Today’s post comes from Penn Press’s Marketing Operations Manager, Tracy Kellmer, continuing a blog series in which Tracy explores one of the books currently for 75% off in the Franklin’s Faves section of our website! The Franklin’s Faves selection will rotate in early October, so be sure to pick up your copy of today’s featured book, Boundaries of Belonging by April Lee Hatfield (or any of the other great books currently available), ASAP—and use code FRANKLINSFAVES to receive your 75% discount!
One of the perks of working at a university press, and especially Penn Press, is that I am exposed to excellent scholarly treatments of a wide variety of subjects. As a member of the Marketing department, I get to know a bit about every book we publish through my engagement with its metadata, such as keywords and subject codes, and its descriptive copy, which appears in everything from seasonal catalogs to online retail sites (we know the one you’re thinking of). But a marketer has short-lived romances with books on the front list: every six months I have a new season’s worth of books to get to know and a new seasonal catalog to publish. That’s why I love Franklin’s Faves! I get a chance to rediscover a book that intrigued me the first time around. I hope you enjoy my rediscoveries as much as I do!
What I picked:
Boundaries of Belonging: English Jamaica and the Spanish Caribbean, 1655–1715 by April Lee Hatfield
Why I picked it:
Penn Press is well-known for its Early American Studies series, which publishes books that explore “neglected aspects of our colonial, revolutionary, and early national history and culture . . . [and] reinterprets familiar themes and events in fresh ways.” As I was searching for my next Franklin’s Faves title to write about, I saw that an Early American Studies title, Boundaries of Belonging, was a Franklin’s Fave. In noticing it, I realized that I have not written about an Early American Studies title in a very long time. Since I am also interested in all things Caribbean (history, music, food, etc.), Boundaries of Belonging was the perfect choice.
What I discovered:
In the 60 years that April Lee Hatfield covers in the book, personal identities from national origin to profession proliferated, and in different contexts granted or denied the rights that a person could have. For example:
- Christian
- English
- Spanish
- Catholic
- Protestant
- Privateer
- Pirate
- Free
- Enslaved
- Maroon
- Indigenous
- Black
- White
- Dutch
- French
- Jew
- Scottish
- Citizen
- Subject
- War Captive
- Property
Once the English captured Jamaica in 1655, gaining a centralized location for trading, they could engage with the Spanish who had colonies on neighboring islands such as Cuba and on the mainland (especially Peru, where they mined for silver). The official seats of both empires in England and Spain were in a constant state of negotiations, if not outright war, and entered into numerous treaties and agreements that set terms for legal trade and enumerated consequences for illegal trade among their Caribbean outposts. In addition, the Dutch and the French also had interests in the Caribbean and entered into treaties with one or both of the English and Spanish crowns, though not consistently.
But what they all agreed on was that the most valuable stock in trade were human beings from Africa. The legal contracts for trading in slaves were limited and hard to obtain. But the overlapping jurisdictions and treaty rules for determining who was enslaved, or enslavable, and who was not were constantly changing in the Caribbean despite the best efforts of the European crowns. And although both the English and Spanish purported to be Christian, which kinds of Christians they were directed the actions of the English and Spanish colonists and traders in the Caribbean, which had huge impacts on the diverse populations there.
For example, in Spain’s Catholic worldview, anyone who converted to Catholicism achieved personhood under the universal law of Catholic Christianity, and could be entitled to certain rights and protections from the Spanish crown. As a result, many former or escaped slaves aspired to get to Spanish territories where they could convert to Catholicism, and even though they may still be oppressed and exploited, it was still better than being under English rule. Because under English rule, what mattered most was not religion, but race. As the English wanted to provide slave labor to its mainland colonies and to trade labor for silver from the Spanish colonies, they focused on what was visibly consistent: the color of one’s skin. The English also needed more whites on the island of Jamaica to oversee its growing enslaved slave labor force on the plantations and so were willing to let Jews and Catholics become quasi-subjects of the English crown, without converting to Protestantism, as long as they kept to themselves.
Indigenous populations often entered into treaties with the Spanish colonies and fought alongside colonists against the English. As a result, they were entitled to Spanish protection because of their loyalty to the crown’s interests. Whereas when English privateers and pirates captured Spanish vessels, it didn’t matter if the crew were Indigenous, Black, mixed, or free: if you were not white, you were a slave in English eyes.
While reading, I had to remember that every time a governor in the Caribbean got a new set of rules, it may have taken months to get there from Europe. If Caribbean governors wanted the crown to weigh in on a conflict or dispute, the time it took to get an answer enabled further confusion or self-interested deal-making. In addition, there were the Dutch, French, and private operators also looking to enrich themselves—and sometimes, when it suited them, their respective “empires.” Individuals might not know if the port at which they were calling would turn them away, give them water and supplies, or seize everything as wartime plunder.
For every governor, trader, merchant, captain, sailor, subject, or resident that honored the various imperial treaties to the best of their abilities, there were just as many who took up national origin, religion, residence, race, and profession in ways that suited their own personal interests without regard to the imperial powers. In the Caribbean, legal privateering at the behest of an imperial government and illegal piracy could look no different, depending on whose side you are on. And it certainly didn’t clarify matters in the Caribbean when the English monarch became Catholic for a few years and when the Spanish king died and the power struggle in Spain rippled throughout the trade networks in the Caribbean.
Boundaries of Belonging showed how fluid identities and communities could be in this period and how rights to personhood, property, and profit could fluctuate based on numerous factors, including the very ground you were standing on. But what the book never lost sight of was how the entire system of colonial trade and flourishing was dependent on the trade in African human beings and that the competition between empires and their avatars to engage in the trade of enslaved persons is what fueled the arbitrariness and malleability of the rules that governed who belonged where and to whom.
Favorite bit:
During this period, England and Scotland each had their own king. However, the Scottish crown was prevented from imperial expansion by an agreement with the English king. To get around the official channels, a group of wealthy Scots took it upon themselves to set up a private company and sell corporate shares into an expedition with the express purpose of setting up a trade colony in the Caribbean. They chose a spot in present-day Panama, which had already been claimed by the Spanish. Nevertheless, the Scots entered into new agreements with the Indigenous people they encountered to settle in the territory, christened New Caledonia. Their vision was to open a port that would trade with any and all comers, regardless of national origin, imperial loyalty, private status, race, religion, or banner. But their utopian vision of a world of pure trade was scuttled by the Spanish who claimed they were English and the English who denied the Scots were English, thereby setting off a conflict of which no one else, neither Dutch, French, nor free, wanted any part. But this confusion over the identity of the Scots may have hastened the Acts of Union that created Great Britain.
