Over the past few years, a number of new titles have begun to rectify a glaring deficiency in how the history of the Atlantic World has been written. Largely overlooked by historians for generations, Africans in the Americas have gained a place in books, articles, and conference papers. These new studies call attention to the fact that African peoples and cultures shaped the history of the Americas as much as did autochthonous inhabitants and Europeans. Most of these studies, however, have centered on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. David Wheat's Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570–1640 remedies this focus by providing us with one of the first studies on the early impact of Africa and Africans anywhere on the American continent.
Before I engage with the main findings of the book, it is necessary to note Wheat's heuristic methodology. Beyond the obvious obstacles that any early modernist would likely find – illegible calligraphy in various languages, confusing vocabularies filled with forgotten words, etc. – Wheat's research also required working in a large number of archives dispersed across continents, where information was not always easy to come by because of the very conditions of preservation of these old documents. As it is apparent from the book, Wheat thrived in response to these challenges.
Not only does the book constitute a wonderful study of the early modern Caribbean, but it establishes in a conclusive manner that this region and era, which is often associated with conquistadores and indigenous populations, was also largely populated by African men and women. Their actions and designs often determined the course of events that, until now, we had failed to relate to them, perhaps precisely because of our scanty knowledge of the themes and issues tackled here. Wheat masterfully restores these African men and women to their rightful place in Caribbean, Hispanic American, Atlantic, and African history. He further makes the case, in unequivocal terms, that these men and women ‘made possible Spain's colonization’ of the region (19).
Perusing the links between various Atlantic African regions and the Caribbean, each chapter opens new windows into a world where Africans are not just victims and slaves, but also vibrant transatlantic actors, often engaged themselves in slave trade ventures – as in the case of Luanda in the early seventeenth century. Equally significant are Wheat's findings about European tangomãos (traders) and grumetes (ship hands). Wheat shows that many of them lived and worked along the African Atlantic before crossing the ocean and settling in the Caribbean.
This book makes a valuable contribution to studies of the African Atlantic and the Caribbean. There is very little to criticize in it; my only qualm, and it is a minor one, is that Wheat uses the problematic term ‘sub-Saharan Africa’ throughout, when other alternatives are available. But this book fills such an important gap that this issue is easy to ignore.
To conclude with one final point: This book is magisterial and distinctive. That is because it teaches us about the dynamic interactions of Atlantic, Hispanic American, Caribbean, and African histories to an extent rarely seen in this field. Wheat has firmly anchored Africa and Africans in the early modern Caribbean and Hispanic Americas, thus bestowing us with what can only be described as an essential and timeless book.
