A product of decades of deep archival research and complete immersion in the scholarly literature, this book will certainly be required reading for scholars of the early Spanish colonization of the islands of Hispaniola, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica. From major political developments to the lived experience of relatively ordinary Spaniards, Indigenous people, and Afro-descendants, Altman has provided a thorough account of life and society in the early Spanish Caribbean.
As Altman states in the introduction, the “central question this book addresses is what was it like to live in these societies that were forged in violence and structured by coercive relationships that affected nearly every aspect of daily life and enabled the establishment of an economy based on mining, commerce, and agriculture” (2). Though seemingly simple, the question is difficult to answer, particularly because, as Altman admits, the nature of the available sources complicates the task of recovering the...