This volume features an introduction, 15 chapters, and an epilogue focused on a wide array of topics related to eighteenth-century fortifications in the Spanish, French, and English Caribbean. The contributors are for the most part experts in art history, which explains the copious cartography, city plans, and fortification sketches found throughout. Packed into just under 300 pages, A Fortified Sea is divided into three uneven parts. The first part, authored by Juan Miguel Muñoz Corbalán and Jesús María Ruiz Carrasco, examines the theoretical and practical education of military engineers in Spain. The second part shifts focus to British warfare and intelligence in the Caribbean, particularly in Jamaica, Antigua, Saint-Domingue, and Cuba, with a special emphasis on the cases of Havana and Guantánamo. Finally, the third part consists of seven chapters that explore eighteenth-century Spanish-American fortifications, spanning sites from Spanish Baton Rouge to Santiago de Cuba and Perote, Veracruz. The volume’s editors, Pedro Luengo and Gene Allen Smith, contend that such a wide-ranging examination of Caribbean fortifications is necessary because “forts became the only surviving remains of imperial heritage in many sites.” In other words, “the history of some local communities can only be explained by examining forts” (x).

Throughout the chapters, significant differences in colonial taxation, labor recruitment, and defensive designs emerge through the analysis of English, Spanish, and French fortifications. In Chapter 3, Aaron Graham reveals how Jamaica’s mid-eighteenth-century defenses were consistently undermined by fragmented funding and planter resistance to governor authority. The local assemblies that ruled British islands refused to allocate funds for the construction of defensive structures “except in wartime, when prices of labor and materials were highest, reducing the success of construction” (46). In this regard, British governors were considerably hampered in their defensive efforts by planter communities wary of governors’ spending, which in turn meant that military engineers were unable to compete for skilled laborers and imported materials during peacetime. Similarly, Christopher K. Waters offers a remarkable examination of how such structural impediments resulted in the construction of poorly conceived fortifications in British Antigua. His analysis reveals a series of useless, thin-walled forts unable to resist enemy fire. Waters attributes the construction of these late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth-century structures to local elites more concerned with “architectural aesthetics” than properly functioning defensive systems.

In a slightly different vein, Ignacio J. López-Hernández examines Rear-Admiral Charles Knowles’ differing approach to Spanish and French military targets in his 1748 Caribbean expedition to Saint-Domingue and Cuba, respectively. Knowles set sail from Jamaica and first destroyed Saint-Louis-du-Sud, an architecturally strong fort, but one plagued by the absence of supporting French crossfire. The Rear-Admiral then proceeded to overcome other Domingoise fortifications at Léogane, Petit-Goâve, and Cap-François. In effect, the French of Saint-Domingue developed a polycentric defensive system that could repel minor incursions, but had never been designed to withstand a large squadron of enemy ships. By contrast, the defensive structures of Santiago de Cuba were able to thwart Knowles’ assault due to the supporting fire from La Estrella and San Pedro’s batteries. The author is also careful to highlight how English misgivings about a Spanish pilot and a (non-existing) chain played a large part in the successful defense of Santiago de Cuba. In other words, intangible and unpredictable factors could hold just as much influence over the outcomes of large-scale attacks. This welcome focus on Santiago de Cuba is also reflected in María Mercedes Fernández Martín’s study of the port through Juan de Císcara’s fortification proposals.

The volume’s editors are to be commended for the range and variety of spaces examined in the greater Spanish Caribbean. The fortifications of Cartagena de Indias, Spanish Louisiana, and Puerto Rico and their subsequent modifications are addressed in the last part of the book. Given the specificity of the subject material, this volume will be especially useful to experts on Caribbean naval engagements and scholars at the intersection of art history, archaeology, and military history.