Table Of ContentCrossings and Encounters
The Carolina Lowcountry and the Atlantic World
Sponsored by the Program in the Carolina Lowcountry
and the Atlantic World of the College of Charleston
Crossings
and Encounters
Race, Gender, and Sexuality
in the Atlantic World
edited by
Laura R. Prieto and Stephen R. Berry
© 2020 University of South Carolina
Published by the University of South Carolina Press
Columbia, South Carolina 29208
www.uscpress.com
29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
can be found at http://catalog.loc.gov/.
ISBN 978-1-64336-084-3 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-64336-085-0 (ebook)
Front cover illustrations: West Indische Paskaert (1650). Lionel Pincus and
Princess Firyal Map Division, The New York Public Library. New York
Public Library Digital Collections. Design by adam b. bohannon
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Foreword ix
Sandra Slater
Introduction 1
Stephen R. Berry
“Our Dutchmen run after them very much”: Cross-Cultural Sex
in New Netherland and the Dutch Global Empire 13
Deborah Hamer
Las Casas de las Rabinas: Three Generations of Women in a Crypto-Jewish
Family in Seventeenth-Century New Spain 30
Michele Mericle
“The Refuse of the whole Creation”: Manhood, Misogyny, and Race in an
Anglo-Caribbean Travel Narrative 46
Erika Gasser
“Inhabitant of Saint-Domingue, today refugee in this place”: Atlantic Networks
and the Contours of Migration among Free Women of Color during the
Haitian Revolution 65
Elizabeth Neidenbach
Intimate Entanglement in the Early Republic: The Gendered Politics of Nation-
Building in Early America 85
Joshua L. Bearden
Building Black Civic Manhood: The Luiz Gama Masonic Lodge and the
Beneficent Society of Men of Color in São Paulo, Brazil, 1894–1914 111
Alicia L. Monroe
Great Circle Sailing: Alice Bache Gould in San Juan, or, the Making of a
Twentieth-Century Atlanticist 124
Laura R. Prieto
White Noise? Desdemona and Transnational Voicings through Time 146
Tessa Roynon
Notes 169
Bibliography 217
Contributors 221
Index 223
Acknowledgments
Our thanks go first of all to Sandy Slater, who organized the annual conference
on the Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World at the College of Charleston
that brought many of us together. Sandy provided wise counsel, unflagging en-
couragement, and good humor every step of the way.
We are also grateful for the intellectual generosity of colleagues—especially
Richard Godbeer, John W. White, and Terri Snyder—who made insightful rec-
ommendations on the shape that this essay collection might take. It was a delight
working with the contributors to this project, and we feel fortunate that they
were willing to share their research in a collaborative volume. At the University of
South Carolina Press, Alex Moore, Linda Fogle, Jonathan Haupt, Simon Lewis,
Richard Brown, and Ehren Foley have shown vast patience with our slow progress
bringing the complete manuscript together. Our colleagues and students at Sim-
mons University kept us motivated by asking about the book at appropriate junc-
tures. Sarah Leonard, Zhigang Liu, Steve Ortega, Jess Parr, and Franny Sulli van
make for the most genial, supportive History Department one could hope for.
Laura Koch, our graduate assistant, provided scrupulous, sharp-eyed assistance at
the formative stages, while Stephen Berry Jr. helped locate illustrations.
As with any scholarly publication, the research in this book depended on the
assiduous work of librarians and archivists from institutions across the Atlantic.
The essays within made substantial use of collections from the Archives Natio-
nales d’Outre Mer in Aix-en-Provence, the Archivo General de la Nación of Mex-
ico, the Arquivo da Cúria Metropolitana de São Paulo, the Arquivo do Estado
de São Paulo, the British Library, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Na-
tionaal Archief of the Netherlands, the National Archives of the United States,
the New Orleans Public Library, the New York State Archives, and the Notarial
Archives Research Center in New Orleans. While we are unfortunately unable
to name all of the individuals who contributed at each institution, the editors do
want to single out some in particular. Amanda Strauss, Robin Wheelwright Ness,
and Peter Harrington of the Brown University Libraries graciously gave us ac-
cess to an elusive illustration; they truly embody the ethos of a research-centered
institution. Sabina Beauchard at the Massachusetts Historical Society helped us
secure permissions to materials there. We want to thank Mark Allan for sharing
with us his lovely professional photographs from the Barbican’s production of
viii Acknowledgments
Desdemona. Mark Cook not only provided the volume with two beautiful maps
but was a joy to work with during the project’s final stages.
As always, we deeply appreciate how our respective families and friends sustain
and support us. For every time they may have distracted us from our allotted
writing and editing time, they have rescued us tenfold with their love.
Foreword
In this collection of essays, a variety of presentations, by established as well as
burgeoning scholars, creates a sustained dialogue. This leads to wonderfully dy-
namic and interesting conversations and debates.
The mission of the Carolina Lowcountry and the Atlantic World (CLAW)
Program is “to promote scholarship and public engagement with the history and
culture of the Lowcountry region, the Atlantic World, and the connections be-
tween the two.” A reflection of this mission, this collection brings together not
just a wealth of detailed scholarship but also the variety of ways in which race,
gender, and sexuality intersect in the Atlantic world. These essays encompass a va-
riety of geographies, peoples, and events, yet all speak to the incredible diversity
of experience. The myriad cultures and communities that contested space, identi-
ties, and terrain reflect the continual exchange of ideas in the Atlantic world. The
cross-cultural encounters dramatically altered conceptions of gender, sexuality,
and the creation of racist and misogynistic regimes of power.
I am especially proud of the interdisciplinary nature of these essays. Though
most of the scholars represented here would identify as historians, these essays
also incorporate literature, geography, migration patterns, family dynamics, re-
ligion, and politics, not to mention studies of the multiplicities of identities. Yet
through all the upheaval and exchange, the Atlantic Ocean remains omnipres-
ent, touching shores, moving people, and undulating in the background as the
mighty facilitator. The one constant is this body of water that serves as a canvas
upon which these histories were painted, layer after layer, by the actors and events
and then again by historians. One of the allures of studying the Atlantic is the
paradox of its richness and depth viewed against its intangibility; the whole can
never be grasped. However, these eight essays offer insight into that enigmatic
history and call our attention to the complexities of these divergent lived experi-
ences, bonded by water and change.
Sandra Slater
