The Books
As each of us individually conducted research on a specific Atlantic traveler, collectively we read these books and used them as our navigational tools to sail the Atlantic's historiographical waters. The books' histories and stories guided us through our own process. Each of the following books features a unique, comprehensive approach to the early modern Atlantic world and the people who traversed it. Their authors provided us physical, conceptual, and narrative maps that we used to navigate our own understanding of the global Atlantic world. These books also offered us a set of concepts to understand and interpret the world our travelers inhabited and the challenges and opportunities they encountered in their journeys. Scott and Hébrard’s “micro-history set in motion,” Sparks's "Atlantic Creoles," Restall and Fernández-Armesto's "armed entrepreneurs," Sweet’s “Black Atlantic,” Jasanoff's "spirit of 1783," Pérez Morales's "masterless Caribbean," and Colley's "biography that crosses boundaries" offered us fruit for thought and nourished our weekly discussions.
The Books
As each of us individually conducted research on a specific Atlantic traveler, collectively we read these books and used them as our navigational tools to sail the Atlantic's historiographical waters. The books' histories and stories guided us through our own process. Each of the following books features a unique, comprehensive approach to the early modern Atlantic world and the people who traversed it. Their authors provided us physical, conceptual, and narrative maps that we used to navigate our own understanding of the global Atlantic world. These books also offered us a set of concepts to understand and interpret the world our travelers inhabited and the challenges and opportunities they encountered in their journeys. Scott and Hébrard’s “micro-history set in motion,” Sparks's "Atlantic Creoles," Restall and Fernández-Armesto's "armed entrepreneurs," Sweet’s “Black Atlantic,” Jasanoff's "spirit of 1783," Pérez Morales's "masterless Caribbean," and Colley's "biography that crosses boundaries" offered us fruit for thought and nourished our weekly discussions.
The Books
The Books
Ramusio Map (1534). Courtesy of John Carter Brown Library
Jean-Baptiste Du Tertre (1610 - 1687)
By CC Groves
Jean Baptiste Du Tertre was born in Calais, France, in 1610. His birth name was Jacques Du Tertre and he did not adopt the religious moniker Jean Baptiste until 1635 when he joined the Dominican Order and became a Blackfriar. Du Tertre first crossed the Atlantic in 1640, when he was sent as a missionary to the French-controlled island of Guadeloupe. He was elected as the head of the 1640 mission by his fellow Blackfriars and almost immediately returned to Paris to raise money and support for the mission in 1642. Having received the necessary backing, Du Tertre returned to the French Antilles in 1643 and stayed there until 1647. When he returned to France in 1647, he began writing his Histoire generale des Antilles habitées par les François, a work detailing the lives and practices of the native peoples in the French Antilles from their religious practices to their manner of warfare. Du Tertre’s writings were based on his own experience interacting with the Caribs, as he referred to the native peoples of the Caribbean, as well as on “a wide range of written sources, including unpublished manuscripts, civil and ecclesiastical records and official correspondence,” particularly focusing on the works of his fellow Dominican Raymond Breton. Du Tertre published Histoire generale, des isles des Christophe, de la Guadeloupe, de la Martinique, et autres dans l’Amerique in 1654, having lost a previous draft of the work.[1] A few years after this publication, a book called Histoire naturelle et morale des Iles Antilles de l'Amerique was published by the author César de Rochefort. The book was remarkably similar to Du Tertre’s writings, and in his outrage over said plagiarism, Du Tertre wrote a further edition of his work that would become Histoire generale des Antilles habitées par les François, which was published in 1667 and included Du Tertre’s research from his final journey to the French Antilles from 1656 to 1657. Du Tertre spent the rest of his life in Paris where he died in 1687.
Between 1640 and 1657, DuTertre made several trips to the French Antilles. Based on his experiences in the Caribbean he wrote several works presenting his impressions of the Antilles and its Carib inhabitants.
Du Tertre’s Illustration of Guadeloupe. Besides thick descriptions of the islands' inhabitants, Du Tertre also offered images of the Caribbean's fauna and flora. Image from DuT ertre, Histoire generale des Antilles habitees par les Francois, vol. 2.
Histoire generale des Antilles habitées par les François is Du Tertre’s best known work and one of the few existing accounts that carefully details the lives of indigenous Caribbean peoples through the early years of the French-controlled Antilles. Indeed, as Dorris Garraway points out, until very recently, Du Tertre’s study “was considered by some scholars to be the most authoritative history available of the early French Caribbean.”[2] Du Tertre’s firsthand accounts of his travels reveal his fascination with the Caribs’ way of life and some of their rituals. Describing a piercing ritual performed on children, Du Tertre remarked: “They have a small banquet and then cut a little hair from the head of the child. They pierce the ear lobe and also the septum of the nose and they pass two or three threads of cotton through the hole to make certain that the wound will not mend itself. Next they pierce the lower lip.”[3] The sleeping arrangements of indigenous Caribbean people also captured Du Tertre’s attention: “The Caribs have no use for beds but always use cotton hammocks which they carry everywhere with them. Those who do not have cotton hammocks sleep on cabanes. These are made of four sticks interlaced with cords of mahot bark. The wives sometimes spend a full year making a hammock.”[4] These in-depth descriptions illuminate how closely Du Tertre was able to observe and interact with the Caribs during his travels. Yet, these descriptions also clearly mark the Caribs as others, fundamentally different from the French missionaries. In turn, this characterization offered him a way to justify conversion and colonization, making him a marked proponent of the colonial narrative. Du Tertre condemned the ill-treatment of the
native Caribs by the French but also claimed that the French were adequately punished for their misdeeds due to their starvation and misfortune. This narrative “relies on the notion of expiation, according to which colonial history is a trial between God and his people, who pay a heavy price for barbarous acts” and therefore allowed the ideals of the Christian missionary to remain intact and dismissed the heinous acts against the Caribs as divine intervention.[5]
Despite claiming their inherent goodness, Du Tertre consistently described the Caribs as “barbarians who have neither faith nor religion.” This illustrates that although he spent years among the Caribs during his travels, he never viewed the Caribs as equals despite the fact that he was looking to convert them to Christianity). Du Tertre consistently remarks on the primitive and backward nature of the natives because they do not conform to Christianity: “the birth, life, and customs of our unenlightened Caribs are filled with superstition, errors, and nonsense which brings amusement at the same time that it brings tears to the eyes of those who have true Christian sentiments.”[6] Ultimately, Du Tertre only objects to the severe ill-treatment and massacre of the Caribs, not to their conquest or enslavement.
Du Tertre was one of very few during this era to document the Carib way of life that he witnessed during his travels, but this documentation does not reveal a respect for the people he lived among for years. Du Tertre does not denounce the enslavement of the Caribs, despite detailing “the miseries of slaves,” but rather “defend[s] France against the charge that it enslaves Christians” by adopting the faithless Carib narrative.[7] Du Tertre’s travels and subsequent works are undeniably useful in painting a tentative picture of native life in the early French Antilles. Yet despite espousing the “natural goodness” of the Caribs, Du Tertre’s experiences among the Caribs in the French Antilles demonstrate how colonial interests prevailed as Du Tertre “depreciates the Carib character” and exonerated the actions of French colonists via Christian providence.[8]
Du Tertre’s depiction of a Carib man and his wife. While arguing for their inherent goodness, Du Tertre described the Caribs as barbarians without faith or religion. Image from Du Tertre, Histoire Générale des Antilles.
[1] Garraway, The Libertine Colony, 51.
[2] Garraway, The Libertine Colony, 52.
[3] Du Tertre, Concerning the Natives of the Antilles, 14.
[4] Du Tertre, Concerning the Natives of the Antilles, 31.
[5] Garraway, The Libertine Colony, 53.
[6] Du Tertre, Concerning the Natives of the Antilles, 12, 14.
[7] Hughes, Versions of Blackness, 327.
[8] Cahill and Sambrook, Du Tertre on the Caribs; Garraway, The Libertine Colony, 71.
References
-
Cahill, Hugh and Katie Sambrook. “Du Tertre on the Caribs.” King's Collections: Online Exhibitions. King's College London. Accessed April 28, 2020. kingscollections.org/exhibitions/specialcollections/caribbean/indigenouspeoples/dutertre.
-
DuTertre, Jean-Baptiste. “Histoire Generale Des Antilles Habitées Par Les François” In Versions of Blackness: Key Texts on Slavery from the Seventeenth Century, edited by Derek Hughes, 330. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
-
DuTertre, Jean Baptiste, Marshall Bassford McKusick, and Pierre Verin. 1667. “Concerning The Natives Of The Antilles.” General History Of The Antilles Occupied By The French. Vol. 2. Paris: T. Iolly, 1667 https://ehrafworldcultures-yale-edu.proxy.library.cornell.edu/document?id=st13-004.