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Introduction: Mobile Culture, Mobilized Politics
- University of California Press
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1 Introduction Mobile Culture, Mobilized Politics Communication networks between subjects of different European empires in the Americas have always thrived, despite being closely regulated and habitually proscribed. Given the climate of competitive mercantilist politics in the region, imperial officialdom militated against unmediated interactions between their colonies and other metropoles. However, contact, most importantly in the form of trade, was essential to the survival of early Caribbean and North American societies that imported basic foodstuffs, luxury items, and enslaved men and women from neighboring territories. Black markets existed alongside sanctioned ones, and colonial officials were known to turn a blind eye to activities that offered a financial incentive.1 Voluminous primary sources document these interactions: ship manifests from archival customs records, travel chronicles of itinerant wanderers, and records of sale for both the official and contraband market in African slaves “seasoned” and traded from one island to another. Contemporary sources make it clear that a merchant living in Saint-Domingue might have had contact with family in Philadelphia or New Orleans, and a slave who had run off to Cuba or Spanish Florida in search of freedom under a writ of Catholic sanctuary might try to share news with fellow slaves back home in South Carolina or Jamaica. There are abundant examples of communication networks that flourished in the interstices of empires, calling into question strict colonial loyalties or imperialist isolation.2 2 | Introduction Whereas contact and exchange between colonial empires have always occurred, the Age of Revolution as it unfolded in the Americas marked interactions on an even larger scale than had hitherto been the case.3 As David P. Geggus points out, “The decades flanking the turn of the nineteenth century . . . were quite exceptional. Most colonies suffered either foreign invasion or internal revolt when, from 1793 to 1802, and with lesser intensity to 1815, war between the European powers sent tens of thousands of soldiers into the region, displaced thousands of refugees, and disrupted local shipping on a massive scale” (“Slavery, War” 2). The Fear of French Negroes attempts to capture the essence of a unique moment, one of chaos, upheaval, and the possibility of fundamental disruptions to the status quo. Virulent debates about the birth of new nations through revolutionary struggle, the future of slavery, and the nature of declining European power and growing U.S. expansionism in the region were just a few of the signs that flux, not stability, was the reigning order of the day. The repercussions of the “big bang” created by the Haitian Revolution are at the heart of this narrative, but the protagonists in the pages that follow participated in other seminal armed conflicts of the age, including the Second Maroon War in Jamaica, the War of 1812 as it unfolded in Louisiana, Latin American independence movements, and the Seminole Wars. One result of this “turbulent time” was increased awareness of life in other colonial spheres of influence and a corresponding insight into the potential advantages to be gained by collaborating on projects of mutual interest (Geggus and Gaspar). The search for opportunities that involved movement across colonial frontiers was constant, and the transcolonial became a meaningful terrain for vastly different people. This was especially the case for those of African descent. I examine the lives of figures as diverse as Romain and his family, armed black soldiers and privateers, female performers, and newspaper editors in an effort to uncover how and why they brokered alliances. I use the idea of transcoloniality as both a geopolitical and a methodological concept. First, transcolonial describes the conflicts and collaborations that occurred between the residents of American territories governed by separate political entities—in this study France, Spain, and England. All three nations had extensive, extremely lucrative empires in the Caribbean Basin, and the region became the theater of their struggles for global dominance. A map produced in the 1730s (figure 3) provides an excellent visual depiction of the rival European empires in [3.229.124.236] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 03:23 GMT) Introduction | 3 the immediate area; New France, New Spain, and the British Americas all coexisted within relatively close proximity around the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea (noted as the North Sea). Hispaniola is just right of center, and one can imagine waves of people leaving the island for neighboring territories such as Cuba, Jamaica, Louisiana, or Maryland . I adopt the modifier transcolonial as opposed to transnational both because the latter would be anachronistic in most of the examples...