Abstract
Although Atlantic history contends that the continents that bordered the ocean comprised a common sphere of economic and cultural exchange for three centuries before 1830, the fact is that plenty of studies that place themselves within that paradigm have adopted a rather parochial view of the oceanic world. This widespread shortcoming appears to vindicate those who complain that Atlantic history is, in fact, a mere rebranding of national Atlantic imperial histories. So it seems appropriate that some Atlanticists have resorted to Entangled history – a historical perspective and a concept of historiography that centres upon the interconnectedness of societies – to put their speciality field back on track. The potential for synergies between Atlantic and Entangled histories was first discussed in 2007 in a four-article American Historical Review Forum entitled ‘Entangled Empires in the Atlantic World’ (vol. 112, no. 3). Two of the articles, written by professors Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra and Eliga Gould, became particularly influential. The present collective volume explores the explanatory possibilities and methodological problems raised back then (which were subsequently further explored in several workshops and publications) and offers a set of exciting case studies that examine the interconnections between the English-speaking and Iberian Atlantic worlds. It is edited by Cañizares-Esguerra, and Gould is the author of the afterword. The contributors belong to ten American universities, though four of them are based in the University of Texas at Austin.
The book is made up of twelve chapters, which are divided into four thematic parts. The three chapters of Part I explore how the histories of the Spanish and British Atlantics ended up being remembered as two separate processes in which the multiple interconnections accrued over three centuries were consciously obscured by actors, empires, and historians. Separate archives, as well as national historiographies, played a significant role in this. Mark Sheaves looks into how the Reformation led to the foundation of segregated imperial narratives. Michael Guasco argues that the account of an original English reluctance to introduce slavery in the Americas was an invention and that it was Africans (both traders and slaves) that enabled the English to access an Atlantic world shaped by the Iberian powers. Ben Breen traces the roots of the British Empire back to Portuguese commercial and epistemological networks, showing that British history was built through the deliberate forgetting of entire archives.
Part II, which includes four chapters, deals with the role of brokers and translators in either facilitating or shadowing Anglo-Iberian entanglements. Christopher Heaney demonstrates that the Spanish experience of the conquest and colonisation of Peru set a benchmark for future English experience in America. Holly Snyder shows the importance of Iberian conversos (Sephardic Jews and crypto-Jews) to the British imperial expansion, even though they always remained outsiders. The late Christopher Schmidt-Nowara explores the role of the Irish in bridging the Anglican Calvinist British north and the Iberian Catholic south, concentrating on three important figures that acted as cultural brokers in the Age of Revolutions. Cameron Strang, who examines the experiences of two leading early nineteenth-century British Floridians, contends that local brokers operating in the borderlands of empire played an important role in entangling Atlantic histories.
The two chapters of Part III are devoted to the entangled nature of seemingly antithetical Anglo-Iberian discourses of sovereignty, legitimacy, and possession. Cañizares-Esguerra shows that English Calvinist and Spanish Catholic discourses of dominium and sovereignty in the Americas were remarkably similar; when Pilgrims and Puritans migrated to Virginia and New England in the 1620s and1630s, they used medieval religious arguments of possession similar to those employed by Castilians a century before. Brad Dixon demonstrates that the British sought to incorporate the indigenous peoples of their colonies as Christian vassals, establishing a system of co-opted Indian English cacicazgos copied from the Spanish República de Indios.
The final part of the book, Part IV, which consists of three chapters, explores the role of trade, diplomacy and war in the creation of Anglo-Iberian entanglements. April Lee Hartfield offers an analysis of the transition in the Caribbean from Spanish to English commercial and military dominance from 1655 to 1713. The Anglo-Spanish Caribbean went from warfare to relatively peaceful intercolonial trade, which became legal once the asiento was agreed; but, interestingly, the entangled economies of Cartagena de Indias, Habana and Jamaica did not produce political and diplomatic cooperation. Of particular interest for maritime historians is Ernesto Bassi’s chapter entitled ‘Enabling, Implementing, Experiencing Entanglement: Empires, Sailors, and Coastal Peoples in the British-Spanish Caribbean’. Bassi demonstrates that Kingston and several Colombian ports formed a single integrated Caribbean sea space that traded commodities and slaves in the Age of Revolutions, bringing the Spanish and British coastal communities more deeply connected. Finally, Kristie Patricia Flannery goes beyond the Atlantic to analyse the British occupation of Manila during the Seven Years’ War and how it changed the nature of Anglo-Spanish entanglements, giving soldiers the opportunity to crisscross empires.
Though maritime history does not have a prominent presence in this book, it is clear that maritime historians could and should engage with its arguments and interpretations. This book provides some very telling examples of how imperial entanglements happened. However, if the Atlantic was truly defined more by its cross-cultural encounters, mixed identities, and local contexts than by the power of European empires, as this book implicitly contends, then a lot more research is needed to prove it. Most of the cases studied here occurred on the fringes of empires rather than at their cores. That is why these entangled histories often resemble borderland histories. That would be fine if Atlanticists were only concerned with the ocean rim, but they’ve boasted that their speciality can explain much more than that. Perhaps it would be advisable to admit that empires also had a strong element of self-containment that should not be excessively downplayed.
The book is well edited, has plenty of cross-references, and is a valuable, inspiring book for those who believe that Atlantic history still has plenty to offer.