Slave law and claims-making in Cuba: The Tannenbaum debate revisited

Law and History Review

Volumn 22, Issue 2, 2004, Pages 339-369

  De La Fuente, Alejandro ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 60949982402     PISSN: 07382480     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/4141649     Document Type: Review

References (218)

1. For a few significant examples, see Fernando Ortiz, Los negros esclavos (1916; Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1975)
2. Luis M. Díaz Soler, Historia de la esclavitud negra en Puerto Rico (1493-1890) (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1953)
3. Carlos Larrazábal Blanco, Los negros y la esclavitud en Santo Domingo (Santo Domingo: J. D. Postigo, 1967)
4. Idelfonso Pereda Valdés, El negro en el Uruguay, pasado y presente (Montevideo, 1965)
5. Miguel Acosta Saignes, Vida de los esclavos negros en Venezuela (Caracas: Hespérides, 1967)
6. Javier Malagón Barceló, Código Negro Carolino (1784) (Santo Domingo: Editora Taller, 1974)
7. Frank Tannenbaum, Slave and Citizen: The Negro in the Americas (1946; Boston: Beacon Press, 1992), 69
8. Robert J. Cottrol, "The Long Lingering Shadow: Law, Liberalism, and Cultures of Racial Hierarchy and Identity in the Americas," Tulane Law Review 76.1 (2001): 40
9. The continuing relevance of Tannenbaum's book is confirmed by the frequency with which his work is explicitly engaged by recent scholarship. For some additional examples, see Frederick Cooper, Thomas C. Holt, and Rebecca J. Scott, Beyond Slavery: Explorations of Race, Labor, and Citizenship in Postemancipation Societies (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 1-32
10. Jane Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 1-2
11. Thomas N. Ingersoll, Mammon and Manon in Early New Orleans: The First Slave Society in the Deep South, 1718-1819 (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1999), xviii-xix, 120-22
12. Gilbert C. Din, Spaniards, Planters, and Slaves: The Spanish Regulation of Slavery in Louisiana, 1763-1803 (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1999), xiii-xiv
13. Cottrol, "The Long Lingering Shadow," 41-42
14. Sidney Mintz, Caribbean Transformations (Chicago: Aldine Publishing, 1974), 70
15. Mintz had made this argument earlier, in a 1961 review of Stanley Elkins's Slavery, which was reproduced as "Slavery and Emergent Capitalisms" in Slavery in the New World: A Reader in Comparative Perspective, ed. Laura Foner and Eugene Genovese (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1969), 27-37
16. For an opposite point of view, see Alan Watson, Slave Law in the Americas (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1989), 63-66. Watson quotes a case (p. 11) in which a Virginia court stated in 1826 that villeinage could not be considered "the prototype of slavery, as it has always existed here."
17. Arnold A. Sio, "Interpretations of Slavery: The Slave Status in the Americas," Comparative Studies in Society and History 7.3 (April 1965): 296
18. James Sweet, "The Iberian Roots of American Racist Thought," The William and Mary Quarterly 44.1 (January 1997): 144
19. Mintz, Caribbean Transformations, 69
20. Herbert Klein, Slavery in the Americas: A Comparative Study of Virginia and Cuba (1967; Chicago: Elephant Paperbacks, 1989)
21. The importance of institutional differences, already present in Tannenbaum's work, was discussed by Elkins as well, who noted that in Latin America several competing powers - Crown church, masters - intervened in regulating the lives of slaves. See Stanley M. Elkins, Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 52-80
22. Marvin Harris, Patterns of Race in the Americas (New York: Walker and Co., 1964), 76
23. Also critical of Tannenbaum's reliance on legal precepts was David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966), 223-43
24. and Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Social Control in Slave Plantation Societies: A Comparison of St. Domingue and Cuba (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971)
25. For a more recent example, see Ingersoll, Mammon and Manon in Early New Orleans, xviii, who asserts that "laws or religion had little or no influence on either the planter class or the condition of black slaves or free blacks."
26. Harris, Patterns of Race, 84-92
27. Harris's demographic explanation was later echoed in numerous studies. For a notable example, see Carl N. Degler, Neither White Nor Black: Slavery and Race Relations in Brazil and the United States (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1971), 41-47
28. For a thoughtful critique of Harris, see Genovese, "Materialism and Idealism in the History of Negro Slavery in the Americas," in Slavery in the New World: A Reader in Comparative Perspective, ed. Laura Foner and Eugene Genovese (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1969), 238-55
29. For examples of this scholarship see Mintz, Caribbean Transformations
30. Manuel Moreno Fraginals, El ingenio: complejo económico-social cubano del azúcar (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1978), first published in 1964
31. Hall, Social Control
32. Franklin Knight, Slave Society in Cuba During the Nineteenth Century (Madison: Wisconsin University Press, 1970)
33. Warren Dean, Rio Claro: A Brazilian Plantation System, 1820-1920 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976)
34. See also Eugene D. Genovese, "The Treatment of Slaves in Different Countries: Problems in the Application of the Comparative Method," in Slavery in the New World, 202-10
35. The best argument along these lines has been made by Degler, Neither Black Nor White, 67-75
36. Concerning legal definitions of slaves, see also Davis, The Problem of Slavery, 244-55
37. John W. Cell, The Highest Stage of White Supremacy: The Origins of Segregation in South Africa and the American South (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), xii
38. Emilia Viotti da Costa, "Commentary," Luso-Brazilian Review (Winter 1992): 147
39. The value of Tannenbaum's model was further undermined by scholars working on the persistence of racism and racial inequality in Latin America after the 1950s. This scholarship was particularly solid and sophisticated in the case of Brazil, once hailed as the paradigm of racial democracy in the Americas. The research of these scholars seemed to suggest that modern race relations in the United States and Latin America were not that different after all. For a discussion of this literature, see Thomas Skidmore, "Race and Class in Brazil: Historical Perspectives," in Race, Class and Power in Brazil, ed. Pierre-Michel Fontaine (Los Angeles: CAAS, 1985), 11-24
40. George Reid Andrews, Blacks and Whites in Sâo Paulo, Brazil, 1888-1988 (Madison: Wisconsin University Press, 1991), 4
41. Frederick Bowser, "Colonial Spanish America," in Neither Slave Nor Free: The Freedmen of African Descent in the Slave Societies of the New World, ed. David W. Cohen and Jack P. Greene (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), 37
42. Ingersoll, Mammon and Manon in Early New Orleans, 221-34
43. Donald G. Eder, "Time under the Southern Cross: The Tannenbaum Thesis Reappraised," Agricultural History 50.4 (October 1976): 600-14
44. David C. Rankin, "The Tannenbaum Thesis Reconsidered: Slavery and Race Relations in Antebellum Louisiana," Southern Studies 18.1 (Spring 1979): 5-31
45. Tannenbaum, Slave and Citizen, 69
46. Stuart Schwartz, Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society: Bahia, 1550-1835 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 253
47. Frederick P. Bowser, "The Free Person of Color in Mexico City and Lima: Manumission and Opportunity, 1580-1650," in Race and Slavery in the Western Hemisphere: Quantitative Studies, ed. Stanley L. Engerman and Eugene D. Genovese (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 331-68
48. Lyman L. Johnson, "Manumission in Colonial Buenos Aires, 1776-1810," Hispanic American Historical Review 59.2 (1979): 258-79
49. Schwartz, "The Manumission of Slaves in Colonial Brazil: Bahia, 1684-1745," Hispanic American Historical Review 54.4 (1974): 603-35
50. Schwartz, Sugar Plantations, 257
51. Rankin, "The Tannenbaum Thesis," 23
52. Thomas M. Fiehrer, "The African Presence in Colonial Louisiana: An Essay on the Continuity of Caribbean Culture," in Louisiana's Black Heritage, ed. Robert R. Macdonald, John R. Kemp, Edward F. Haas (New Orleans: Louisiana State Museum, 1979), 3-31
53. Rankin, "The Tannenbaum Thesis," 6
54. For a similar claim, see Winthrop D. Jordan, White over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), 588
55. The most notorious case of resistance to the application of Spanish slave law in the colonies concerns the 1789 real cédula that enacted the Código Negro Carolino. See Manuel Lucena Salmoral, Los códigos negros de la America española (Madrid: Ediciones UNESCO, 1996), 108-23
56. Norman A. Meiklejohn, "The Implementation of Slave Legislation in Eighteenth-Century New Granada," in Slavery and Race Relations in Latin America, ed. Robert Brent Toplin (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1974), 176-203
57. Benjamín Nistal Moret, Esclavos prófugos y cimarrones: Puerto Rico 1770-1870 (Río Piedras: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1984)
58. Manuel Lucena Salmoral, Sangre sobre piel negra: la esclavitud quiteña en el contexto del reformismo borbónico (Quito: Ediciones Abya-Yala, 1994)
59. Carlos Aguirre, Agentes de supropia libertad: los esclavos de Lima y la desintegración de la esclavitud, 1821-1854 (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 1993)
60. Christine Hünefeldt, Paying the Price of Freedom: Family and Labor among Lima's Slaves, 1800-1854 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994)
61. Thomas Fiehrer, "Slaves and Freedmen in Colonial Central America: Rediscovering a Forgotten Black Past," Journal of Negro History 64.1 (1979): 39-57
62. María E. Díaz, The Virgin, the King, and the Royal Slaves of El Cobre: Negotiating Freedom in Colonial Cuba, 1670-1780 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000)
63. Gloria García, La esclavitud desde la esclavitud: la vision de los siervos (Mexico City: Centro de Investigación 'Ing. Jorge Tamayo,' 1996)
64. Digna Castañeda, "The Female Slave in Cuba during the First Half of the Nineteenth Century," in Engendering History: Caribbean Women in Historical Perspective, ed. Verene Shepherd, Bridget Brereton, and Barbara Bailey (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995), 141-54
65. Ward Stavig, The World of Tupac Amaru: Conflict, Community, and Identity in Colonial Peru (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), 85
66. On the complex interaction between the colonial state and the indigenous communities, see also Steve J. Stern, Peru's Indian Peoples and the Challenge of Spanish Conquest (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982)
67. Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492-1800 (London: Verso, 1997), 18
68. Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida, 2, 139
69. Hans W. Baade, "The Law of Slavery in Spanish Louisiana, 1769-1803," in Louisiana's Legal Heritage, ed. Edward F. Haas (Pensacola: The Perdido Bay Press, 1983), 43-86
70. Judith K. Schafer, Slavery, the Civil Law, and the Supreme Court of Louisiana (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994)
71. Schafer, Slavery, 6
72. Mintz, "Slavery and Emergent Capitalisms," 31
73. Mintz's statement has been frequently quoted. For examples, see Sio, "Interpretations of Slavery," 307
74. and Eder, "Time under the Southern Cross," 612. By far the best scholarship concerning Cuban slavery along Tannenbaum's arguments is Klein's Slavery in the Americas
75. For a discussion of this problem in Brazil, see B. J. Barickman, A Bahian Counterpoint: Sugar, Tobacco, Cassava, and Slavery in the Recôncavo, 1780-1860 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998)
76. This view is not uncommon in Cuban history manuals. For examples, see Julio Le Riverend, Selección de lecturas de historia de Cuba (Havana: Editora Política, 1984)
77. Sergio Aguirre, Historia de Cuba, 3 vols. (Havana: Editorial Nacional, 1966)
78. Jesús Guanche, Procesos etnoculturales de Cuba (Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1983)
79. Calixto Masó Velázquez, Historia de Cuba (Miami: Ediciones Universal, 1976)
80. Other historians speak of sugar plantations in early colonial Cuba. For examples, see Eduardo Torres-Cuevas and Eusebio Reyes, Esclavitud y sociedad: notas y documentos para la historia de la esclavitud negra en Cuba (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1986)
81. Francisco Castillo Meléndez, "Un año en la vida de un ingenio cubano (1655-1656)," Anuario de Estudios Americanos 39 (1982): 449-63
82. Although there is not a comprehensive study of preplantation slavery in Cuba, the topic has been covered in several important works of scholarship. Particularly useful are, in addition to Klein's Slavery in the Americas, Leví Marrero, Cuba: economía y sociedad (Madrid: Editorial Playor, 1975-1992), especially 2:346-70, 5:25-42
83. Isabelo Macías, Cuba en la primera mitad del siglo XVII (Sevilla: Escuela de Estudios Hispanoamericanos, 1978)
84. Castillo Meléndez, "Un año en la vida de un ingenio cubano," 449-63
85. Although dated, Hubert Aimes, A History of Slavery in Cuba, 1511 to 1868 (New York: Putman's Sons, 1907)
86. and Ortiz, Los negros esclavos are still valuable contributions. A slave community that has received significant attention is that of El Cobre, studied by José Luciano Franco, Las minas de Santiago del Prado y la rebelión de los cobreros, 1530-1800 (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1975)
87. Leví Marrero, Los esclavos y la virgen del Cobre (Miami: Ediciones Universal, 1980)
88. and Díaz, The Virgin, the King, and the Royal Slaves of El Cobre
89. For the development of Havana's service and maritime economy, see Alejandro de la Fuente, César García del Pino, and Bernardo Iglesias Delgado, "Havana and the Fleet System: Trade and Growth in the Periphery of the Spanish Empire, 1550-1610," Colonial Latin American Review 5.1 (1996): 95-115
90. Marrero, Cuba, 2:138-64
91. Archivo del Museo de la Ciudad de la Habana (hereafter AMCH), Actas Capitulares del Ayuntamiento de la Habana, originales, 1672-1683, fol. 45
92. Local authorities constantly complained about the large number of female slaves who devoted themselves to service activities and tried repeatedly to curb their autonomy. Local regulations devoted specifically to black women were approved in 1553, 1557, 1599, 1601, 1620, 1654, and 1698. Actas Capitulares del Ayuntamiento de la Habana, 1550-1578 (Havana: Municipio de la Habana, 1937-1946), 1.2: 75, 150
93. AMCH, Actas Capitulares del Ayuntamiento de la Habana, trasuntadas (hereafter ACAHT), 1599-1604, fol. 474v, 521
94. 1616-1624, fol. 126
95. 1648-1654, fol. 874
96. 1691-1702, fol. 207.Women were also referred to in regulations dealing with slaves' urban activities in general. See Table 1 below
97. AMCH, ACAHT, 1648-1654, fol. 618
98. José Martín Félix de Arrate, Llave del Nuevo Mundo (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1949), 95
99. On the growing sector of artisans in Havana, see Leandro S. Romero, "Fichero ilustrado," Revolución y Cultura (August 1975): 78-82
100. Romero, "Orfebrería habanera en las islas canarias," Universidad de la Habana 222 (January-September 1984): 390-407
101. See the Lib. 2, Tit. 1, Const. 4 of Diocesan Synod of 1680 in Juan García de Palacios, Sínodo Diocesano (Havana: Oficina de Arazoza y Soler, 1814), 46
102. AMCH, ACAHT, 1599-1604, fol. 474v
103. 1691-1702, fol. 207
104. The 1578-1610 estimate is taken from a database of 271 contracts and inventories of rural properties based on data from Havana's notarial records. For the early eighteenth century, see Fe Iglesias García, "La estructura agraria de La Habana, 1700-1775," in Las raíces históricas del pueblo cubano, ed. Consuelo Naranjo Orovio and Miguel A. Puig-Samper (Madrid: Arbor, 1991), 91-112
105. Archivo Nacional de Cuba (hereafter ANC). Protocolos Notariales de la Habana (hereafter PNH), Escribanía Fornaris, 1693, fol. 192
106. 1694, fol. 169, 508v
107. Alejandro de la Fuente, "Los ingenios de azúcar en la Habana del siglo XVII: estructura y mano de obra," Revista de Historia Económica 9.1 (Winter 1991): 35-67
108. Mercedes García Rodríguez, "Ingenios habaneros del siglo XVIII," in Las raíces históricas del pueblo cubano, 113-38
109. For a discussion of the slave provisions of Las Siete Partidas, see Davis, The Problem of Slavery, 102-6
110. Watson, Slave Law in the Americas, 40-47
111. Ortiz, Los negros esclavos, 309-16
112. I have used here the version of the Partidas contained in Los códigos españoles concordados y anotados, 12 vols. (Madrid: La Publicidad, 1847-1851)
113. Klein, Slavery in the Americas, 59
114. For a discussion of the Havana figures, see my "Los matrimonios de esclavos en la Habana, 1585-1645," Ibero-Amerikanisches Archiv 16.4 (1990): 507-28
115. The figures from Sancti Spíritus are based on Libro Primero de Matrimonios de Blancos y de Color. Parroquial del Espíritu Santo, Sancti Spíritus, 1623-1739. Archivo Nacional de Cuba, Fondo Valle Iznaga
116. These figures are based on Archivo de la Catedral de la Habana, Libro Barajas de Bautismos de Españoles, 1590-1610; Archivo de la Parroquial Mayor de la Villa de Sancti Spíritus, Libro Primero de Bautizos, in Archivo Nacional de Cuba, Fondo Valle Iznaga
117. Forty-one percent of the godparents of slave children in Havana and 52 percent in Sancti Spíritus were white. Conversely, the overwhelming majority of godparents of adult slaves were also slaves (78 percent in Havana; 59 percent in Sancti Spíritus). Forty-one percent of the witnesses and godparents in slave marriages in Havana were also white. My findings concerning patterns of godparentage in early colonial Cuba coincide roughly with those of Schwartz, Slaves, Peasants, and Rebels: Reconsidering Brazilian Slavery (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 137-60
118. For a discussion of manumission in early colonial Havana, see de la Fuente, "A alforría de escravos em Havana, 1601-1610: primeiras conclusões," Estudos Econômicos 20.1 (Jan.-April 1990): 139-59
119. I have also used results from a sample of three hundred manumission letters taken from ANC, PNH, Escribanía Fornaris, 1690-1694
120. For the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, see Manuel Moreno Fraginals, "Peculiaridades de la esclavitud en Cuba," Del Caribe 4.8 (1987): 4-10
121. For the 1790-1880 period, see Laird W. Bergad, Fe Iglesias Garcia, and Maria del Carmen Barcia, The Cuban Slave Market, 1790-1880 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 131-41
122. ANC, PNH, Escribanía Fornaris, 1604, fol. 452
123. ANC, PNH, Escribanía Fornaris, 1691, fol. 273
124. In other cases, it was the white father who himself purchased the freedom of his children. For an example, see the will of Isabel Valderas in ANC, PNH, Escribanía Regueira, 1606, fol. 207
125. ANC, PNH, Escribanía Fornaris, 1690, fol. 140, 144, 262, 363
126. L. 45, Tit. 5, P. 5, in Los Códigos, 3: 614
127. Manuel Lucena Salmoral, "El derecho de coartación del esclavo en la América Española," Revista de Indias 59: 216 (May-August 1999), 357-74
128. Rolando Mellafe, Breve historia de la esclavitud en América Latina (Mexico City: Secretaría de Educación, 1973), 136
129. Carlos E. Deive, La esclavitud del negro en Santo Domingo, 1492-1844 (Santo Domingo: Museo del Hom'bre Dominicano, 1980), 2:409
130. For a recent example in which the alleged lateness of the coartación policy is central to a critique of Tannenbaum's approach, see Ingersoll, Mammon and Manon in Early New Orleans, 221-32
131. ANC, PNH, Escribanía Regueira, 1597, fol. 134
132. Ortiz de Matienzo to the King, Havana, 23 November, 1673. ANC, Academia de la Historia, leg. 89, no. 548
133. Real Academia Española, Diccionario de la Lengua Castellana (Madrid: Imprenta de Francisco del Hierro, 1729), 626
134. David M. Davidson, "Negro Slave Control and Resistance in Colonial Mexico, 1519-1650," in Maroon Societies, ed. Richard Price (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), 85
135. For a discussion of some of this legislation, see de la Fuente, "Los matrimonios de esclavos en la Habana," 507-28
136. R.C. 9-11-1526, Colección de Documentos, 1:355
137. R.C. 31-3-1583
138. Konetzke, Colección, 1: 547
139. R.C. 15-4-1540
140. later L. 8, Tit. 5, Libra 7 of the Recopilación
141. These appeals are registered in AMCH, ACAHT
142. Moreno Fraginals, "Peculiaridades," 7
143. For examples, see the petitions of Luisa Murga, 11-23-1671
144. and Maria Guiomar, 11-27-1676 in their legal processes for freedom
145. Both in AMCH, ACAHT, 1667-1672, fol 748
146. and 1672-1683, fol. 150
147. ANC, PNH, Escribanía Fornaris, 1693, fol. 49
148. For cases in which slaves had to surmount significant obstacles to obtain their freedom even with a freedom letter from their deceased masters, see ANC, PNH, Escribanía Junco, 1677-1678, s/f (declaration dated 1-1-1677)
149. AMCH, ACAHT, 1672-1683, fol. 150
150. ANC, PNH, Escribanía Fornaris, 1691, fol. 343
151. For instance, in 1681 the slave Felipa demanded freedom because she had "escaped from Jamaica in power of the British" and come to His Majesty's Catholic territories. The governor found in favor of the slave, a verdict that her alleged master appealed. Another slave requested freedom from Havana's town council in 1597 alleging that he had rendered a valuable service by discovering and denouncing those who had committed the "pecado nefando" (sodomy). Although this was not included in Las Partidas as a cause for freedom, they did stipulate that when slaves rendered some valuable social services they should be set free. The final outcome of both processes is unknown. See AMCH, ACAHT, 1672-1683, fol. 329v
152. 1584-1599, fol. 405
153. L. 3, Tit. 22, Partida 4, in Los Códigos, 3: 522
154. For concrete examples, see a 1641 case in ANC, Gobierno General, leg. 319, no. 15,420
155. and ANC, PNH, Escribanía Regueira, 1609, fol. 198
156. ANC, PNH, Escribanía Regueira, 1591, fol. 191
157. 1595, fol. 424v
158. 1596, fol. 331
159. ANC, PNH, Escribanía Regueira, 1596, fol. 331
160. 1610, fol. 349
161. Escribanía Fornaris, 1694, fol. 201v
162. Escribanía Ortega, 1653, fol. 2
163. María T. de Rojas, Indice y extractos del Archivo de Protocolos de la Habana, 15781585 (Havana: n. p., 1947), 1: nos. 652-54
164. ANC, PNH, Escribanía Fornaris, 1690, fol. 264
165. ANC, PNH, Escribanía Regueira, 1595, fol. 995
166. For a good example, see the will of Ana bioho, who lists credits with various individuals, including whites, free blacks, and other slaves. Among the debtors was her own master, who had received money towards her manumission. See ANC, PNH, Escribanía Regueira, 1604, fol. 318
167. I have grouped under "Others" regulations concerning various aspects of slaves' lives and of free blacks as well. Among these were ordinances dealing with nourishment, clothing, recreation, and so on
168. The slaves' complaints concerning the daily rent were elevated to the Consejo de Indias in Madrid. See Informe del licenciado Gerónimo de Córdova, 1690
169. Archivo General de Indias, Seville (hereafter AGI), Santo Domingo, leg. 65, no. 4
170. Diego Antonio de Viana Hinojosa to the King, Havana, 1688. ANC, Academia de la Historia, leg. 90, no. 641
171. For an example in which an African slave testifies in a process involving whites, see Demanda de naturaleza de Enrique Méndez y Diego de Noroña, 1608. AGI, Escribanía de Cámara, leg. 74A
172. Pedro Deschamps Chapeaux, Los batallones de pardos y morenos libres (Havana: Editorial Arte y Literatura, 1976)
173. Francisco Castillo Meléndez, La defensa de la isla de Cuba en la segunda mitad del siglo XVII (Sevilla: Disputación Provincial, 1986), 194-201
174. Marrero, Cuba, 5:28-30
175. Figures about the free population of color have been taken from Kenneth Kiple, Blacks in Colonial Cuba 1774-1899 (Gainesville: The University Presses of Florida, 1976)
176. David Eltis et al., The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-Rom (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999)
177. Juan Pérez de la Riva, ¿Cuántos africanos fueron traídos a Cuba? (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1977), estimates that up to 1790 around 100,000 slaves entered the island, compared to some 700,000 during the 1800s
178. On this, see the interesting debate between Moreno Fraginals, El ingenio, 2:7-90
179. and Rebecca J. Scott, Slave Emancipation in Cuba: The Transition to Free Labor, 1860-1899 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985)
180. Moreno Fraginals, El ingenio, 1:126-33, 2:7-90
181. Knight, Slave Society, 59-126
182. Robert Paquette, Sugar Is Made with Blood: The Conspiracy of La Escalera and the Conflict between Empires over Slavery in Cuba (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1988)
183. Verena Martínez-Allier, Marriage, Class, and Colour in Nineteenth-Century Cuba: A Study of Racial Attitudes and Sexual Values in a Slave Society (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1974)
184. Bergad, Iglesias, and Barcia, The Cuban Slave Market, 47-52
185. Moreno Fraginals, El ingenio, 3:59
186. Jorge Ibarra, "Regionalismo y esclavitud patriarcal en los departamentos oriental y central de Cuba," Anales del Caribe 6 (1986), 22-52
187. Visitors to the island frequently referred to this institution. For some examples, see Louis A. Pérez, Slaves, Sugar, and Colonial Society: Travel Accounts of Cuba, 1801-1899 (Wimington: SR Books, 1992)
188. Marrero, Cuba, 9:208
189. Concerning the urban free population of color, see Pedro Deschamps Chapeaux, El negro en la economía habanera del siglo XIX (Havana: UNEAC, 1971)
190. and Rafael Duharte, El negro en la sociedad colonial (Santiago de Cuba: Editorial Oriente, 1988)
191. Duharte, El negro en la sociedad colonial, 56-58. So far I have identified more than five hundred cases in which slaves petitioned authorities and the courts in the 1770-1870 period in just one section of the ANC, that of Gobierno Superior Civil. These petitions usually revolved around two issues: their freedom or coartación and changing owners due to abuses or other reasons
192. Emilio Bacardí y Moreau, Crónicas de Santiago de Cuba (Madrid: Breogán, 1973), 3: 159
193. For a few examples, see Libertad que pretende la parda Francisca de Paula, 1830. ANC, Audiencia de la Habana, leg. 24, no. 312
194. Dimas Chavez por la libertad de su madre, 1866. ANC, Gobierno Superior Civil, leg. 968, no. 34211
195. Incidente al intestado de Dn. Luis Minet, 1833. Archivo Provincial de Santiago de Cuba (hereafter APSC), Juzgado de Primera Instantia, leg. 379, no. 9
196. Causa criminal por lesiones de la negra Agripina Criolla, 1879. ANC, Audiencia de la Habana, leg. 1, no. 65
197. El Síndico Procurador General reclama la libertad del negro Nicolas. Santiago de Cuba, 1829. APSC, Juzgado de Primera Instancia, leg. 379, no. 3
198. For a discussion of the "Reglamento de esclavos" of 1842 see Knight, Slave Society, 126-32
199. Ortiz, Los negros esclavos, 339-43, 439-52
200. For a few examples concerning criminal cases, see "Expediente criminal contra Andres y Justo Mena," Havana 1864. ANC, Miscelánea de Expedientes, leg. 1391, A
201. Bienvenido Cano and Federico de Zalta, Libro de los Síndicos de Ayuntamiento y Juntas Protectoras de Libertos (Havana: Imprenta del Gobierno, 1875)
202. Antonio Andrés Azoy, Colección de causas criminales, 2 vols. (Matanzas: Imprenta El Ferrocarril, 1868)
203. Scott, Slave Emancipation
204. William H. Hurlbut, Pictures of Cuba (London: Longman, 1855), 102
205. Hilary McD. Beckles, "Social and Political Control in the Slave Society," in The Slave Societies of the Caribbean, ed. Franklin Knight (London: UNESCO, 1997), 201
206. On slave law in the U.S. South, see Mark V. Tushnet, The American Law of Slavery, 1810-1860 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981)
207. Thomas D. Morris, Southern Slavery and the Law, 1619-1860 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996)
208. Paul Finkelman, ed., Slavery and the Law (Madison: Madison House, 1977)
209. Eugene D. Genovese, "Slavery in the Legal History of the South and the Nation," The Journal of Southern History 59 (1981): 969-98
210. Ariela J. Gross, Double Character: Slavery and Mastery in the Antebellum Southern Courtroom (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000)
211. Ira Berlin, Slaves without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South (New York: Pantheon Books, 1974), 138
212. On restrictions on manumission, see also Arthur Howington, "'A Property of Special and Peculiar Value': The Tennessee Supreme Court and the Law of Manumission," in Law, the Constitution, and Slavery, ed. Paul Finkelman (New York: Garland, 1989), 210-23
213. For a comparative assessment of this question in Latin America, see David W. Cohen and Jack P. Greene, eds., Neither Slave nor Free: The Freedmen of African Descent in the Slave Societies of the New World (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972)
214. Quoted in Tushnet, The American Law of Slavery, 21
215. For a discussion of the complex intersections between the wars of independence, the process of slave emancipation, and the creation of a cross-racial nationalist coalition, see Ada Ferrer, Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868-1898 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999)
216. For a discussion of blacks activism and claims-making in the early years of the republic, see the recent volume edited by Fernando Martínez Heredia, Rebecca J. Scott, and Orlando F. García Martínez, Espacios silencios y los sentidos de la libertad: Cuba entre 1878 y 1912 (Havana: Unión, 2001)
217. See also Rebecca J. Scott, "Reclaiming Gregoria's Mule: The Meanings of Freedom in the Arimao and Caunao Valleys, Cienfuegos, Cuba, 1880-1899," Past and Present 170 (February 2001): 181-217
218. and Rebecca J. Scott and Michael Zeuske, "Property in Writing, Property on the Ground: Pigs, Horses, Land, and Citizenship in the Aftermath of Slavery, Cuba, 1880-1909," Comparative Studies in Society and History 44 (2002): 669-99