Islanders and Empire examines the role smuggling played in the cultural, economic, and socio-political transformation of Hispaniola from the late sixteenth to seventeenth centuries. With a rare focus on local peoples and communities, the book analyzes how residents of Hispaniola actively negotiated and transformed the meaning and reach of imperial bureaucracies and institutions for their own benefit. By co-opting the governing and judicial powers of local and imperial institutions on the island, residents could take advantage of, and even dominate, the contraband trade that reached the island's shores. In doing so, they altered the course of the European inter-imperial struggles in the Caribbean by limiting, redirecting, or suppressing the Spanish crown's policies, thus taking control of their destinies and that of their neighbors in Hispaniola, other Spanish Caribbean territories, and the Spanish empire in the region.

Winner, 2021 Alfred B Thomas Book Award, Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies

'Islands and Empire is an important contribution to the growing literature on the Caribbean during the long seventeenth century. This deeply researched and well written study of the social and economic smuggling networks on Hispaniola shows how royal officials and local elites on the island confounded the Crown's attempts to enforce mercantilist controls.'

Jane Landers - Gertrude Conway Vanderbilt Professor of History, Vanderbilt University

'Working from a difficult archival base with incredible imagination and care, Smugglers and Empire reconstructs stratifications - and freedoms - made within a world shaped by extralegal trade. Ponce Vázquez helps to reframe narratives not only of the early colonial Caribbean, seen from Santo Domingo, but also all of the plantation struggles that were yet to come.'

Anne Eller - Associate Professor of History, Yale University

'Through an innovative investigation of smuggling, this deeply researched book asks us to reconsider subjecthood in the Spanish Empire. Ponce Vázquez convincingly argues that illicit commerce enabled Santo Domingo’s inhabitants to consolidate control over colonial government, redefine their relationships with foreigners and the Spanish monarchy, and selectively disobey royal orders.'

Jesse Cromwell - Associate Professor of History, University of Mississippi

'A century after Columbus conquered Hispaniola, the crown rerouted the silver fleets away from Santo Domingo. The impoverished island thus became the hub of a vast, grassroots, intra- and trans-imperial smuggling network. Islanders and Empire is a fascinating, crisply written, richly researched book on the political economy of smuggling and the making of a decentralized, Creole-ruled American Spanish Empire.'

Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra - Alice Drysdale Sheffield Professor of History, University of Texas-Austin

‘… draw[s] attention to important yet understudied periods of Haiti’s history.’

Crystal Eddins Source: Haiti’s New Political Worlds

‘Islanders and Empire is a wonderfully interesting and entertaining book. It reorients our knowledge of colonial Santo Domingo, and at the same time elegantly contributes to recent debates on Spanish colonialism in Latin America.’

Michiel Baud Source: New West Indian Guide