Creolization and Contraband: Curacao in the Early Modern Caribbean and Atlantic

FAIN: FT-55942-08

Linda Marguerite Rupert
University of North Carolina, Greensboro (Greensboro, NC 27412-5068)

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Dutch island of Curacao was one of the Caribbean's most vibrant smuggling centers, and a major hub in the Atlantic commercial system. Curacao's capital of Willemstad was one of the largest and most ethnically diverse port cities in the region. Using Curacao as a case study, my monograph will be the first book-length treatment of the relationship between illicit inter-imperial trade (also called contraband or smuggling) and processes of social, cultural, and linguistic exchange--or creolization--in the early modern world. I argue that smuggling broke through social as well as economic barriers, and thus opened particularly rich opportunities for cross-cultural exchange. This monograph is a revised doctoral dissertation. It is based on archival research in Curacao, the Netherlands, Spain, and Venezuela. The NEH Summer Stipend would allow me to revise two chapters in preparation for publication.