Liquid Geographies of Transatlantic Slavery: Caribbean Pathways of Forced Migration, 1580-1640

Abstract

Slave transshipment and resale routes within the Spanish Caribbean were a fundamental part of the Atlantic slave trade. Enslaved Africans brought to the region during the late XVI and first half of the XVII century were forcibly made to traverse multiple circum-Caribbean points throughout their lives in a continuous process of de-racination, re-commodification, and forced mobility. Maritime regional slave routes linked seemingly marginal locations in the Caribbean like Cumaná, Margarita, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, or Trujillo with wider regional flows of peoples, capital, and commodities, as well as with the circulation in the larger Atlantic. Veracruz and Cartagena each served as an axis for these regional slave transshipment and resale routes, while Havana and Cartagena both functioned as re-shipment springboards for Veracruz.