LSU Press Life and Society in the Early Spanish Caribbean: The Greater Antilles, 1493–1550

The half century of European activity in the Caribbean that followed Columbus's first voyages brought enormous demographic, economic, and social change to the region as Europeans, Indigenous people, and Africans whom Spaniards imported to provide skilled and unskilled labor came into extended contact for the first time. In Life and Society in the Early Spanish Caribbean, Ida Altman examines the interactions of these diverse groups and individuals and the transformation of the islands of the Greater Antilles (Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Jamaica). She addresses the impact of disease and ongoing conflict; the Spanish monarchy's efforts to establish a functioning political system and an Iberian church; evangelization of Indians and Blacks; the islands' economic development; the international character of the Caribbean, which attracted Portuguese, Italian, and German merchants and settlers; and the formation of a highly unequal and coercive but dynamic society. As Altman demonstrates, in the first half of the sixteenth century the Caribbean became the first full-fledged iteration of the Atlantic world in all its complexity. Review "Ida Altman gives us a different history of the Greater Antilles in the first half of the sixteenth century. On the basis of a substantial immersion in the primary sources and ... the existing literature, the narratives of discovery and conquest and the omnipresent figure of Columbus yield here to the construction of a deep and vivid account, inhabited by people who created a new and complex society, matrix of the Spanish colonial world in America. Taking a creative approach, in which can be distinguished the methods of micro-history and the history of daily life, and incorporating as well the archaeological evidence, a detailed and vibrant picture of the human universe that emerged from the conquest is constructed.... In this world physical, spiritual, and sexual violence not only affected the conquered Indians and enslaved Africans but marked the everyday life and relationships of the colonizers as well. At the same time it also produced extensive ethnic mixing and left space for expressions of connection that reflect the diversity of individual attitudes and the importance of family.... Altman's book... offers us a humanized history, peopled by diverse, controversial actors."-- "Roberto Valcárcel Rojas, author of Archaeology of Early Colonial Interaction at El Chorro de Maíta, Cuba""Engaging deeply and critically with archival sources, archaeological studies and the Spanish-language historiography, Altman's landmark study offers the first detailed look at the structures of everyday life for the inhabitants of the early Spanish Caribbean. Her attention to Black and Indigenous voices, the experiences of women, and her treatment of themes including violence, coercion, disease, and mestizaje during this dynamic, formative period make Life and Society in the Early Spanish Caribbean an obligatory point of reference and an essential model for students of the sixteenth-century Atlantic world."-- "David Wheat, author of Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570-1640""From one of the leading scholars of the new wave of studies of the early modern Caribbean, Life and Society in the Early Spanish Caribbean is a tour de force for anyone interested in understanding the challenges and opportunities of the decades following the arrival of Spaniards to the Caribbean. Altman offers as complete a picture as possible of what life was like for the native inhabitants of the Caribbean, the African and European newcomers, and their indigenous-African-European descendants, who ruled and were ruled upon, worked, reproduced, survived, thrived, and died in the dangerous, cruel, and complex world of the Greater Antilles in the half-century following the irruption of Spaniards on the islands. Carefully plowing through records that intentionally silence the voices and experiences of In