Alfred Thayer Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power upon History was undoubtedly a quintessential by-product of an age that believed in universally applicable rules, in this case that a navy’s function was the same in the seventeenth as in the nineteenth century, the command of the sea its ultimate goal. Naturally enough, over the years Mahan’s sweeping theoretical framework has received its share of criticism. In his 1911 book Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, Sir Julian Corbett argued that it was more important to deny to one’s opponent the command of the sea, rather than seize it for oneself, so that ‘the enemy can no longer attack our lines of passage and communication effectively, and that he cannot use or defend his own’. Taking a leaf from Corbett, John F. Guilmartin underscored how Mahan’s principles cannot be applied to the early modern Mediterranean, the physical conditions of the area defying the paradigms applied by Anglo-American naval historians to the oceanic world. Besides, even if Mahan did acknowledge the importance of weaponry, Geoffrey Parker has pointed out that The Influence of Sea Power upon History ‘contained no discussion of guns, sails or ship design, because the author did not believe that changes in these things could affect the application of strategic principles’.

This chapter focuses on the rise of the contraband culture in Hispaniola in response to the economic challenges the island faced during the last decades of the sixteenth century. Smugglingexisted in some measure throughout the earlier years of the colony, but contraband as a widespread phenomenoninvolving all social groups of the island’s inhabitants appeared during the second half of the sixteenth century and had its origins in the lack of official trade and the search by local residents for alternatives to the Sevillian trade. By the early seventeenth century, contraband had become an intrinsic part of Hispaniola’s culture, and that of many other parts of the Spanish Caribbean. Thisraised the suspicions of some authorities and members of the clergy who feared the consequences that such close relations with foreign Protestant traders might have for the economic and spiritual life of the local residents. These concerned observers made no distinctions between French or English merchants. They were all seen as a threat to the economy of the island and the faith of its residents. This chapter also reveals the complete inability of Spanish bureaucracy to curve illicit trading.