Creolization and Contraband

This exploration of localized sociocultural mixing and extensive, illicit commerce on a Dutch Caribbean island makes for a fascinating study of colonial agency. The Antilles was the most dynamic site of creolization and contraband in the early modern world. Anyone interested in Atlantic history will want to read this excellent book.

* author of Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry *

Rupert’s rich analysis of multiethnic Curaçao is an original and substantial contribution to Atlantic and Caribbean history. Her book is an excellent case study of creolization and contraband trade—phenomena that informed most, if not all, societies in the colonial Americas—and scholars of the Atlantic world will turn to it for comparative purposes.

* author of Revolutions in the Atlantic World: A Comparative History *

With considerable research, Rupert . . . is able to connect the dots between culture formation and smuggling and to trace its development over the course of several centuries to the economic decline of Curaeao in the early 19th century. Important reading for Caribbeanists while testing the assumptions of students of broader cultural processes.

* CHOICE *

In [Creolization and Contraband], Linda M. Rupert offers the most complete history to date of the Dutch colony of Curaçao in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. . . . Her tying together of creolization and contraband within which Curaçaoans lived mean that this book’s theme resonate beyond the small island at its center.

* American Historical Review *

[Rupert’s] engaging description of how Willemstad grew from Fort William to a larger conglomeration of neighborhoods mirrors her skill in describing the historical development of Curaçao’s Creole language. . . . [Creolization and Contraband] will be most widely read by students and specialists in Atlantic and Caribbean history, but the author nonetheless writes in a clear enough register to make this book appropriate to assign for upper-division undergraduate courses and to make sure that it will be appreciated by lay and local history aficionados alike.

* History: Reviews of New Books *

[Creolization and Contraband] is a fascinating book that makes a valuable contribution to the study of colonial history in Latin American and the Caribbean.

The volume is a rich and complex presentation, well-researched and dense with information. . . . Brief summary sentences along with occasional overviews skillfully convey its core points.

* The Americas