Title: Early Anti-Slavery Sentiment in the Spanish Atlantic World, 1765–1817
Abstract: Abstract This article examines the dynamics of slavery and anti-slavery in the Spanish Empire prior to the Independence of the Spanish American mainland. Rather than focusing on the Spanish Caribbean and the ‘late’ period of slavery in the second half of the nineteenth century, it explores slavery and abolition in the colonial period from an imperial perspective, using early abolitionist texts, records from the Spanish Cortes of 1810–1812, and various royal decrees pertaining to slavery. Although Spain did not abolish the slave trade until 1817, and only did so with intense outside pressure, the prevailing notion that there was no native anti-slavery movement in the Spanish Empire overlooks a more complex reality. Early anti-slavery movements were relatively quiet in the late Spanish Empire, yet outlining their contours helps to illuminate the pragmatic nature of Spanish imperial rule in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This article also shows how the development of pro-slavery and anti-slavery ideologies highlights the transatlantic nature of intellectual and political projects in this period. Notes Here I employ the terms ‘anti-slavery’ and ‘abolitionist’ in the sense they are most often used in the United States historiography; ‘anti-slavery’ indicates earlier movements to end the slave trade itself, while ‘abolition’ connotes a desire to fully abolish the institution of slavery. Jennings, French Anti-slavery, Dubois, A Colony of Citizens, Sala-Molins, Dark Side of the Light, Brown, Moral Capital, Marques, The Sounds of Silence. See, for instance, the work of Herman Bennett , Sherwin Bryant, María Elena Díaz, Marcela Echeverri, Nicole Von Germeten, Lyman Johnson, Ben Vinson, and Tamara Walker. Klein, African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean, 232. Kamen, Empire: How Spain Became a World Power, 136. Newsom and Minchin, From Capture to Sale, ch. 1. Of course, the official Spanish policy on the subject does not necessarily mean that no Spanish vessels were engaged in direct trade for slaves. Klein and Vinson state that in the late eighteenth century, the Spanish West Indies had approximately 80,000 slaves, while the British West Indies had 467,000 and the French West Indies was home to 575,000. The continental figures similarly suggest the relatively smaller slave population in the Spanish Empire: while Brazil was home to one million slaves and the new United States housed approximately 575,420, mainland Spanish America had only 271,000. African Slavery in Latin America, 273. On Haiti, see the work of Geggus, Dubois, and Fick. Schmidt-Nowara, Empire and Antislavery, esp. ch. 1. González and González, Christianity in Latin America, 74. ‘Mercator’, ‘Slave Trade Felony Act’. Brown, Moral Capital, 155. ‘Mercator’, ‘Slave Trade Felony Act’, 373. Murray, Odious Commerce, 39. Corwin, Spain and the Abolition of Slavery in Cuba, 21. The historiography of slavery and abolition in the Spanish Empire and Latin America is the most developed for the cases of Cuba and Puerto Rico. See the work of Matt D. Childs, Alejandro de la Fuente, Ada Ferrer, Manuel Moreno Fraginals, David R. Murray, Francisco A. Scarano, Rebecca Scott, and Dale Tomich. I found the work of Gabriel Paquette, particularly his argument about ‘critical emulation’ as a policy strategy employed throughout the Atlantic during this period, especially useful in thinking about the broader importance of early Spanish anti-slavery. Enlightenment, Governance, and Reform in Spain, 14. Brown's Moral Capital first brought this matter to my attention, especially chs 1, 4, and 5. Bielby Porteus, ‘The Civilization, Improvement, and Conversion of the Negro Slaves’, 72. Alejandro de La Fuente has recently written on coartación in Cuba, arguing that by the late eighteenth century, gradual self-purchase was a ‘customary right’ that was accompanied by the right of papel, or requesting transfer to another owner in case of blatant mistreatment. de la Fuente, ‘Slaves and the Creation of Legal Rights in Cuba’, 633. For explorations of slave law throughout the Atlantic world, see Watson, Slave Law in the Americas. Burns, ‘Introduction to the Fourth Partida’, xxiv. Konig ‘The Código Negrero of 1789’, 141. Johnson, ‘A Lack of Legitimate Obedience and Respect’. Echeverri, ‘Enraged to the Limit of Despair’. ‘Extracto del Codigo Negro Carolino, Formado por la Audiencia de Santo Domingo, Conforme a lo Prevenido en el Real Orden de 23 de Septiembre de 1783 para el Gobierno Moral, Político, y Económico de los Negros de Aquella Isla’, Santo Domingo, 14 March 1785, in Colección de Documentos para la Historia de la Formación Social de Hispanoamérica, 1483–1810, vol. III, edited by Richard Konetzke (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Invesstigaciones Científicas, 1953), 565. Konetzke, Colección. There were two prior codes as well. The first Spanish Black Code was written for the island of Santo Domingo in 1768, but never officially approved by the Council of the Indies. Its main focus was to prevent slave desertions. In 1769, Spain decreed a slave code for Louisiana, which it had received from France in 1766. This code was meant to be an exact translation of the French Code Noir that had previously managed slaves in the territory. It remained in place until 1800, when Spain lost Louisiana. See Liliana Obregón, ‘Black Codes in Latin America’, Africana, 245–249. Konetzke, Colección, Aranjuez, 31 de Mayo de 1789. R. Instrucción sobre la educación, Trato, y Ocupación de los Esclavos'. Konetzke, Colección, 649. Konetzke, Colección, 650. On cofradías, see the work of Nicole von Germeten; on hospitals for blacks, see the work of Nancy Van Deusen. For blacks in colonial militias, see Ben Vinson's Bearing Arms for His Majesty: The Free-Colored Militia in Colonial Mexico (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001.) Currently, the work of Sherwin Bryant, Maria Elena Díaz, Alejandro de la Fuente, and Lyman Johnson treats this issue. König, ‘The Código Negrero of 1789’, 143. King, ‘Evolution of the Free Slave Trade Principle’, 51. At first, the Spanish tried a system of multiple, smaller asientos given to Spanish merchants, but the plan proved too cumbersome. In 1760, a Cádiz merchant named Miguel de Uriarte received a 10-year asiento that lapsed a year later when Spain became involved in the Seven Years' War. In 1765, Uriarte was granted another asiento that stipulated he would build a slave fort in Puerto Rico. However, this initial plan still allowed for British involvement: lacking experience in direct slave trade, the Spaniards would not purchase slaves in Africa themselves, but would instead buy them second-hand from British traders. The fort in Puerto Rico would serve as the clearing-house for British imported slaves to be distributed throughout Spanish America. For background, see King, ‘Evolution of the Free Slave Trade Principle’. Paquette discusses the Company's ‘success' in Enlightenment, Governance, and Reform, 107. King, 44. For more on the Company, see Torres, La Compañia Gaditana de Negros. The treaty agreement looks less unfair upon realising that Santa Catarina island was strategically located off the Brazilian mainland, and thus was an ideal location for military garrisons. It also had a good harbour which facilitated the passage of large ships (including slave ships) to the coast. Stearns, ‘The Brazilian ‘Judicial Police’. Silva, ‘Imperial Re-organization’. See Sundiata, From Slavery to Neoslavery. ‘Tratado de Amistad, Garantia y Comercio, Ajustado y Concluido entre el Rei. N.S. V La Reina Fidelisima y ratificado por Su Majestad en el Pardo a 25 de Marzo de 1778. En el cual se revalidan y explican los demas tratados precedentes que subsistían entre las Coronas de España y Portugal, cediéndose a favor de la primera algunos Territorios y Derechos' (Madrid: Imprenta Real de la Gazeta, 1778.) Castro and de la Calle, Origen de la Colonización Española. Also see Castro and Ndongo, España en Guinea, Randall Fegley, Equatorial Guinea: An African Tragedy and Equatorial Guinea (World Biographical Series). On the Philippines Company, see Schurz, The Manila Galleon, 409–418. Castro, Origen de la Colonización. King, ‘Evolution of The Free Slave Trade Principle’, 50–52. These statistics are in stark contrast to the only 11 voyages producing 3537 slaves from 1765 to 1789. ‘The Atlantic Slave Trade Database’, Emory University, http://slavevoyages.org/tast/index.faces In 1787, the same year that the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was founded, British abolitionists established the African colony of Sierra Leone, as a new home for freed slaves from Britain (and later North America.) The first settlers moved with the assistance of Granville Sharp, who believed that Sierra Leone should be a self-governing, Christian settlement, whose inhabitants would produce agricultural goods for trade with the British. See Blyden, West Indians in West Africa, 1–10. See Lynch, Bourbon Spain, especially ch. 10. Martínez, Los Grupos Liberales, particularly ch. 3. See Esdaile, Spain in the Liberal Age. The defining work on the Cortes and Constitution of 1812 remains Rodríguez's The Independence of Spanish America, 82. See Smith, The Emerging Female Citizen, 4–55 and Uribe-Urban, ‘The Birth of a Public Sphere’. A survey of abolitionist sentiment in nineteenth-century Spanish periodicals will be a central query of my impending book-length project on early anti-slavery and abolitionist sentiment in the Spanish Empire. For background on Antillón, see Martínez Quinteiro, as well as studies by Don Ricardo Beltrán and Agustín Hernando. Publication and circulation details of the tract are sketchy. Matt Childs and David Murray briefly reference Antillón as an early Spanish abolitionist, and Martínez Quinteiro broadly traces his liberal publications, but to date, there has been no thorough evaluation of his abolitionist ideas and their relationship to the broader anti-slavery discourse of the British and Spanish Atlantic worlds in the early nineteenth century. See Childs, The 1812 Aponte Rebellion, 30. Murray, Odious Commerce, 34. Martínez, Los Grupos Liberales, chs 1–53. Antillón, Dissertación sobre el Origen de la Esclavitud de los Negros, 19. Antillón, Dissertación. Antillón, Dissertación, 34. Antillón, Dissertación, 52. Antillón, Dissertación, 49. Brown, Moral Capital, 28. Childs, The 1812 Aponte Rebellion, 35–36. Antillón, Dissertación, 41. Antillón, Dissertación, 64. Antillón, Dissertación, 67. Here he is borrowing from Bernardo Ward, whom he references in previous pages. In 1779 Ward famously wrote that ‘The Indians … are the true Indies and the richest mine of the world’. Ward, Proyecto Económico, 247. Antillón, Dissertación, 54. Antillón, Dissertación, 57. Antillón, Dissertación, 60 Antillón, Dissertación, 61. Brown, Moral Capital, ch. 5. For a discussion of how Bourbon reformers applied the discourse of commercial humanism to the native peoples of the Americas, see Berquist, ‘Bishop Martínez Compañón's Practical Utopia’. On commercial humanism, see Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and History. The connections between Iberian and British political economy are clearly outlined for the Portuguese Empire in the work of Kenneth Maxwell. See Pombal and Naked Tropics. Quintana himself was a central figure in Antillón's circle of young liberals, and he made his abolitionist sentiments well known through a poem he wrote about an African girl who had been captured and sold into slavery, and later through his abolitionist discourses in the Spanish Cortes. Glendinning, A Literary History of Spain, 84. For the connections between Antillón, Manuel José Quintana, and José Blanco White, see Durán, Crónicas de Cortes del Semanario Patriótico. Martínez, Los Grupos liberales. Murphy, Blanco White. On the Semanario Patriótico, see Obra Completa de José Blanco White, edited by Silva and Rico. On Blanco White, see Moreno, Divina Libertad and Murphy, Blanco White. Murphy, Blanco White, 83–91. Moreno ‘Introducción’, in Moreno Alonso, ed., Bosquejo del Comercio, 22–41. Alonso, Bosquejo, footnote 17. Alonso, Bosquejo, 138. Alonso, Bosquejo, 150. Alonso, Bosquejo, 174. Alonso, Bosquejo, 175. Alonso, Bosquejo, 178. Alonso, Bosquejo, 176. Alonso, Bosquejo, 173–184. For instance, Klein and Vinson argue that the main abolitionist activity in the Cortes was promoted by Cuban or Puerto Rican creoles, and that it was the colonial delegates who promoted the most progressive anti-slavery measures. African Slavery in Latin America, 233. ‘Número 105: Sesión del día 9 de Enero de 1811’, Diario de Sesiones, 327. ‘Número 119: Sesíon del Día 23 de Enero de 1811’, Diario de Sesiones, 420. ‘Número 185: Sesión del Día 2 de Abril de 1811’, Diario de Sesiones, 812. ‘Número 185: Sesión del Día 2 de Abril de 1811’, Diario de Sesiones, 812. The records of the Cortes sessions are not uniformly complete, especially when dealing with sensitive subjects. Mejía's speech is quoted in King, ‘The Colored Castes’, 41. On Mejía, see Astuto, ‘A Latin American Spokesman’. ‘Número 185: Sesión del Día 2 de Abril de 1811’, Diario de Sesiones de las Córtes, 811. ‘Número 185: Sesión del Día 2 de Abril de 1811’, Diario de Sesiones de las Córtes, 813. (Although he did not call this coartación per se, the practice he was referring to was undoubtedly that.) Rieu-Millan, Los Diputados Americanos, 169. Murray, Odious Commerce, 33. Rodríguez, ‘Equality! The Sacred Right of Equality!’, 112. King, ‘The Colored Castes and American Representation’, 52. King, ‘The Colored Castes'. ‘La Constitución Española de 1812’, available at the Biblioteca Virtual Cervantes, http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/portal/1812/constitucion.shtml, 10. Rodríguez, The Independence of Spanish America, 92. Esdaile, Spain in the Liberal Age, 31. Murray, Odious Commerce, ch. 7. ‘An Inquiry into the Right and Duty’. ‘Real Cedula Circular a Indias Expedida por el Rey Fernando VII Sobre Prohibicion de la Trata Negrera’. Eltis, ‘The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database’. Yannakakis, The Art of Being In-between, 167. Weber, Bárbaros, 154. Weber, Bárbaros, 5.
Publication Year: 2010
Publication Date: 2010-06-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 25
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