“Morir o dominar”: En torno al reglamento de esclavos de Cuba (1841-1866)

Abstract

Cuban slave codes have attracted scholarly attention for more than two hundred years, dating back to Alexander von Humboldt’s writings in the early part of the nineteenth century. Historians have largely used the slave codes to illustrate specific arguments about different aspects of Cuban slavery, rather than making their formulation, debate, and implementation the central topics of study. For example, comparative historians such as Herbert Klein, Slavery in the Americas (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1967), pointed to the laws to argue slaves’ legal rights made Cuban slavery less harsh than in the United States. Franklin Knight’s Slave Society in Cuba (Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1970) demonstrated that not all slaves could exercise these rights, and consequently, the laws offered misleading conclusions for the social history of Cuban slavery. Jean-Pierre Tardieu’s “Morir o dominar” focuses on the political and economic climate of the first half of the nineteenth century, which prompted the drafting of a new slave code in 1842. In particular, he narrows in on the active role played by Cuban slave owners and the plantation elite who shaped the law by filling out questionnaires regarding slave treatment.Drawing primarily upon archival sources from the Asuntos Políticos, Gobierno General, and Gobierno Superior Civil sections of Cuba’s national archives, Tardieu makes an important addition to the literature by investigating how the authors composed the laws in response to the changing nature of Cuban slavery in the nineteenth century. His major contribution is his detailed portrait of the Cuban elite as active participation in formulating the law and not merely recipients of the edicts handed down by colonial officials. Although he touches on the matter briefly, Tardieu’s study is not primarily concerned with the historiographical question of whether the slave code effectively put limits on masters’ authority and any broader conclusions that might follow. Rather, he is interested to show how the law serves as an index for debates about Cuban slavery, and particularly the mindset of the master class in the middle of the nineteenth century. By placing the 1842 slave code within the larger sweep of nineteenth-century Cuban history, Tardieu follows the standard historiographical interpretation of slavery’s expansion following the Haitian Revolution. In moving his narrative from the 1790s to the 1840s, he addresses the major Cuban thinkers on slavery, metropolitan debates over slavery, and slave resistance. Tracing the evolution of Cuban thought on slavery, he succinctly summarizes the writings of Francisco de Arango, Felix Varela, Juan Bernardo O’Gavan, and José Antonio Saco, among others. He also examines Spaniards’ debates among themselves in Spain and with the British that culminated in the 1817 and 1835 treaties to limit the transatlantic slave trade. Tardieu also factors into his analysis a cursory discussion of slave resistance, from runaways to major rebellions in 1825 and 1833. While most of these conclusions will be familiar to specialists in Cuban slavery, Tardieu builds on them to reach his final argument: that by the 1840s, Cuban slave codes needed to be reformulated as a result of shifting thoughts on slavery, international pressures, and a reluctant recognition of an increase in slave resistance.The heart of the book examines the 1842 slave code. Tardieu focuses his scholarly analysis on a series of questionnaires sent to the most powerful slave owners on the island, among them the marqués de Arcos, Rafael O’Farril, Domingo de Aldama, and others. Perhaps remembering Cuban slave owners’ rejection of the 1789 slave code, which forced the Spanish crown to declare it void, the captain general asked slave owners to report on labor, housing, health, religious instruction, marriage, clothing, and other topics related to slave life on the plantations before drafting the 1842 code. Tardieu closely scrutinizes these responses to analyze how masters treated their slaves and tease out their proslavery ideology. These sources have allowed Tardieu to provide a detailed portrait of Cuba’s elite slave owners, their justifications of slavery, and how they and their overseers treated slaves. Scholars will be eager to consult the book for Tardieu’s analysis of the slave owners’ responses and delighted to find that the one-third of the book reprints, as documents, many of the returned questionnaires.In summary, scholars of Cuban slavery, the legal history of slavery, and slavery in Latin America more broadly will find in “Morir o dominar” insightful analysis of the process behind the formulation of the 1842 slave code, and in particular, how Cuban slave owners shaped the document.