Session Abstract

From the late sixteenth century, when other European powers began to challenge the Iberian monopoly of the Americas, contraband became a central concern of imperial authorities. Contraband’s corrupting influence captured the attention of Spanish colonial officers. Traditionally regarded as activities that undermined imperial systems and breeched mercantilist policies, contraband and corruption figured prominently in official projects to strengthen the imperial hold of territories at the margins of empire. In the past decades, historians have re-examined the role of both “illicit” practices in the making of the Atlantic Empires showing that, more often than not, authorities and important mercantile groups were involved in complex networks for smuggling and profiting out of imperial funds. These “illicit” connections, the papers in this panel collectively argue, re-drew the boundaries of the Atlantic World, resulting in the construction of trans-imperial geographic spaces where political allegiances did not conform to imperial designs.

Focusing on the Caribbean and the Rio de la Plata, this panel tackles the three elements of this year’s conference theme by addressing the ways in which the lives and stories of bureaucrats, slaves, and merchants gave new meaning to the geographic spaces they traversed. Trans-imperial connections—a part of the everyday experience of inhabitants of these two regions—effectively resulted in the configuration of rival geographies that, just as the political allegiances that characterized the lives of rioplatenses and Caribbean dwellers, did not conform to imperial prescriptions.