Historical sources

This is a sample of the historical sources of the revolutionary Atlantic I used in the book Rogue Revolutionaries: The Fight for Legitimacy in the Greater Caribbean (University of Pennsylvania Press: 2020).  As my cast of characters barged across borders, countries, islands, and empires, I followed their traces across the United States, Colombia, Mexico, France, Spain, and Britain.

This sample includes a range of materials: newspaper clippings, songs, maps, emancipation papers, declarations of independence, and government documents. Get ready for a trip that will take you to Cartagena, Venezuela, Providencia Island, Haiti, New Orleans, Guatemala, Puerto Rico, and Northern Italy.

I’ve included a short interpretation alongside each source as well as a few questions you can use in class. These documents and my book can be used to research and teach the following topics:

  • foreign recognition and state-construction
  • the international dimensions of the Latin American wars of independence
  • the role of people of African descent in the revolutionary Atlantic
  • why some decided to join the republican cause while others sided with the Spanish empire
  • the fight for liberty for enslaved people
  • the Age of Revolutions
  • U.S. expansion in the Caribbean.

My book Rogue Revolutionaries includes more elaborate discussions of these sources and this historical moment. You might want to compare my interpretation to yours.

You can find more information about the book, an archival guide, maps, and a cast of characters here.

My research on the Greater Caribbean, citizenship and nationality, and the African Diaspora is on this page.