A review by robertrivasplata
The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution by Julius S. Scott

funny informative medium-paced

4.25

A history of the Caribbean's grapevine in the 18th century. As with so many scholarly history books, the choices of primary source quotes are really what make the book. Shows that even though the rise of the Caribbean's plantation economy displaced the buccaneers and freebooters of the 17th century, there were still many opportunities for ordinary people (importantly including people of color) to escape authorities and live a masterless existence at sea, or with the Maroons in the highlands and jungles, or even just in town the next island over from one's last known whereabouts. Scott highlighted the ways in which colonial authorities and planter elites were constantly worried about but also dependent upon the flow of information that the Caribbean's sailors carried between the islands and the continents. The Common Wind also illustrates how class (or caste) identities transcended national or colonial identities across the region. And why not? While the various colonial powers jealously guarded their possessions and their trade with them, they would also from time to time swap territories along with their populations to one another. And at the time aristocratic officers and bourgeois thought nothing of pursuing careers in the service of foreign kings. An interesting factoid from this book is how few people were in all of these places during the time period. Kingston Jamaica was the largest British held city America in 1790 with a population of 23,500; all of Haiti had fewer than 600k people before the revolution. The common wind isn't exactly a history of the Haitian Revolution, but it gives a lot context to any other history of this era of the Caribbean.