eBook

American Baroque

MOLLY A. WARSH

2018

Overview

Pearls have enthralled global consumers since antiquity, and the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella explicitly charged Columbus with finding pearls, as well as gold and silver, when he sailed westward in 1492.American Baroquecharts Spain's exploitation of Caribbean pearl fisheries to trace the genesis of its maritime empire. In the 1500s, licit and illicit trade in the jewel gave rise to global networks, connecting the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean to the pearl-producing regions of the Chesapeake and northern Europe.Pearls-a unique source of wealth because of their renewable, fungible, and portable nature-defied easy categorization. Their value was highly subjective and determined more by the individuals, free and enslaved, who produced, carried, traded, wore, and painted them than by imperial decrees and tax-related assessments. The irregular baroque pearl, often transformed by the imagination of a skilled artisan into a fantastical jewel, embodied this subjective appeal. Warsh blends environmental, social, and cultural history to construct microhistories of peoples' wide-ranging engagement with this deceptively simple jewel. Pearls facilitated imperial fantasy and personal ambition, adorned the wardrobes of monarchs and financed their wars, and played a crucial part in the survival strategies of diverse people of humble means. These stories, taken together, uncover early modern conceptions of wealth, from the hardscrabble shores of Caribbean islands to the lavish rooms of Mediterranean palaces.

• Publisher: Omohundro Institute and University of North Carolina Press,Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture,University of North Carolina Press,The University of North Carolina Press,Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture,Omohundro Institute and University of North Caroli
• Subject: 16th century / 17th century / Caribbean & West Indies / Caribbean Area / Colonies / Europe / HISTORY / Pearl industry and trade / Pearl industry and trade -- Caribbean Area -- History -- 16th century / Pearl industry and trade -- Caribbean Area -- History -- 17th century / Pearls / Pearls -- Political aspects -- History / Political aspects / Spain / Spain & Portugal / Spain -- Colonies -- History -- 16th century / Spain -- Colonies -- History -- 17th century
• ISBN: 1469638975, 9781469638973