Raiders and natives : cross-cultural relations in the age of buccaneers

Summary: "Raiders and Natives illuminates the relationships among-and conflicts between-European buccaneers and various Indigenous peoples in Central America during the seventeenth century. Like many of the Natives they encountered on their frequent inland excursions, most of these buccaneers-chiefly those flying under English, French, and Dutch flags-also viewed the Spanish and their colonial regime as an enemy. While this sort of geopolitical situation led to martial alliances, it also resulted in a variety of cross-cultural exchange that altered sociopolitical organization, material culture, subsistence economies, and military strategies for all involved. Building on what one reviewer has called "immense archival research," Bialuschewski's study untangles the wide variety of forms this cross-cultural exchange took. Although a "mutually beneficial long-term alliance" emerged between buccaneers and Natives on the Miskito Coast in Nicaragua-and succeeded in holding off Spanish colonization until the nineteenth-century-elsewhere cultural exchange took the form of abduction, enslavement, and sexual assault. By placing these encounters at the center of Raiders and Natives, Bialuschewski changes our understanding of the early modern Atlantic World and the cross-cultural relations that shaped it"--