Molly A. Warsh. American Baroque

Delicate, beautiful, mysterious, and elusive, pearls have long fascinated human beings. Worn on necklaces and in earrings, sewn into garments and depicted in art, they symbolized romance and exoticism, functioning both as bodily adornment and as sources of wealth. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries they were highly coveted items, gracing the bodies of queens, courtesans, merchants, and African slaves. American Baroque: Pearls and the Nature of Empire, 1492–1700 traces the complex history of pearls and their owners. Drawing on a diverse range of sources, from personal letters to Inquisition records, Molly A. Warsh explores how pearls were extracted, circulated, and valued and situates them within wider frameworks of imperial expansion, consumption, and global trade. Chapter 1 examines attitudes toward and perceptions of pearls, which, according to Warsh, “existed in limbo, understood more as treasure from a mysterious and ungovernable realm than as a product of a fragile natural ecosystem” (25). Chapter 2 charts the emergence of the first American pearl fisheries in Cubagua, off the coast of Venezuela, highlighting the dangers associated with their extraction and the tensions that arose between imperial designs and local knowledge. Chapter 3 focuses on the valuation of and trade in pearls, which passed through multiple hands and often bypassed official channels. Chapter 4 charts the development of pearl fishing in seventeenth-century Spanish America and Portuguese India. Chapter 5 studies the circulation of pearls through personal networks, and chapter 6 examines the harvesting and possession of pearls in Northern Europe, from the coasts of Virginia and Bermuda to the rivers of Scotland and Sweden.

Adornment · Aesthetics · Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Baroque · Empire · Exoticism · Geography · Pearl · Portuguese · Realm · Treasure · Classics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Philosophy · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies