A Fortified Sea The Defense of the Caribbean in the Eighteenth Century

"[A Fortified Sea] brings together an impressive international group of contributors to compare the British and Spanish empires while showing how military fortifications articulated imperial practices, which is an aspect of Atlantic history that is not well appreciated by scholars in the field generally. . . It is impressive: multi-archival, multi-lingual, undertaken in multiple countries. It represents a real dedication to the historian's craft" -David Head is an associate lecturer at the University of Central Florida and Distinguished Faculty Fellow in History at Kentucky Wesleyan College. He is the author of A Crisis of Peace: George Washington, the Newburgh Conspiracy, and the Fate of the American Revolution and Privateers of the Americas: Spanish American Privateering from the United States in the Early Republic. He is co-editor of A Republic of Scoundrels: The Schemers, Intriguers, and Adventurers Who Created a New American Nation.

"A Fortified Sea focuses on fortifications as a site to examine imperial rivalries and contested spaces in the greater Caribbean. More importantly, the multilingual, transnational body of scholars involved in this edition is truly impressive. . . it is an ambitious work!" -Sharika Crawford is the Speedwell Professor of International Studies and professor of history at the US Naval Academy. A Latin Americanist and Caribbeanist, she is the author of The Last Turtlemen of the Caribbean: Waterscapes of Labor, Conservation, and Boundary Making.

"This volume offers an invaluable comparative approach to the agenda of two colonial European powers in the Caribbean through the defensive architecture, designs, ideas, and policies that emerged from a contested imperial context. Importantly, it reexamines the diverse cultural traditions and technical knowledge that merged in this fortified landscape, and sheds light on the individuals at work, from understudied engineers to the essential labor force, including enslaved workers, that materialized and repaired these edifices and settlements. " -Luis Gordo PelÁez, Assistant Professor of Art History, California State University