ABOUT THIS BOOK

In An Aqueous Territory Ernesto Bassi traces the configuration of a geographic space he calls the transimperial Greater Caribbean between 1760 and 1860. Focusing on the Caribbean coast of New Granada (present-day Colombia), Bassi shows that the region's residents did not live their lives bounded by geopolitical borders. Rather, the cross-border activities of sailors, traders, revolutionaries, indigenous peoples, and others reflected their perceptions of the Caribbean as a transimperial space where trade, information, and people circulated, both conforming to and in defiance of imperial regulations. Bassi demonstrates that the islands, continental coasts, and open waters of the transimperial Greater Caribbean constituted a space that was simultaneously Spanish, British, French, Dutch, Danish, Anglo-American, African, and indigenous. Exploring the "lived geographies" of the region's dwellers, Bassi challenges preconceived notions of the existence of discrete imperial spheres and the inevitable emergence of independent nation-states while providing insights into how people envision their own futures and make sense of their place in the world.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Ernesto Bassi is Assistant Professor of History at Cornell University.

REVIEWS

"Bassi’s transimperial greater Caribbean allows for new and valuable perspectives that specialists and advanced graduate students should read. Highly recommended."

-- J. Rankin Choice

"An Aqueous Territory provides a valuable addition to Atlantic as well as Caribbean historiography, managing to address a wide variety of themes and topics in a fairly slender volume. The methodologies that Bassi employs and the painstaking detail with which he recreates sailor geographies will be of interest to readers seeking to learn more about transimperial networks, maritime spaces, and the ways in which mariners conceived of geographic space."

-- James Hill Junto

"An interesting tour d’horizon of the conceptual and material worlds of the inhabitants of Spanish colonial New Granada and its independent successor states. . . . An Aqueous Territory is a sophisticated tour of a world whose inhabitants might have taken a different historical trajectory, who might have forged different polities. Although the author stops short of offering an alternative history, readers are left in little doubt that the material presented in this interesting book would provide an excellent basis for one."

-- John Hickman Journal of Global South Studies

"By highlighting alternative geographies, Bassi upends traditional nation-state historiography. . . . The book is a welcome addition to historical monographs examining the greater Caribbean basin."

-- Karl Offen Journal of Latin American Geography

“A book based upon excellent use of multiple, and often ignored, archival holdings that provokes one to think deeply about the categories and changing dimensions of space, time, environmental contexts, and cultural perspectives. We warmly welcome Ernesto Bassi to the sub-ﬁeld of historical geography.”

-- David J. Robinson Journal of Historical Geography

“This clearly written book, and its concept of an aqueous territory, offers as much to scholars of the British and French Caribbean as it does to those who study Latin America.”

-- Adrian Finucane Hispanic American Historical Review

“Ernesto Bassi's imaginative approach, rich primary sources, and provocative challenge to long-standing disciplinary boundaries allow historians to better comprehend the entanglements between Colombia, the islands of the Caribbean, and the world beyond.”

-- Edgardo Pérez Morales Canadian Journal of History

"Impressively rich and detailed. . . . [Bassi's] use of ideas of space and social geography, his concept of 'hidden harbors' that deeply influenced the perception of the Atlantic, and his theory of the Transimperial Greater Caribbean will prompt historians of the entire region, from Latin Americanists to Caribbeanists and colonial Americanists in particular, to engage with new theoretical frameworks to ground their own theses."

-- Christian Pinnen The Latin Americanist

"A refreshing perspective of the Caribbean. . . . [Bassi] astutely shows the ways various historical actors developed ‘mental maps’ . . . He also does an excellent job showcasing the multiethnic diversity of this maritime Caribbean world. . . . An Aqueous Territory should be a must-read on the syllabi of graduate seminars on Atlantic, Caribbean, Latin America, and even maritime histories."

-- Sharika Crawford Bulletin of Latin American Research

"[An Aqueous Territory] will be read usefully and with pleasure by scholars interested in more topics than those raised by Ernesto Bassi’s central arguments alone. . . . Ambitious on every level: theoretical, geographical, and chronological. . . . Scholars . . . will find rich pickings among Bassi’s careful research and provocative interpretations."

-- Adrian Pearce American Historical Review

"In An Aqueous Territory, Ernesto Bassi offers a powerful reframing of geographic and sociocultural space in colonial and early national Colombia. . . . Bassi’s book is an essential contribution to an emerging scholarship that envisions the Caribbean basin as not simply a depot of sugar and slaves, but also a region whose counter-imperial character influenced early modern global commerce, politics, and revolutions."

-- Jesse Cromwell European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies

"An Aqueous Territory is a brilliant book that changes our mental maps and reminds us of the multiple ways in which people of the past have imagined their territories. It also reminds us of the many ways in which we can still imagine ours."

-- Marixa A. Lasso New West Indian Guide

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: Uncovering Other Possible Worlds 1

Part I. Spatial Configurations

1. Vessels: Routes, Size, and Frequency 23

2. Sailors: Border Crossers and Region Makers 55

Part II. Geopolitics and Geopolitical Imagination

3. Maritime Indians, Cosmopolitan Indians 85

4. Turning South before Swinging East 114

5. Simón Bolivar's Caribbean Adventures 142

6. An Andean-Atlantic Nation 172

Conclusion: Of Alternative Geographies and Pausible Futures 204

Appendixes 213

Notes 243

Bibliography 297

Index 331

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