Abstract
When approaching histories of a sea or an ocean, it is always instructive to consider whether the author looks outwards from a particular shore. In the case of J.S. Sledge's The Gulf of Mexico, the littoral base of the book is spelled out frankly in the introduction, where the author states: ‘If this book has a bias, it reflects my perch – the north-central Gulf Coast’ (p. 9). As this acknowledgement suggests, what follows is a history of the Gulf of Mexico that centres its northern shore and tracks the basin's transition to its apparent status as an ‘American lake’ (p. 146) by the twentieth century. This is an entertaining history of the Gulf intended for the general reader in the United States, notable for its highly evocative rendering of the region's people by an author with a talent for description far exceeding that of almost any professional historian.
The structure is a familiar one for general histories of regions across the Americas, moving chronologically from native to colonial and finally to national periods. Persistent themes recur throughout, the strongest of which are seafaring, travel and exploration, along with social and artisanal practices. As the book progresses, these themes begin to fade, as trade, naval warfare and geopolitics are given increasing emphasis. A shift in thematic focus is common in longue durée synthetic works such as this, as authors are led by the preoccupations of the many different historiographies that they have to read and process. It also very much feels like a modern maritime history, in that it is comfortable to stray into landed contexts. To the author's credit, he consistently weighs the significance of any events on land for the larger maritime context of the Gulf.
To summarise the book's content: chapter 1 covers the centuries immediately preceding European entry into the Gulf, with overviews of Seminole, Mayan and Calusa cultures. Here the author draws on recent work by archaeologists and historians to great effect, providing memorable accounts of how each people traversed the sea, alongside vivid descriptions of everyday life. The description of the Seminole town of Talahasochte is particularly memorable. In what is a recurring tendency throughout the book, darker, more conflictual aspects of life are downplayed.
Chapters 2 and 3 introduce readers to the familiar stories of Spanish conquistadors and the establishment of French colonies on the Mississippi over a century and a half later. At this point in the book, the author relies heavily on journals and travel accounts of contemporaries to tell the neatly contrasting stories of Hernán Cortés and Cabeza De Vaca, followed by René-Robert Cavelier. There is then a somewhat jarring transitioning to a military history of the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763), used as a bridge to quickly move to the period of US nationhood. A real strength of this section is the author's use of passages in the primary material that describe the Gulf's flora, fauna and everyday practices, which academic historians tend to gloss over.
Then, chapters 4–7 cover the long nineteenth century, beginning with a colourful chapter on the Lafitte brothers and their piratical careers in the Gulf, followed by the military back-and-forths of the wars of independence during this period and what is, by this point, a series of characteristically vivid descriptions of life on the waterfront in the northern Gulf and Havana. This section is also the first to include enslaved Africans in any significant detail, as well as the lives of free black people.
A final chapter focuses on the discovery of oil in the Gulf in 1901, the subsequent exploitation of the resource by petroleum companies, and finally the catastrophic oil spill of 2010. While a fairly dramatic change of pace from previous chapters, a focus on the oil industry brings the economic aspects of the book through to the modern day.
There are some tendencies throughout that affect the overall quality of the book. Indigenous people appear infrequently from the moment that more than one group of Europeans are present in the Gulf, and Anglophone people dominate to a disproportionate extent from chapter 4 onwards. There is also some squeamishness about focussing on enslaved Africans or on chattel slavery in a descriptive way or for any length of time, even though this form of slavery spread relentlessly across the Gulf from the sixteenth century. The word empire appears infrequently and imperialism not at all, which is probably a conscious choice given the language of the secondary literature used. These omissions suggest thatm despite the author's stated aims to convey the Gulf as ‘beautiful, bountiful, frightening, and destructive’ (p. 8), the former two adjectives are his true emphasis.
These limitations aside, this book is to be recommended for those seeking an immersive journey through the history of the Gulf of Mexico, concerned with the material aspects of the world, everyday practices and events. Its descriptive passages are stronger than the narrative sections, which is for the best as many of these stories are well worn. It also contains a raft of information valuable to maritime historians, which is the product of significant research.