The archaeology of the Spanish contact period in the Caribbean

The arrival of Spanish conquistadors and colonists to the Caribbean in the late fifteenth century set in motion the processes that produced the post-1500 New World. The sixteenth-century cultural and ecological exchanges among Europe, Africa, and the Americas that took place during the early contact period greatly affected the social and economic patterns of life in both the Old and the New Worlds. Nowhere was this change manifest as profoundly and dramatically as in the sixteenth-century Caribbean. This essay explores the archaeological insights into the processes of encounter between the Amerindian peoples of the Caribbean region and the first permanent Europeans in the Americas and the responses of each to contact with the other. Archaeological research has informed our understanding of this seminal era in New World cultural development in important ways. It had also allowed the documentation of both the cultural and demographic disintegration of the Caribbean Indians and the formation of Euro-American culture.     

Petsamo: bringing modernity to Finland’s Arctic Ocean shore 1920–1939

In the Peace Treaty of Tartu 1920 Finland was given a corridor to the Arctic Sea. This area of 10,000 km² called Petsamo, was situated along the eastern side of the present Russo-Norwegian border. For many Finns Petsamo was seen as part of a Greater Finland expansionist ideology. Petsamo remained part of Finland until 1944, and during that time tourism was intensified to this new Arctic Ocean part of Finland. However, the most significant single project for bringing modernity and the young Republic of Finland to Petsamo was the Kolosjoki nickel mine. Kolosjoki was a piece in a larger international struggle for natural resources to be used for economic and political gains both in times of war and peace. The Kolosjoki mine can be compared with other similar mining communities in the Arctic and Siberia. When compared with the Soviet Russian Piramid mining community on Svalbard, differences in architectural style also become a signifier. The Kolosjoki mining village was built in a functionalistic style that was eagerly adopted by Scandinavia and Finland at that time. An Arctic dimension, connected explicitly to the Arctic Ocean presence of Finland at that time, is mostly lacking in later Finnish collective history culture.     

The counter-revolutionary Atlantic: white West Indian petitions and proslavery networks

Following recent research into imperial networks and their materialities, this paper addresses the geographies of the early-modern Atlantic. Its focus is the defensive response of white West Indian colonists to the emergence of popular antislavery sentiment in Britain during the ‘age of abolition’ (c. 1780–1833), which led to the increasing marginalization of slave-holding interests. This response included the production of corporate legislative petitions that sought to prevent or delay the reform of slavery. The paper argues that these petitions should be understood not as rhetorical forms of ‘influence’ that can be analysed in terms of their language, but as material objects whose potential efficacy derived from how, and in what textual company, they travelled. Tracing these material networks of petitioning provides a means to operationalize ‘circum-Atlantic’ perspectives and thus explore the spaces of the Atlantic. The paper also considers how theories of creolization, which underpin much thinking about the Atlantic, might be informed by a consideration of these petitionary networks.

L'Atlantique contre-révolutionnaire: les demandes des blancs des Antilles et les réseaux favorables à l'esclavagisme

Cet article fait suite aux recherches récentes effectuées sur les réseaux impériaux et leurs matérialités et s'intéresse aux géographies du début de l'époque moderne de l'Atlantique. Il met l'accent sur la réaction défensive des colons blancs des Antilles devant l'arrivée du sentiment populaire anti-esclavagiste en Angleterre pendant «l'ère abolitionniste» (1780–1833) qui a contribué à la marginalisation des propriétaires d'esclaves. Cette réaction comprenait des pétitions légales relevant de sociétés privées dont le but était d'empêcher ou de retarder le projet de réforme de l'esclavagisme. Cet article montre que ces pétitions ne devraient pas être vues comme des formes rhétoriques «d'influence» pouvant s'analyser en fonction de leurs modes linguistiques, mais comme des objets matériels dont la capacité de rendement résultait des manières et des formats textuels par lesquels elles pouvaient voyager. Remonter jusqu'aux réseaux concrets qui ont permis de protester par des pétitions est un moyen d'opérationnaliser les approches «circon-Atlantique» et d'explorer ainsi les espaces de l'Atlantique. Par ailleurs, l'article tente de montrer comment l'étude de ces réseaux de pétitions peut éclairer les théories de la créolisation qui sous-tendent la plupart des réflexions sur l'Atlantique.

El Atlántico contra-revolucionario: peticiones y organizaciones a favor de la esclavitud de la gente blanca de las Antillas

Con referencia a las recientes investigaciones de redes imperiales y su aspecto material, este papel trata las geografías del antiguo atlántico moderno. Se centra en la reacción defensiva de los colonos blancos de las Antillas al surgimiento del sentimiento popular antiesclavitud en Gran Bretaña durante ‘la era de la abolición’ (c. 1780–1833), que dio lugar a una marginación cada vez mayor de los intereses de los negreros. La producción de peticiones colectivas legislativas para tratar de impedir o retrasar la reforma de la esclavitud formó parte de esta reacción. Este papel sugiere que hay que ver estas peticiones no como formas retóricas de ‘influencia’ que se puede analizar por su lenguaje sino más bien como objetos materiales, la eficacia potencial de los cuales viene de cómo, y en qué compañía textual se viajaban. Un análisis del origen de estas redes materiales de peticionar posibilita el funcionamiento de perspectivas ‘circum-atlánticas’ y, por consiguiente, una exploración de los espacios del Atlántico. El papel también considera como teorías de criollización que son fundamentales al pensamiento actual sobre el Atlántico pueden ser informadas por un estudio de estas redes de peticionar.