The Conclusion turns to the end of the seventeenth century, when Mexico and the Caribbean underwent a political realignment. In the Caribbean, ascendant European empires began to construct the monocultures that have come to dominate the study of Caribbean history. Meanwhile, in the mainland, renewed interest in New Spain’s northern frontier initiated a new series of cultural encounters and violent contests that signal the origin of borderlands history. While it is tempting to see in these two developments the disintegration of the Mexican-Caribbean world, I argue that the end of the seventeenth century was not an unmaking but a remaking. As Spanish power in the Caribbean declined, bonds between remaining Spanish island and mainland settlements strengthened. At the same time, Veracruz and the Caribbean both played an important role in the construction of Mexico’s northern border and the Caribbean’s new economic and political relationships. In this, the study points forward to the development of new material relationships that informed the social and cultural possibilities of people in Mexico’s Gulf Coast and the Caribbean Islands into the eighteenth century.