This volume offers a complex portrait of the earliest years of Spanish presence in the Caribbean. As editors Ida Altman and David Wheat assert, the field of Atlantic studies tends to overlook the sixteenth century, and their collection provides a welcome intervention. In addition to enriching Spanish colonial history, the book will be useful for scholars of other colonial powers, notably English and French. With a glossary of terms and summaries introducing each thematic part, the well-organized volume accommodates readers less familiar with this history, making it suitable for nonspecialist researchers and students.

Part 1 deals with the relations between indigenous people and Europeans, and relations among different indigenous groups. On multiple occasions, the trope of the Carib underscores the flexible appropriation of “savagery.” Lauren MacDonald's examination of intercultural blending in religious practice highlights adaptable forms of Native identity expression in the face of evangelism and conquest. In a study of Native political resistance in Puerto Rico, Cacey Farnsworth demonstrates the role of Amerindian interconnectedness and alliances on both sides of revolt. Among other forms of violence, forced labor defined European oppression of indigenous people. By analyzing legal discourse and slave-raid narratives, Erin Stone describes the Spanish capture and sale of indigenous people (1503–42), an important but little-understood chapter of circum-Caribbean history.

Part 2 explores European populations. Altman's case study of local Cuban official Vasco Porcallo de Figueroa exposes the new dynamics of an emerging society where kinship networks were evolving and unauthorized violence could serve both the Crown and self-interest. Shannon Lalor centers on two noblewomen, Isabel de Bobadilla and Guiomar de Guzmán, whose lives demonstrate the ways women “fought, won, and lost as active and integral participants in the construction of the colonial world” (107). With attention to the Portuguese as a group, Brian Hamm considers the distinct sixteenth-century prejudices against them alongside the ways many were integrated into the Spanish colonial community.

Part 3 is dedicated to Africans in the early Caribbean. Marc Eagle overviews the Spanish transatlantic slave trade during the years 1530–80 to emphasize the influence of outside events, the evolution of complex pathways, and the role of transnational cooperation that at times evaded royal authority. But what aspects of West African origins did captives carry across the Atlantic? Wheat identifies the enduring effects of political relations in Upper Guinea on social ties in Havana, thus encouraging a closer look at potentially oversimplified understandings of “creolization.” Part 4 considers the ways the geographic and epidemiological environment shaped Caribbean history. J. M. H. Clark traces the relocation of Veracruz to identify the conflicting and shifting priorities of royal and local officials. Ultimately, metropolitan economic interests won out, but ongoing associations of Caribbean port cities with disease provoked a series of institutional responses, as Pablo F. Gómez shows. His history of quarantines and hospitals identifies increasingly centralized efforts, but also uncovers the role of diverse health practitioners, including especially those of African descent.

Part 5 centers on the extensive trade networks that traversed the early Caribbean. Spencer Tyce explains the involvement of South German merchants in the conquest and development of the Spanish colonies, thus emphasizing international participation in the traffic of captives and commodities. Gabriel de Avilez Rocha too identifies multiple European players in his study of the Azores, a key stopover on eastward crossings from the Caribbean. Importantly, this final chapter highlights the itineraries of non-European individuals, including several unnamed Tairona captives and an enslaved African woman, Isabel, and her manumitted son, António. Like the Europeans in part 2, their lives vividly illustrate the evolving political and economic situation of the sixteenth-century Atlantic. What other narratives of enslaved and indigenous individuals hide in the margins of these archives? How might they contribute to understandings of this formative period?

These questions only underscore the value of this excellent book as an eye-opening addition to Caribbean and Atlantic studies that will inspire future research. These twelve chapters present a diverse, unique, and ultimately foundational history that warrants increased scholarly attention.