African Slavery and Spanish Empire
Imperial Imaginings and Bourbon Reform in Eighteenth-Century Cuba and Beyond
In: Journal of Early American HistorySearch for other papers by Elena Schneider in
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This article traces a philosophical shift that opened the door to a new departure in eighteenth-century Spanish empire: a newly emerging sense that the slave trade and African slavery were essential to the wealth of nations. Contextualizing this ideological reconfiguration within mid-eighteenth century debates, this article draws upon the works of political economists and royal councilors in Madrid and puts them in conversation with the words and actions of individuals in and from Cuba, including people of African descent themselves. Because of the central place of the island in eighteenth-century imperial rivalry and reform, as well as its particular demographic situation, Cuba served as a catalyst for these debates about the place of African slavery and the transatlantic slave trade in Spanish empire. Ultimately, between the mid-eighteenth century and the turn of the nineteenth, this new mode of thought would lead to dramatic transformations in the institution of racial slavery and Spanish imperial political economy.
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1
David Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000); J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492–1830 (New Haven, Ct.: Yale University Press, 2006); Anthony Pagden, Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Britain, Spain, and France, c. 1500–1850 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995) and “The Struggle for Legitimacy and the Image of Empire in the Atlantic to c. 1700”, in ed. Nicholas Canny, The Oxford History of the British Empire: Vol. I, The Origins of Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 34–54; Sophus A. Reinert, Translating Empire: Emulation and the Origins of Political Economy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2011) and “Rivalry: Greatness in Early Modern Political Economy” in eds. Philip J. Stern and Carl Wennerlind, Mercantilism Reimagined: Political Economy in Early Modern Britain and its Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 348–370, 350. See also Eliga Gould, The Persistence of Empire: British Political Culture in the Age of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press/Omohundro Institute, 2000) and Vincent Harlow, The Founding of the Second British Empire, 1763–1793, 2 vols. (New York: Longmans, Green, 1952, 1964). For a contemporary who made similar comparisons, see Abbé Raynal, L’Histoire philosophique et politique des etablissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indies (Amsterdam: 4 vols., 1770).
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7
Dale Tomich, “World Slavery and Caribbean Capitalism: The Cuban Sugar Industry, 1760–1868”, Theory and Society, vol. 20, no. 3, Special Issue on Slavery in the New World (June 1991), pp. 297–319 and Through the Prism of Slavery: Labor, Capital, and World Economy (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004).
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9
Pernille Røge, “A Natural Order of Empire: The Physiocratic Vision of Colonial France after the Seven Years’ War”, pp. 32–53, 35–66, 42, and Thomas Hopkins, “Adam Smith on American Economic Development and the Future of European Atlantic Empires”, pp. 32–75, 66, in Røge and Reinert, The Political Economy of Empire in the Early Modern World, in Stern and Wennerlind, Mercantilism Reimagined ; J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492–1830 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), ch. 10.
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10
Allan J. Kuethe, Cuba, 1753–1815: Crown, Military, and Society (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1986); Jorge Domínguez, Insurrection or Loyalty: The Breakdown of the Spanish American Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980) and “‘Los llorones cubanos’: The Socio-military Basis of Commercial Privilege in the American Trade under Charles IV”, in The North American Role in the Spanish Imperial Economy, in eds. Jacques A. Barbier and Allan J. Kuethe (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), pp. 142–156; Allan J. Kuethe and G. Douglas Inglis, “Absolutism and Enlightened Reform: Charles III, the Establishment of the Alcabala, and Commercial Reorganization in Cuba”, Past & Present, 109 (November 1985), pp. 118–143. See also Juan Bosco Amores Carredano, Cuba en la época de Ezpeleta (Pamplona: Ediciones Universidad de Navarra, 2000) and Josep María Fradera, Colonias para después de un imperio (Barcelona: Ediciones Bellaterra, 2005), p. 22. Fradera argues that the British invasions of Manila and Havana during the Seven Years’ War acted as primary catalysts for fiscal, military, and political reorganizations directly afterwards, even though projects of rejuvenation had started before.
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14
Luis Perdices de Blas, La economía política de la decadencia de Castilla en el siglo XVIII: Investigaciones de los arbitristas sobre la naturaleza y causas de la riqueza de las naciones (Madrid: Editorial Síntesis, 1996), p. 145.
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16
Paquette, Enlightenment, Governance, and Reform, pp. 36–45, and “Views from the South”; Shovlin, p. 310; Sophus Reinert, Translating Empire, pp. 46–60.
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19
Almarza, pp. 17–19. Gabriel Paquette has shown how the Bourbon reformers were also inspired by study of the British East India Company; see “Enlightened Narratives and Imperial Rivalry in Bourbon Spain: The Case of Almodóvar’s Historia Política de los Establecimientos Ultramarinos de las Naciones Europeas (1784–1790)”, The Eighteenth Century, vol. 48 no. 1 (2007), pp. 61–80.
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20
Ronald D. Hussey, La compañía de Caracas, 1728–1784 (Caracas: Banco Central de Venezuela, 1962); Montserrat Garate Ojanguren, Comercio ultramarino e ilustración: la Real Compañía de la Habana (San Sebastián: Real Sociedad Bascongada de los Amigos del País, 1994); Mariano García Ruiperez, “El pensamiento económico ilustrado y las compañías de comercio”, Revista de historia económica, 4:3 (1986), pp. 521–548.
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29
Ribera, pp. 158, 186.
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31
Ribera, pp. 137–142.
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32
Ribera, p. 143.
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36
Campillo y Cosío, Nuevo sistema de gobierno económico para la América, pp. 94–95, 120–121; Stein, Silver, Trade, and War, pp. 204–215.
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38
Jaime Delgado, “El Conde de Ricla: Capitan General de Cuba”, Revista de Historia de América, nos. 55/56 (1963), pp. 41–138; Elena Schneider, “The Occupation of Havana: War, Trade, and Slavery in Eighteenth-century Cuba” (Ph.D. diss.: Princeton University, 2011).
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49
Ibid., p. 331v.
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50
Ibid., p. 333.
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53
Ibid., p. 240v.
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54
See Adelman, Sovereignty and Revolution in the Iberian Atlantic, pp. 73–90. On the debates about whether “mercantilism” ever existed in practice, see Stern and Wennerlind, “Introduction”, in Mercantilism Reimagined, pp. 1–2.
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56
Ibid., p. 254v.
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61
Ada Ferrer, “Noticias de Haití en Cuba”, Revista de Indias, 63:229 (2003), pp. 675–694; Ada Ferrer, Consuelo Naranjo Orovio, Ma. Dolores González Ripoll, Gloria García, and Josef Opartny, El rumor de Haití en Cuba: Temor, raza, y rebeldía, 1789–1844 (Madrid: Centro Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2004).
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64
José Gomariz, “Francisco de Arango y Parreño: El discurso esclavista de la ilustración cubana”, Cuban Studies, 35 (2004), pp. 45–61; Jamie Holeman, “‘A Peculiar Character of Mildness’: The Image of a Humane Slavery in Nineteenth-century Cuba”, in Francisco Arango y la invención de la Cuba azucarera.
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71
Bibiano Ramírez Torres, La compañía gaditana de negros (Sevilla: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-americanos, 1973); Manuel Lucena Salmoral, Los códigos negros de la América española (Alcalá de Henares: Universidad Alcalá, 1996), Regulación de la esclavitud negra en las colonias de américa española (1503–1886): Documentos para su estudio (Alcalá de Henares: Universidad de Alcalá, 2005); Mariano L. de Castro and María Luisa de la Calle, Origen de la colonización española en Guinea Ecuatorial (1777–1860) (Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 1992); Manuel Cencillo de Pineda, El brigadier Conde de Argelejo y su expedición militar a Fernando Poo en 1778 (Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Africanos, 1948); I.K. Sundiata, “A Note on an Abortive Slave Trade: Fernando Po 1778–1781”, Bulletin de l’Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire, Serie B, vol. 35, issue 4 (1973), pp. 793–804.
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72
Dale Tomich, “The Wealth of Empire” and “‘The Second Slavery’: Bonded Labor and the Transformation of the Nineteenth-century World Economy”, in Through the Prism of Slavery.
African Slavery and Spanish Empire
Imperial Imaginings and Bourbon Reform in Eighteenth-Century Cuba and Beyond
In: Journal of Early American HistorySearch for other papers by Elena Schneider in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
This article traces a philosophical shift that opened the door to a new departure in eighteenth-century Spanish empire: a newly emerging sense that the slave trade and African slavery were essential to the wealth of nations. Contextualizing this ideological reconfiguration within mid-eighteenth century debates, this article draws upon the works of political economists and royal councilors in Madrid and puts them in conversation with the words and actions of individuals in and from Cuba, including people of African descent themselves. Because of the central place of the island in eighteenth-century imperial rivalry and reform, as well as its particular demographic situation, Cuba served as a catalyst for these debates about the place of African slavery and the transatlantic slave trade in Spanish empire. Ultimately, between the mid-eighteenth century and the turn of the nineteenth, this new mode of thought would lead to dramatic transformations in the institution of racial slavery and Spanish imperial political economy.
