Social and political survival at the edge of empire: Spanish local elites in Hispaniola, 1580--1697

This dissertation analyzes the transformation of local elites in the Spanish colony of Hispaniola throughout the seventeenth century and their influence over royal institutions and policies on the island and the entire Caribbean. It argues that despite their marginal position within the Spanish imperial possessions in the Americas, or precisely because of it, the local elites of Hispaniola managed to exert overwhelming control over Spanish royal institutions and officials stationed on the island. Elites used their close ties with Crown officials to establish commercial partnerships with both Spanish and foreign smugglers, thus overcoming the limited legal trade arriving in Santo Domingo. By the late seventeenth century, these elites consciously navigated between their allegiance to the Spanish Crown and their own self-interest. In order to preserve the mutually beneficial economic partnerships that they had established with the French settlers in western Hispaniola, these local elites hindered the Crown’s military attempts to expel the French settlers and reunify the island. In the process of establishing these economic relationships with foreigners inside and outside Hispaniola, local elites drastically altered the application and reach of Spanish imperial policies and institutions in the region.