8 - Caribbean South America: Free People of Color, Republican Experiments, Military Strategies, and the Caribbean Connection on the Path to Independence

Summary

This chapter analyses the wars of independence in Spanish America from the perspective of the Caribbean coast of South America, arguing that this stretch of coast (the pardo coast) constituted a cohesive and coherent geographical space with dynamics that resulted from its demographic structure and geographical location. Because people of African descent constituted the majority of the population of Caribbean South America, a focus on the pardo coast reveals the central role they played during the conflicts that led to the creation of Colombia and Venezuela. Because the pardo coast was in such close proximity to the Caribbean islands, the independence process in the area was greatly determined by what its leaders could achieve in Jamaica and Haiti. Because it was the gateway to South America, the pardo coast was at the vanguard of some of the most modern political experiments of the era and was the center of some of the most violent confrontations of the wars. In short, a focus on the pardo coast offers a useful recalibration of scale that makes visible processes that often get lost in analyses that use national frameworks as units of analysis or that are perceived as uniquely local.