Empire And Antislavery: Spain Cuba And Puerto Rico 1833-1874

by Christopher Schmidt-Nowara

Overview

In 1872, there were more than 300,000 slaves in Cuba and Puerto Rico. Though the Spanish government had passed a law for gradual abolition in 1870, slaveowners, particularly in Cuba, clung tenaciously to their slaves as unfree labor was at the core of the colonial economies. Nonetheless, people throughout the Spanish empire fought to abolish slavery, including the Antillean and Spanish liberals and republicans who founded the Spanish Abolitionist Society in 1865. This book is an extensive study of the origins of the Abolitionist Society and its role in the destruction of Cuban and Puerto Rican slavery and the reshaping of colonial politics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822956907
Publisher:	University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date:	05/06/1999
Series:	Pitt Latin American Series
Edition description:	1
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Christopher Schmidt-Nowara is associate professor of history at Fordham University. He is the author of Empire and Antislavery: Spain, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, 1833-1874 and coeditor, with John Nieto-Phillips, of  Interpreting Spanish Colonialism: Empires, Nations, and Legends.

Table of Contents

	List of Tables	IX
	Acknowledgments	XI
	Introduction: Spain in the Antilles and the Antilles in Spain	1
1	The Limits of Revolution: Slavery and Liberty in Spain and Cuba, 1833-1854	14
2	"Cuestion de brazos": The Rise of Puerto Rican Antislavery, 1840-1860	37
3	Free Trade and Protectionism: The Transformation of the Metropolitan Public Sphere, 1854-1868	51
4	Family, Association, and Free Wage Labor: Social Reform in Liberal Madrid, 1854-1868	73
5	The Colonial Public Sphere: The Making of the Spanish Abolitionist Society, 1861-1868	100
6	Revolution and Slavery: 1868-1870	126
7	"Today Victory Is Assured": Abolitionism and a New Imperial Order, 1870-1874	139
	Conclusion: The Impact and Legacy of Abolitionism	161
	Notes	177
	Bibliography	211
	Index	233

Editorial Reviews

"It is a thoroughly researched study that moves beyond the "us-against-them" model that has characterizes much of the earlier scholarship, forcing scholars to recognize a more complex Spain, whose various economic and social actors clashed to produce contradictory and seemingly bizarre colonial policies."
—Colonial Latin American Historical Review

From the Publisher