Sea Control - Sea Control 299 - Maritime Insecurity in the Age of Revolutions

Episode Date: December 5, 2021

Links1. Rogue Revolutionaries: The Fight for Legitimacy in the Greater Caribbean, by Vanessa Mongey, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020.2. Smugglers, Pirates and Patriots: Free Trade in the Age of Revolution, by Tyson Reeder, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019.3. Sea Control 239: “Things Done By Halves” by Walker Mills with Dr. BJ Armstrong, CIMSEC, April 11, 2021. 4. Dr. Mongey’s Website.

Hey folks, Jared here today. Walker Mills is back as host. He's joined by authors Dr. Vanessa Mangier and Dr. Tyson Reeder to discuss their books, Rogue Revolutionaries and Smugglers, Pirates, and Patriots, respectively. This episode was edited and produced by Marie Williams. At SimSec, we believe victory in the maritime domain starts with great ideas communicated compellingly. Right, fight, win. Beginning with Giving Tuesday going through December, we're holding our annual Right, Fight, Win holiday donation campaign to support SimSec into the new year. SimSec's proud to say, since our founding, our content has been free and always will be. Especially as more websites build paywalls or pursue intrusive advertising, we hope those in the SimSec community who value our free, no-ad model

consider supporting us with monthly donations. Finally, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec Podcast Network, The Bilge Pumps. You can find Alex, Jamie, Drack, and a pile of Iron Brew bottles wherever you download your podcasts. On that note, I'll turn it over to Kimber's men. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Welcome back aboard the Sea Control podcast from the Center for International Maritime Security.

Today, we're talking with Dr. Vanessa Monge and Dr. Tyson Reeder. Vanessa is a scholar and writer. She's the author of the recent book, Rogue Revolutionaries, The Fight for Legitimacy in the Caribbean. Tyson is a professor at the University of Virginia and the author of the recent book Smugglers, Pirates, and Patriots, Free Trade in the Age of Revolution. We're excited to have them on the podcast today, and we're going to be talking about the complex nature of the Maritime Caribbean during the Age of Revolution. Vanessa, welcome aboard. Can you introduce yourself a bit more formally to our listeners? Yeah, sure. And thanks, Walker, for inviting me to the podcast. I'm a historian working on mobility, migration identity in the late 18th

and 19th century. I've published my research on the Haitian diaspora, on the British Empire, the greater Caribbean, especially on Belize. And personally, I've had quite an international career. I grew up in France, as you can probably hear, but I moved to the US and I got a PhD in history at the University of Pennsylvania. I had a series of appointments and fellowships at universities and museums in the U.S. and in Europe before ending up in the U.K., where I now work for educational organizations developing and producing qualifications and assessments. Awesome. Well, we're excited to have you on the podcast. And Tyson, can you go ahead and introduce yourself as well? Sure. Thanks for having me, Walker. My name is Tyson Reeder. I am an Affiliate

Assistant Professor of History at the University of Virginia and an editor with the Papers of James Madison, which is an effort to collect and publish all of his correspondence that was written by him or to him, basically anything that crossed his desk. And in that capacity, my specialty is an editor of his tenure as Secretary of State, dealing with all of his foreign correspondence and anything that related to his time as the Secretary of State. I took my PhD at the University of California, Davis, and I've been at the University of Virginia since 2017. Awesome.

And we're excited to have you. Before we start, I'd just like to remind our listeners that the opinions presented here are solely our own and should not be taken as representative of any institutions that we are associated with. Tyson. So in your book, you kind of had me in the first two pages. I'm a sucker for privateers and pirates and the kind of stuff that you're covering. And you use this example of Captain Daniels in the South Atlantic. Can you tell us a little bit about what he's doing that you kind of use in the introduction of your book?

Sure. I think one thing that it's helpful to for listeners to know what it means to be a privateer versus a pirate. I mean, a pirate, we all have a pretty good idea, right? But a privateer, we may more or less think of as a legalized pirate, somebody who is a private citizen who is sponsored by a nation state to plunder enemy vessels. And so that is what Captain Daniels is doing off the coast of Brazil. He's what we may call an Artigan privateer, somebody who's sailing on behalf of a provisional or proto-government of Jose Herbacio Artigas in the Banda Oriental, which is modern day Uruguay. And there's a really complicated history behind Artigas and what he's trying to accomplish, but more or less, he is a revolutionary in the early 1800s. He has joined the independence movement against Spain. and yet at the same time he is very skeptical of centralization efforts in Buenos Aires and he wants to maintain autonomy for again what we call the Banda Oriental modern day Uruguay and so and at the same time while all of this is going on the Portuguese government which is based in Rio de Janeiro at the time, has been since 1808. We're now in 1816 and 1817 is when

Daniels comes on the scene. Around that time, Portugal invades the Banda Oriental. And so Artigas finds himself fighting against Portugal, resisting centralization efforts in Buenos Aires and also revolutionizing against Spain. So he has a lot of enemies and a lot of adversaries. And so he turns to North Americans and starts to give them privateer commissions. And the problem with that is that these privateer commissions are coming from a very precarious government. Nobody has recognized Artigas or his government as a legitimate government. He's not viewed as a legitimate leader still. No nation has recognized Uruguay, let alone the United Provinces, which is the kind of the larger area that's controlled by Buenos Aires. And so the

question becomes, is Daniels a privateer or is he a pirate? Because he's wielding a commission but it's a commission from a very precarious government. And I open with John Daniels in the book because it really crystallizes a lot of what I'm trying to say about the intersections between revolution and commerce, that early Americans viewed revolution and Republican revolution specifically as a way to open up commerce and open it up to open the world up to free trade so that people can trade without barriers. And they assume that republics are going to do that better than monarchies, that republics will foster free trade. And so how do you get a republic from a monarchy? Well, you revolutionize. And so you have North American

privateers slash pirates like Daniels who are going south and are helping not just Artigas, but also other revolutionary governments. They're privateering on behalf of those governments, and yet they're still U.S. citizens. This violates U.S. neutrality. So a lot of sticky situations come up from people like Danels. Now, saying that they were going down south to try to help revolutionize and help these budding republics doesn't mean that they're working solely off of ideology or, you know, from a sort of magnanimous or altruistic feeling for Republican brethren and sisters or something. There's obviously a great deal of profiting that they're looking after, that they're looking to get by this. But my argument is that in the early

Republic, that these prophets and this Republican ideology combined with free trade is all sort of part of the same package. And so that is what brings us to John Daniels going down as a privateer, trying to help revolutionize South American governments to become republics and open up free trade to the world. So I just think that's a fascinating argument to make that there's this real nexus between the commerce and the entrepreneurship and the revolutionary politics of the region. And so I want to shift to Vanessa. And I was really struck reading your books because her book also starts with this image of an American ship, the Mary, heading down into the Caribbean to, I guess you could say, export revolution. So Vanessa, can you tell us

a little bit about what's going on there. Yes. So the story behind the ship, the Mary, was really a dream that never came true. So the Mary was part of a revolutionary expedition to liberate or invade, depending on your point of view, the Spanish colony of Puerto Rico in 1822. It launched from the expedition, launched from the East Coast in the summer with financial support from U.S. merchants, but it was coordinated by an international team made of a former French colonial official who had served during the French Revolution as a governor of Guyana and Guadeloupe, Afro-Caribbean merchants who had also been active in Guadeloupe in the revolutionary years of the 1790s and had since moved to the Swedish colony of Saint-Barthes where they were trading,

including slave trade. There was also Prussian veterans of the Napoleonic Wars in Europe. There was also US journalists. So the Revolution Expedition and the Mary encountered a heavy storm and ended up in the Dutch colony of Curaçao where they were arrested. And the authorities discovered inside the Mary many boxes filled with proclamations about this new republic in Puerto Rico that was to be called the republic of boricua boricua is the original indigenous name of the island

remember that almost none of these guys had even set foot in puerto rico but yes they had yeah they had imagined you know what the republic was going to be like they they had you know created a declaration of independence uh constitutional articles they had flags and so forth so it's really this republic of paper that shows how the multinational and multi-ethnic maritime world had really turned into a political project at the time it's really you know a revolution of paper um at the time so in the book i i kind of use the mary uh this introduction to these new um to these kind of dreams so i look not only at the ambitions of these revolutionaries uh and how they drew inspiration from other revolutions and other republics but also what

the failure of these you know expeditions or other state projects meant for the geopolitics of the Caribbean with in this case the US being blamed for what happened but also various governments like what Tyson mentioned you know various governments around the Atlantic trying to figure out like who should prosecute these men right because they all came from different regions of the world even what their actual crimes were because they were not Spanish subjects so they you know actually didn't commit you know really any crime they actually had technically not done anything yet right they haven't you know even reached the vicinity of Puerto Rico and I kind of in the end I could show how all these various governments even if they competed

with each other especially regarding trade and commerce they kind of came together to prevent this kind of social and political unrest to happen again it's really the idea you know around that time that the right of revolution has started to run out of control and there was this desire to reorganize and stabilize you know the caribbean region um so yeah so with the mary i kind of look like not only of a political project itself but kind of like the impact of the failure of this political project on you know governments all around the atlantic world i love that phrase revolution of of paper i i think that's just such a great way to put this image of a of the ship i think it was coming out from baltimore you know with with the all of the documents that they need

to create a republic but but you know they hadn't actually uh been on the ground in puerto rico yet and so vanessa i was hoping maybe we can take a step back when we say the age of revolution what time are we are we talking about um and and kind of what's going on in the caribbean and then i want to um toss the same question to tyson because he actually uses the phrase age of revolution in the title of his book yes well that's going to be an interesting discussion because I think we're probably going to disagree. I think historians tend to do that. So, yeah, my definition of the Age of Revolutions

is relatively traditional. For historians, it's roughly between the 1760s and the 1830s, which is this time that is marked by fierce discussions around the Atlantic world, around rights, especially the right of revolution, the right not only to overthrow governments, but also establish new regimes.

discussions around the forms of government that were best suited for different kind of people. So the age of the revolution really for me is a moment where ways of seeing the world changed dramatically, where political and military upheavals happened. The British Empire being defeated in North America, absolute monarchy being overthrown in France, groups of enslaved people and formerly enslaved people gaining their freedom in Haiti. It was you know, Saint-Domingue at the time, overthrowing the French Empire, which was one of the most powerful empire at the time, to gain their independence. And then you have European monarchies kind of reinvented themselves in response and coming up, you know, even stronger

sometimes. So for the cast of characters, you know, the rogue revolutionaries of the title of the book, the age of revolution was really a moment where the world opened up, where basically anybody could you know um could accomplish their ambitions and they really yearned to play a major role in you know the world that was changing around them but also in changing the world itself to really suit their needs and ambitions it's really this moment where their dreams became bigger and bolder and they transitioned from you know sailors ship captains or even teachers into revolutionaries and into state entrepreneurs and they really try to you know not only participate in other countries revolutions but you know try to launch their own revolutions and set up their

own countries throughout the caribbean like the example from the republic of boricua that you know that i mentioned and then the end of the book which is like the mid 19th century is when these bursts of revolutions kind of calm down, and a new order with nation states, you know, you know, starts to be in place, and you have a new international order that becomes more settled. So while my definition of the age of revolution itself is relatively traditional, I really want to diversify who we consider part of this age of revolutions, and argue that all these different revolutions you know throughout the atlantic world were interconnected and kind of influenced each other producing something new and unique and innovative every time um and sometimes the

best way to understand how a world came into existence is to look at it from the outside for what didn't survive what failed uh so i think historians tend to focus on like default defining moments right moments are clear turning points in history uh but i have to remember that the 19th century, many of the projects throughout the Atlantic World were quote-unquote failed projects. They have actually, you know, either never really took off, like the example I gave from the expedition, you know, against Puerto Rico on the Mary, only lasted a few years, you know, just, or sometimes just a few months. So, you know, trying to think of failure also as this, you know, basically what makes a revolution successful? Is it because it had, you know,

change of regime is it because you know the new regime lasted like i think we kind of need to have a bigger and more expensive definition of revolution but maybe tyson you know um would have an interesting perspective on that no i i appreciate that i i think that's a really uh a worthy thing thing to remind ourselves that you know for every every pivot point and every turning point in history you know there are many more where history could have pivoted and and and it didn't, you know, and perhaps we can learn just as much from those failures as we can from the successes. So Tyson, now, you know, I want to turn to you, because I remember that, you know, your definitions were slightly different. And I see you're both writing about generally the

same period. So how, you know, how would you define the age of revolutions? And kind of how did you scope your book in the Atlantic world? Yeah, so I think that in a lot of ways that my definition and Vanessa's definition really complement each other. I mean, in terms of chronology, I would not be that far afield from Vanessa. I would say, you know, I think I say in my book, the 1760s to the 1820s, you know, certainly the 1830s, you know, there's no, you know nobody at any time said the age of revolution is now over um right so so certainly uh it's it's sort of in those vague parameters that i would put the age of revolution um i think what part of what i'm doing though with my book is um to to suggest the messiness of the age of

revolution so the the age of revolution did not always have an overarching ideology that everybody shared, that all people around the Atlantic shared. And I get into this with my comparisons between how the Age of Revolution affects the early United States versus how it affects the late colonial and early national Brazil. So for instance, as I mentioned previously, in the early United States, free trade and republicanism seemed to be a syllogism that was indispensable to Americans, early North Americans' ideas of revolution and what it means to revolutionize. So there's a syllogism that independence from Europe equates with republicanism, and republicanism equates with free trade, and free trade equates with prosperity.

And that's how most North Americans viewed the age of revolution and what, you know, at least in terms of trade and commerce, what the age of revolution was supposed to produce. Brazilians followed a very different trajectory. Brazilians do begin in the 1780s. It seems like they could have been on the same path as North America. You do have a small conspiracy slash plot slash planned rebellion that doesn't go anywhere. It's quashed. The ringleaders are broken up. One is executed. And so in the 1790s, the Portuguese monarchy institutes a series of reforms that are meant to liberalize trade within the Portuguese empire. And as a result of those reforms, and especially, and those reforms are kind of capped off, they culminate when the Portuguese monarchy, because it's about to get invaded by Napoleon's French troops, the entire monarchy, the entire court, like 10,000 to 15,000 people pack up and move the court from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

and as as part of that they open up trade the portuguese government opens up trade in brazil and so all of a sudden you have the the former colony which is now the center of empire it's the seat of the monarchy and so this reinforces brazilians assumptions that monarchy and free trade go go hand in hand just as much as north americans thought that republicanism and free trade went hand in hand. So they both follow these very, very different trajectories. And it creates conflict in the age of revolution as North Americans are expecting all of the Western hemisphere to revolutionize and become republics, free trade republics. And Brazil completely demolishes that tidy narrative. And so there's a messiness to the

age of revolutions that we need to recognize, that it wasn't everybody sharing the same ideology, but it is a time when, for many different reasons, these imperial regimes are fracturing into nation states. And again, I kept getting reminded of, you know, my kind of like high school history, you know, that in the United States, you know, there was a lot of high-minded talk and a lot in the Declaration of Independence. But a lot of it, if not the significant majority of it, was also about taxes and about entrepreneurship and about free trade. So it was not just higher ideals about the state of man, but it was about capitalism as well. Vanessa, I want to shift over to you. You said that you made that claim in your book,

And I don't think this is particularly controversial that the Caribbean during the Age of Revolution was one of the most completely globalized regions in the world. And I was hoping you could talk a little bit more about kind of the flows of of ideas and people and politics in the Caribbean and then also kind of construct for us a little bit the Atlantic world. So we get an idea of what's going on there. Yes, sure, I've got to try, at least. Sorry, this is a big question. No, no, I think just the first thing I would say is that, you know, we have to remember that the Caribbean was the first place in the Americas that were invaded and colonized by Europeans with the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492 in what is now the Bahamas. And then the Spanish troops, you know, set up camp there to launch military incursions into the mainland. So every historian probably argues the same thing,

you know, about the region of the world they study, but in many ways I would say that the Caribbean is where our modern world was forged, for many reasons, you know, just talking about the movement of goods, people and ideas. It was a a very wealthy region, especially after the rise of the plantation economy in the 17th century, with sugar, coffee, indigo becoming these very high demand commodities, especially in Europe. And then this shift that triggered the rise of the Atlantic safe trade and really forced the arrival of thousands of Africans to work on these plantations. A few of them managed to get their freedom and then in the 19th century um in addition to europeans uh from all over europe and

africans from all over west africa you have the arrival of indians and chinese workers so all these individuals kind of coming from all corners of the world kind of help usher a new world in sometimes harsh and deathly conditions uh you know slavery but also environmental conditions with hurricanes for example uh and you know if it kind of formed a cross of crucible and they created new forms of labor and social organizations or legal innovations uh resistance to these innovations new languages new religions so on so forth um and so my argument is like you know during the age of revolution the caribbean also became this you know crucible for you know political innovations with sometimes very radical projects political projects um that kind of you

know went a bit you know um felt like they were going out of control uh and to add to you know all these new mix of you know people and commodities uh the islands and the coast in the caribbean are in geographic linguistic and cultural proximity to each other with people easily traveling back and forth by sea you know um you know sometimes you have families or extended networks no uh spanning different islands and colonies and coasts um and the colonies also switch hands quite often they increase you know this globalization so from one day you were a spanish subject you became you know british subject um you were a french subject you become a swedish subject so it's kind of like all these you know um movements and flows of you know ideas

and people that kind of like fueled um this you know innovation and modernity that was in the caribbean but not only that happened within the caribbean but also with the rest of the world um because they know really these connections i think the caribbean like i said really can i see it as the center of the atlantic world um and even today for such a small geographic region like the caribbean has really produced an amazing number of thinkers uh artists um and innovators I think really are both like a strong sense of place you know that's something I think distinctive like by the Caribbean but also common human experience uh that resonates with many people outside of the Caribbean because again these globalization movements are become I think

have become part of our everyday lives um so I do see you know like many others in the Caribbean at this place where in a way modern globalization started and you know where a lot of the ideas and cultures and languages we have inherited have been shaped by these interactions of people, commodities, and ideas. I really like talking about the Caribbean. It's not just because I live and work here, but I think it's interesting. It's always interesting for me to see how in history, you know, for a time during this time, this was almost kind of like the center of the world um in some respects and and yet i think now today we we don't often think about that and i think your comment about you know the the role of the sea in the maritime space um that's kind of

the difference right this during this time the age of revolutions or the age of sail um it was connective uh and now you know i i feel like the sea in some ways is this big moat um you know in the Caribbean and it's more, it divides more than it connects. And so I want to switch back to Tyson and ask, so what's the relationship kind of with the United States and the Caribbean and Brazil at this point? I know that's, you know, it's a big question, but what's, you know, the role of the United States or the young United States during this period? The United States is starting to emerge by the early 1800s, Americans are starting to imagine themselves as leaders in the Western Hemisphere. And that's going to inform and influence the way that they see

revolutions in South America. So North Americans are going to try to export not only the idea of revolution, but also their own ideology of revolution to South America. And as South Americans revolutionize, Americans are going to either try to influence the directions of those, or they're at least, at the very least, hoping that those revolutions move in the directions that they would like. So I mentioned the move of the Portuguese empire across the Atlantic in 1808. And that tends to, we might say, throw North Americans into an epistemological conundrum, we'll say. So they are looking south and thinking this is supposed to be a hemisphere of republics. I thought, you know, that's what we've envisioned ourselves initiating. and if you read the correspondence of thomas jefferson thomas jefferson knew through a secret source in france about some early revolutionary rumblings in brazil and you can follow jefferson's

correspondence in his and his hopes that brazil is basically going to follow in the footsteps of the United States. And all of a sudden, though, Brazil is a monarchy. I mean, it's the center of a monarchy. And so what do you do with this? And not only that, it's the center of a monarchy that is liberalizing trade. To throw them into more, even more of, again, an epistemological conundrum. The Brazilian monarchy liberalizes trade at the exact moment that the United States Republic restricts trade with the Embargo Act of 1807. And so all of a sudden, you have a republic that is restricting trade to a greater extent than a monarchy in Brazil. And so Americans are trying to make sense of this. And after the War of 1812 ends in 1815, Americans kind of breathe

a sigh of relief that they feel like they can kind of go back to their old vision of a hemisphere of republics, that they don't have to have the trade strictures anymore that they thought were necessary to combat Britain, um, in, in the commercial arena. Um, and so again, they start to look to Brazil and Brazil has rumblings of Republican revolution at Northeast in a place called Pernambuco. And so Americans start to cheer for the independence of Pernambuco from, from Brazil, from the Portuguese government based in Brazil. And so they are essentially saying now, with this revolution at Pernambuco, now we are going to see the great flowering of republicanism in Brazil that we've sort of waited for all along, and we're going to

have free trade with them. And indeed, Pernambucan provisional government was promising free trade with the United States, if the United States would send it arms and supplies. And so this seemed another moment of promise for a Brazilian republic, and that didn't come to fruition. And so Americans see a lot of what they would consider false starts toward republicanism. And it starts to change. Brazil changes how they think about revolution. By the 1820s, the united states government recognizes brazilian independence but brazil has just transitioned to a monarchy the the portuguese monarch has returned to lisbon by that point but his son don pedro is the one who actually declares independence and don pedro essentially declares himself a king or

emperor of Brazil. And so Americans recognize Brazilian independence as a monarchy. And we start to see a slow slide away from these high-minded ideas of republicanism in the western hemisphere to, well, as long as they have liberal trade, that's good enough for us. As long as we can have free trade, you know, we prefer that they be a republic, but if they're a monarchy, that's fine. And that slowly slides. By the time you get to the 1840s and 1850s, they don't even, I mean, some, a lot of Americans don't even want Brazil to be a republic because they don't, there's been so many false starts and republicanism has created so much messiness. A republican revolution has created so much, as they see, as North Americans see it,

messiness in South America that they say, well, monarchy seems more stable anyway. And if you have a stable government, you can better protect slavery. And so by the end of the Age of Revolution, Americans view themselves as a fellow slave power with Brazil, rather than a sister republic, as this had all started. Tyson, can you talk a little bit more about the role of slavery in some of these commercial relationships? Because I think, you know, in at least in this period, in the Caribbean, that's, you know, that's it's underpinning the economic system in this part of the world. Right, absolutely. The role of slavery changes throughout the trajectory of the book, obviously. I mean, I start for all intents and purposes, really, the book goes as early as the 1640s. But in 1695, we'll just take a large, you know, the 30,000 foot view. In 1695,

gold is discovered in Brazil. And so the Portuguese Empire sees this discovery of gold as a rebirth of their empire. And so to mine that gold, they start to export more and more slaves to Brazil and so the slave trade really picks up in Brazil and with that with the growth of the slave trade you get more mining and that gold is shipped to Europe which is then used to pay that gold is then used to pay for North American provisions things like breadstuff flour wheat and that nature that Portugal needs to import from from North America and so the entire commercial nexus, really, of North American, colonial America, and the early U.S. commerce with the Portuguese Empire is really based on slavery. And that continues to influence this commerce

throughout the entire range of the book. So, for instance, we talked about John Daniels. Well, he and captains like him, when they're plundering Portuguese trade, a lot of what they're plundering are Portuguese slave ships. And so as they capture slave ships, they start to smuggle the slaves into the Caribbean or after 1808, after the United States abolished the international slave trade, They're smuggling them into the United States, for example. And then slavery takes another shift in the discussions when in 1897, Britain made the abolition of the slave trade a stipulation for British recognition of Brazilian independence. And so Brazil does eventually agree to abolish the international slave trade. And so they rely on U.S. vessels to ship slaves from Africa to Brazil because the United States has resisted British attempts to board American vessels to enforce bans on the international slave trade. And so Americans, either American vessels themselves or vessels falsely flying the American flag, become the major carriers of slaves, illicit carriers of slaves across the Atlantic. took. So Vanessa, I want to follow up and ask you kind of a similar question about the role of

slavery in the Caribbean revolutionary projects. You know, and we've talked kind of about the exportation of revolution from the, you know, the young United States. What was the balance between kind of exported revolution and domestic revolution and what kind of role did slavery have in that well many of these revolutionary expeditions were actually funded by the slave trade um you mentioned uh you know where um enslaved africans were seized from spanish slave ships and then sold into other places in the caribbean or even the united states um so i think you know these rogue revolutionaries were a bit um i think they kind of disrupt our understanding of this balance between slavery,

republicanism and freedom, because not only were many of them of African descent themselves, all the revolutionary projects I look at were founded on the idea of equality, regardless of birthplace, religion or skin color, or race or ethnicity. So basically they are promised,

join our projects or join our republics and you will gain equal rights and you can actually rise up through the ranks. But like I said, these kind of radical political projects were actually funded on slave trading or attacking Spanish slave ships. So I think, especially coming, I think, from a US perspective where slavery is heavily racialized,

the fact that you have people of African descent who openly call themselves Republicans and revolutionaries and basically equality was their calling card. It kept on mentioning equality and liberty, trading other human beings, can seem quite a surprise for us. But if you place in the context of the Caribbean, it actually did make sense

because there's a tradition in the colonial world, especially in Spanish and French colonies, of people of African descent owning enslaved people. So it would make sense that they continue this practice once they call themselves Republicans. But to go back to the idea of slavery and the United States, what is interesting is that the United States will use this, I don't wanna call it a pretext,

but this reason that these revolutionaries were trading enslaved being illegally after 1808 into the United States to basically try to delegitimize these political projects. You know, saying that basically they are contributing, you know, U.S. rules and U.S. laws, and then they have to be defeated. So, you know, so they are attacking these projects because they say, oh, they are too radical, right? They promise equality for all. And when I say all, it's mostly men. And then they're also introducing, you know, enslaved Africans illegally into the United States. They're also doing all these things that kind of go against the U.S. political project.

So they, you know, they kind of like, you know, almost come with the hashtag, no, not all Republicans. So I guess, you know, like there was a sense of hemispheric solidarity, but not with all of the Republicans. So many of the, you know, of the men I look at were actually attacked and accused often of piracy by, you know, the U.S. government. And in the book, I study the so-called Amelia Affair,

Amelia Island, Florida, where the U.S. government took over, invaded a self-fashioned republic. in 1819 eventually eventually leading to the acquisition of freuda in 1821 um but um so yeah so they you know sometimes use this political project as a way to expand new u.s territory and u.s influence um you see that also in the caribbean when you know they start you know starting to police what was happening outside of their borders when they launched a revolutionary expedition when they launched a naval expedition in 1821-1822 with the West India Squadron. But just to add to what Tyson was saying, I think especially for me and if you look at the United

States from the Caribbean perspective, it places the US in a different light that obviously they thought in a way that they were quite important in the hemisphere. But if you look at the from the Caribbean perspective, like the U.S. in the early 19th century was not the U.S. of the mid-19th century, or especially, you know, of the Spanish-American War. It was still a relatively weak country that didn't have an expensive, you know, army or navy. All these revolutionary expeditions that were, you know, fomented on Versailles actually provoked the, you know, the discontent of, you know, other governments, especially, you know, Spanish consuls, also Portuguese consuls that kept on complaining

about the inability of the U.S. to control people within their borders. They basically kept on accusing them of being weak state. So in a way, this kind of like, you know, flexing of muscles when they invaded Florida or when they launched the West India Squadron of the Caribbean was also a way for the U.S. to restore that international image and kind of to show themselves as the protectors of law and order um even you know if in practice they actually really couldn't control you know their citizens um so you know it's almost you know so it's i think it's like important to bear in mind that the u.s in the early 19th century was still relatively weak uh and the west indian squadron actually ran into so many issues um especially around to you know the right

to apprehend you know foreign ships or even to touch ground on you know foreign lands um and And then, you know, yeah, I mean, in the end, you know, the U.S. government proclaimed the West India Squadron as a success, but in practice, the West Indian Squadron couldn't really do any, you know, much. And also the U.S. was also worried that, you know, should they overstep their place, you know, Britain and France would intervene because they didn't want, you know, the U.S. to really extend their presence in the Caribbean and become yet another competitor. there was also this fear that you know should anything happen in Cuba and Puerto Rico which were the last two Spanish colonies since they were the last majority of the population was of African descent any kind of like disorders of threat of disorders would turn Cuba and Puerto Rico into another Haiti with a massive slave rebellion which is the last thing many countries around the Atlantic world, including the US, France and Britain wanted. So yes, there was

this desire of the US in a way to play a bigger role than they actually did. And I think you really see that from the Caribbean perspective, that the United States was indeed an important actor, like an important geopolitical actor, but it was just one of many. And especially in the early 19th century it didn't play as big of a role especially in the Caribbean as it would later in the century and especially in the 20th century so I think it's important not to read retrospectively the power of the United States uh at this remember that you know yes the United States was influential but maybe not as influential they thought they were yeah I think that's absolutely a great takeaway Vanessa and I you know I really appreciate and I think both of

both of your books it's kind of complicating the complicating the history right mixing in the idea of capitalism entrepreneurship with republican ideals um and and like you said vanessa you know this something that perhaps is more difficult for us to understand now but the idea that you have both slave revolutions um you know like in haiti but you also have revolutions that are funded by slavers, funded with money, with profits from the slave trade. And I do have to add, we did just do a great podcast with Dr. B.J. Armstrong, who's a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, about some work that he's done about the U.S. Navy in the Caribbean during the Age of Sail at the end of the 18th century.

And we'll post a link to that so you can check that out. So before we go, I'd like to give you each an opportunity to tell our listeners where they can find you online and maybe give us a preview of if you're working on another book or you've got another project that we might see coming out soon. So how about you go first, Tyson? Where can we find you online? And then do you have anything coming out soon that we can look forward to? Yeah, so listeners can find me at at Tyson F. Reader on Twitter. That's F as in Foxtrot at Tyson F. Reeder on Twitter, or they can go to the University of Virginia History Department website, and my information, my email will be there. My next book is a contract now with Oxford University Press, tentatively tiled Between Dissent and Disloyalty, Foreign Meddling and Foreign Collusion in an Age of Madison is the working title.

So writing a history of foreign meddling and foreign collusion in early America and the partisan politics, how that works, some of the similarities, some of the differences between that period and the world we live in today. I'm also the editor of the forthcoming Rutledge History of U.S. Foreign Relations. awesome we will look forward to those and vanessa same question to you yes so my new project is on the regulation of international travel in the north atlantic world in the modern era from 1770 to 1870 especially france and people african descent and how freedom movement became a testing ground for ideas about nationality race and gender and i recently had an article come out on a refugee crisis in belize with refugees coming from mexico in the 19th century during the casta war if anyone is interesting interested in that um i have

another project on black british history in the northeast northeast of england which is not a region we often associate with migrants from the caribbean or west africa and like places like london or bristol but actually the northeast has a rich history of anti-racism and pan-african activism so i've created a digital program called path across waters where i've put documents and essays online uh but the best way to get in touch with me through my website i created a digital companion to my book with maps from resources got to archives you know especially digital archives that you used and also links to my you know to my other digital projects so you have the website which is the best way to get in touch with me and i'd like to thank my guests again dr vanessa

Monge, author of Rogue Revolutionaries, The Fight for Legitimacy in the Caribbean, and Dr. Tyson Reeder, author of Smugglers, Pirates, and Patriots, Free Trade in the Age of Revolution. Thank you for joining us, and we'll make sure to post the links to their work and where you can find them online below the podcast. See you next week. Put it on the shimbo now, so help me for wine, put it in the alley, way, hey, put it in the alley, help me for wine, put it in the alley, put it on the shimbo now. A pot of rum and a pot of gin, oh Why, hey, put it in the alley A pot of wine, both white and red, oh

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