“Engaging deeply and critically with archival sources, archaeological studies and the Spanish-language historiography, Altman's landmark study offers the first detailed look at the structures of everyday life for the inhabitants of the early Spanish Caribbean. Her attention to Black and Indigenous voices, the experiences of women, and her treatment of themes including violence, coercion, disease, and mestizaje during this dynamic, formative period make Life and Society in the Early Spanish Caribbean an obligatory point of reference and an essential model for students of the sixteenth-century Atlantic world.”
~David Wheat, author of Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570–1640
“Ida Altman’s account of the early Spanish Caribbean is so detailed and vivid that readers will wonder if she is a time-traveler. Drawing on extraordinary archival research and a deep command of the secondary literature, Altman shines light on the competing interests and actors that gave shape to this earliest arena of sustained Atlantic entanglement. The transformation of landscapes and labor regimes, the constant and violent political wrangling among secular and religious figures, and the stark inequalities experienced by the islands’ European, Indigenous and Black inhabitants are brought to life. This book will be required reading for all scholars of the period.”
~Molly A. Warsh, author of American Baroque: Pearls and the Nature of Empire, 1492–1700
“Ida Altman has done it again. With every monograph, she has altered our perception of a topic, time-period, and region of the Spanish American world—thereby gifting us a book that is mandatory reading for scholars and students of the entire field. Life and Society in the Early Spanish Caribbean is no exception. Her stated aim is to ‘introduce’ us to the ‘dangerous, cruel, and complicated world’ of Hispaniola, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica in the first half of sixteenth century. But she achieves so much more than that, revealing the grim humanity of unremitting warfare, slaving, and colonialism; and bringing to life—as never before—the many and mixed peoples of European, African, and Indigenous origins who struggled to survive and make sense of this perilous new world.”
~Matthew Restall, author of The Maya World, The Black Middle, and Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest
“Ida Altman gives us a different history of the Greater Antilles in the first half of the sixteenth century. On the basis of a substantial immersion in the primary sources and … the existing literature, the narratives of discovery and conquest and the omnipresent figure of Columbus yield here to the construction of a deep and vivid account, inhabited by people who created a new and complex society, matrix of the Spanish colonial world in America.
Taking a creative approach, in which can be distinguished the methods of micro-history and the history of daily life, and incorporating as well the archaeological evidence, a detailed and vibrant picture of the human universe that emerged from the conquest is constructed…. In this world physical, spiritual, and sexual violence not only affected the conquered Indians and enslaved Africans but marked the everyday life and relationships of the colonizers as well. At the same time it also produced extensive ethnic mixing and left space for expressions of connection that reflect the diversity of individual attitudes and the importance of family…. Altman’s book… offers us a humanized history, peopled by diverse, controversial actors.”
~Roberto Valcárcel Rojas, author of Archaeology of Early Colonial Interaction at El Chorro de Maíta, Cuba
“From one of the leading scholars of the new wave of studies of the early modern Caribbean, Life and Society in the Early Spanish Caribbean is a tour de force for anyone interested in understanding the challenges and opportunities of the decades following the arrival of Spaniards to the Caribbean. Altman offers as complete a picture as possible of what life was like for the native inhabitants of the Caribbean, the African and European newcomers, and their indigenous-African-European descendants, who ruled and were ruled upon, worked, reproduced, survived, thrived, and died in the dangerous, cruel, and complex world of the Greater Antilles in the half-century following the irruption of Spaniards on the islands. Carefully plowing through records that intentionally silence the voices and experiences of Indigenous and Black people, Altman casts a light on the shadows to which non-Spaniards have been relegated by a skewed historical record, showing, among other things, that in the early Spanish Caribbean the appearance of unchallenged European dominance was deceptive. Altman’s frankness about the insurmountable obstacles the archives pose makes Life and Society in the Early Spanish Caribbean key to understanding how we know what we know, why what we know is, at best, an incomplete picture, and why the full picture may forever remain beyond our reach.”
~Ernesto E. Bassi Arevalo, author of An Aqueous Territory: Sailor Geographies and New Granada’s Transimperial Greater Caribbean World
“Joining a recent burst of scholarship on the early Spanish Caribbean . . . Life and Society in the Early Spanish Caribbean stands apart for its focus on the Spanish settlers on the islands. . . . [It] is an impressive achievement in meticulous archival research that will bring the complexity of early Spanish society in the Americas to the attention of a wider audience. Historians of gender will value Altman’s attention to the lives of Caribbean women, while historians of Spanish colonialism will appreciate the book’s precise study of political and urban development in the Greater Antilles. Finally, the book will be an invaluable resource to Caribbean scholars looking to understand the history of the region in the early sixteenth century on a deeply human scale.”
~Hispanic American Historical Review
“In Life and Society in the Early Spanish Caribbean: The Greater Antilles, 1493–1550, Ida Altman offers a compass and a chart to navigate that complex, contradictory, and dynamic space and time. . . . Life and Society in the Early Spanish Caribbean should be mandatory reading for those interested in the Spanish colonization of America and the early colonial period. It is the most reliable introduction to early Caribbean history that scholars, students, and the general public have long been waiting for.”
~American Historical Review
“Life and Society in the Early Spanish Caribbean is the culmination of Ida Altman's writing career as a historian. . . . The interconnectedness of social, cultural, and economic patterns emerging from the first fifty years of European exploration in the region are the focus of this book. Altman's intent is to introduce and familiarize the Anglo world with the Spanish Caribbean. . . . Altman's work offers a unique revisionist look at how the Spanish Caribbean was more diverse, dynamic, and socioeconomically adaptable than given credit for within the correlating historiography.”
~Journal of American History
