Veracruz and the Caribbean in the Seventeenth Century

At the center of Joseph M. H. Clark's new book, Veracruz and the Caribbean in the Seventeenth Century, is something of a paradox. Veracruz, despite being the most important port city for the Viceroyalty of New Spain and functioning as the center of trade for five continents, never attained the size or status of comparable Atlantic port cities like Havana and Philadelphia. Clark resists easy explanations for that paradox, such as Veracruz's reputation for the spread of virulent diseases, which kept the population relatively small. Instead, over seven chapters, Clark analyzes the internal dynamics and external linkages that shaped the development of Veracruz. In the process, Clark reveals how the paradox that opened the book makes sense from the perspectives of early modern elites but not at all from the perspectives of the Afro-diasporic communities who made Veracruz a vibrant center of local trade, spiritual practice, and material connections across the Caribbean world. Reframing Veracruz in this way, Clark's excellent new book reveals a distinct Mexican Caribbean world shaped by quotidian, intercolonial linkages that often confounded the perspectives held by imperial elites and replicated in colonial archives.As a book that crosses many different historiographies, Veracruz and the Caribbean in the Seventeenth Century will find a wide and appreciative readership; scholars interested in urban history, the African diaspora, transatlantic and intercolonial trade, religion and informal religious communities, race, and military history will especially find much of interest. In particular, however, Clark's book is an important contribution to recent histories of the Caribbean world that reframe the region from the perspectives of those whose lives traversed and disrupted imperial cartographies. And, similar to recent books by historians such as Cécile Vidal, Tessa Murphy, and Kristen Block, Clark's geographic reframing of Veracruz as a Caribbean port city also provides a methodological approach for accessing the lives of people, especially of African descent, most often neglected in colonial archives.Clark traces how material links embedded Veracruz in a regional Caribbean framework while exploring the important consequences of those quotidian ties for the social, religious, and economic development of the port city. The book begins with the creation of the Mexican Caribbean world, beginning with the 1599 decision to relocate Veracruz to the Gulf lowlands. As Clark argues, the relocation of the port closer to the Ulúacan coast served the commercial goals of elites and bound its development to maritime trade. The decision carried epidemiological consequences, and Clark pays special attention to how early modern observers conflated the port's disease environment with the large African-descended population.The location of Veracruz also meant that maritime links, especially small-scale trade, shaped life in the seventeenth-century port. Clark traces regional Caribbean trade networks through an exhaustive study of import and export duties for the ports of Veracruz, Havana, and Cartagena. This data reveals the importance of small-scale trade in constructing material links between residents of Veracruz and the wider Caribbean. While transatlantic trade was larger by volume and value than regional trade, Clark demonstrates how the frequency and seasonality of the latter had a greater impact on the social, cultural, and economic life of Veracruz. Frequency also appears as a theme in Clark's analysis of the transatlantic slave trade to Veracruz between 1545 and 1713. By examining both the transatlantic and the intercolonial slave trades, Clark argues that the frequency and nonlinearity of the slave trade to Veracruz created a cohesive, Caribbean-wide African diasporic community shaped by continuous links between the Mexican Caribbean and the African continent.Caribbean maritime connections influenced the sociocultural development of Veracruz over the seventeenth century. Building on his analysis of the slave trade, Clark argues that Veracruz's maritime connections created horizontal links between Africans in the diaspora that strongly influenced the formation of ethnic identities and religious practice. In one example, Clark shows how African ethnic identities remained in use longer among the Afro-descended residents of Veracruz than in the interior regions of Mexico as a result of material connections with parts of Africa and Afro-diasporic communities in the Caribbean. In another example, Clark traces the movement of spiritual practitioners throughout the Caribbean world to show how intercolonial networks tied Veracruz to Caribbean-wide religious communities.Through a close examination of an array of archival sources, including notarial records, census reports, Mexican inquisitorial records, port registers, and official correspondence, Clark has produced a dynamic history of seventeenth-century Veracruz. Crucially, by moving beyond the geographic framings privileged by elites, he demonstrates the importance of regional, granular perspectives for uncovering the experiences of individuals, especially those of African descent, within a multifaceted Caribbean world

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