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African slavery was pervasive in Spain's Atlantic empire yet remained in the margins of the imperial economy until the end of the eighteenth century when the plantation revolution in the Caribbean colonies put the slave traffic and the plantation at the center of colonial exploitation and conflict. The international group of scholars brought together in this volume explain Spain's role as a colonial pioneer in the Atlantic world and its latecomer status as a slave-trading, plantation-based empire. These contributors map the broad contours and transformations of slave-trafficking, the plantation, and antislavery in the Hispanic Atlantic while also delving into specific topics that include: the institutional and economic foundations of colonial slavery; the law and religion; the influences of the Haitian Revolution and British abolitionism; antislavery and proslavery movements in Spain; race and citizenship; and the business of the illegal slave trade.
List of contents
Introduction: Colonial Pioneer, Plantation Latecomer
Josep M. Fradera and Christopher Schmidt-Nowara Chapter 1. The Slave Trade in the Spanish Empire (1501-1808): The Shift from Periphery to Center
Josep M. Delgado Chapter 2. The Portuguese Missionaries and Early Modern Antislavery
Luiz Felipe de Alencastro Chapter 3. The Economic Role of Slavery in a Non-Slave Society: The River Plate, 1750-1860
Juan Carlos Garavaglia Chapter 4. Slaves and the Creation of Legal Rights in Cuba:
Coartación and
Papel (reprinted from Hispanic American Historical Review)
Alejandro de la Fuente Chapter 5. Cuban Slavery and Atlantic Antislavery (reprinted from Review: A Journal of the Fernand Braudel Center)
Ada Ferrer Chapter 6. Wilberforce Spanished: Joseph Blanco White and Spanish Antislavery, 1808-1814
Christopher Schmidt-Nowara Chapter 7. Spanish Merchants and the Slave Trade: From Legality to Illegality, 1814-1870
Martín Rodrigo Chapter 8. The
Amistad: Ramón Ferrer, Cuba, and the Transatlantic Dimensions of Slaving and Contraband Trade
Michael Zeuske Chapter 9. Antislavery before Abolitionism: Networks and Motives in Early Liberal Barcelona, 1833-1844
Albert Garcia Balañà Chapter 10. Moments in a Postponed Abolition
Josep M. Fradera Chapter 11. From Empires of Slaves to Empires of Antislavery
Seymour Drescher
About the author
Josep M. Fradera is Professor of History at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra and the author of La nación imperial. Derechos, representación y ciudadanía en los imperios de Gran Bretaña, Francia, España y los Estados Unidos (2015).
Christopher Schmidt-Nowara (1966-2015) was Professor of History and Prince of Asturias Chair in Spanish Culture & Civilization at Tufts University. He was at work on a translation and edition of Joseph Blanco White’s Bosquexo del comercio en esclavos.
Summary
African slavery was pervasive in Spain's Atlantic empire yet remained in the margins of the imperial economy until the end of the eighteenth century when the plantation revolution in the Caribbean colonies put the slave traffic and the plantation at the center of colonial exploitation and conflict.
