CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

List of Illustrations

List of Abbreviations and Short Titles

INTRODUCTION
The Global Early Americas

CHAPTER 1
Sex, Death, and the Sea: Pearls in the Early Modern Imagination

CHAPTER 2
Pearls and a Political Ecology of Empire, 1498–1541

CHAPTER 3
“Even the Black Women Wear Strands of Pearls”: Assessing the Worth of Subjects and Objects in a New Era, 1540–1600

CHAPTER 4
Making “A Machine of Pearls” in the Seventeenth Century: Custom and Innovation in Iberian Pearl-Fishing Ventures

CHAPTER 5
“Regardless of Gender, Class, Color, and Condition”: Pearls in Private Possession around the Iberian Imperial World

CHAPTER 6
“A Few More or Less Make No Difference”: Accounting for Pearls in Northern Europe in the Seventeenth Century

CONCLUSION
Rescuing “That Tired Irregular Pearl from Such Lengthy Isolation”

Essay on Sources

Index