THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO THE CREOLE ARCHIPELAGO: COLONIZATION, EXPERIMENTATION, AND COMMUNITY IN THE SOUTHERN CARIBBEAN, C. 1700-1796 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY BY TESSA MURPHY CHICAGO, ILLINOIS MARCH 2016 Table of Contents List of Tables …iii List of Maps …iv Dissertation Abstract …v Acknowledgements …x PART I Introduction …1 1. Creating the Creole Archipelago: The Settlement of the Southern Caribbean, 1650-1760...20 PART II 2. Colonizing the Caribbean Frontier, 1763-1773 …71 3. Accommodating Local Knowledge: Experimentations and Concessions in the Southern Caribbean …115 4. Recreating the Creole Archipelago …164 PART III 5. The American Revolution and the Resurgence of the Creole Archipelago, 1774-1785 …210 6. The French Revolution and the Demise of the Creole Archipelago …251 Epilogue …290 Appendix A: Lands Leased to Existing Inhabitants of Dominica …301 Appendix B: Lands Leased to Existing Inhabitants of St. Vincent …310 A Note on Sources …316 Bibliography …319 ii List of Tables 1.1: Respective Populations of France’s Windward Island Colonies, 1671 & 1700 …32 1.2: Respective Populations of Martinique, Grenada, St. Lucia, Dominica, and St. Vincent c.1730 …39 1.3: Change in Reported Population of Free People of Color in Martinique, 1732-1733 …46 1.4: Increase in Reported Populations of Dominica & St. Lucia, 1730-1745 …50 1.5: Enslaved Africans Reported as Disembarking in the Lesser Antilles, 1626-1762 …57 1.6: Enslaved Africans Reported as Disembarking in Jamaica & Saint-Domingue, 1526-1762 …58 2.1: Reported Populations of the Ceded Islands c. 1763 …78 2.2: African Slaves Disembarked in the Lesser Antilles, 1763-1773 …103 2.3: Evolution of Free and Enslaved Populations in the Ceded Islands, 1763-1773 …107 2.4: Amount of Sugar (cwt) Exported from the Ceded Islands, 1769-1773 …110 2.5: Value of Total Trade between Great Britain & the Ceded Islands, 1763-1773 …112 3.1: Sample of Leaseholds in Dominica …123 3.2: State of Grenada, 1772 …124 3.3: Leases Granted to Existing Inhabitants of St. Patrick’s Parish, St. Vincent …128 3.4: Number of Slaves Annually Disembarked at Dominica, 1764-1773 …157 4.1: Evolution of the Population of St. Lucia, 1756-1765 …187 4.2: Ratio of Slaves to Free People in the Ceded Islands, 1763 & 1773 …203 5.1: Number of African Slaves Disembarked in the Ceded Islands, 1775-1783 …237 5.2: Number of African slaves disembarked in the Ceded Islands, 1784-1789 …245 5.3: Free & Enslaved Populations of the Ceded Islands c. 1783 …248 iii List of Maps 0.1: Location of the Creole Archipelago within the Caribbean …4 1.1: Location and Sovereign Status of Southern Caribbean Islands c. 1660 …26 1.2: Location and Parishes in Martinique …49 2.1: Respective British and French Possessions in the Southern Caribbean, 1763 …75 2.2: Parishes Created by British Colonial Officials in Grenada c. 1763 …84 2.3: Parishes Created by British Colonial Officials in Tobago c. 1763 …90 2.4: Parishes Created by British Officials in St. Vincent c. 1763 …92 2.5: Parishes Created by British Officials in Dominica c. 1763 …94 3.1: Lands Leased by New Adopted Subjects in St. Patrick’s Parish, St. Vincent …126 3.2: Lands Leased by Laurence & Nicholas Houelche, St. Peter, Dominica …130 4.1: Boundary between Carib and Settler lands, St. Vincent, c. 1763 …167 4.2 Carib-Settler Boundaries before and after the First Carib War …182 4.3: Parishes in St. Lucia c. 1764 …189 4.4: Lands to which Existing Inhabitants Formerly Laid Claim in St. Vincent …193 5.1: Respective British & French possessions in the Southern Caribbean c. 1775 …214 5.2: Respective British & French possessions in the Southern Caribbean c. 1781 …231 5.3: Respective British & French possessions in the Southern Caribbean c. 1783 …238 7.1: St. Vincent and the Grenadines …291 iv Dissertation Abstract “The Creole Archipelago: Colonization, Experimentation, and Community in the Southern Caribbean, c.1700-1796.” This dissertation examines how two of the most powerful empires in the early modern Atlantic World tried—and largely failed—to assimilate, erase, or remake a distinctive society that was forged outside the sphere of colonial rule in early America. As Amerindians, free people of color, poor whites, and others for whom there was little room in the plantation societies of the colonial Americas migrated to spaces not claimed by European Crowns, they forged distinctive borderland communities that existed alongside and competed with those sanctioned by colonial officials. Focusing on the southernmost reaches of the Caribbean, this dissertation argues that the thousands of men and women who settled in Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, and Tobago before the islands became colonies created and maintained a ‘Creole Archipelago:’ a set of economic, social, and informal political networks that united the islands in a shared community. The persistence of inter-island networks that transcended or disregarded the geographic and imagined political boundaries of early modern empires would repeatedly frustrate French and British attempts to control settlement and trade and to police the boundaries of political and racial belonging in their respective American realms. The resultant diplomatic and military contests that animated the southern Caribbean in the long eighteenth century challenged evolving European legal, economic, and racial norms and, by extension, undermined the practice of imperial rule. Drawing on census and trade records, government correspondence, and Catholic parish registers archived in the Caribbean, France, Great Britain, and the United States, my research reveals significant exchanges and interconnections between spaces often studied according to imperial or national boundaries. By tracing the circulation of people, goods, and information, this dissertation highlights regular and sustained interactions that shaped what are often thought of as v ‘British,’ ‘French,’ or ‘Latin’ America. Focusing on the everyday interactions that contributed to the construction of the Atlantic World, I re-situate a little-studied American borderland as a site in which broader ideologies and practices of empire were first elaborated, experimented with, and negotiated. Focusing on a region of the Atlantic World that first evolved outside the sphere of imperial rule invites a new approach to the study of colonization. A close examination of the shared practices and norms that were developed in the absence of formal agents and institutions of empire suggests that historians can overemphasize the role of metropolitan laws and institutions in the formation of early America. Rather than a European geopolitical contest in which competing Crowns vied for territory and influence, the colonization of the southern Caribbean entailed innovation and compromise on the part of people who came not from Europe but from Africa and the Americas; as this dissertation shows, imperial attempts to erase or absorb these innovations in the latter half of the eighteenth century were lengthy, violent, and only partially successful. Finally, this study illustrates the benefits of a microhistorical approach to Atlantic or global history. Looking closely at one small part of the early modern world allows for an appreciation of how abstract phenomena such as the rise and consolidation of empires, the elaboration of transatlantic trade systems, and the circulation of revolutionary ideologies were both experienced and influenced by people often omitted or marginalized in studies of the wider Atlantic World. Through their daily interactions and exchanges, Amerindians, free and enslaved Africans, and Europeans from a variety of nations forged and maintained an inter-island community whose very existence—and persistence in the face of substantial pressures to reform—revealed the limits of early modern imperial rule. vi The dissertation is divided into three sections. In the first, I explore the genesis of the Creole Archipelago, tracing when and why Amerindians, free and enslaved Africans, and Europeans from a variety of nations chose or were forced to settle outside the sphere of formal colonial rule in the southern Caribbean. In the absence of colonial institutions and authorities such as governors, courts, and customs officers, the thousands of men and women who settled in the islands developed their own economic, social, and informal political practices and their own understandings of the relationship between race, legitimacy, and authority. Amidst the plantation colonies of the early Americas, the emergence of a society in which Amerindians and free people of color exercised considerable economic, social, and political influence generated practical and symbolic contests between colony and borderland. In the second section, which is composed of three chapters, I explore the wide-ranging political, economic, demographic, and social consequences that accompanied the Creole Archipelago’s incorporation into existing European empires after the Seven Years’ War (1756- 1763). I argue that previous experiences of colonial rule elsewhere in the Americas shaped British and French designs for the new colonies, as metropolitan officials sought to transform the archipelago into a center of sugar production as rapidly and as efficiently as possible. Exercising the autonomy and authority they had enjoyed for decades, many residents of the Creole Archipelago sought and secured concessions and accommodations