The Predatory Sea: Human Trafficking and Captivity in the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025)

Colonialism is often imagined as an imperial project organized by officials at the highest levels of the state. For the earliest English and French colonies in the Caribbean, nothing could be further from the truth. Between 1570 and 1670, a multinational assortment of privately funded ship captains, sailors, merchants, and adventurers engaged in widespread practices of captive-taking and human trafficking throughout the Caribbean. Raids against coastal communities and regional shipping in the region ensnared multitudes, including free and previously enslaved people of African and Indigenous descent, who found themselves trafficked into slavery away from their communities of belonging. Beginning in the 1570s, their captors established maritime bases on small, strategically located islands throughout the region. Those anchorages served as temporary settlements for northern European traffickers decades before their respective monarchs sanctioned official colonies. Colonization thus started with practices of captive-taking and human trafficking, which remained central to the development of the first English and French colonies in the Caribbean.

Through extensive research in Spanish, French, and English archives in Europe and the Caribbean, The Predatory Sea offers a fresh perspective on how captivity and maritime violence shaped early English, French, and Dutch settlement. Drawn from sources across imperial archives, the book reveals the experiences of those ensnared in this trade. Many captives escaped to Spanish population centers, where they testified to officials about what they witnessed in early English, French, and Dutch colonies. Those testimonies informed a series of Spanish attacks on foreign settlements in the Caribbean over the decades leading up to the 1650s. Captives were cause and consequence of inter-imperial competition and warfare during this violent century of Caribbean history. This captive economy, as explicated in The Predatory Sea, shaped English and French colonization, inter-imperial competition, and the lived experiences of captives and their captors.

About the speaker
Casey Schmitt is an Associate Professor of History at Cornell University where she researches and teaches on early modern colonization, mobility, empires, and slavery. Her work has appeared in the Hispanic American Historical Review, Early American Studies, and the William & Mary Quarterly and she has received support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Historical Association, and the Cornell Center for Social Sciences among others.

Host
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, part of the Einaudi Center for International Studies

Come learn more about this spring opportunity with spring break travel, developed in partnership with Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ), National University of Singapore (NUS), and as part of the Jeb E. Brooks School’s Global Policy Exchange Lab. This collaborative online international learning (COIL) and community-based global learning (CBGL) course allows a unique exchange as highlighted the photo essays from our 2025 program. The program invites Cornell students to explore the complexities of education policy and practice in the United States and Ecuador with students and faculty from USFQ and NUS as well as with teachers, administrators, and policy makers in both contexts.

Come learn more about this spring opportunity with spring break travel, developed in partnership with Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ), National University of Singapore (NUS), and as part of the Jeb E. Brooks School’s Global Policy Exchange Lab. This collaborative online international learning (COIL) and community-based global learning (CBGL) course allows a unique exchange as highlighted the photo essays from our 2025 program. The program invites Cornell students to explore the complexities of education policy and practice in the United States and Ecuador with students and faculty from USFQ and NUS as well as with teachers, administrators, and policy makers in both contexts.

Come learn more about this spring opportunity with spring break travel, developed in partnership with Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ), National University of Singapore (NUS), and as part of the Jeb E. Brooks School’s Global Policy Exchange Lab. This collaborative online international learning (COIL) and community-based global learning (CBGL) course allows a unique exchange as highlighted the photo essays from our 2025 program. The program invites Cornell students to explore the complexities of education policy and practice in the United States and Ecuador with students and faculty from USFQ and NUS as well as with teachers, administrators, and policy makers in both contexts.

Go global in summer 2027! Global Internships give you valuable international work experience in fields spanning global development, climate and sustainability, international relations, communication, business, governance, and more.

Applications are open now.

Can’t attend? Contact programs@einaudi.cornell.edu.

***

The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies hosts info sessions for graduate and for undergraduate students to learn more about funding opportunities, international travel, research, and internships. View the full calendar of fall semester sessions.

Go global in summer 2027! Global Internships give you valuable international work experience in fields spanning global development, climate and sustainability, international relations, communication, business, governance, and more.

Applications are open now.

Can’t attend? Contact programs@einaudi.cornell.edu.

***

The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies hosts info sessions for graduate and for undergraduate students to learn more about funding opportunities, international travel, research, and internships. View the full calendar of fall semester sessions.

Go global in summer 2027! Global Internships give you valuable international work experience in fields spanning global development, climate and sustainability, international relations, communication, business, governance, and more.

Applications are open now.

Can’t attend? Contact programs@einaudi.cornell.edu.

***

The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies hosts info sessions for graduate and for undergraduate students to learn more about funding opportunities, international travel, research, and internships. View the full calendar of fall semester sessions.

Go global in summer 2027! Global Internships give you valuable international work experience in fields spanning global development, climate and sustainability, international relations, communication, business, governance, and more.

Applications are open now.

Can’t attend? Contact programs@einaudi.cornell.edu.

***

The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies hosts info sessions for graduate and for undergraduate students to learn more about funding opportunities, international travel, research, and internships. View the full calendar of fall semester sessions.

Global politics are undergoing a radical rupture. The post-WWII rules-based international order, which prohibits most uses of military force, provides collective security, and respects human rights, has always been imperfect. But today several prominent governments appear to be explicitly repudiating these norms. Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East suggest that great powers like Russia and the United States are seeking power primarily through military force and economic coercion rather than through incentives or persuasion. Middle powers such as Canada have responded by calling for new coalitions and strategies to counter aggression. What will these changes mean for the future of war and peace? In this panel, four distinguished scholars with regional expertise in Africa, East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Europe will discuss different visions for the future of international order, with a focus on prospects for developing non-violent means of resolving conflict.

Panelists
Amitav Acharya, American University
Oumar Ba, Cornell University
Kyoko Imai, Indo-Pacific Security Initiative, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security
Alexander Lanoszka, University of Waterloo

Moderator
Rebecca Slayton, Cornell University

Host
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, part of the Einaudi Center for International Studies

Co-sponsors
Einaudi Center for International Studies
East Asia Program, part of the Einaudi Center for International Studies
Institute for African Development, part of the Einaudi Center for International Studies
Southeast Asia Program, part of the Einaudi Center for International Studies

Find out more about our winter program exploring the Tiputini Biological Station in the Yasuni National Park in the Amazon in Ecuador. Tropical forests have a stunning array of diversity, and adaptations to strong species interactions, while species in alpine ecosystems have highly-specialized adaptations to challenging environmental conditions. To study this gradient, students will embark on a field course spanning multiple biogeographic regions in Ecuador, a region that boasts some the highest degrees of species diversity and endemism. This program will involve travel in January to the Amazon followed by synthesizing those field observations fduring the first seven weeks of spring upon return.