Smugglers, pirates, diplomacy, and the Spanish Caribbean in the late seventeenth century

Abstract

ABSTRACT In November 1682 the Dutch pirate Nicholas Van Hoorn entered the port of Santo Domingo. He left behind a path of robberies in Spain and attacks on ships of every nationality in West Africa for which English and Dutch authorities sought to prosecute him. The events that transpired during Van Hoorn's visit to Hispaniola reveal that European diplomatic alliances meant little in places where local groups had co-opted the Spanish bureaucracy under their own control and patronage. Local interests used their political influence to maneuver the Spanish administration and to serve their own goals, thus upending Spanish (and by extension, European) diplomatic arrangements. The sack of Veracruz in 1683 was in part the consequence of these actions, showing a worst-case scenario of the impact that events in the Spanish Caribbean borderlands had on the functioning of imperial systems. This article thus seeks to encourage a reevaluation of the relevance of Spanish Caribbean in the functioning of the Spanish colonial system beyond their traditional categorization as marginal enclaves.