How Cuba burned with the ghosts of British slavery: race, abolition and the Escalera

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Letter from Joseph Gordon, Baron von Ketelhodt, and William Wemyss Anderson to Lord Elgin & Kincardine, 18 April 1844 (Public Record Office (PRO), CO 137/279). Memorial to Queen Victoria from the Householders of the Parish of Saint Andrew, County of Surrey, Jamaica (PRO, CO 137/279). Statement of James Thomson, made before Max. Aug. Baron v. Ketelhodt, 22 March 1844 (PRO, CO 137/279). Letter from Richard Burleigh Kimball, Knickerbocker, July 1845, cited in Robert L. Paquette, Sugar is Made with Blood: The Conspiracy of La Escalera and the Conflict between Empires over Slavery in Cuba (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1988). The British Parliament passed the Consolidated Slave Act in 1824, which included amongst its measures protection against excessive punishment and the right for slaves to secure their freedom and to own property. However, it took two years and much arm-twisting to force the measure through the Bahamas Assembly, and even then in a somewhat weakened form. G. Saunders, Slavery in the Bahamas, 1648–1838 (Nassau: Nassau Guardian, 1985), pp.172, 175. A similar story of opposition from leading members of colonial society could be seen throughout the West Indies. J.C. Dorsey, ‘Seamy Side of Abolition: Puerto Rico and the Cabotage Slave Trade to Cuba, 1848–73’, Slavery and Abolition, 19, 1 (April 1998), pp.106–28. Dorsey identifies 5 illicit movements of slaves around the Caribbean in the first half of the nineteenth century: from Hispaniola following the Haitian Revolution; from Jamaica and the Bahamas to Cuba, in response to abolitionism and eventually emancipation; from the Eastern Caribbean islands to Puerto Rico at the time of British emancipation; Spanish-sponsored movement from the French Antilles to Puerto Rico; and the sale of slaves from the French and Dutch Antilles to Puerto Rico at the time of emancipation there. Many of the slaves who entered Puerto Rico were subsequently transferred to Cuba. M. Craton and G. Saunders, Islands in the Stream: A History of the Bahamian People, Vol.1 (Athens & London: University of Georgia Press, 1985), p.224. Letter from David Turnbull to Lord Stanley, Nassau, 3 Sept. 1842 (PRO, CO 318/157). H. Thomas, The Slave Trade: The History of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440–1870 (London: Picador, 1997); José Luciano Franco, Comercio clandestine de esclavos (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1996). José Luciano Franco, ‘Piratas, corsarios, filibusteros y contrabandistas’, in José Luciano Franco, Ensayos Históricos (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1974), pp.47–92. L. Derby, ‘National Identity and the Idea of Value in the Dominican Republic’, in N. Priscilla Naro (ed.), Blacks, Coloureds and National Identity in Nineteenth-Century Latin America (London: ILAS, 2003), p.17. Roland Ely describes how it was this contraband trade between the British and Spanish colonies that provided the important stimulus to Cuba's economy, forcing the Spanish to liberalize its trade policies (R.T. Ely, Cuando reinaba su majestad el azúcar: Estudio histórico-sociológico de una tragedia latinoamericana: el monocultivo en Cuba. Origen y evolución del proceso (Havana: Imagen Contemporánea, 2001), pp.47–54). See, M. Moreno Fraginals, El Ingenio, 3 Vols. (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1978); F. Knight, Slave Society in Cuba during the 19th Century (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1970); Ramiro Guerra y Sánchez, Azúcar y población en las Antillas (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1970). Ramiro Guerra y Sánchez et al. (eds.), Historia de la nación cubana, Vol.2 (Havana, 1952), p.78; and Resumen del censo de la población de la isla de Cuba (Havana, 1842), p.19 – cited by Knight, Slave Society in Cuba, p.24. L.W. Bergad, Cuban Rural Society in the Nineteenth Century: The Social and Economic History of Monoculture in Matanzas (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp.69–76; L.W. Bergad, Fé Iglesias and María del Carmen Barcia, The Cuban Slave Market (1790–1880) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Knight, Slave Society in Cuba, p.53; Lloyd, The Navy and the Slave Trade, pp.275–6; Archivo Histórico Nacional, Madrid (AHN), Ultramar, Esclavitud, Legs.3547, 3552, 3553. Slave trade reports sent by British representatives in Cuba to the British government throughout the period are a litany of complaints of the blatant breaches of the Treaty, and show that there was a constant stream of illicit slave landings which they were all but powerless to prevent (PRO, FO 84). A number of factors saw prices increasing greatly once again from the late 1840s: repeal of British sugar duties; uncertainty about the future of the slave trade; an increase in international sugar prices leading to increased production; inequality in mechanization between agricultural and industrial phases of sugar production. L.W. Bergad, ‘Slave Prices in Cuba, 1840–1875’, Hispano American Historical Review, 67, 4 (Nov. 1987), pp.631–55; Bergad, Cuban Rural Society; Bergad et al., Cuban Slave Market. British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Reporter (BFASR), 4, 13 (21 June 1843), p.107. BFASR, 2, 3 (10 Feb. 1841), pp.34–5. Letter from Foreign Office to Charles Tolmé, London, 31 Aug. 1838 and letter from Tolmé to Viscount Palmerston, Havana, 14 July 1838 (PRO, FO 72/513). Rhodes House Library (Oxford) (RH), British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society papers (BFASS), MSS Brit Emp s.18, G77; PRO, FO 84/357 and FO 84/358. D.R. Murray, Odious Commerce: Britain, Spain and the Abolition of the Cuban Slave Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp.271–97. Letter from David Turnbull to HM Commissioners for the Suppression of the Slave Trade, Havana, 4 Jan. 1841 (PRO, CO 318/153). Letter from David Turnbull to Gerónimo Valdés, Havana, 8 March 1841 (PRO, FO 72/584). See M. Fraginals, El Ingenio; Ely, Cuando reinaba su majestad el azúcar. By 1867, more than 40 per cent of the world's cane sugar came from Cuba (A. Dye, Cuban Sugar in the Age of Mass Production: Technology and the Economics of the Sugar Central, 1899–1929 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), p.27). The expansion was not just in terms of the number of plantations cultivating sugar, but also resulted from the many technological improvements that speeded up the grinding and refining processes. Since the labour-intensive field work remained largely unmechanized, this accentuated the need for more labourers. See, for example, M. Moreno Fraginals, ‘Plantations in the Caribbean: Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic in the Late Nineteenth Century’, in M. Moreno Fraginals, F. Moya Pons and S.L. Engerman (eds.), Between Slavery and Free Labor: The Spanish-speaking Caribbean in the Nineteenth Century (Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), pp.3–21. José Antonio Saco was particularly prominent in the promotion of white immigration as both economically and racially necessary (amongst many such writings, see José Antonio Saco, ‘Análisis de una obra sobre el Brasil’, Papeles sobre Cuba, Vol.2 (Havana: Ministerio de Educación, 1960), pp.30–90). Derby, ‘National Identity and the Idea of Value’, p.20. Dorsey, ‘Seamy Sides of Abolition’. Archivo Nacional de Cuba (ANC), Fondo Gobierno Superior Civil (FGSC), 844/28360. ANC, FGSC, 843/28293. ANC, FGSC, 844/28360. ANC, FGSC, 844/28351. Craton and Saunders, Islands in the Stream, p.225. PRO, CO 318/157. ANC, FGSC, 845/28390. BFASR, 4, 9 (3 May 1843); ANC, FGSC, 845/28390; PRO, CO 137/279. AHN, Estado, Legajo 8057/1, No.1. AHN, Estado, 8057/1 No.2. AHN, Estado, 8057/1 No.5. José Gutiérrez de la Concha y de Irigoyen, Marqués de la Habana, Memorias sobre el estado político, gobierno y administración de la isla de Cuba (Madrid, 1853), p.15. Letter from Kennedy to Earl of Aberdeen, Havana, 8 July 1844 (PRO, FO 84/509). Vidal Morales y Morales, Inicadores y primeros mártires de la revolución cubana (Havana, 1901), pp.129–77; F. González del Valle, La Conspiración de la Escalera. I. José de la Luz y Caballero (Havana, 1925); P. Deschamps Chapeaux, El negro en la economía habanera del siglo XIX (Havana, 1971); Knight, Slave Society in Cuba. José de J. Márquez, ‘Plácido y los conspiradores de 1844’, Revista Cubana, 20 (1894); Fernando Ortiz, Hampa afro-cubana; los negros esclavos; estudio sociológico y de derecho público (Havana, 1916); José Manuel de Ximeno, ‘Un pobre histrión (Plácido)’, in Primer Congreso Nacional de Historia, Vol.2 (Havana, 1943), pp.371–7; also idem, ‘Apuntes para la historia constitucional de Cuba. Los complicados con Plácido’, Libertad nacional, 4 May 1944; G. Midlo Hall, Social Control in Slave Plantation Societies: A Comparison of St Domingue and Cuba (Baltimore, 1971); Jonathan Curry-Machado, ‘Catalysts in the Crucible: Kidnapped Caribbeans, Free Black British Subjects and Migrant British Machinists in the Failed Cuban Revolution of 1843’, in Naro (ed.), Blacks, Coloureds and National Identity, pp.123–42. M. Hernández y Sánchez-Barba, ‘David Turnbull y el problema de la esclavitud en Cuba’, Anuario de estudios americanos, 14 (1957); Daisy Cué Fernández, ‘Plácido y la conspiración de la Escalera’, Santiago, 42 (June 1981), pp.145–206; R. Sarracino, Inglaterra: sus dos caras en la lucha cubana por la abolición (Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1989). Paquette, Sugar is Made with Blood, pp.263–4. PRO, FO 72/584. David Turnbull, Travels in the West: Cuba; with notices of Porto Rico, and the Slave Trade (London, 1840). PRO, FO 72/559. Letter from Luis de Florez (Encargado de Negocios en Londres) to Earl of Aberdeen, London 22 Sept. 1841 (AHN, Estado 8054/1). Letter from Palmerston to Turnbull, 2 Aug. 1841 (PRO, FO 84/358). Letter from Palmerston to Turnbull, 26 Aug. 1841 (PRO, FO 84/358). Letter from Tolmé to Turnbull, 9 Nov. 1840 (PRO, FO 72/559). The result was a vitriolic exchange of letters between both men and the British government. The latter eventually had to verbally knock their heads together, since the conflict was in danger of becoming a serious embarrassment to the British state (PRO, FO 84/357, 358). Letter from Turnbull to Lord Stanley, 22 Dec. 1842 (PRO, CO 318/157). ANC, Comisión Militar (CM), 51/1, pp.566–7. ANC, FGSC, 843/28310, 844/28329 and AHN, Estado, 8054/1. Aberdeen to Turnbull, 10 Feb. 1842 (PRO, FO 72/608). Crawford to Aberdeen, 24 June 1842 (PRO, FO 72/609). Turnbull to Aberdeen, 14 June 1842 (PRO, FO 72/608); Turnbull to Lord Stanley, 14 June 1842 (PRO, CO 318/157). PRO, CO 318/157. Various letters from Turnbull to Lord Stanley from Nassau, Sept. and Oct. 1842 (PRO, CO 318/157). Letter from Turnbull to Lord Stanley, Nassau, 3 Sept. 1842 (PRO, CO 318/157). Extracts of statements sent by Captain General Valdés to First Secretary of State in Madrid, 5 Nov. 1842 (AHN, Estado, 8054/2); Crawford to John Bidwell, 6 Nov. 1842 (PRO, FO 72/609); Turnbull to the Lieutenant Governor of the Bahamas, 22 Oct. 1842 (PRO, CO 23/113); H. Leapern to Secretary of the British & Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, Nassau, 5 Nov. 1842 (RH, BFASS, MSS Brit Emp s.18, C14/141). Paquette, Sugar is Made with Blood, pp.78, 180. Letter from J.M. Morales to Henry A. Coit, Havana, 1 April 1843 (Biblioteca Nacional ‘José Martí’, Havana (BNJM), C.M. Lobo 113, No.1, File 2; Paquette, Sugar is Made with Blood, p.177; Letter from Crawford to Aberdeen, 18 April 1843 (PRO, FO 72/634). Morales to Coit, 1 April 1843 (BNJM, Lobo 113/1/2); Crawford to Aberdeen, 18 April 1843 (PRO, FO 72/634); Paquette, Sugar is Made with Blood, p.210. Paquette, Sugar is Made with Blood, pp.178, 210; Crawford to Aberdeen, 18 April 1843 (PRO, FO 72/634). Manuel Barcia Paz, ‘Entre amenazas y quejas: un acercamiento al papel jugado por los diplomáticos ingleses en Cuba durante la conspiración de la Escalera, 1844’, Colonial Latin America Historical Review, 10, 1 (Winter 2001), pp.1–25 – my translation. Paquette, Sugar is Made with Blood, pp.209–10. M. del Carmen Barcia and M. Barcia Paz, ‘La Conspiración de la Escalera: el precio de una traición’, Catauro: revista cubana de antropología, 3 (2001), pp.199–204; Paquette, Sugar is Made with Blood, p.215. Letter from José del Castillo to John Scoble, Havana, 14 Feb. 1844 (RH, BFASS, MSS Brit Emp s.18, C 15/10); William Norwood Diary, 18 Feb. 1844 (Virginia Historical Society); Paquette, Sugar is Made with Blood, pp.217, 222–3. Sentence (12a) pronounced by Military Commission, Matanzas (AHN, Estado, 8057/1, No.1). ANC, CM, 51/1, pp.591–2. Turnbull to Aberdeen, 21 Aug. 1844 (PRO, FO 84/516); and Turnbull to Earl of Elgin, 21 Aug. 1844 (PRO, CO 137/280). Crawford to Aberdeen, 18 April 1843 (PRO, FO 72/634). PRO, FO 72/709. Turnbull to Lord Stanley, 31 July 1842 (PRO, CO 318/157). Sarracino, Inglaterra. Sarracino, Inglaterra, pp.132–5. See, for example, Turnbull to Aberdeen, Havana, 30 Oct. 1841 (PRO, FO 84/358). BFASS Minute Book No.2 (RH, MSS Brit Emp s.20, E 2/7). PRO, FO 72/709. Although Cocking goes into great detail as to the workings of the committees organizing the uprising, and the plans they had, it is highly probable that he exaggerated the significance both of these, and of his own and Turnbull's involvement. At the time of writing his confessional letters, he was almost destitute in Caracas, and was desperately seeking through his letters to curry favour with the British government. They were none too impressed with his heroic claims, however, and clearly felt that there were no grounds on which to reward him. Turnbull to Lord Stanley, HMS Romney, 31 July 1842 (PRO, CO 318/157). Turnbull to Lord Stanley, HMS Romney, 31 July 1842 (PRO, CO 318/157). Charles Clarke to Aberdeen, 2 June 1843 (PRO, FO 72/634); also PRO, CO 137/275. AHN, Estado, 8038/3. AHN, Estado, 8057/1. ANC, Asuntos Políticos (AP), 41/52 – my translation. ANC, AP, 41/51 – my translation. J. Luciano Franco, ‘La conjura de los negreros’, in Franco, Ensayos Históricos, pp.193–200. See Sarracino, Inglaterra, pp.135–6. Clarke to Russell, 20 Nov. 1840 (PRO, CO 318/149); Turnbull to Stanley, 31 July 1842 (PRO, CO 318/157); Turnbull to Palmerston, 15 Dec. 1840 (PRO, FO 72/559); Turnbull to Palmerston, 27 Jan. 1841 (PRO, FO 72/584); Crawford to Aberdeen, 12 Aug. 1842 (PRO, FO 72/609). For a full history of the imperial machinations of the United States in Cuba, and the rivalry with Britain, see Luis Martínez-Fernández, Torn between Empires: economy, society and patterns of political thought in the Hispanic Caribbean, 1840–1878 (Athens & London: University of Georgia Press, 1994). Race continued to be the principal stumbling block for a successful Cuban national project throughout the nineteenth century. Racial differences played a large part in the failure of the first war of independence (the Ten Years War, 1868–78); and largely defined the limits of support for Maceo's continued rebellion (1878–79). It was not until José Martí succeeded in building a cross-race, cross-class national coalition of forces in the 1890s that Cuba finally succeeded in ridding itself of Spanish control. However, racial differences continued to be at the heart of contested visions of what the Cuban nation should be well into the twentieth century. See A. Helg, Our Rightful Share: The Afro-Cuban Struggle for Equality, 1886–1912 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995); Alejandro de la Fuente, Race, Inequality, and Politics in Twentieth-Century Cuba (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); P. Pérez Sarduy and J. Stubbs (eds.), AfroCuba: An Anthology of Writing on Race, Politics and Culture (Melbourne: Ocean Press, 1993). While no kidnapped Caribbeans were directly accused of complicity in the plot, some black British subjects were arrested. Amongst them was Joseph Kelly, a freeborn native of the Bahamas. He arrived in Cuba in 1823, working as a carpenter in the vicinity of Matanzas. Although he was not the only British worker to be caught up in the trials, unlike the white workers who were all eventually released, he was found guilty and sentenced to ten years of hard labour in the Ceuta penal colony (PRO, FO 72/664; PRO, CO 23/118; PRO, FO 84/520). Six years later diplomatic pressures were continuing in an attempt to secure his release (PRO, FO 72/771). See R.J. Scott, Slave Emancipation in Cuba: the Transition to Free Labour, 1860–1895 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985). Curry-Machado, ‘Catalysts in the Crucible’. PRO, FO 72/664. Free blacks in general were seen as a threat to the established white order in Cuba throughout the nineteenth century (see J. Stubbs, ‘Race, Gender and National Identity in Nineteenth Century Cuba: Mariana Grajales and the Revolutionary Free Browns of Cuba’, in Naro (ed.), Blacks, Coloureds and National Identity, pp.95–122). It was they who bore the brunt of the repression that followed the Escalera. M.D. Childs, ‘The Aponte Rebellion of 1812 and the Transformation of Cuban Society: race, slavery and freedom in the Atlantic World’ (PhD thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 2001); M.D. Childs, ‘“A Black French General Arrived to Conquer the Island”: Images of the Haitian Revolution in Cuba's 1812 Aponte Rebellion’, in D. Geggus (ed.), The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2001), pp.135–56; José Luciano Franco, ‘La Conspiración de Aponte, 1812’, in Franco, Ensayos Históricos, pp.127–90. Rumours that emancipation had been decreed in Spain, but denied by local authorities in Cuba, fuelled slave uprisings at the time both of the Aponte and Escalera conspiracies. See D. Murray, ‘The Slave Trade, Slavery and Cuban Independence’, Slavery & Abolition, 20, 3 (Dec. 1999), pp.112–13. Similar events occurred in Jamaica in 1831, sparking unrest there (see M. Craton, Testing the Chains: Resistance to Slavery in the British West Indies (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982), pp.291–321). D.B. Gaspar and D.P. Geggus (eds.), A Turbulent Time: The French Revolution and the Greater Caribbean (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997); Geggus, Impact of the Haitian Revolution. F. Douglass, ‘Lecture on Haiti’, in P.S. Foner (ed.), The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass (New York: International Publishers, 1950–75), Vol.4, pp.484–6. Murray, ‘Slave Trade, Slavery and Cuban Independence’, p.113. ANC, CM, 51/1. J.S. Scott III, ‘The Common Wind: Currents of Afro-American Communication in the Era of the Haitian Revolution’ (PhD thesis, Duke University, 1986). J. Curry-Machado, ‘Beneath and Beyond the Nation: Cuba at the Interstices of Nineteenth Century Trans-national Networks’, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, forthcoming. P.D. Curtin, Cross Cultural Trade in World History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p.246. M. Turner, Slaves and Missionaries: The Disintegration of Jamaican Slave Society, 1787–1834 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982); C. Hall, Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination, 1830–1867 (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002).