No Dollar Too Dark: Free Trade, Piracy, Privateering, and Illegal Slave Trading in the Northeastern Caribbean, early 19th Century

The multidisciplinary project ‘No dollar too dark: free trade, piracy, privateering and illegal slave trading in the northeast Caribbean, early 19th century’ (NDTD) integrates maritime archaeology, history, geophysical survey and anthropology to investigate illicit trade between the Caribbean islands St.

Eustatius, Saba, St. Thomas, St. Bartholomew and St.

Maarten (5S) from 1816 to c.1840 with the aim of understanding why and how these islands were drawn into an illicit trade network, what archaeological evidence remains of these activities and why this is relevant to current ‘theories of piracy’ and modern illicit trade in the region.

NDTD has five Research Objectives (RO) to investigate:RO1) Entanglements between international, regional and local factors that drove these islands to engage in illicit trade.RO2) How these islands functioned together as a network for illicit trade, smuggling and laundering, the processes involved, and how long it occurred.RO3) Dialectics between the acquisition of illicit goods, consumption of these goods, and race, class, and gender .RO4) Archaeological evidence of these activities.RO5) How illicit trade from this period informs the ‘theories of piracy’ proposed by scholars in the 21st century