Dr. Jesse Cromwell is an Associate Professor of Colonial Latin American History in the Department of History and Undergraduate Program Coordinator at the University of Mississippi.
Research Interests
Dr. Jesse Cromwell's research interests include:
- Latin American History
- Atlantic History
- Caribbean History
- Comparative Empires
- Maritime Commerce
- Piracy and Smuggling
- Transatlantic Migration
- Alcohol in the Caribbean
Biography
Dr. Jesse Cromwell earned his BA in History from Brown University and his MA and PhD from the University of Texas at Austin. He joined the Department of History at UM in 2012.
His research and teaching interests encompass colonial Latin American history as well as the histories of the Caribbean, and the Atlantic world. He has been fascinated throughout his career by the contradictions between political and human geographies. In general, he focuses on how mobile individuals adjacent to the massive plantation complexes of the Atlantic world knit together imperial and inter-imperial economies, communication and settlement networks, and even foodways within the reorganizational framework of the Bourbon Reforms.
Dr. Cromwell is currently at work on two projects. The first is a study focusing on the migration of families from the Canary Islands to the Spanish circum-Caribbean in the latter half of the eighteenth century. As Crown-supported colonizers, they took up residence in territories such as Venezuela, Cuba, Santo Domingo, Puerto Rico, Louisiana, Texas, and Florida. Records of this mobile, transatlantic population underscore the limits of militarization, social and economic reform, and socioracial perception in Bourbon Spanish America and the Atlantic World. The second project is a broad history of alcohol and cultures of drinking in the Spanish Caribbean.
Publications
Illicit Trade and Atlantic Communities in Eighteenth-Century Venezuela
For the publisher:
The Smugglers' World examines a critical part of Atlantic trade for a neglected corner of the Spanish Empire. Testimonies of smugglers, buyers, and royal officials found in Venezuelan prize court records reveal a colony enmeshed in covert commerce. Forsaken by the Spanish fleet system, Venezuelan colonists struggled to obtain European foods and goods. They found a solution in exchanging cacao, a coveted luxury, for the necessities of life provided by contrabandists from the Dutch, English, and French Caribbean.
Selected Book(s):
Beyond 1619: The Atlantic Origins of American Slavery
Selected Article(s):
“Illicit Ideologies: Moral Economies of Venezuelan Smuggling and Autonomy in the Rebellion of Juan Francisco de León, 1749-1751.” The Americas, 74:3, pp. 267-297, July 2017
“More than Slaves and Sugar: Recent Historiography of the Trans-imperial Caribbean and Its Sinew Populations.” History Compass, 12:10, pp. 770-783, October, 2014
Courses Taught
- HIST 1600 Intro to Latin American History
- HIST 1990 What is History?
- HIST 3600 Colonial Latin America, 1450-1820
- HIST 3630 History of the Caribbean
- HIST 3640 Independence of Latin America, 1760-1830
- HIST 4790 Alcohol in the Americas
- HIST 4980 Pirates of the Early Modern Caribbean
- HIST 4990 The World of the Ship: Maritime History in the Age of Sail
- HIST 6610 Europe & the Atlantic World
- HONR 1010 Freshman Honors I
- HONR 1020 Freshman Honors II
Education
Ph.D. History, The University of Texas at Austin (2012)
Recognitions
- Bandelier-Lavrín Prize, Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies, 2019
- Bolton-Johnson Prize Honorable Mention, Conference on Latin American History, 2019
- Murdo MacLeod Prize Honorable Mention, Southern Historical Association, 2019