#  "Pirates," Patrons, and the Performance of Catholic Conversion in Spanish Caribbean Ports, 1610-1660 

 



Kristen Block

My contribution to this summer’s seminar draws from the second of my dissertation’s case studies, on the construction of alliances between Protestant Northern European sojourners and local Spanish Caribbean officials. My work with Spanish manuscript sources generated by Caribbean religious and secular administrators has revealed a small but significant minority of French, English, and Dutch captives and runaways who took up residence in Spanish port cities, despite the official ban on foreigners in the Indies. With the help of local officials who stood to gain from their presence, these foreigners—who served as sailors, smugglers, and transient laborers—learned to integrate themselves into colonial societies through Catholic conversion. More specifically, this paper analyzes three Old World influences that helped inform these New World performances of inclusion: the confessionalization of European societies under Protestant Reform and Catholic Renewal; the diplomatic and bureaucratic dictates of the Spanish Inquisition; and parallels between Mediterranean and Caribbean cultures or commerce, coercion and conversion. By expanding on Ira Berlin’s definition of the Atlantic Creole—those who learned how to “redefine themselves in ways that transcended nativity”—religion becomes an essential category of analysis, a way to see how marginalized individuals could construct a shared identity to obtain security and rewards in a potentially hostile environment.

**\[WP #0623\]**