Abstract
Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz, Nueva Veracruz or Ciudad de los Muertos – all of these names refer to Veracruz, ‘one of the most important ports in the New World’ (51) in the seventeenth century. It is the topic of Joseph M. H. Clark's latest book, Veracruz and the Caribbean in the Seventeenth Century, which is a very welcome contribution to Latin American historiography because, even though ‘Veracruz was one of the most globally connected cities in the world’ (1), a study dedicated solely to the city for this period did not yet exist. Historians have either focused on Veracruz's beginning or end, or have studied the city from the perspective of two ‘broader geographic constructs’, ‘Mexico’ or ‘New Spain’, on the one hand, or ‘the Spanish Empire’, on the other (4–5). Yet, as Clark convincingly shows, Veracruz was not ‘simply a Mexican city’ (6) but strongly linked to the Caribbean. By placing Veracruz in the geographical construct of the Caribbean, Clark offers a new, fresh look at the city, and in this way bridges the gap between the two separate historiographies (15).
Clark begins his book with a geographical and environmental description of the city. It is a clever move, inspiring many a historian's work. Indeed, it explains why Veracruz had to relocate several times and, despite this, continued to suffer structural problems throughout the seventeenth century.
Veracruz was one of the most important cities of the Spanish Empire. Not only was it the primary distributor of metal wealth, but it was also the main port of entry for European migration and the second-largest destination for enslaved Africans. Yet it was only the seventeenth most populated city in the Spanish Empire with ‘only’ 6,000–8,000 inhabitants. It suited Veracruz as a Caribbean port, where people came and went, and few stayed in the city for long periods of time. Soldiers and sailors caused unrest in the city, but there was little the local government could do because they were not under local jurisdiction. Disease and disaster were the main characteristics of seventeenth-century Veracruz.
Clark focuses most of his book on the largest group of Veracruz residents – the free and enslaved Africans. He shows what their probable origins were, what their roles were in the city, and how they tried to give meaning to their lives. An important contribution is made, furthermore, to the debate over the number of slaving voyages to Veracruz. Clark correctly argues that an understanding of regional shipping in the Caribbean is lacking in the historiography. Instead, transatlantic trade continues to dominate. According to Clark, however, we should change our perspective of shipping to and from Veracruz: regional shipping was typical; transatlantic shipping was exceptional. Estimating the number of slave voyages before 1594 is challenging, but Clark found an innovative solution by looking at the Mexican Inquisition archives to identify new slave ships. While these archives do not offer complete information either – sometimes the inquisitors did not identify ships as slave ships, for instance, which is something Clark realizes too – they still provide new information on the slave trade of the sixteenth century.
Clark argues that, after 1640, there was a decline in the slave trade to Veracruz. In the historiography, three reasons are given for this: first, the indigenous populations had largely recovered by then; second, the black Creole population was naturally increasing; and third, Spanish officials were expressing more concerns about the black communities. Clark, however, argues for a fourth reason: there was not a decline in demand but, instead, a decline in the supply of enslaved Africans after the end of the Iberian Union (1580–1640). While this may be true, it does not explain why the asentistas, starting with Domenico Grillo and Ambrosio Lomellino in the 1660s, had factors in Veracruz. Throughout the book, Clark does not pay much attention to the asiento or more generally how the slave trade was organized in the Spanish Empire, which is unfortunate, specifically because of the changes in the second half of the seventeenth century.
Clark may have successfully placed Veracruz in the Spanish Caribbean, but the rest of the Caribbean is largely absent. Throughout his book, Clark hints at the trans-imperial movements in the Caribbean but does not include Veracruz within this wider framework. A question that arises, for example, is what role foreign slave ships played in the slave trade to Veracruz, which was increasing precisely in the second half of the seventeenth century through the islands of Curaçao and Jamaica, among others – in other words, the intra-Caribbean – and the American slave trade. Clark mentions that ‘qualitative sources suggest the maintenance of an active slave trade’ and points to a ‘regularity of slaving traffic that is not otherwise reflected in official tallies of slave ships’ (135), yet he argues there was a decline nonetheless. It is a line of argumentation that we encounter a few times in the book. Elsewhere, for instance, he argues that contraband shipping was less common in Veracruz, but makes the reader doubt this was the case by explaining earlier that archival references relating to this are lacking.
In Veracruz and the Caribbean in the Seventeenth Century, Clark has convincingly shown how Veracruz was part of the ‘unitary circuit’ (141) of the Spanish Caribbean. What we would like to know next is how Veracruz was linked to the rest of the Caribbean.