Bio

I am a specialist in colonial Latin American history, the Spanish Caribbean, and the Spanish Atlantic. In particular, my research focuses on the Spanish Caribbean world during the seventeenth century. My first book is titled Islanders and Empire: Smuggling and Political Defiance in Hispaniola, 1580-1690 (Cambridge University Press, 2020). In it, I study the role that Spanish societies played in the forging of a Caribbean world in which they were caught in between the competing imperial agendas of Spain and the expanding European powers of the day, namely England, France, and the United Provinces. I analyze how the residents of the Spanish colony of Hispaniola used smuggling to transcend their marginal location and status within the Spanish colonial world and took advantage of the intense imperial competition that engulfed the Caribbean during the seventeenth century. The study of a colonial periphery such as Hispaniola demonstrates how local peoples actively negotiated and transformed the meaning and reach of imperial bureaucracies and institutions for their own benefit. In Santo Domingo, local actors managed to undermine and co-opt the powers of imperial bureaucracies, either by absorbing them into their own patronage networks, or by confronting them with the strength that their colonial isolation granted them. By doing so, they heavily influenced Spanish imperial policy in the Caribbean, and exploiting it for their own socioeconomic advantage.

I have had several conversations about Islanders and Empire online in different places:

• A conversation between myself and Kris Lane, co-editor of Cambridge Latin American Studies series, hosted by Cambridge University Press is available on Cambridge UP’s YouTube channel.
• My interview with Grant Kleiser from the New Books Network is available on Apple Podcasts.
• My conversation with Steven Hyland for the podcast Historias is available on the Historias Soundcloud page.

Islanders and Empire won the 2021 Alfred B. Thomas Award, given by the Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies (SECOLAS) to the best book on a Latin American subject published by a SECOLAS member in the previous year.

Beyond academia, I have served as a consultant for the PBS series Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and the National Geographic documentary Conquistadors: Rise and Fall.

Current Projects

• I am slowly diving into two new book projects. The first is temporarily titled “Gregorio de Robles and His World: Travels of an Illiterate Farmer through the Americas in the Age of Sail.” It revolves around the travel narrative of part-time soldier and full-time adventurer Gregorio de Robles, who traveled through the Caribbean, South America, and across the Atlantic world in the late 17^th century. His experiences across the Atlantic world grant us an unusual perspective on contraband, international relations, native labor, and the state of the Spanish colonies as seen by an illiterate Spanish peasant.

Courses Taught

• Colonial Latin America (HY 111)
• Slavery, Blood, and Freedom: the Haitian Revolution (HY-3xx)
• Caribbean Pirates in History and Popular Culture (HY-374)
• Slavery and the Law in Colonial Latin America (HY-375)
• US-Latin American Relations (HY-430)
• Indians, Nuns, and Rogues. Cities in Colonial Latin America (HY 473)
• Imperial Spain during its ‘Golden Age’ (HY-477)
• Teaching History (HY-600)
• Latin American Literature (HY-605)
• Race and Slavery in Spanish America (HY-665)
• Seminar Paper Revision Workshop (HY-698)

Recent Presentations

• “Gregorio de Robles, Contraband, and the Observations of a Plebeian Traveler in the Late 17th century” (pre-circulated paper). Atlantic World New York University Atlantic Workshop, 2025.
• Gregorio de Robles, Contraband, and the observations of a Plebeian Traveller in the late 17^th century.” (2nd version) International Conference: “Powers, Polycentrism and Commercial Regulations in Iberian Spaces: Monopolies, Privileges and Exclusive Regimes.” The College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA, 2024.
• “The Real Pirates of the Caribbean, and Why We Think We Love Them.” Discourse Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, 2024.
• “Afrodescendientes en Santo Domingo en el siglo XVII a través de los archivos eclesiásticos” Archivo de Ciencias Sociales y del Caribe, Works-in-Progress Research Seminars. Universidad de Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, Puerto Rico, 2023.
• 2023 “New Perspective on the Early-Modern Caribbean (Roundtable)” Latin American Section of the Southern Historical Association, Baltimore, MD 2023.

• “From Santo Domingo to Madrid: Reflections on the Hispanic Monarchy Seen from an Imperial frontier,” in “Philip III and the Government of the Spanish Empire, 1598-1621,” edited by Héctor Linares, Isabel Encase Alonso-Muñumer, and Amorina Villarreal. Brill (forthcoming)
• “Colonial Societies in the Spanish Caribbean to 1700.” In The Cambridge History of the Caribbean, volume II, ed. Kristen Block (forthcoming).
• “Smugglers, Pirates, Diplomacy, and the Spanish Caribbean in the Late 17th Century.” In Colonial Latin American Review 32, no. 1 (2023): 54-73.
• Islanders and Empire: Smuggling and Political Defiance in Hispaniola, 1580–1690 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020).
• “Unequal partners in crime: masters, slaves and free people of color in Santo Domingo, c.1600–1650,” Slavery and Abolition 37, no. 4 (2016): 704-723.
• “Colaboraciones fronterizas, diplomacia y guerra en La Española, 1660-1690,” in Boletín del Archivo General de la Nación, Año LXXVII 40, no. 142 (2015), 255-283.
• “Casting Traitors and Villains: The Historiographical Memory of the 1605 Depopulations of Hispaniola,” in Sites of Memory in Spain and Latin America, eds. Marina Llorente, Marcella Salvi, and Aida Diaz de León (New York: Lexington Press, 2015). For a conversation between myself and Kris Lane, co-editor of Cambridge Latin American Studies series, hosted by Cambridge University Press, click here.