Frontier Waters, Interimperial Trade: Contraband and the Slave Economy in Saint Lucia, 1698–1748

Between 1698 and 1748, Saint Lucia occupied a distinctive position in the Antilles. This island—disputed between Indigenous Kalinagos and imperial powers since the Spanish arrival in the Caribbean—became a liminal space where English and French merchants circumvented imperial trade and taxation laws. Traditionally, historians have underscored that the Dutch and Danish Caribbean colonies were the main hubs of inter-imperial trade and smuggling in the region. Yet emphasis on how competing imperial powers exploited mercantilist loopholes and imperial regulations overlooks the significance of Indigenous sovereignty in transforming islands into spaces of contact and trade in the region. This presentation illuminates how decades of Euro-Indigenous competition decisively shaped transimperial commercial circuits in Saint Lucia. Rather than a lawless smuggling haven, Saint Lucia functioned as a negotiated maritime frontier that accommodated competing plantation projects while preserving its sui generis political autonomy. Ultimately, this presentation reframes Saint Lucia as a critical piece in Atlantic commercial networks rather than a backwater of flourishing plantation economies. Here, English and French merchants extended the slave trade beyond their jurisdictions. These dynamics demonstrate that the island’s anomalous status was less a failure of mercantilist regulations than a testament to the resilience of Indigenous power in the face of imperial expansion. This presentation is also an invitation to reexamine notions of contraband and the limits of empire in the early modern Caribbean