VERACRUZ AND THE CARIBBEAN IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY by J.M.H. Clark A dissertation submitted to Johns Hopkins University in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Baltimore, Maryland September, 2016 © 2016 Joseph Michael Hopper Clark All Rights Reserved Abstract of the Dissertation This dissertation examines the relationship between the Mexican port city of Veracruz and Caribbean in the seventeenth century. Drawing evidence from archival research conducted primarily in Mexico and Spain, I argue that Veracruz was part of a coherent urban system in the early modern Caribbean. Its first chapter uses early chronicles and conquest narratives, archived correspondence of Veracruz’s town council (cabildo), hospital records, and traveler accounts to examine Veracruz’s environmental struggles from the city’s foundation in 1519 until the end of the seventeenth century. Chapter Two builds on a database of import and export tax duties assessed in the ports of Veracruz and Havana to argue that Veracruz was part of a discrete regional trading network that followed patterns that were independent of the transatlantic silver fleet. The third chapter reassesses Veracruz’s role in the transatlantic slave trade, showing that the African captives who arrived in the city were a larger and more diverse group than previous studies have acknowledged. A particular contribution is the use of previously unused Mexican archival sources for the transatlantic slave trade. Chapter Four evaluates the ethnic and religious acculturation of African and free-black communities in Veracruz using the lens of a religious borderland. The final chapter examines how Veracruz’s role in colonial defenses changed over the course of the seventeenth century. In particular, I cite the formalization of the free-black militia to argue that Veracruz was integrated into a military-strategic system in the Spanish Caribbean that evoked explicit invocations of regional consciousness. By applying an alternate regional lens in Veracruz, this ii dissertation demonstrates how understandings of early Mexican history are enhanced by more thorough consideration of New Spain’s maritime borderlands. Members of the Committee Ben Vinson III, advisor Franklin W. Knight, advisor Gabriel Paquette, advisor Sara Castro-Klarén Eduardo Gonzalez, chair Erin Rowe (alternate) Sebastián Mazzuca (alternate) iii Inscription For Emily (and mom and dad) iv Acknowledgements Thanks to an odd accumulation of serendipity, I have had the rare benefit of three dedicated and generous mentors in my time at Johns Hopkins, each of whom have left their mark on this project. I was an awkward junior undergraduate at Boston University on the way to meet with my advisor in the Department of African American Studies when I first met Ben Vinson III. He was waiting in the adjacent office, making last- minute changes to a talk he would give later that afternoon. I knew vaguely that I was interested in pursuing a doctorate in history, but my wandering curiosity and thickheaded determination To Study Everything had prevented me from specializing—hence why I was meeting with my advisor that morning. In the few short moments we had together, Ben pitched me on Johns Hopkins and colonial Mexican history. I had never truly considered Mexican history, but within minutes I was sold. Less than two years later I was at Hopkins working with Ben. Since that first morning about eight years ago, he has been a constant source of wisdom and advice, and through his prodigious faculty he has opened doors for me to set my roots in Mexico and grow as a scholar. In my first semester at Hopkins, I found a second mentor in Franklin W. Knight. Gregarious, witty, and slightly mischevious, he commanded a seminar room with the sort of effortless brilliance that us mere mortals can only dream of emulating. Above all, Franklin is an endlessly loyal and dedicated mentor to his graduate students. I am profoundly grateful that he took an interest in me and my work early on. When Ben moved down the road to George Washington University, Franklin slotted in seamlessly as the day-to-day mentor of this project. Over the years, he has been my most enthusiastic v and faithful supporter. In more ways than one, his scholarship inspired this project, his incisive wisdom refined it, and his unfailing encouragement propelled it through. Finally, I have no greater gratitude and this project has no greater intellectual and emotional debt than to Gabriel Paquette. Gabe has been a friend and a mentor, and his dissertation-whispering has both made this a better project and, above all, made this a finished project. Gabe offered generously of his time and his wisdom when it was most needed, and his advice has always had that elusive quality most virtuous of a dissertation mentor: always focused on the next step that would advance the dissertation along the path to finishing. To him, I am endlessly grateful. In addition to my three “principal” advisors, I have had the great fortune of being reared in the intellectual culture of the Hopkins History Department. Phil Morgan, Toby Ditz, François Furstenberg, María Portuondo, Erin Rowe, and Richard Kagan have all read various chapter drafts and project proposals over the years, as well as offering their guidance on stray issues like conference presentations, job talks, and the like. Pier Larson, Nate Connolly, and Mary Ryan all generously allowed me to sit in on their seminars as a passerby, which allowed me to ocassionally break out of my colonial Latin American mindset and think about key issues like race, slavery, space, and urban history from a different theoretical vantage. I was also fortunate to work as a teaching assistant for Sara Berry, Peter Jelavich, and Bill Rowe. All three set a fine example behind a podium or in class discussion. I would like to thank Bill in particular for being a great friend, whether on the basketball court or in The Seminar room. His dedication to The Seminar and to the Department is the evergreen image of collegiality that I aspire to. I vi would finally like to thank Tobie Meyer-Fong, who has been a wonderful and deeply committed DGS during my years at Hopkins. Beyond the History Department, I owe a great debt of gratitude to Sara Castro- Klarén, Eduardo Gonzalez, and Sebastián Mazzuca, who generously read the entire dissertation and crafted, thoughtful, probing questions of it that will help guide the next stages of the project. Among Hopkins faculty, I reserve a special mention from the brilliant, kind, and late Sidney Mintz. Rare, in the last fifty years, is the Caribbeanist who has not been inspired by Sid’s work. My encounter with his scholarship as an undergraduate in many ways propelled me to Caribbean history in the first place. I am beyond fortunate to have had the opportunity to meet Sid as a graduate student and discuss this project with him during its conceptual phase, and our subsequent correspondence via e-mail always sent a thrill down my spine as the project developed. My graduate colleagues have meant the world to me, and among them none have been more important to my work and my sanity than my fellow Latin Americanists and Hispanists. I am continually awed by my own good fortune to have entered grad school at the same time as Lauren MacDonald and Katherine Boníl Gomez, two of the most brilliant, generous scholars—and greatest friends—anyone could ever hope to meet. They, along with the incomparable Guillermo García Montúfar, Norah Andrews, Dexnell Peters, Álvaro Caso Bello, Matthew Franco, Jonathan Greenwood, Yonaton Glazer- Eyatan, Carolyn Salomans, María Lumbrejas, and Brandi Waters, have made my time at Hopkins rich and happy, and pointed my work in directions that were unexpected and enlightening. vii Some of my Latin Americanist compatriots and I made a second home for ourselves within Hopkins’s famed Atlantic Seminar, where folks of the non-Anglophonic persuasion are welcomed with open arms. There, my work gained the insights of my graduate colleagues Nick Radburn, Katherine Smoak, Jeremy Fradkin, Nathan Marvin, John Harris, Christopher Consolino, Claire Gherini, Will Brown, Alexey Kritchal, Steph Gamble, Steffi Cerato, Rachel Calvin-Whitehead, Meredith Gaffield, Joe Wallace, Daisy Ramsden, Jennie Williams, Sam Backer, and Michael Hatton. Other graduate colleagues have read chapters, lending both substantive feedback and their sharp eyes for copyediting. Lauren MacDonald lent both on a number of chapters over the years as she has become one of my most trusted sounding boards. I must thank Lauren particularly for the last-minute copyedits she did for Chapters One and Five. Will Brown read an early draft of Chapter Three, offering a great deal of brilliant feedback. There is neither a sharper eye nor a sharper substantive-feedback-giver than than Catherine Hinchliff, who read Chapter Three. Dexnell Peters and Jess Walker both offered very helpful proofs of their own. Ada Link has been a friend and ally at Hopkins since day one. Finally, I would like to thank Jennie Grayson and Christopher Consolino for being daily fixtures in the windowless graduate workroom, where much the writing of this dissertation took place, punctuated by shared conversation, commiseration, and coffee. My work has benefitted greatly from insights, questions, and conversations with a number of scholars outside of Hopkins. First among them are my undergraduate mentors, John Thornton and Linda Heywood, without whom I would never have gotten myself into this mess. They are not alone in their culpability, having had conspirators in Arianne viii Chernock, Bruce Schulman, and Jim Johnson, all three of whom share a fair amount of the blame. In all earnestness, I cannot describe how meaningful their encouragement and patience was to me as an undergraduate.