Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570-1640

353 Pages·2016·4.89 MB·English

by  David Wheat

Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean,
1570–1640
Wheat_Atlantic_FINAL PAGES i
This book was the winner of the
Jamestown Prize
for 2015.
Wheat_Atlantic_FINAL PAGES ii
Atlantic Africa
and the
Spanish Caribbean, 1570–1640
david wheat
Published for theww Omohundro Institute of
Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia,
by the University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill
Wheat_Atlantic_FINAL PAGES iii
The Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture is sponsored
by the College of William and Mary. On November 15, 1996, the Institute adopted
the present name in honor of a bequest from Malvern H. Omohundro, Jr.
© 2016 The University of North Carolina Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Cover illustration: Puerto de Bayaha. Detail. [Circa 1575–1605]. España.
Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte. Archivo General de Indias.
Mapas y Planos, Santo Domingo, 3.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Wheat, David, 1977– author.
Title: Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570-1640 / David Wheat.
Description: Chapel Hill : Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early
American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of
North Carolina Press, [2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCn 2015041271 | isBn 9781469623412 (cloth : alk. paper) |
isBn 9781469623801 (ebook) suBJeCts: LCsh: Spain—Colonies—Caribbean
Area—History—17th century. | Spain—Colonies—Caribbean Area—
History—16th century. | Atlantic Coast (Africa)—History—17th century. |
Atlantic Coast (Africa)—History—16th century. | Slave trade—Africa, West—
History—17th century. | Slave trade—Africa, West—History—16th century. | 
Slavery—Caribbean Area—17th century. | Slavery—Caribbean Area—16th
century. | Blacks—Caribbean Area—17th century. | 
Blacks—Caribbean Area—16th century.
Classification: LCC F1621 .w47 2016 | ddC 966/.02—dc23 LC record available at
http://lccn.loc.gov/2015041271
Parts of Chapter 4 draw on the previously published article, “Nharas and Morenas
Horras: A Luso- African Model for the Social History of the Spanish Caribbean,
c. 1570–1640,” Journal of Early Modern History, XIV (2010), 119–150.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of
the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on
Library Resources.
The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the
Green Press Initiative since 2003.
cloth 20 19 18 17 16 1 2 3 4 5
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For seiLa and miCaeLa
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Acknowledgments
This book would not have been possible without a great deal of help from
many individuals and institutions over the past twelve to fifteen years. I am
immensely grateful to my mentor Jane Landers for more kindnesses, and
more adventures, than I could possibly enumerate. Even as I filled out grad-
uate school application forms, having recently read Black Society in Spanish
Florida, I never anticipated that I would soon be following Jane to far- flung
research sites scattered across the globe: from Saint Augustine to Toronto,
from Azrou to Veracruz, from the Aflao border post to Old Havana, where
someone would give half of my lunch to a stray dog named Rita. In addition
to supervising my graduate training at Vanderbilt University, where this
project first took shape as a Ph.D. dissertation, Jane was (and remains) a
vital source of guidance and encouragement.
Other faculty members in Vanderbilt’s History Department were tre-
mendously supportive; in particular, I would like to acknowledge Dan
Usner, Marshall Eakin, and Katie Crawford. I am also grateful to Anthère
Nzabatsinda. Interlibrary Loan staff at the Jean and Alexander Heard Li-
brary, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, provided invaluable
aid. Paula Covington trained me in research methods, and, at my request,
acquired all twenty- two volumes of António Brásio’s Monumenta Missionária
Africana for the library. I began my archival research in Spain under the
auspices of a College of Arts and Sciences Summer Research Award in 2005;
further research was made possible by a Fulbright Institute of International
Education Fellowship and the Conference on Latin American History’s
Lydia Cabrera Award. A Graduate School Dissertation Enhancement grant
permitted me to travel to Bogotá and Cartagena, Colombia, for additional
research in 2008, and a fellowship at the Robert Penn Warren Center for
the Humanities, directed by Mona Frederick, allowed me to visit archives
in Lisbon and to devote the 2008–2009 academic year to writing. Through-
out my time in Nashville, I benefited from the hospitality, companionship,
and good graces of friends and family. I would especially like to thank
Rick Moore, Philippe Adell, Pablo Gómez, Kathrin Seidl, and my brother
Jeremy Wheat.
vii
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Thanks are also due in no small measure to the many archivists and
scholars who facilitated my research. I am greatly indebted to staff at the
Archivo General de Indias (AGI) in Seville, where I conducted research
for twenty months in 2005–2006 and where Mark Lentz, J. Michael Francis,
Esther González, Jeremy Baskes, and the late Fernando Serrano Mangas,
among many other friends and scholars, provided camaraderie and guid-
ance. In Cuba, I am grateful to staff members in Havana’s cathedral, where
in 2004 and 2006, as a graduate assistant on the preservation project Ecclesi-
astical and Secular Sources for Slave Societies, I helped Jane Landers and Oscar
Grandío Moráguez digitize parish records that figure prominently in this
study. In the Archivo Nacional de Cuba, I learned that Havana’s early no-
tarial records were in poor condition and thus unavailable for consultation;
Coralia Alonso Valdés mitigated my disappointment by graciously directing
me to a useful database of notarial record abstracts. Renée Soulodre-L a
France was indispensable in helping me make the most of an all-t oo- brief
visit to the wonderful Archivo General de la Nación in Bogotá, Colombia,
and I remain grateful to Pablo Gómez, Sara Gómez Zuluaga, and Margarita
Zuluaga Tobon for their hospitality in Bogotá and Medellín. In Lisbon,
Jessica Dionne, Walter Hawthorne, and Daniel Domingues da Silva ac-
quainted me with the Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino and the Arquivo Na-
cional da Torre do Tombo in summer 2008, and John Thornton generously
shared notes from his own extensive work in both of these archives.
The Department of History at Michigan State University (MSU) has
been my academic home since 2009, and I feel extremely fortunate to have
been able to continue working on this project in such a collegial and sup-
portive environment. Special thanks to Walter Hawthorne, Pero Dagbovie,
Ben Smith, Glenn Chambers, Ed Murphy, and my fellow Alabamian Peter
Beattie. I am also grateful to David Bailey, Liam Brockey, Emily Conroy-
Krutz, Denise Demitriou, Kirsten Fermaglich, LaShawn Harris, Charles
Keith, Matt Pauly, Roger Rosentreter, Mindy Smith, Helen Veit, and John
Waller. Thanks also to Jorge Felipe González. For assistance and timely
advice on matters ranging from fiscal and administrative issues to win-
ter survival skills, I thank Deb Greer, Elyse Hansen, Jeanna Norris, and
Chris Root. The MSU library has been a fantastic resource, and Mary Jo
Zeter kindly helped me locate several elusive published collections. A one-
semester release from teaching duties in 2011 permitted me to write a new
chapter, and I completed a draft of the entire manuscript under the auspices
of a National Endowment for the Humanities Faculty Fellowship in 2012–
2013. A HARP-P roduction Award from MSU’s Office of the Vice President
viii Acknowledgments
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for Research and Graduate Studies provided funding for map production
fees and a subvention to help offset manufacturing costs. For each of these
sources of support, I am deeply grateful.
During the years I researched and wrote this book, I was very fortunate
to exchange ideas with many other scholars at archives and conferences and
via e- mail. Alex Borucki, António de Almeida Mendes, Antonio García
de León, Armin Schwegler, Ben Smith, Consoli Fernández, David Eltis,
Derrick Spires, Fabrício Prado, Frank Knight, George Brooks, Gerhard
Seibert, Ida Altman, Ivor Miller, Jim Amelang, Joe Miller, John Thornton,
José da Silva Horta, Juanjo Ponce-V ázquez, Kristen Block, Leo Garafolo,
Linda Newson, María Cristina Navarrete, Maria Manuel Torrão, Maria
João Soares, Mike Larosa, Nicolas Ngou- Mve, Paul Lovejoy, Peter Mark,
Phil Morgan, Rina Cáceres, and Toby Green shared their knowledge of
primary and secondary sources, copies of their own work before publica-
tion, or encouraging words that meant far more to me than they probably
realized. Jane Landers, Walter Hawthorne, Manolo Fernández Chaves, Rafa
Pérez García, Pablo Gómez, Kara Schultz, Gabriel Rocha, and Marc Eagle
supported my research in all of the above- mentioned ways and provided
much- appreciated feedback as I revised my book manuscript.
Any errors that may remain are mine alone, but a great deal of credit is
due to the editorial staff of the Omohundro Institute of Early American
History and Culture. In addition to the extraordinarily helpful suggestions
provided by Ida Altman and one anonymous reader, Fredrika Teute’s in-
sightful comments and queries vastly improved the manuscript, to say the
least. I would also like to thank Nadine Zimmerli, and Kaylan Stevenson for
her skillful— nay, heroic— copyediting.
Finally, it is a pleasure to acknowledge my gratitude to my parents,
John R. Wheat and Patricia H. Wheat, to my siblings and siblings-i n- law,
Jeremy, Ellen, Emily, and John, and to the entire González Estrecha family,
especially my in-l aws Julio González Zahinos and Micaela Estrecha Flores,
for their long- standing support. To Rick and Suzanne Moore and to Andre
and Erika and the Brown- Binion family I also offer my heartfelt thanks. For
their love, and for their patience, my deepest gratitude is to Seila González
Estrecha and to our daughter Micaela; this book is dedicated to them.
Acknowledgments ix
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