 121, 122, 156, 161, 193–202 in Curaçao, 16, 212–13, 214 in Nevis, 101–103, 105 n.33 in New Netherland, 8 in Portugal, 64, 193–202 in Spain, 62, 64, 65, 70 in Spanish America, 16–17, 176, 208, 218 in Suriname, 21 in Virginia, 95 Slave Trade, 6, 9–10, 13, 24, 64–5, 121, 153–4, 155, 156, 158, 159, 161, 164, 165, 170, 176, 179, 180, 181 n.26, 182–3 n.34, 186, 189, 190, 198, 199, 200, 202 Smith, William, 108, 110 smoking illustrations of, 24 in Africa, 159, 161, 168, 169, 170 in America, 24 in Europe, 23, 24, 35 Smollett, Tobias, 206, 207 Snelgrave, William, 158, South Carolina rice production in, 11 Spain English merchants in, 57–73 expulsion of Jews, 98, 177 n.14 Spanish America and contraband trade, 13–17, 20, 207 and English merchants, 58, 59–60, 61 n.18, 62, 64, 69 and foreign mercenaries, 208–9, 216–19, 221–2 Spanish Indies (see Spanish America) Stachouwer, Jacob, 18

260


Stapleton, William, 102, 108 n.47 St Kitts, 88, 89, 90, 91, 104 St Martin, 88 stockfish exports from Iceland, 23 exports from Norway, 23 Sukunya, 139 suras, 178, 186 Suriname Jews in, 20–21 mulatto Jews of, 21 tangomãos, 176 Tapuya and Dutch colonization, 117, 120, 122–3, 127 and Portuguese colonization, 120 Terra de los Bachalaos, 47 Testefolle, Charles, 165 testimonio, 211 n.34 Thorne, Robert, 57, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 68, 69, 70, 71 Thornton, John, 6–7, 155 tobacco as contraband, 15, 16 n.67, consumption in Africa, 24 in Hueda, 159, 161 smoking pipes, 159, 161, 168, 169, 170 consumption in Europe, 23, 24, 34, 35, 56 tobacco trade, 78, 89, 91, 92, 159, 161, 168, 170 Tobajares, 115, 117 Toubacanti, 149 transculturation, 29, 174, 187 travel writing, 207 Treaty of Bruges, 68 Treaty of London, 67–8 Treaty of Madrid, 13 Triana (Reales Almonas), 64, 65, 68, 70 Tucacas Jewish settlement of, 15, 16 n.66 Tupi (see also Potiguar) and Dutch Calvinism, 117, 118 as allies of Dutch, 113, 115–30 as allies of French, 115, 116 as allies of Portuguese, 116, 117, 127

as guests in the Dutch Republic, 113, 116–17, 122–3, 128 Dutch attitudes towards, 117, 123, 126 grievances against Dutch, 114, 118, 119, 120, 121, 127 legal status under Dutch rule, 113–14, 117, 119–23, 124, 128, 129 self-governance, 119–23 relations with Dutch, 113–30 resistance to Portuguese colonization, 114, 115, 116 Ulloa, Antonio de, 207 Unicorn, 137, 143 n.39 Valverde Turices, Santiago, 25 Van Dam, Rip, 106 Vaz de França, Bibiana (Ña Bibiana), 189, 191 Venezuela trade with Curaçao, 15, 16–17 Vieira, João Fernandes, 18 Virginia Africans in, 95 Dutch in, 88–9, 93–6 English in, 95–6 Scots in, 88–9, 93–6 Vowell, Richard, 208 Wafer, Lionel, 133, 141 n.32 War of Jenkins’ Ear, 206 Washington, George, 205, 206 West India Company (see also Curaçao; Dutch Brazil; New Netherland; Rotterdam) soldiery of, 19, 127 Whydah cloth, 161 Willemstad, 14, 16 Wolsey, Thomas, 67–8, 69 Women in Cacheu, and Inquisition, 177, 181–91 religious role, 177, 179–89 in Curaçao, 16–17 in Darien, 131 n.2, 145, 147 in Mexico, and acculturation of Spanish men, 25 and chocolate preparation, 25

Index in Nevis, as merchants, 107–8 as shipowners, 107–8 in Ouidah, and relations with Europeans, 9, 165–6 in Rotterdam, as lodging house keepers, 83 n.31, 85–6

in Seville as companions of English merchants, 57, 62, 66, 71 Woodward, Thomas, 94 Yoruba, cloth production, 161 Yovogan, 165, 169

261

Bridging the Early Modern Atlantic World

The Early Modern Atlantic Economy

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Constructing Early Modern Empires: Proprietary Ventures in the Atlantic World, 1500-1750

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Remapping the Mediterranean World in Early Modern English Writings (Early Modern Cultural Studies)

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Remapping the Mediterranean World in Early Modern English Writings (Early Modern Cultural Studies)

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