Review of:
No Limits to Their Sway: Cartagena’s Privateers and the Masterless Caribbean in the Age of Revolutions, by Edgardo Perez Morales
In: New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids
Author: Dian Murray
Online Publication Date: 05 Dec 2019
Volume/Issue: Volume 93: Issue 3-4
Page Count: 303–304

"Amidst a plethora of recent books on the relationship between pirates, privateers, state formation, and empire consolidation, No Limits to Their Sway contributes an account of the Republic of Cartagena (1811–15) and the privateers, heavily Haitian Blacks, who sustained it....[P]rivateers under many flags flocked to Cartagena. In the midst of the War of 1812, scores of American freebooters used the port as a basis for anti-British activities. Among them was Morales’s “protagonist,” the French mariner Louis-Michel Aury, who was recruited in Baltimore to accept a commission. Aboard the schooner Bellona, he filled out his crew with scores of “French Negroes” from Haiti and worked closely with the former slave Ignacio the Younger. By July 1813, he had sunk 23 ships and sent six prizes to Cartagena....In addition to the account of Aury, it includes the names of nearly all the vessels that plied those waters and where possible, of the crew members that manned them. It is carefully researched and clearly written with good introductions to each topic or chapter."

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