The Predatory Sea: Human Trafficking and Colonization in the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean

The Predatory Sea: Human Trafficking and Captivity in the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025) Colonialism is often imagined as an imperial project organized by officials at the highest levels of the state. For the earliest English and French colonies in the Caribbean, nothing could be further from the truth. Between 1570 and 1670, a multinational assortment of privately funded ship captains, sailors, merchants, and adventurers engaged in widespread practices of captive-taking and human trafficking throughout the Caribbean. Raids against coastal communities an