War as the "forcing house of change": State slavery in late-eighteenth-century Cuba

William and Mary Quarterly

Volumn 62, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 411-440

  Jennings, Evelyn Powell ^a  

^a ST LAWRENCE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 34547489450     PISSN: 00435597     EISSN: 1933-769     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3491530     Document Type: Review

References (66)

1. The "forcing house of change" is from Jeremy Black, ed., War in the Early Modern World (London, 1999), 19
2. Much scholarship and debate on the role of slavery in the development of the Atlantic world began with Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (1944; repr., Chapel Hill, N.C., 1994)
3. David Eltis, The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas (Cambridge, 2000)
4. Joseph E. Inikori, Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England (Cambridge, 2002). Literature on slaves as soldiers usually examines state enslavement as a political and military issue rather than an economic one
5. See, for instance, Roger Norman Buckley, Slaves in Red Coats: The British West India Regiments, 1795-1815 (New Haven, Conn., 1979)
6. Peter M. Voelz, Slave and Soldier: The Military Impact of Blacks in the Colonial Americas (New York, 1993)
7. María Elena Diaz, The Virgin, the King, and the Royal Slaves of El Cobre: Negotiating Freedom in Colonial Cuba, 1670-1780 (Stanford, Calif, 2000)
8. One book views the use of crown slaves in Guyana by Britain after 1803 as an economic failure (see Alvin O. Thompson, Unprofitable Servants: Crown Slaves in Berbice, Guyana, 1803-1831 [Barbados, 2002])
9. For the assertion that historians often exaggerate the negative effects of war on development, see Patrick Karl O'Brien, "Global Warfare and Long-Term Economic Development, 1789-1939," War in History 3, no. 4 (November 1996): 444
10. For the infusion of imperial funds, see Moreno Fraginals, El ingenio, 52
11. Manuel Moreno Fraginals, "Peculiaridades de la esclavitud en Cuba," Islas 85 (September-December 1986): 3-12
12. For a review of the debate about the economic importance of the British occupation and a more restrained view of its relevance, see John Robert McNeill, Atlantic Empires of France and Spain: Louisbourg and Havana, 1700-1763 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1985), 190-91, 283 n. 55. Celia María Parcero Torre has argued that the defense plans for Havana and the development of the sugar industry had begun before 1762. The occupation was, in many ways, disruptive and destructive
13. The reforms after 1763 then continued at a more accelerated pace than earlier defense and economic initiatives (Parcero Torre, La pérdida de la Habana y las reformas borbánicas en Cuba [1760-1773] [Castille-Leon, Spain, 1998], 15, 157-58, 170)
14. For the reform programs of the eighteenth century, see Allan J. Kuethe, Cuba, 1753-1815: Crown, Military, and Society (Knoxville, Tenn., 1986)
15. Sherry Johnson, The Social Transformation of Eighteenth-Century Cuba (Gainesville, Fla., 2001)
16. Juan B. Amores, Cuba en la época de Ezpeleta (1785-1790) (Pamplona, Spain, 2000), devotes more attention to patterns of economic growth and change in Cuba under the Bourbon administrators
17. For examples of the major European powers waging war and defending territory on a transatlantic scale, see, for instance, Peggy K. Liss, Atlantic Empires: The Network of Trade and Revolution, 1713-1826 (Baltimore, 1983), 18
18. Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492-1800 (London, 1997), 373-400, 495
19. For the focus on the empires of Britain and France see, most notably, John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State 1688-1783 (New York, 1989)
20. For inclusion of Spain, see Liss, Atlantic Empires
21. and McNeill, Atlantic Empires of France and Spain. At the death of Charles II, the last of Spain's Hapsburg kings, in November 1700, Philip of Anjou was named to the Spanish throne. Reigning as Philip V, he brought the Bourbon dynasty of France to Spain but he renounced any claim to the French throne in the Treaty of Utrecht that ended the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-13)
22. Paul E. Hoffman, The Spanish Crown and the Defense of the Caribbean, 1535-1585: Precedent, Patrimonialism, and Royal Parsimony (Baton Rouge, La., 1980), 22-23, table 2, for mean yearly costs from 1535 to 1547, 56-57, for enslaved Africans as one of the costs of construction
23. Pérez Guzmán, La Habana, 6, for the royal order to fortify Havana
24. For forced and free workers, see Renée Méndez Capote, Fortalezas de la Habana colonial (Havana, Cuba, 1974), 16
25. The period of twenty-odd years necessary to complete the Havana fort was not particularly unusual, even for fort building in Europe a century later (Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500-1800, 2d. ed. [Cambridge, 1996], 166)
26. For slave imports through Havana, see Alejandro de la Fuente Garcia, "El mercado esclavista habanera, 1580-1699: las armazones de esclavos," Revista de las Indias 50, no. 189 (May-August 1990): 377. For growth outside the port area, see Gordon Douglas Inglis, "Historical Demography of Colonial Cuba, 1492-1780" (Ph.D. diss., Texas Christian University, 1979), 85. Inglis estimates for 1570 a total island population of approximately 17,550 people, of whom 1,200 were Spanish, 1,350 indigenous, and 15,000 black and mulatto (159, app. 1)
27. On the royal bankruptcies, see J. H. Elliott, Imperial Spain: 1469-1716 (New York, 1964), 197-361
28. For land forces given higher priority and the effects of royal bankruptcies on naval policy, see David Goodman, Spanish Naval Power, 1589-1665: Reconstruction and Defeat (Cambridge, 1997), 46, 258-59
29. This paragraph relies on information in G. Douglas Inglis, "The Spanish Naval Shipyard at Havana in the Eighteenth Century," in New Aspects of Naval History: Selected Papers from the 5th Naval History Symposium, ed. Department of History, U.S. Naval Academy (Baltimore, 1985), 47-59 (quotation, 49)
30. For an account of company assets, see a representation, Dec. 19, 1748, reviewing the company's losses in ship construction and other grievances (legajo 995, Ultramar, AGI). For free workers in the Havana shipyard, see Levi Marrero, Cuba: economia y sociedad (Madrid, Spain, 1980), 8: 18
31. For a concise discussion of primary and secondary sources' estimates of slave imports to Cuba from 1740 to 1760, see McNeill, Atlantic Empires of France and Spain, 167
32. Pablo Tornero Tinajero cites 3,263 slaves imported by the Royal Company of Havana from 1743 to 1747 alone, so the total number up to 1760 may be higher (Tornero Tinajero, Crecimiento económico y transformaciones sociales: Esclavos, hacendados y comerciantes en la Cuba colonial [1760-1840] [Madrid, Spain, 1996], 34)
33. For the production of ships of the line in Havana during the eighteenth century, see Inglis, "Spanish Naval Shipyard," 52, table 2
34. The study argues that the reluctance of Jamaican planters to arm their slaves stymied British efforts to recruit large numbers of slaves for service in the expedition (Daniel E. Walker, "Colony versus Crown: Raising Black Troops for the British Siege on Havana, 1762," Journal of Caribbean History 33, nos. 1-2 [1999]: 74-83, 78-79, for the numbers of slaves in the initial expedition)
35. For the contingent of slaves that saved the city from a British attack, see Pedro J. Guiteras, Historia de la conquista de la Habana (Philadelphia, 1856), 132
36. According to Parcero Torre, on June 23, 1762, Captain General Prado also created a company of one hundred black musketeers from a group of privately owned slaves who were granted their freedom (Parcero Torre, La pérdidad de La Habana, 155). It is not clear whether these musketeers were among the 105 slaves to whom Prado granted freedom during the siege, but it seems likely
37. For the order to sink several men-of-war ships, see Guiteras, Historia de la conquista, 75-83
38. For improvements in the design and function of the shipyard, see Inglis, "Spanish Naval Shipyard," 53-54
39. For consolidation and centralization of colonial power, see Allan J. Kuethe and Lowell Blaisdell, "The Esquilache Government and the Reforms of Charles III in Cuba," Jahrbuch Für Geschichte von Staat Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft Lateinamerikas 19 (1982): 120-29
40. For a thorough discussion of the military reforms of the Bourbons in Cuba and Ricla's proposals specifically, see Kuethe, Cuba, chap. 2, 24-49
41. For the Asiento system in Cuba during the first half of the eighteenth century, see Colin Palmer, Human Cargoes: The British Slave Trade to Spanish America, 1700-I739 (Urbana, Ill., 1981)
42. For the import of slaves through Havana, see Tornero Tinajero, Crecimiento económico, 37
43. For total slave imports to the city, see Gloria García, "El mercado de fuerza de trabajo en Cuba: El comercio esclavista (1760-1789)," in La esclavitud en Cuba (Havana, Cuba, 1986), 135
44. Amores, Cuba en la época de Ezpeleta, 174, cites the defense industry in Havana and the Mexican silver that supported it as one of the fundamental bases of Cuban development, esp. in the eighteenth century
45. For the seven hundred laborers clearing La Cabaña, see Jaime Delgado, "El Conde de Ricla Capitán General de Cuba," Revista de Histórica de America 55-56 (January-December 1963): 90-97. For the new construction of a fort on La Cabaña given priority, see letter from Ricla to Arriaga, July 27, 1763 (legajo 1212, Santo Domingo AGI). Ricla hoped to obtain four to five hundred slaves donated by private owners, and was waiting for a group of Guachinango Indians to be sent from New Spain. The figures for slaves purchased by the state vary somewhat. A statement of fort works expenses summarized in December 1772 gives 4,198 slaves purchased from May 1763, to the end of 1765, with a credit to the Royal Account for the sale of 283 slaves to the artillery company, yielding a total of 4,481 (report compiling figures from July 7, 1763, to Dec. 31, 1772, legajo 2129, ibid.). Francisco Pérez Guzmán gives a total figure of 4,400 slaves purchased for the state (La Habana, 66). Pablo Tornero Tinajero cites 4,359 with the gender breakdown (Crecimiento económico, 36)
46. For details about the situado, see Allan J. Kuethe, "Havana in the Eighteenth Century," in Atlantic Port Cities: Economy, Culture, and Society in the Atlantic World, 1650-1850, ed. Franklin W. Knight and Peggy K. Liss (Knoxville, Tenn., 1991), 18, 24
47. For loans from private citizens, see Parcero Torre, La pérdida de La Habana, 270
48. For other European states' emphasis on defense expenditures, see Parker, Military Revolution, 39
49. For declining numbers of mills and the average number of slaves, see Fe Iglesias García, "La estructura agrarian de La Habana, 1700-1775," Arbor 92 (July-August 1991): 100-102
50. Allan J. Kuethe and G. Douglas Inglis, "Absolutism and Enlightened Reform: Charles III, the Establishment of the Alcabala, and the Commercial Reorganization in Cuba," Past & Present, no. 109 (November 1985): 125-27, 140-43
51. For recruitment and control of day laborers, see letter from Luis Huet to Captain General Juan Manuel de Cagigal, Havana, July 29, 1782 (legajo 1311, Cuba, AGI). Huet notes the scarcity of laborers and the lack of prisoners from New Spain "that for years have not come from the Kingdom of New Spain." For preventing another attack on Havana, see letters from Huet to Cagigal, Havana, Sept. 7, Oct. 6, Oct. 28, 1782, ibid
52. A royal cédula permitted foreigners and Spaniards to sell an unrestricted number of slaves in the Cuban market through several free ports, including Havana (Franklin W. Knight, Slave Society in Cuba during the Nineteenth Century [Madison, Wis., 1970], 11)
53. For an extended discussion of the consequences of the free trade decree of 1789 on imperial trade and regional economies, see Stanley J. Stein and Barbara H. Stein, Apogee of Empire: Spain and New Spain in the Age of Charles III, 1759-1789 (Baltimore, 2003) 267-304
54. For the belief that capital was an important factor in the expansion of sugar production, see, for instance, Franklin W. Knight, "Origins of Wealth and the Sugar Revolution in Cuba, 1750-1850," Hispanic American Historical Review 57, no. 2 (May 1977): 231-53, esp. 242
55. Moreno Fraginals, El ingenio, 1: 65
56. For a summary of this scholarship on revenues from defense spending in Cuba, see Kuethe, "Havana in the Eighteenth Century," 14-25 (quotation, 24)
57. For an insightful discussion of the weight of disparaging comparisons in historiography on Spanish development so often couched in terms of decline, backwardness, and failure, see David R. Ringrose, Spain, Europe, and the "Spanish miracle," 1700-1900 (Cambridge, 1996), esp. chap. 1, "Perceptions and Perspectives," 3-28
58. For the central role of slavery, see Williams, Capitalism and Slavery
59. and reassessments of his thesis and the resulting historiography, such as Barbara L. Solow and Stanley L. Engerman, eds., British Capitalism and Caribbean Slavery: The Legacy of Eric Williams (Cambridge, 1987)
60. Solow, Slavery and Rise of Atlantic System
61. Inikori, Africans and the Industrial Revolution
62. A short list of works on Cuba's incorporation into the Atlantic economy would include Herbert S. Klein, Slavery in the Americas: A Comparative Study of Virginia and Cuba (Chicago, 1967)
63. Knight, Slave Society in Cuba
64. Moreno Fraginals, Islas 85
65. Laird Bergad, Cuban Rural Society in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, N.J., 1990)
66. Buckley, Slaves in Red Coats, 55