Adrian Leonard &amp; David Pretel (eds.), The Caribbean and the Atlantic World Economy. Circuits of Trade, Money and Knowledge, 1650-1914, New York, Palgrave MacMillan, 2015, 319 pp

Coello de la Rosa, Alexandre

Illes i imperis

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Illes i Imperis 18, 2016, 183-187
http://dx.doi.org/10.2436/20.8050.02.8
THE CARIBBEAN AND THE ATLANTIC WORLD ECONOMY. 
CIRCUITS OF TRADE, MONEY AND KNOWLEDGE, 1650-1914
Adrian Leonard & David Pretel (eds.), The Caribbean and the Atlantic World Economy. 
Circuits of Trade, Money and Knowledge, 1650-1914, New York, Palgrave MacMillan, 
2015, 319 pp.
In the last two decades or so, Atlantic history arose as a cultural, geographic and histori-
cal paradigm that led scholars to focus primarily on transoceanic connections, em-
pire-state building, and cultural difference.1 By «inventing» a new field of historical study 
called the Atlantic –as David Armitage argued–2 European historians focused on in-
tra-imperial interactions between metropolitan centers and their new-world colonies. As 
a result of considering the unity of the Caribbean and by extension the Atlantic world as 
a by-product of European imperialism, Atlantic history was simply reduced to the ratio-
nale of an exploiting metropole. However, other scholars, such as Charles Tilly,3 drew the 
attention to macro-historical processes, particularly to the study of the development of 
the Atlantic World economy and its evolving global circuits (1-2). The aim of this collec-
tion of essays is to drive forward a broader Atlantic history that nonetheless falls into the 
trap of modernity, a concept that is generally missing from the major part of individual 
essays (with the exception of Oostindie’s). Paradoxically, this concept ends up reinforc-
ing the essentialisms it criticizes throughout the book, which on the other hand provides 
new insights on knowledge and economic exchanges not only in the American and Afri-
can Atlantic Worlds, but also in the western European coastal nations which invented 
1. Bailyn, Bernard, Atlantic History: Concept and Contours, Harvard, Harvard University Press, 2005; 
Bernard and Patricia L. Denault, «Introduction: Reflections on Some Major Themes», in Bailyn, Bernard and 
Patricia L. Denault (eds.) Soundings in Atlantic History. Latent Structures and Intellectual Currents, 1500-1830, 
Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2009, pp. 1-8; Elliot, John H., Empires of the Atlantic World. Britain and 
Spain in America, 1492-1830, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2007; Elliot, John H., España, Europa y el 
mundo de ultramar (1500-1800), Madrid, Taurus, 2009, pp. 21-26.
2. Armitage, David, «Three concepts of Atlantic History», in David Armitage and Michael J. Braddick 
(eds.), The British Atlantic World, 1500-1800, New York, Palgrave McMillan, 2002, pp. 11-27; Armitage, Da-
vid, Greater Britain, 1515-1776: Essays in Atlantic History, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2004.
3. Tilly, Charles, Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons, New York, Russell Sage Foundation, 
1984, pp. 74-76.
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The Caribbean and the Atlantic World Economy. Circuits of Trade, Money and Knowledge
them. Economic world history and historical sociology provide the theoretical and meth-
odological insights to answer larger questions of European economic growth, divergence 
and industrial revolution.
At the turn of the 15th century the opening of newly discovered lands to Europeans 
allowed transition from a medieval to a modern economy. Colonization was part and 
parcel of the historical making of the Atlantic economy. As evolving to enlightened mo-
dernity, Europeans abandoned imperial mercantilist systems in favor of a more modern, 
open system of commerce that turned the Atlantic into the arena of world trade, com-
merce, finance, and agricultural and industrial production. If economic historians strove 
to understand the origins of the uneven material development by polarizing Atlantic 
economy (the advanced, industrial territories and the so-called «backward» ones), con-
tributors to this volume do not privilege a single explanation (such as slavery) or a grand 
theory (such as entrepreneurial spirit) but a number of complementary explanations. Fol-
lowing Wallerstein’s world-system model, they adopt a system approach based on West-
ern institutions and politics (a metropolitan center) that exercised an overwhelming influ-
ence on the economic peripheries (7). However, prestigious Atlanticists, such as Jorge 
Cañizares-Esguerra, have been long warning against historiographic dichotomy of 
core-periphery due to its oversimplifying nature.4 More often than not local dynamics 
have been understudied and therefore, stereotyped treatment of the «exploiting 
metropole» goes together with a few «peripheries», such those in the Caribbean, which 
became world leaders in sugar production and over time shifted to core when compared 
to other local «peripheries».
The reviewed volume places itself within this historiographical debate by challenging 
the (Eurocentric, empire-focused) core-periphery model that perceives the Caribbean as 
a passive recipient of core innovations (10). By bringing a cultural perspective to eco-
nomic history, contributors seek to have a better understanding of the socioeconomic 
changes that occurred in the Caribbean and the European metropoles. In addition, most 
of essays explore the interplay between local conditions and long-distance networks 
which privilege an inter-imperial approach. These networks cannot be simplified to «cen-
ters» or «peripheries» because they are cross-national and cross-imperial (9-10).
The book opens up with an interesting piece by David Ormrod. He focuses upon the 
North Sea-Baltic trading system and its entry into the larger matrix of regional change 
under two headings: institutions and environment. As Ormrod has already pointed out, 
the North-Sea/Baltic zone was a world in itself containing its own core and periphery 
areas.5 As a result, a «balanced view of Atlanticization» should be taken into account. 
4. Cañizares-Esguerra, Jorge, Puritan Conquistadors: Iberianizing the Atlantic, 1550-1700, Stanford, Stan-
ford University Press, 2006. See also Assis Kalil, Luis Guilherme & Luiz Estevam de Oliveira Fernandes, «His-
toria atlántica e intelectualidad: una entrevista con Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra», História da historiografia 7, 2011, 
pp. 14-28.
5. Ormrod, David J., «Institutions and the environment: Shipping Movements in the North Sea/Baltic 
zone, 1650-1800», in Unger, Richard W. (ed.), Shipping and Economic Growth, 1350-1850, Leiden, Brill, 2011, 
pp. 135-166.
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One that makes clear that intra-European trade was much more important than transat-
lantic trade for both England and the Netherlands up to 1750. Reflecting upon K. Pomer-
anz’s influential Great Divergence (2000), Ormrod argues that «abolishing the land con-
straint» allowed the land-intensive products of the Atlantic to bring unique advantages» 
to Britain, but at the cost of restructuring older trading systems. The momentum behind 
the rise of the Atlantic World, as Ormrod remarks, depended to European «change and 
adaptation» (31).
By combining marine archeology and extensive archival research, archaeologist 
Chuck Meide’s contribution supports Wallerstein’s insistence that relative relationships 
between centers and peripheries were not fixed. The study of a dataset of 1.431 ship-
wrecks lost in Florida led him to conclude that some areas, notably North America, 
transformed from a periphery to semi-periphery to a core power in their own right (38). 
In a similar vein, Adrian B. Leonard explores the trading change pattern from Rhode Is-
land to the West Indies. In the 18th century, a prominent merchant of Providence, such as 
Obadiah Brown (1712-62), began to assume a central role in insuring merchant vessels 
and cargoes. This chapter provides an interesting cultural perspective by exploring the 
transmission of merchant culture and custom from the Old World to the New (137-160).
Nuala Zahedieh’s chapter focuses on the impact of the War of the Spanish Succes-
sion (1701-1714) in the island of Jamaica, which scholars has long recognized as the cra-
dle of colonial privateering. Particularly Zahedieh has been one of the first scholars to 
identify the close links between illegal trade and the rapid commercial growth of the 
colonies. In her essay she criticizes Patrick O’Brien’s thesis (2011) and demonstrates that 
Britain’s mercantilist warfare was not of benefit of trade. On the contrary, it instead dam-
aged the very commerce it was intended to bolster (74, 291). By exploring inter-imperial 
trading relationships, she overturns the historiographical argument that the War of the 
Spanish Succession was self-financing (291). Knick Harley also questions another histo-
riographic trend: that of Eric Williams. In his Capitalism and Slavery (1944), Williams 
stated that the institution of slavery and the trade flows it engendered were the catalyst of 
the Industrial Revolution in England. However, Harley considers that Williams overem-
phasized the role of slave colonies, arguing that the northern mainland colonies would 
have found alternative export goods in order to fund their demand for European manu-
factures (182).
Manuel Covo’s contribution centers in Baltimore’s close connections with post-revo-
lutionary France, demonstrating that far from isolated from the French Caribbean, the 
town’s merchants were deeply involved with commercial vessels arriving from Saint-
Domingue. Rather than considering Baltimore a French city, Covo demonstrates how 
those merchants, turned into historic actors, were actively carrying coffee and sugar from 
the French Caribbean and receiving numerous refugees from the Haitian Revolution (87-
107).
Without denying that Dutch territorial and commercial expansion in the early mod-
ern period was not primarily directed to the Atlantic, but rather to Asia, Gert Oostindie’s 
essay shows how the Dutch Atlantic was more important to the Republic than has gener-
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The Caribbean and the Atlantic World Economy. Circuits of Trade, Money and Knowledge
ally been realized.6 Despite the loss of Pernambuco (1654) and the New Netherland 
(1667), the Dutch Republic emerged from its revolt against Spain as a decentralized state. 
Following Jan de Vries’ hypothesis (2005), the Dutch West Indian Company (WIC), 
based on the innovative model of the Dutch East Indian Company (VOC), was not di-
rected by a metropolitan state. Rather, it was open migratory, commercial, financial, and 
information networks what allowed Dutch actors «to play a more important role in the 
development of an increasingly integrated Atlantic World than one would expect on the 
basis of the small size of their homeland or the number and dimensions of their colonies» 
(109). In contrast, Martin Rodrigo’s contribution focuses on the international flow of 
capital from the Spanish Caribbean, mainly Cuba, back to European centers such as Bar-
celona, Paris, and London. His contribution questions some of Kevin O’Rourke and Jef-
frey Williamson’s theses: first, that the first wave of capitalist globalization took place 
earlier than 1870; second, that after the second third of the 19th century «center-periph-
ery financial flows were preceded and accompanied by capital flows from the periphery 
to the center» (235).
After his renowned monograph on sugar industry in Martinique,7 Dale W. Tomich 
delved into geographical and physical conditions of sugar production, in connection with 
the technology deployed to maximize it. Rather than studying geographical configura-
tions, human labor and nature separately, Tomich argues that all these factors must be 
considered alongside political and institutional ones to have a better understanding of 
the sugar island’s success. Similarly, David Pretel and Nadia Fernández de Pinedo ana-
lyze the interconnections between the Cuban economy and the historical processes of the 
greater Atlantic World. Starting from a macro-historical perspective, they link human 
agency and networks to shifting technology in sugar production. Of particular interest is 
the active participation of Cuban Creole elites in the modernization of sugar plantation, 
which functioned as the main promoter of the modernization of industry through the 
diffusion of foreign technology and the attraction of foreign experts in the mid-19th cen-
tury Cuba (282). In doing so, they explore the interaction between global developments 
and the local perspective, specifically in non-Spanish Europe, the US, and Cuba.
Lastly, Inés Roldán de Montaud also focuses on Cuban sugar plantation economy, 
but from the perspective of finance. Existing studies of Barings’ Brothers have routinely 
understudied the connections with 19th century Cuba. In recent years she has filled the 
gap by exploring the role these merchant bankers played in the process of mobilizing the 
island’s agricultural export economy (239). As editors pointed out, her essay clearly illus-
trates the way in which transnational organizations superseded imperial links in the pro-
vision of capital which underpinned Cuban sugar production (12).
To sum everything up, this volume offers an up-to-date study of the scholarly debates 
6. See also Oostindie, Gert & Jessica V. Roitman (eds.), Dutch Atlantic Connections, 1680-1800. Linking 
Empires, Bridging Borders, Leiden, Brill, 2014.
7. Tomich, Dale W., Slavery in the Circuit of Sugar: Martinique and the World Economy, 1830-1848, Balti-
more, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990.
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on the Atlantic World economy, which includes not only the British empire but also 
France, the Dutch Republic, Spain, and the United States. In addition, it provides «a 
trans-imperial understanding of the complex web of connections on which the Atlantic 
economy rested». As Martin Dauntoun remarks in the afterword, unlike other approach-
es, which focus on only one empire, this volume is concerned with the interconnections 
between different empires, paying special attention to their differences of structure and 
policies.8
Alexandre Coello de la Rosa
Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF-CSIC)
8. Daunton, Martin, «Afterword: Mercantilism and the Caribbean Atlantic World Economy» (in this vol-
ume), p. 290.
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THE CARIBBEAN AND THE ATLANTIC WORLD ECONOMY. CIRCUITS OF TRADE, MONEY AND KNOWLEDGE, 1650-1914

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