Subaltern Agency and Imperial Rivalry in the Franco-Spanish CircumCaribbean: Native American and Black Actors during the Long 17th Century

My project explores the agency of Native American and Black actors in circum-Caribbean frontier zones between the French and Spanish empires during the 'Long 17th Century'. Although the French and Spanish Atlantics have been described by Jane Landers as "intimately linked," scholarship has usually treated them separately. Silvia Espelt-Bombin has also noted a tendency to perceive imperial conflicts only in terms of European diplomacy, neglecting the role of colonial populations. My project counteracts this. It focusses on the period from 1580 to 1720, the apex of the Franco-Spanish conflict, using it as a framework for the subjects examined: sovereign Native American nations, outlaws such as maroons and pirates, and subject or enslaved populations attempting to improve their status through alliance-building in frontier zones like Guyana, Panama, coastal Mexico, and the Caribbean islands. There, Native American and Black communities were often intertwined and difficult to separate. Their relationships to each other were equally important as those to Europeans. Previous scholarship on my topic is limited, but some relevant examples can be delineated. Among the earliest is Panamanian maroons' support for 16th-Century French pirates and later switch of allegiance to guarding the coast against their former allies. Another group in this area vied over by the Spanish and French were the native Kuna. French manoeuvrers against Spain were also coordinated with the Guyana Caribs. In western Hispaniola, a cluster of maroon villages, a buccaneer nest, and a French colony led into another as the French arranged encroachment upon the Spanish with the maroons. Two studies by Arne Bialuschewski also provide strong examples. They show Native Americans joining European-led buccaneer raids, travelling along the Atlantic littoral, and taking part in an attempted alliance with an unconquered Maya kingdom. I will primarily use sources at the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, Archives nationales d'Outre Mer in Aix-en-Provence, and Archives nationales and Bibliothèque nationale in Paris, planning for two months at each site. As far as possible, I will also include material from American archives, relying on the digital stores of the Archivos General de Nación of Colombia, Mexico, and Central America (Guatemala) if on-site research should be impossible. French and Spanish letters of report will allow me insights into colonisers' alliance-building and their fears about enemy attempts at it. Missionary reports provide an additional angle. Spanish archives also contain trial protocols of suspected rebels or interlopers. All these sources come from what Carlo Ginzburg termed 'archives of the repression,' and require special care. I will practise a critique of archival sources as established in the works of Ann Stoler, Michel-Rolph Trouillot, and more recently Marisa Fuentes and Saidiya Hartman. I apply Hans van Wees's ideas on competition to articulate the Franco-Spanish relationship while also treating the empires as 'provincialised' in Dipesh Chakrabarty's sense, as providing tension that contextualises the actions of Native American and Black subjects. Further, I use Lawrence Gross's 'Postapocalypse Stress Syndrome' and Paul Gilroy's 'Black Atlantic' to account for the European impact upon my subjects' intellectual tradition. Given this field of mutual influence, I consider my project one of global history, specifically drawing upon the 'histoire croisée' of Michael Werner and Bénédicte Zimmermann. Using these methods, I formulate a subaltern scope of action corresponding to Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper's 'imperial repertoires.' My project not only breaks new ground in taking on several topics so far neglected by scholarship but ties them together as a coherent whole. To analyse my findings, I employ an interdisciplinary method that considers ideas from Classics, Native American Studies, and Literature as well as those of Early Modern History.