Voices of the Enslaved in Nineteenth-Century Cuba: A Documentary History

• Published in: Caribbean Quarterly Vol. 60; no. 1; pp. 153 - 156
• Main Author: DUNKLEY, D. A.
• Format: Book Review Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Mona University of the West Indies 01.03.2014; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: 19th century; Abolition of slavery; Business; Emancipation of slaves; Spanish language; New York; Cuba; United Kingdom > UK; United States > US; Mexico; Jamaica; Latin America
• ISSN: 0008-6495; 2470-6302

[...]other struggles "to gain even the conditional freedom of coartación (slaves' legal right to be appraised for a fixed value and to pay down their balance over time until they were free), or even to attain manumission itself, a status realised only by some and longed for by all" (2), are all revealed in varying but frequently dramatic ways in the writings in the book. Interestingly, the book reveals that the change in the importations was due to deregulation in 1789, meaning that the Spanish crown had relinquished control over the trading in captive Africans after fierce fights with slaveholders in Cuba, who argued that they were experiencing labour shortages. The growing profitability of Cuba's sugar industry in the nineteenth century is well known, but Rodríguez has added a vital component to enhance our understanding of how this came about: it also followed the rapid expansion of slave trading to that country, fuelled by the greed and unenlightened sensibilities of planters and aided by the crown's deregulation.