Sydney Sweat-Montoya

Ph.D. Student (ABD)

Advisor: Dr. Julia Gaffield and Dr. Fabricio Prado
Email: [[ssweatmontoya]]
Current Research: Caribbean; Early America; Atlantic World

Bio

Sydney Sweat-Montoya is a Ph.D. candidate at William & Mary specializing in Atlantic and Caribbean history. Her dissertation, “Evading Empire: The Lumber Trade in the Western Circum-Caribbean, 1630-1800,” investigates the development of logging camps in the Gulf of Honduras. By analyzing various strategies loggers relied on to move across British, Spanish, and Mosquito jurisdictions, this project shows how Caribbean actors influenced reactive imperial policies. Her dissertation is based on archival work across Central America, the Caribbean, North America, and Europe and has been supported by the Huntington Library, the John Carter Brown Library, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and Forum for Early Empires and Global Interactions, among others. Sydney received her B.A. in history at the University of West Georgia (2019), and holds an M.A. in History from Virginia Tech (2021) and from William and Mary (2022).