Journal of Early American History 

About: Journal of Early American History is an academic journal published by Brill. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Colonialism & Atlantic World. It has an ISSN identifier of 1877-0223. Over the lifetime, 105 publications have been published receiving 180 citations.

The Meaning of Kaswentha and the Two Row Wampum Belt in Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) History: Can Indigenous Oral Tradition be Reconciled with the Documentary Record?

Abstract: This essay analyzes the colonial era documentary record for corroboration of Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) oral tradition regarding the kaswentha (as currently understood and represented in the form of a Two-Row wampum belt). Eighteen different recitations of the tradition appear in documentary sources from 1656 to 1755. These findings demonstrate substantial convergence and complementarity between two perspectives on the past and suggest that the comparison and integration of indigenous oral tradition and documentary research may yield a more robust understanding of the past than would be the case of either undertaken alone.

“All would be equal in the effort”: Santo Domingo's “Italian Revolution”, Independence, and Haiti, 1809-1822

Abstract: This article explores the colony of Santo Domingo just after it had passed from French back to Spanish hands in 1809. Although impoverished and at the very margins of the Caribbean plantation system, revolutionary winds were nonetheless buffeting the colony. Using the testimony of a failed 1810 conspiracy known as the “Italian Revolution”, the article explores the enduring inequalities present in Santo Domingo, the immediate influence of the Haiti to the west, and the beginnings of Latin American independence more generally. Whereas Spanish authorities and other Caribbean elites might have dismissed the colony as marginal to the political events, therefore, the conspiracy sheds light on its importance to subaltern travelers and migrants from neighboring islands. Finally, it shows the tremendous concrete and symbolic importance of the Haitian Revolution on the neighboring colony, complicating a historiography that often argues for conflict, and not interrelation, between the two sides of Hispaniola.

Should We Stay or Should We Go?: Being on Opposing Sides after a Colonial Takeover

Abstract: The colonial map of the Americas during the seventeenth century was ever-changing. Near-constant warfare meant that colonies could change hands several times in a matter of decades, and that European settlers could at any time find themselves under “new management”. A takeover posed a potential threat to the colonists’ way of life, but the newcomers could be faced with a potentially hostile population as well. Differences in religion, language, political practice, as well as the question of loyalty could all pose serious obstacles for a good relationship between the new rulers and the old colonial population. This article addresses this issue from the perspective of the settlers. Taking the colony of Suriname as the main case, and by comparing it to other colonies such as Brazil and New Netherland, I conclude that most settlers were content to stay, with exceptions due to pressures by governments or incompatible religious differences.

Emulating a Portuguese Model: The Slave Policy of the West India Company and the Dutch Reformed Church in Dutch Brazil (1630–1654) and New Netherland (1614–1664) in Comparative Perspective

Abstract: This article presents a new perspective on the master-slave relationship in New Netherland in order to complement the existing theories on the treatment of slaves in that Dutch colony. It shows how prior to the loss of Dutch Brazil, the West India Company modeled its slave policy after Portuguese practices, such as the formation of black militias and the use of Christianity as a means to foster slave loyalty. It also points out that in the initial slave policy of the Dutch Reformed Church was characterized by the ambition to replace the Iberian Catholic Church in the Americas. While the Reformed Church in the early decades of the Dutch colonial expansion was characterized by a community-building spirit and a flexible attitude toward newcomers, the loss of Brazil shattered the dream of a Protestant American continent and gave way to a more exclusivist approach with a much stronger emphasis on orthodoxy. This led to a dramatic change in attitude vis-a-vis slaves, which is reflected in the segregationist policies―both at a social and a religious level―in later Dutch slave colonies such as Suriname.

African Slavery and Spanish Empire: Imperial Imaginings and Bourbon Reform in Eighteenth-Century Cuba and Beyond

Abstract: This article traces a philosophical shift that opened the door to a new departure in eighteenth-century Spanish empire: a newly emerging sense that the slave trade and African slavery were essential to the wealth of nations. Contextualizing this ideological reconfiguration within mid-eighteenth century debates, this article draws upon the works of political economists and royal councilors in Madrid and puts them in conversation with the words and actions of individuals in and from Cuba, including people of African descent themselves. Because of the central place of the island in eighteenth-century imperial rivalry and reform, as well as its particular demographic situation, Cuba served as a catalyst for these debates about the place of African slavery and the transatlantic slave trade in Spanish empire. Ultimately, between the mid-eighteenth century and the turn of the nineteenth, this new mode of thought would lead to dramatic transformations in the institution of racial slavery and Spanish imperial political economy.