Matthew Taylor Raffety is a professor of history at the University of Redlands where he teaches American and Atlantic, and diplomatic history. He holds a BA from Williams College and an M.Phil and Ph.D. from Columbia University. His first book, The Republic Afloat: Law, Honor, and Citizenship in Maritime America published by University of Chicago Press in 2013. Most recently, he contributed a chapter on the transnational history of maritime law to A World at Sea: Maritime Practices and Global History (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020). Currently, he is working on a monograph about Nicholas Trist’s difficult years in Havana.