This remarkably comprehensive study covers the United States, the Caribbean, and Latin America. It makes two very important points. The first is that every slave system was an extremely complex operation, especially across the varied geography of the American hemisphere. Second, it persuasively illustrates that every American slave system, regardless of time, place, and circumstances, was not only inherently explosive, but also bore within itself the seeds of its eventual destruction, in the form of the enslaved. Nevertheless, for many reasons, European-imposed slavery existed across the Americas for almost 400 years.
The focus of the study is on the various ways in which enslaved individuals gained their liberation. Using mainly selected secondary authorities, the author examines what she refers to as liberation strategies across and within different imperial systems. The narrative treats the theme chronologically, and is divided into four parts with a short epilogue. The first part examines the early Iberian and African Atlantic background. The second part covers developments between 1501 and 1763, and the third reviews changes from the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763 to 1825. The fourth part discusses the period between 1800 and 1838, which the author describes as “the beginning of the end of slavery in the Americas” (3, 275). The epilogue restates the underlying hypothesis that the enslaved, through flight, marronage, self-purchase, war service, and various forms of individual and state benevolence, managed to free themselves in significant although undetermined numbers throughout the experience of slavery in the Americas.
Iberia experienced enslaved Africans long before Christopher Columbus arrived in what Europeans were to designate their new world. Moors conquered most of Iberia and remained for seven centuries. Persons of African descent, both enslaved and free, accompanied early Iberians to the Americas and initially served in almost all capacities—as conquistadors, builders of cities, muleteers, sailors, adventurers, traders, and managers of the local population. With the precipitous decline of the indigenous population and the increasing dependence on mining and agriculture for local and imperial economic solvency, the use of imported Africans rapidly assumed enormous importance. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, manual labor of any sort was increasingly identified with people of African descent. By then, the transatlantic slave trade was a major international commercial operation, transporting millions of Africans as commodified cargoes to ports all across the western hemisphere.
The book's impressive comprehensiveness and manifest convenience make this an extremely useful study for the general reader. Just about every American slave revolt, conspiracy, and maroon community is discussed. Nevertheless, the stated origin of some terms such as cimarrón or even “slave society” are highly debatable. There are other minor quibbles. The Caribbean island of Grenada is small but certainly not flat. And the Stono Rebellion in South Carolina in 1739 was probably more a minor rebellion than a case of marronage.
Serious scholars will be less satisfied about a number of themes running throughout the book. The major theme is self-liberation. Yet, across time and geography, most of the liberated end up dead, more often than not the result of maliciously calculated mass murder by slave owners, local authorities, or imperial governments obsessed by imaginary slave conspiracies. Some interpretations are questionable. The Spanish crown did not eagerly accept the notion of enslaving the indigenous population. Isabel I firmly rejected that idea when Columbus proposed it, declaring the entire population of the Indies to be her vassals and all the newly discovered land to be the private domain of the monarchs of Castile. Spain spent almost half a century trying to resolve the jurisprudential problems presented by its newly acquired American possessions.
The Spanish crown did not seize the Cuban copper mines at El Cobre outside of Santiago de Cuba. Instead, the operation went bankrupt and reverted to the crown, resulting in all the enslaved falling into the privileged category of royal slaves. The incident had one of the most interesting denouements in the history of any American slave society. After a century, the compromise to return the mines to private operation invented the term, wage slavery. Africans who had purchased their freedom were indeed free. Those still determined to be enslaved had to be paid wages by the new operators.
It is also highly questionable that British abolition in the 1830s indicated the beginning of the end of slavery in the Americas, except within the British empire. Slavery disintegrated over a very long period, as this study clearly indicates. The success of the Haitian Revolution instilled a terrified consciousness across the Americas that permanently undermined the confidence of slave owners. After Haiti, slavery in the Americas would never be the same. The British and American abolition of their transatlantic slave trades in the early 1800s reflected a fundamental change in the nature of that form of trade, as well as changes in economics in general. The transatlantic slave trade facilitated the shift away from bullionism and mercantilism as global economic metrics and greatly stimulated the development of industrial capitalism, which was in many ways inimical to the long-term continuation of the system of slavery.
This study shows how the populations of enslaved coped with these global changes and took advantage of them when and where they could. Self-liberation or communal emancipation represents only one dimension of their reaction to their circumstances.
