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Creolization and Contraband
Curacao in the Early Modern Atlantic World
By Linda M. Rupert
From The University of Georgia Press
296 pp / 6 x 9
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When Curaçao came under Dutch control in 1634, the small island off
South America’s northern coast was isolated and sleepy. The introduction
of increased trade (both legal and illegal) led to a dramatic transformation,
and Curaçao emerged as a major hub within Caribbean and wider Atlantic
networks. It would also become the commercial and administrative seat of
the Dutch West India Company in the Americas.
The island’s main city, Willemstad, had a non-Dutch majority composed
largely of free blacks, urban slaves, and Sephardic Jews, who communicated across ethnic divisions in a new creole language called Papiamentu. For Linda M. Rupert, the emergence of this creole language was one of the two defining phenomena that gave shape to early modern Curaçao. The other was smuggling. Both developments, she argues, were informal adaptations to life in a place that was at once polyglot and regimented. They were the sort of improvisations that occurred wherever expanding European empires thrust different peoples together.
Reviews & Quotes
"Rupert’s rich analysis of multiethnic Curaçao is an original and substantial
contribution to Atlantic and Caribbean history. Her book is an
excellent case study of creolization and contraband trade—phenomena
that informed most, if not all, societies in the colonial Americas—and
scholars of the Atlantic world will turn to it for comparative purposes."
— Wim Klooster, author of Revolutions in the Atlantic World: A Comparative History
"This exploration of localized sociocultural mixing and extensive,
illicit commerce on a Dutch Caribbean island makes for a fascinating
study of colonial agency. The Antilles was the most dynamic site of
creolization and contraband in the early modern world. Anyone interested
in Atlantic history will want to read this excellent book."
— Philip Morgan, author of Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry
About Linda M. Rupert
Linda M. Rupert is an assistant professor of history at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.
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"The Early American Places series is an exciting development in scholarly publishing, one that will highlight the most important part of the study of history: the local and particular dimensions of global issues and trends. This is where the rubber meets the road, where ordinary people's lives help to make, and are made by, the bustling wider world in which they live. Early American Places is an original series, and it will publish important scholarship."
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