Sugar, Slavery, and Freedom in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico

Sugar, Slavery, and Freedom in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico
Author: Luis A. Figueroa
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2006-05-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807876836

The contributions of the black population to the history and economic development of Puerto Rico have long been distorted and underplayed, Luis A. Figueroa contends. Focusing on the southeastern coastal region of Guayama, one of Puerto Rico's three leading centers of sugarcane agriculture, Figueroa examines the transition from slavery and slave labor to freedom and free labor after the 1873 abolition of slavery in colonial Puerto Rico. He corrects misconceptions about how ex-slaves went about building their lives and livelihoods after emancipation and debunks standing myths about race relations in Puerto Rico. Historians have assumed that after emancipation in Puerto Rico, as in other parts of the Caribbean and the U.S. South, former slaves acquired some land of their own and became subsistence farmers. Figueroa finds that in Puerto Rico, however, this was not an option because both capital and land available for sale to the Afro-Puerto Rican population were scarce. Paying particular attention to class, gender, and race, his account of how these libertos joined the labor market profoundly revises our understanding of the emancipation process and the evolution of the working class in Puerto Rico.

The Slave's Rebellion

The Slave's Rebellion
Author: Adélékè Adéèkó
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2005-07-21
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780253111425

Episodes of slave rebellions such as Nat Turner's are central to speculations on the trajectory of black history and the goal of black spiritual struggles. Using fiction, history, and oral poetry drawn from the United States, the Caribbean, and Africa, this book analyzes how writers reinterpret episodes of historical slave rebellion to conceptualize their understanding of an ideal "master-less" future. The texts range from Frederick Douglass's The Heroic Slave and Alejo Carpentier's The Kingdom of this World to Yoruba praise poetry and novels by Nigerian writers Adebayo Faleti and Akinwumi Isola. Each text reflects different "national" attitudes toward the historicity of slave rebellions that shape the ways the texts are read. This is an absorbing book about the grip of slavery and rebellion on modern black thought.

Sugar Island Slavery in the Age of Enlightenment

Sugar Island Slavery in the Age of Enlightenment
Author: Arthur L. Stinchcombe
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 380
Release: 1995-12-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 1400822009

Plantations, especially sugar plantations, created slave societies and a racism persisting well into post-slavery periods: so runs a familiar argument that has been used to explain the sweep of Caribbean history. Here one of the most eminent scholars of modern social theory applies this assertion to a comparative study of most Caribbean islands from the time of the American Revolution to the Spanish American War. Arthur Stinchcombe uses insights from his own much admired Economic Sociology to show why sugar planters needed the help of repressive governments for recruiting disciplined labor. Demonstrating that island-to-island variations on this theme were a function of geography, local political economy, and relation to outside powers, he scrutinizes Caribbean slavery and Caribbean emancipation movements in a world-historical context. Throughout the book, Stinchcombe aims to develop a sociology of freedom that explains a number of complex phenomena, such as how liberty for some individuals may restrict the liberty of others. Thus, the autonomous governments of colonies often produced more oppressive conditions for slaves than did so-called arbitrary governments, which had the power to restrict the whims of the planters. Even after emancipation, freedom was not a clear-cut matter of achieving the ideals of the Enlightenment. Indeed, it was often a route to a social control more efficient than slavery, providing greater flexibility for the planter class and posing less risk of violent rebellion.

Slavery Without Sugar

Slavery Without Sugar
Author: Verene Shepherd
Publisher:
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2002
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780813025520

"Urgently needed, since an examination of the sugar plantation complex alone does not effectively and conclusively provide the entire picture, or detail the factors leading to the profitability of the Caribbean economy. . . . An excellent, well-thought-out compilation."--Selwyn H.H. Carrington, Howard University The plantation economy model--at its core the sugar plantation complex that structured Caribbean society along a rigid enslaver-enslaved line--has so pervaded Caribbean historiography that it has often masked the social and economic diversification that existed in the age of sugar. Equally veiled are the gender, class, and ethnic heterogeneity of the slave-holding class and the variation in the occupations and lived experience of the enslaved population. This volume seeks to reopen discourse on Caribbean slave society by showing how diverse the economy and society really were and how varied were the experiences of the enslaved. 1. Indigo and Slavery in Saint Domingue, by David Geggus 2. Timber Extraction and the Shaping of the Culture of Enslaved Peoples in Belize, by O. Nigel Bolland 3. The Internal Economy of Jamaican Pens, 1760-1890, by B. W. Higman 4. Nonsugar Proprietors in a Sugar-Plantation Society, by Verene A. Shepherd and Kathleen E. A. Monteith 5. Coffee and the "Poorer Sort of People" in Jamaica during the Period of African Enslavement, by S. D. Smith 6. Slavery and Cotton Culture in the Bahamas, by Gail Saunders 7. State Enslavement in Colonial Havana, 1763-90, by Evelyn Powell Jennings 8. The Urban Context of the Life of the Enslaved: Views from Bridgetown, Barbados, in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, by Pedro L. V. Welch 9. Freedom without Liberty: Free Blacks in Barbados, by Hilary McD. Beckles 10. The Free Colored Population in Cuba during the Nineteenth Century, by Franklin W. Knight 11. "Quien Trabajara?": Domestic Workers, Urban Enslaved Workers, and the Abolition of Slavery in Puerto Rico, by Felix Matos Rodríguez Verene A. Shepherd is associate professor of history at the University of the West Indies, Mona.

Sweetness and Power

Sweetness and Power
Author: Sidney W. Mintz
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 322
Release: 1986-08-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1101666641

A fascinating persuasive history of how sugar has shaped the world, from European colonies to our modern diets In this eye-opening study, Sidney Mintz shows how Europeans and Americans transformed sugar from a rare foreign luxury to a commonplace necessity of modern life, and how it changed the history of capitalism and industry. He discusses the production and consumption of sugar, and reveals how closely interwoven are sugar's origins as a "slave" crop grown in Europe's tropical colonies with is use first as an extravagant luxury for the aristocracy, then as a staple of the diet of the new industrial proletariat. Finally, he considers how sugar has altered work patterns, eating habits, and our diet in modern times. "Like sugar, Mintz is persuasive, and his detailed history is a real treat." -San Francisco Chronicle

Imposing Decency

Imposing Decency
Author: Eileen Findlay
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 332
Release: 1999
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780822323969

The interrelationship between sexuality and national identity during Puerto Rico's transition from Spanish to U.S. colonialism.