In this Book

An Aqueous Territory: Sailor Geographies and New Granada's Transimperial Greater Caribbean World

Book
Ernesto Bassi
2017
Published by: Duke University Press
summary
In An Aqueous Territory Ernesto Bassi traces the configuration of a geographic space he calls the transimperial Greater Caribbean between 1760 and 1860. Focusing on the Caribbean coast of New Granada (present-day Colombia), Bassi shows that the region's residents did not live their lives bounded by geopolitical borders. Rather, the cross-border activities of sailors, traders, revolutionaries, indigenous peoples, and others reflected their perceptions of the Caribbean as a transimperial space where trade, information, and people circulated, both conforming to and in defiance of imperial regulations. Bassi demonstrates that the islands, continental coasts, and open waters of the transimperial Greater Caribbean constituted a space that was simultaneously Spanish, British, French, Dutch, Danish, Anglo-American, African, and indigenous. Exploring the "lived geographies" of the region's dwellers, Bassi challenges preconceived notions of the existence of discrete imperial spheres and the inevitable emergence of independent nation-states while providing insights into how people envision their own futures and make sense of their place in the world.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page, Copyright, Dedication

Contents

pp. vii-viii

Acknowledgments

pp. ix-xii

Introduction: Uncovering Other Possible Worlds

pp. 1-20

Part I. Spatial Configurations

1. Vessels: Routes, Size, and Frequency

pp. 23-54

2. Sailors: Border Crossers and Region Makers

pp. 55-82

Part II. Geopolitics and Geopolitical Imagination

3. Maritime Indians, Cosmopolitan Indians

pp. 85-113

4. Turning South before Swinging East

pp. 114-141

5. Simón Bolívar’s Caribbean Adventures

pp. 142-171

6. An Andean-Atlantic Nation

pp. 172-203

Conclusion: Of Alternative Geographies and Plausible Futures

pp. 204-212

Appendixes

pp. 213-242

Notes

pp. 243-296

Bibliography

pp. 297-330

Index

pp. 331-346
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