Beyond the sugar revolutions: rethinking the Spanish Caribbean in the 17th and 18th centuries

Abstract

The Spanish Antilles figure little in the Caribbean historiography of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, whose protagonists are, in general, the English, French and Dutch Antilles. The scant importance of slave plantations in the Hispanic Antilles during these centuries seems to exclude them from the history of the region. However, a more integrated analysis of the history of the Caribbean reveals an important interaction between the production of provisions, cattle and wood from the Spanish Antilles and the neighboring "sugar islands", mainly mediated by the smuggling trade.