Ernesto Mercado-Montero, Mellon Faculty Fellow, is the winner of the 2022 Richmond Brown Dissertation Prize for his dissertation "Nations Across the Seas: The History of the Carib People and the Making of the Early-Modern Caribbean." The prize is awarded annually by the Latin American and Caribbean section of the Southern Historical Association for the best dissertation written on Latin America, the Atlantic World, the Borderlands, and the Caribbean. Below is what the prize-committee said about Ernesto Mercado-Montero and his work:
Ernesto Mercado-Montero's "Nations Across the Sea" directs Latin American and Caribbean Studies to more closely examine Indigenous and Black actors of the Caribbean alongside their European counterparts. This dissertation centers the political autonomy of Afro-Indigenous Carib peoples, also known as the Black Caribs. Rather than caught between European empires, it shows their agency and acumen as distinct players in the economics of the land, people, and violence that shaped the early-modern Caribbean. Shifting through various colonial sources and archives in a compelling re-telling of early-modern colonization, Montero's dissertation draws out European and Carib entanglements and limitations, while also expanding the study of Afro-Caribbean and Black Diaspora histories. This well-written history will also be of interest to the public beyond the academy.