Middle Tennessee State University’s Department of History will host author and historian Marc Eagle at 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, Oct. 1, in Room 207 of Peck Hall, 537 Old Main Circle on campus.
Eagle, a professor of history at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, will speak on human trafficking in the Caribbean during the 1600s at the lecture that is free and open to the public.
“The Seventeenth-Century Slave Trade in the Spanish Caribbean” will highlight the role of the Dominican Republic city of Santo Domingo as an alternate entry point for slaving voyages in the 1600s.
“For many years, Marc Eagle has traveled to Spain to cull fresh primary sources on the slave trade from the archives. This is a wonderful opportunity to learn about new research on the Caribbean,” said Christoph Rosenmüller, MTSU history professor who organized the speaking engagement.
By making unscheduled stops there, ship crews avoided higher duties and disembarked larger groups of enslaved Africans, keeping Santo Domingo and San Juan, Puerto Rico, tied to Africa and to Spanish ports across the Caribbean.
“We know a good deal about slave trade with the English colonies, Brazil, or Colombia. The fate of the enslaved in the Spanish West Indies is much less known, and Dr. Eagle will shed new light on this issue,” Rosenmüller explained.
But shifts in the region soon changed that flow. The decline of commercial agriculture in Hispaniola and the end of the Portuguese monopoly on supplying enslaved Africans to Spanish colonies in 1640 sharply reduced the number of captives brought to Santo Domingo.
As a result, a distinct society of the enslaved population developed — one not centered on plantation agriculture.
Eagle’s research focuses on the political and social history of the early Spanish Caribbean, particularly the 16th to 17th centuries.
His recently released book, “The Audiencia of Santo Domingo in the Seventeenth Century: Justice and Royal Authority in the Spanish Caribbean,” Eagle examines the appellate court that had jurisdiction over most of the Caribbean. Other articles by Eagle have explored conflicts among royal officials and the illicit slave trade to Hispaniola.
At WKU, Eagle directs the Latin American studies minor and teaches courses on Colonial and Modern Latin America, world history, and U.S.-Latin American relations.
To learn more about the Department of History in the College of Liberal Arts, visit https://history.mtsu.edu/.
The lecture is sponsored by the Provost’s Office, the Honors College, the Department of Political & Global Affairs, and the Department of History.
Off-campus visitors must obtain a temporary permit from the Parking and Transportation Services office at 205 City View Drive or pay by plate by visiting https://bit.ly/mtvisitorparking. A searchable campus parking map is available at https://bit.ly/ParkingMapMTSU2025.
— Nancy DeGennaro (Nancy.DeGennaro@mtsu.edu)
