Competing Providences:
English and Spanish interpretations of the English defeat on Hispaniola, 1655
Carla Pestana
Professor of History, UCLA
Tuesday, May 17, 2016
2:00 - 3:30 PM
Humanities 1, 520
Light refreshments will be provided.
In 1655, the English sent an army to invade the Spanish Caribbean, but were repulsed by a far smaller force on the island of Hispaniola. This talk explores the explanations for victory or defeat from the two vantage points, showing how both used Divine Providence as an interpretive tool. Despite their drastic religious (and other) differences they shared similar although not identical ways of thinking about military and other outcomes.
Carla Gardina Pestana moves between religion and empire in her study of early America and the English Atlantic world, although her most recent book The Protestant Empire: Religion and the Making of the British Atlantic World combines the two. She and Sharon Salinger just published a four-volume collection of texts related to the Early English Caribbean, 1570-1700 (2014). Next year, Harvard University Press will publish The English Conquest of Jamaica. She teaches at UCLA.
