journal of early american history 5 (2015) 93-105 brill.com/jeah
Book Reviews
∵ Consuelo Naranjo Orovio
Historia de las Antillas, 5 vols., Madrid: Ediciones Doce Calles, csic, 2009–2014. isbn (complete series) 978-84-00-08790-6.
When the twentieth century was coming to an end, Prof. Elena HernándezSandoica asked a number of colleagues to compile a collection of texts for a series she was directing at the time: “History of Spain, 3rd millennium”. I was invited to participate with a book that would be entitled The Spanish Americas (1763–1898): Culture and Daily Life. In the end this book was the result of close collaboration between Prof. Manuel Hernández González and me. He took care of the section on continental Spanish America while I was responsible for the chapters on the Spanish Caribbean during the crucial period that saw the birth of the Antillean and Spanish contemporaneity and that ended in that key year of 1898. This book saw the light in 2000 as planned. It was not an easy task. Not because of its inherent difficulties-all works have them, especially those on sections of History which deal with specific matters and involve a great deal of analyses and complexity, and even more so when the text is intended as an invitation to reflection, a new proposal of lines of work, and a training tool for students. It was difficult because of a worrying lack of adequate material needed for the completion of certain chapters: there was an absolute absence of sources about certain insular territories which were central to this work such as Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic. There were subjects on which there was virtually nothing written at all; and there was not enough material of a satisfactory quantity or quality on other subjects. I am very happy to corroborate that this is no longer an issue. More recently, under the expert supervision by Prof. Consuelo Naranjo Orovio a series of books have been published in the past few years which have become essential in the History of the Spanish Antilles in Spanish. The third volume of the series, a book on the non-Spanish Caribbean deserves special mention as it rounds up an outstanding collection destined to become the most up-to-date and comprehensive of all which deals with the whole of the
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Caribbean in Spanish. These five volumes are, no doubt, the most relevant work and the greatest scientific effort undertaken by a research team published in the language of Cervantes during recent times as it deals with that nuclear and germinal area in which two worlds met. These five volumes span over a frantic five-year period of institutional and private collaborative publishing effort from 2009 to 2014. A number of renowned institutions co-ordinated by Doce Calles Publishing House have contributed to the Antilia Collection. Editorial csic; Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems and Civilisations at Binghamton University; Oficina del Historiador de Puerto Rico, Prince of Asturias Chair in Spanish Culture and Civilisation at Tufts University; Caribbean and Latin/o American Studies, University at Buffalo; the State University of New York; Fundación Instituto de Historia Social, Academia Dominicana de la Historia; Centro de Investigaciones Históricas de la Universidad de Puerto Rico; Fundación Vueltabajo. This is a highly advisable way to cut costs and make the most of the existing distribution channels. Here follows a list of the five books of this series: Vol 1: Historia de Cuba. Coordinated by Consuelo Naranjo Orovio. 2009. Vol 2: Historia de la República Dominicana. Coordinated by Frank Moya Pons. 2010. Vol 3: Historia de las Antillas no hispanas. Coordinated by Ana Crespo Solana and Mª Dolores González-Ripoll. 2011. Vol 4: Historia de Puerto Rico. Coordinated by Luis E. González Vales and Mª Dolores Luque. 2012. Vol 5: Historia comparada de las Antillas. Coordinated by José Antonio Piqueras Arenas. 2014. This combined effort has resulted in a well-presented work covering the period of time that begins when the Descubrimiento and continues up to today. And, in addition to the monographic analyses conducted on the three major Antilles, Cuba, República Dominicana and Puerto Rico, this series boasts a groundbreaking major work on the “Antillas no hispanas”, that is, the territories that became part of the British, French or Dutch empires as part of their attempts to undermine the commercial monopoly established by Spain over the Spanish America. A major asset to this series is its transversal and multidisciplinary nature as seen in the variety of subjects and the various different approaches as the result of a combination of efforts displayed by the various specialists. The result is richly filled with colours, a quest for innovative solutions to issues journal of early american history 5 (2015) 93-105
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open to ongoing revision and re-discovery; or the transversality of a knowledge which requires an obvious cultural pairing/marriage to be adequately understood and interpreted. The authors add greatly to the quality of this series as they are from a variety of different schools and backgrounds although united in the common objective of presenting the readers with a new vision and interpretation of a space with a fascinating geo-cultural peculiarity immerse in the history of the Atlantic World. Finally, this comparative approach has brought to the foreground how several common factors such as slavery, miscegenation, transculturation, sugar, plantation life, music, spiritual culture or religiosity, have led us to a unitary, homogeneous concept of the Caribbean space on which new, different realities are based: there are other Caribbean spaces limited to small societies and cultures with an important degree of ethnic diversity. The basic structure of the first volume, Historia de Cuba, has been used as a model for the subsequent volumes. No surprise then that, on a job of this calibre, the scheme and structure devised for the first issue proves to be adequate for the rest of the project. It has been structured into sections like the old and effective division into books, the chapters in classic treatises, in which the various papers on a trunk subject are collected. This division allows for a more comprehensive picture of a wide and complex historical reality. Given the vast extension covered, it is fair to praise a structure and contents which span from demography to political cultures. The Historia de la República Dominicana, the second volume in the series deals with the island where America was founded while it follows the structure just described, Plantation models were tried and tested, new judicial and religious institutions were created and the official colonial culture begins to emerge at a time when the first university in the New World is being built on an island in a remote world of frontier. No less appealing are the four large blocks into which the volume on the Non-Hispanic Caribbean has been split. No effort has been spared in this volume to depict, outline and describe with precision the historical transformation of these territories which are geographically small but extremely important in the context of colonial and cultural history. The History of Puerto Rico provides harmony and balance to the series with a study of the third major island in the Spanish Caribbean. The book´s meticulous structure allows for a versatile, modern and up-to-date knowledge of the history of the island. Lastly, the culmination of the project, a more than adequate volume on the “Comparative study of the West Indies” led by Prof. Piqueras has just seen the light of day. Comparative History at its peak as it presents us with some essential reflexions on the current state of the historical research into the Antilles in journal of early american history 5 (2015) 93-105
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practically all aspects. This is why this volume is the final synthesis drawn by a collaborative effort made for the last few years by a number of historians. These Spanish historians are leaders in their innovative lines of investigation both nationally and internationally in Europe and America. In this last volume we find chapters dealing with the incorporation of the Caribbean in the Atlantic History; the exegesis of power, its agents and challenges; the creation of new human landscapes under a serious reflexion on migration processes; or the analyses of spiritual culture, scientific know ledge or original literary creation. All of these contribute to providing a synthetic perspective that, in all probability, far from bringing to an end a cycle of study that has been favored by the Spanish specialists for the last few years, will lead to new lines of research into this somehow endless subject. The Caribbean is a space always capable of fascinating us with new questions and aspects. It would be an excellent idea to translate this series into English to encourage debate and cultural demand, to set out on a quest for new interpretations and shed light on those obscure areas which lie beyond the veil of history. Manuel de Paz Sánchez
Universidad de La Laguna, Tenerife
[email protected]
journal of early american history 5 (2015) 93-105
