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
Edgardo Pérez Morales, No Limits to Their Sway: Cartagena's Privateers and the Masterless Caribbean in the Age of Revolutions (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2018)
By Trevor Davis and Hermis Reyes
In No Limits to Their Sway, Edgardo Perez Morales recounts the journey of French adventurer Louis-Michel Aury, who ends up travelling across the Atlantic to the Caribbean in hopes of making a name for himself. Aury, originally from a middle-class family in France, had big hopes and dreams. He set sail when he was eighteen years old and joined the ranks of Napoleonic France’s mighty navy in 1803. From 1803 to 1808 Aury sailed under the French flag. He built up an increasingly prideful attitude throughout his time with the navy, mimicking the increased momentum of the Napoleonic Empire. This prideful narrative is cut short once Morales reveals a shift in Aury’s perspectives.
Originally, he was set on gathering more glory for an already influential France; however, starting around 1808, French neglect of the increased tensions in the Caribbean became obvious once the invasion of the Iberian Peninsula took place. The invasion galvanized forces under Spanish and French colonial rule to opportunistically spark battles of independence. Considering the revolutionary chaos that followed after the clash of two major colonial powers, Aury began to detach himself from France. It was only easier for him to get influenced as he continued to run into countless ‘privateers’ and pirates that had various aspirations other than fighting for their countries. Through his various stops in Haiti and other places in the Caribbean, he formed his own diverse crew aboard his ship, the Bellona. Naming his ship after the Roman goddess of war was a foreshadowing of what his future would become.
Cartagena de Indias and Tierra Firme. Cartagena's central location, in close proximity to both revolutionary centers, such as Haiti and the United States, and Spanish strongholds in Cuba, Panama, and Venezuela, allowed it to emerge as key battle ground during the Napoleonic wars. Image from Pérez Morales, No Limits to Their Sway, 3.
Aury’s transition to a ‘Masterless Caribbean’ was not immediate, his beliefs fluctuated just as the status of victory often fluctuated during the later years of the Napoleonic Wars. For Pérez Morales, 1812 was the year when Aury, as part of his own interpretation of the opportunities generated by the War of 1812 that pitted the United States and Great Britain, began to redefine the privateer lifestyle. As soon as he gathered enough influence on his own aboard the Bellona, he captured the attention of a pioneering Venezuelan lawyer in the United States. This lawyer, Pedro Gual, would then recruit Aury to fight in support of an independent Cartagena. This opened the gates for Aury to live a new life of war, plundering, and glory in hopes that he could live up to par with others competing for domination over the Caribbean Sea.
In Cartagena, Aury served as a Privateer Commodore, and headed a small flotilla in addition to his own ship, the Bellona. He worked to harass shipping lanes and capture Spanish vessels and cargo up until the Spanish recaptured Cartagena in 1815. Aury then helped lead the evacuation of civilians and military leaders to Aux Cayes. After a split with Simón Bolívar, the political leader of the New Granada independence movement, Aury continued his privateering exploits in Galveston, Texas, but was derailed after his crew aboard the Criolla staged a mutiny that then spread to the rest of the fleet. Aury then rebounded and attempted to work with Gregor Macgregor to set up a new base of operations at Amelia Island. MacGregor, however, abandoned the project (which had never received the necessary backing), and the island was captured by the United States. From there, Aury went on to continue his privateering in the name of South American independence, at Old Providence off the coast on modern day Nicaragua. Longing to reconnect with his old friend and his cause, Aury was denied entrance into the Colombian fleet by President Bolívar on the grounds he would denigrate the new country. “In Bolívar’s eyes,” Morales writes, “Aury would forever be a mercenary” (152). He would die in Old Providence in 1821, of injuries sustained from being thrown by his own horse.
Fuerte de La Libertad, Old Providence, 1822. Aury spent the last years of his privateering career working from Old Providence, where he died in 1821. Image from Archivo General de la Nación, Bogotá, Colombia.
Morales uses Aury’s trajectory through the changing Atlantic world as an exploratory vehicle that showed the social and political forces shaping his notion of a ‘Masterless Caribbean’. Independent Cartagena provides a fertile starting point for this analysis, exemplifying the possible political outcomes brought about by the period’s unique characteristics. The weakening of European dominance over the region, coupled with increased connectivity and the initiation of a burgeoning American influence over the Caribbean, turned the greater Caribbean into a breeding ground for novel independence projects and enterprising privateers. Morales reveals how unique Cartagena was in the sense that it was a niche environment in an early modern era where both “political belonging” and “political allegiance” (in the form of vassalage or subject hood) emanated from “place of birth” (78). With an acceleration of social, economic, and political tensions in Cartagena, there were splitting divides within the Peninsulares and the Criollos. These divides complicated the sense of political allegiance in the city and eventually violent conflicts pushed Peninsulares to move North to Santa Marta. The decreased influence of Peninsulares, then set the stage for Cartagena to become a haven for pirates and privateers in the late Golden Age of Piracy. This influx of a diverse number of flags sailing into Cartagena’s port only further clouded the political allegiances within the city. In short, with little to no colonial influence and increasing revolutionary ideas emanating from the American, French, and Haitian revolutions, Cartagena became a major headquarters for those striving for a ‘Masterless Caribbean’. Those who fought for this notion often followed talks of revolution because it led to battles in which many could achieve military fame, gather money, and establish political freedom against the weakening colonial grip on the Caribbean.
Flag of the independent republic of Cartagena. Flying the flag of independent Cartagena, Aury and other privateers turned the Caribbean into a critical theater of actions during the Napoleonic wars. Image from Wikimedia Commons.
The boundless opportunities for those seeking political freedom and those seeking wealth and fame often brought both groups together against common imperial enemies. At times, as evidenced by the relationship between Aury and Simón Bolívar, the two groups could be in conflict. After Cartagena fell to Spanish forces commanded by Pablo Morillo in 1815, Aury had no interest in joining a less profitable land assault to liberate Terra Firme. Bolívar, in a similar vein, distanced himself from his former privateering allies in order to build legitimacy for his new Gran Colombian state. He also disavowed Haitian ties despite begrudgingly accepting support from President Alexandre Petíon. His volatility indicated that ties between political allies in the burgeoning Atlantic region were often struck up and discarded when convenient.
Bolívar’s reluctance to associate his new independent state with Haiti shows how effective the seeds of internalized racism that European powers planted over the region for generations were, even when they could no longer monopolize violence or political authority in a region. While European and American fears of slave revolts and ‘slave’ states shaped Bolívar’s diplomatic views, they also interfered with Aury and Gregor MacGregor’s ability to generate American support for a potential base of revolutionary operations on Amelia Island in Florida. Privateering crews of Afro-Caribbean free men and the political entities that sponsored such diverse privateering engendered distrust and faced repercussions for their practices. Some states, such as Haiti, benefitted as safe havens for people of all backgrounds and creeds at the expense of international recognition. In the case of Cartagena, legislation against the slave trade positioned the proto-state in opposition to Cuba and the Spanish empire. At the same time, it necessitated an agricultural and economic overhaul, and put privateers who wished to (and did) sell captured slaves at odds with policymakers. Morales suggests that Aury’s crew of mainly Haitian soldiers feared being captured and sold into slavery. This fear, along with their distaste for being subordinate to a European in a naval hierarchy, led to a mutiny which set his endeavors back substantially. This example of collective action against Aury illuminates the structural and personal forces at play that impacted the goals and agency of those caught up in a political environment characterized in relation to slavery. In this instance, and throughout his work, Morales asks readers to consider the Antilles, Gulf Coast, and South America during the Age of Revolution as a newly interconnected political arena—one in which rapid transformations were not only achievable, but unavoidable. An enterprising man with a crew and connections could make the Caribbean Sea his oyster, finding no limits to his sway.