Carlos Enriques Clerque as crypto-Jewish confidence man in Francisco de Seyxas y Lovera's Piratas y contrabandistas (1693)

This article considers the story of Carlos Enriques Clerque, the enigmatic instigator of the 1669–1671 John Narborough expedition to Chile, as presented in Francisco de Seyxas y Lovera's Piratas y contrabandistas, a history of piracy from 1693, first published in 2011. Locating Seyxas's account in the context of related print and archival sources, this study demonstrates how the author develops a new and singularly complete picture of Enriques Clerque's South American adventure. At the same time, this article examines how Seyxas's version of the Enriques Clerque story exemplifies a uniquely Spanish vision of piracy specific to the final years of the seventeenth century. Setting aside the violent predators featured in Northern European texts on piracy from the period, Seyxas focuses on a category of sophisticated confidence men who deploy linguistic ability and cultural knowledge to undermine Spain's commercial system overseas.     

Managing the Transition to a Free Labor Society: American Interpretations of the British West Indies during the Civil War and Reconstruction

American reactions to the Morant Bay rebellion of 1865 reveal that three decades after abolition, British West Indian emancipation was still considered relevant to policy debates in the United States. The early 1860s saw a significant shift in northern views of the British Caribbean colonies, in particular as a result of the writings of William G. Sewell on the subject. For Republicans, escalating social conflict in Jamaica highlighted above all the need to prevent former slaveholders from monopolizing political power after emancipation, and this interpretation of the West Indian experience reinforced the evolving case for equal rights. Many had argued that former slaves’ economic independence had been the major cause of declining plantation production in the West Indies. However, Republicans tended to accept representations of black farmers in the Caribbean as an incipient middle class, and never concluded from the British case that access to land for freed slaves would be fundamentally at odds with maintaining future cotton production.     

Review Article: Nations and Empires in Colonial North America

GREGORY EVANS DOWD. War under Heaven: Pontiac, the Indian Nations, and the British Empire. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. Pp. xvi, 360. $32.00 (US); ERIC HINDERAKER and PETER C. MANCALL. At the Edge of Empire: The Backcountry in British North America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. Pp. ix, 210. $17.95 (US), paper; JANE T. MERRITT. At the Crossroads: Indians and Empires on a Mid-Atlantic Frontier, 1700–1763. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2003; dist. Toronto: SBS. Pp. vi, 338. $32.95 (CDN), paper; MICHAEL LEROY OBERG. Uncas: First of the Mohegans. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2003. Pp. ix, 268. $27.50 (US). Reviewed by Gary Clayton Anderson