A Fortified Sea: The Defense of the Caribbean in the Eighteenth Century

by Pedro Luengo (Editor), Gene Allen Smith (Editor), Mónica Cejudo Collera (Contribution by), Pedro Cruz Freire (Contribution by), María Mercedes Fernández Martín (Contribution by)

Overview

Winner of The Society for Military History's 2025 Distinguished Book Award

A multidisciplinary examination of the role of military forts in the Caribbean during the age of European colonial expansion

A Fortified Sea illuminates the key role of military forts in the greater Caribbean during the long eighteenth century. The historical Caribbean, with its multiple contested boundaries at the periphery of European western expansion, typically has been analyzed as part of an empire. European powers, including Spain, the Netherlands, England, and Denmark, carved up the Caribbean Sea into a cultural patchwork. These varied cultural contexts were especially evident during regional and national conflicts throughout the eighteenth century and prompted the construction of more fortifications to protect imperial interests. The emergence of Anglo-American colonies during the eighteenth century and later the United States gradually altered previous geopolitical balances, redefining the cultural and geopolitical boundaries of the region.

This collection of essays incorporates several historiographical traditions—from Spanish to American—all portraying the borderland as a breakthrough contested cultural, social, economic, and military boundary. A multinational roster of contributors approaches topics through a war studies lens as well as architecturally and historically, enriching a usually monothematic view. As well, discussion of cultural management of the historical remains of forts shows local communities trying to preserve and interpret the role of forts in society.

Part I defines the training of military engineers in Spain. Part II engages with British defensive military plans and settlements in the Caribbean and shows how the British dealt with the rhetorical image of the empire. Part III clarifies the building processes of fortifications in Santiago de Cuba, Cartagena de Indias, Havana, and Veracruz, among other places. Copious period maps complement the prodigious research. The book will appeal to readers interested in the history of the Caribbean, military history, and European imperial expansion.
 

CONTRIBUTORS
Mónica Cejudo Collera / Pedro Cruz Freire / María Mercedes Fernández Martín / Aaron Graham / Manuel Gámez Casado / Francisco Javier Herrera García / Nuria Hinarejos Martín / Pedro Luengo / Ignacio J. López-Hernández / José Miguel Morales Folguera / Alfredo J. Morales / Juan Miguel Muñoz Corbalán / Jesús Maria Ruiz Carrasco / Germán Segura García / Gene Allen Smith / Christopher K. Waters

 

 

 

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780817395223
Publisher:	University of Alabama Press
Publication date:	08/20/2024
Series:	Maritime Currents: History and Archaeology
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	316
File size:	35 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Pedro Luengo is professor of the history of art at the Universidad de Sevilla. He is author of Global Architecture for Eighteenth-Century Beijing: Building Qing Enlightenments and Manila, 1645 and coeditor of From Colonies to Countries in the North Caribbean: Military Engineers in the Development of Cities and Territories.

Gene Allen Smith is professor of history at Texas Christian University. He is author of The Slaves’ Gamble: Choosing Sides in the War of 1812, coeditor of From Colonies to Countries in the North Caribbean: Military Engineers in the Development of Cities and Territories, coauthor of In Harm’s Way: A History of the American Military Experience, and coeditor of Nexus of Empire: Negotiating Loyalty and Identity in the Revolutionary Borderlands, 1760s–1820s, among other works.
 

Table of Contents

Introduction

Gene Allen Smith and Pedro Luengo

Abbreviations

Part I. A Common Background: Early Modern Caribbean and the Training of Military Engineers

1. Fortification and Pedagogy: Theoretical Military Engineering and Cartography between Academic Institutional Rigor and Ludic Poliorcetics

Juan Miguel Muñoz Corbalán

2. Military Engineers and the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando’s Censure

Jesús María Ruiz Carrasco

Part II. The British Plan: Warfare, Intelligence, and Rhetoric of the Empire

3. Fortification, Engineering, and Empire in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Jamaica

Aaron Graham

4. Vernacular Architecture and the Defense of Antigua, 1670–1785

Christopher K. Waters

5. The English Settlement of Guantánamo, Cuba: Urban and Defensive Features

Pedro Luengo

6. Fortification Systems Designed to Counter Charles Knowles’s Attacks in Cuba and Saint-Domingue in 1748

Ignacio J. López-Hernández

7. The Versatility of the Military Engineer Luis Huet: Engineer, Urban Planner, and Spy

Pedro Cruz Freire

8. Text and Image: The 1762 Capture of Havana

Alfredo J. Morales

Part III. The Spanish Plan: Fortifying the Caribbean Sea

9. The Interior Defense of Santiago de Cuba: The Fort of San Francisco

María Mercedes Fernández Martín

10. Engineering and the Articulation of Territory: Juan de Herrera y Sotomayor and the Canal del Dique Improvement Project in Cartagena de Indias, 1725–1728

Francisco Javier Herrera García

11. Projects and Defensive Reforms at the End of the Viceregal Cartagena: The Military Engineer Manuel de Anguiano and the Martyrs of Independence

Manuel Gámez Casado

12. The Fort of San Carlos de Perote: The Historical Context of Its Construction

Mónica Cejudo Collera and Germán Segura García

13. The Three Defensive Lines Built on the East Front of Puerta de Tierra, San Juan, Puerto Rico

Nuria Hinarejos Martín

14. The Defense of New Orleans as a Capital of the Government of Louisiana and Western Florida

José Miguel Morales Folguera

15. “Without Any Fighting or Disturbance”: Conquering Spanish Baton Rouge and Mobile

Gene Allen Smith

Epilogue

Pedro Luengo and Gene Allen Smith

Notes

Bibliography

List of Contributors

Index

Editorial Reviews

A Fortified Sea focuses on fortifications as a site to examine imperial rivalries and contested spaces in the greater Caribbean. More importantly, the multilingual, transnational body of scholars involved in this edition is truly impressive. . . it is an ambitious work!”
—Sharika Crawford, author of The Last Turtlemen of the Caribbean: Waterscapes of Labor, Conservation, and Boundary Making

 “This volume will be especially useful to experts on Caribbean naval engagements and scholars at the intersection of art history, archaeology, and military history.”—The Americas

“[A Fortified Sea] brings together an impressive international group of contributors to compare the British and Spanish empires while showing how military fortifications articulated imperial practices, which is an aspect of Atlantic history that is not well appreciated by scholars in the field generally. . . . It is impressive: multi-archival, multi-lingual, undertaken in multiple countries. It represents a real dedication to the historian’s craft.”
—David Head, author of A Crisis of Peace: George Washington, the Newburgh Conspiracy, and the Fall of the American Revolution
 

“This volume offers an invaluable comparative approach to the agenda of two colonial European powers in the Caribbean through the defensive architecture, designs, ideas, and policies that emerged from a contested imperial context. Importantly, it reexamines the diverse cultural traditions and technical knowledge that merged in this fortified landscape, and sheds light on the individuals at work, from understudied engineers to the essential labor force, including enslaved workers, that materialized and repaired these edifices and settlements.”
—Luis Gordo Peláez, coeditor of Architecture and Extraction in the Atlantic World, 1500-1850
 

From the Publisher