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Early Anti-Slavery Sentiment in the Spanish Atlantic World, 1765-1817Emily Berquist aa Department of History, California State University, Long Beach, California, USA

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Early Anti-Slavery Sentiment in theSpanish Atlantic World, 17651817

Emily Berquist

This article examines the dynamics of slavery and anti-slavery in the Spanish Empire

prior to the Independence of the Spanish American mainland. Rather than focusing on

the Spanish Caribbean and the late period of slavery in the second half of the nineteenth

century, it explores slavery and abolition in the colonial period from an imperial perspec-

tive, using early abolitionist texts, records from the Spanish Cortes of 18101812, and

various royal decrees pertaining to slavery. Although Spain did not abolish the slave

trade until 1817, and only did so with intense outside pressure, the prevailing notion

that there was no native anti-slavery movement in the Spanish Empire overlooks a

more complex reality. Early anti-slavery movements were relatively quiet in the late

Spanish Empire, yet outlining their contours helps to illuminate the pragmatic nature

of Spanish imperial rule in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Thisarticle also shows how the development of pro-slavery and anti-slavery ideologies high-

lights the transatlantic nature of intellectual and political projects in this period.

In recent years, historians of the eighteenth century have increasingly paid attention to

the early period of anti-slavery and abolitionist movements in the Atlantic world.

Laurent Dubois, Lawrence Jennings and others have told the story of slave revolts

and emancipation in France and her colonies. For the British world, Christopher

Browns Moral Capital focuses attention on the eighteenth century as a crucial

period in the development of anti-slavery politics. Even the Portuguese Empire hasbeen given a place in this discourse with Joao Marques recent study The Sounds of

Silence.1 Yet somehow, the historiography on early anti-slavery in the Atlantic world

still lacks a definitive study of early abolitionist sentiment in the Spanish Empire

prior to mainland Spanish American Independence. Historians have produced

innovative social and cultural histories of slave life in late colonial Spanish America,

many of which focus on overt and covert forms of negotiation and resistance.2

Scholars have also recognised the importance that abolition played in the foundation

Slavery and Abolition

Vol. 31, No. 2, June 2010, pp. 181205

Emily Berquist is Assistant Professor, Department of History, California State University, Long Beach, 1250

Bellflower Boulevard, Long Beach, California 90840, USA. Email: [email protected]

ISSN 0144-039X print/1743-9523 online/10/02018125DOI: 10.1080/01440391003711073# 2010 Taylor & Francis


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of many of the newly independent Spanish American republics, especially in the Gran

Colombia region of Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador, which in 1821 promulgated a

Free Womb Law and set up local manumission committees to collect funds to pur-

chase the freedom of older slaves.3 But when it comes to early Spanish anti-slavery

and abolitionism in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, we are facedmost resoundingly with the apparent absence of an idea.

The scholarly literature implies that this void reflects the general lack of abolitionist

thought in the Spanish Empire in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

There are a number of standard explanations for this supposed lacuna. Historians

recognise that for most of the colonial period, the Spanish Crown farmed out the

business of trading slaves through the asiento or monopoly contract system, by

which it provided the legal framework and capital advances for trading expeditions,

but remained otherwise distant from the operations.4 Furthermore, in comparison

to the British and French Empires, the Spanish territories had much smaller slavepopulations.5 Both of these points have led scholars to assume that Spain felt no

urgent need to agitate against slavery, and therefore would not have engendered any

anti-slavery activity. Others purport that in the wake of the massive slave rebellion

in Haiti from 1791 to 1804, the Spanish were so seized with fear of similar rebellions

that any discourse surrounding amelioration or abolition of slavery was effectively

squashed.6 Likewise, scholars have (rightly) recognised the economic clout and politi-

cal prowess of the rich planter class of Cuba, which succeeded in eliminating anti-

slavery measures from the Spanish Constitution of 1812.7 There is also the pesky

little matter of Church involvement in slavery, which undoubtedly must have contrib-

uted to discouraging public abolitionist movements.8

Historians have been willing to accept that anti-slavery ideology eked out a meagre

existence in the Spanish Empire when the British forced it upon an unwilling Spanish

populace. This story of the righteous British and self-interested Spanish is well known

in the Atlantic scholarship. After the British secured the end of the trade in their own

dominions in 1807, their anti-slavery campaigns shifted to the international arena. The

British abolitionists believed they were still responsible for, as one commentator put it,

extinguishing, or . . . diminishing this remaining lot of evil9 in the rest of the Atlantic

world, where the Spanish and French dragged their feet on ending the trade to their

immensely profitable West Indian colonies. Unsurprisingly, the Spanish were particulartargets of criticism. After all, as Christopher Brown wrote in Moral Capital, in the

public imagination, the British Empire was defined by its commitment to liberty. . .

in every respect, it was presumed, the British brought freedom to the Americas while

the Spanish brought only despotism.10 For example, in 1811, one angry British

citizen complained that the Spaniards (and their Iberian conspirators, the Portuguese)

were largely responsible for the majority of the remaining slave trade, yet the British

government continued to treat them with overstrained delicacy. . . [meekly] beseech-

ing them to do as little mischief as possible. He complained that the Spanish laugh at us

for our forbearance, while they go on with their work of slaughter and destruction.11

The few existing studies dealing with abolition in the Hispanic world have followedthese lines of analysis, often casting the British as pioneers for justice who fought

182 Emily Berquist


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Cuban planters and recalcitrant Spanish administrators in the Atlantic war to save the

slaves. Although David Murrays Odious Commerce briefly mentions Spanish anti-

slavery sentiment, his work focuses primarily on Britains role in promoting abolition,

asserting that in the Spanish Empire any anti-slavery inclination was clothed mainly

in foreign garb.12 Likewise, in his 1967 study of the abolition of slavery in Cuba,Arthur Corwin argued that Spain lacked an abolitionist conscience and therefore

could not engage in the anti-slavery dialogue that swept Europe in the late eighteenth

and early nineteenth centuries.13 Such ideas conform to the dominant vision of a des-

potic Spanish Empire that promoted African slavery and de-facto Indian servitude up

until the last possible moment.

Another line of inquiry in the existing literature deals with anti-slavery efforts as a

side note to the study of slavery in the Spanish Caribbean. Matt Childs work on the

1812 Aponte Slave rebellion in Cuba discusses early anti-slavery sentiment, but his

contribution stands alone until the period of the later nineteenth century, whenstudies by Aline Helg and Rebecca Scott approach emancipation from a social

history perspective.14 The only study focusing on abolition in the Spanish Empire

remains Christopher Schmidt-Nowaras Empire and Antislavery, which examines

popular abolitionist movements in Spain, Cuba, and Puerto Rico in the second half

of the nineteenth century. Must the history of anti-slavery in the Hispanic world inevi-

tably be limited to Anglocentric paradigms, a focus on Cuba, or the nineteenth-

century period in which abolition was actually achieved? Should scholars in fact

revise our assumption that there was no anti-slave trade or abolitionist movement

in the Hispanic world before Spanish American Independence?

This article argues that although Spain did not abolish the slave trade until 1817,and only did so with intense outside pressure, the prevailing notion that there was

no there there with early Hispanic anti-slavery is not entirely correct. Although

early anti-slavery movements were relatively quiet in the late Spanish Empire, outlin-

ing their contours helps to illuminate the pragmatic nature of Spanish imperial rule in

the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This article will demonstrate how

the Spanish Crown promoted the seemingly contradictory instruments of free trade

and privileged trading companies, and concurrently sought to advance its involvement

in the slave trade while simultaneously pushing for better treatment of slaves them-

selves. While such policies may appear paradoxical to modern observers, they are infact representative of the late Bourbon attempts to address the increasingly divergent

social and economic needs of Spain in Europe and Spain in the Americas, especially in

dealing with slave and native populations. Equally important is how the development

of pro-slavery and anti-slavery ideologies highlights the transatlantic nature of intel-

lectual and political projects in this period. As was the case for early anti-slavery move-

ments in the British, French, and Portuguese Empires and their former territories, the

early stirrings against the slave trade in the Spanish Empire were inherently transna-

tional, borrowing epistemologies, approaches, and support from outside the Empire

and within it. Spain was not in this period fully closed to outside ideas, nor did it

simply slavishly imitate them.15 However different Spanish anti-slavery was fromBritish or North American early abolitionism, in fact the Spanish Empire did foster

Slavery and Abolition 183


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its own early anti-slavery movement, a movement that was small in scale, yet uniquely

attuned to the problem of slavery and abolition in the Spanish Atlantic world.

Spanish slave codes and early anti-slavery discourse in the Atlantic arenaThe transnational nature of early anti-slavery discourse is most immediately visible in

discussions surrounding the customary and legislative treatment of slaves in the Atlan-

tic Empires. For instance, in the second half of the eighteenth century, some early

British abolitionists cautiously admired the customs and codes that governed the treat-

ment of slaves in the Spanish Empire.16 Of particular interest was the Spanish practice

of coartacion, or gradual self-purchase. Effectively, this meant that a slave who was

hired out or worked on a personal plot of land (a peculio) would be able to save a

small portion of his or her income, and then use this money to purchase freedom.

Granville Sharp had heard of the practice by 1766, referring to it as a programmefor gradual enfranchisement that was a considerable step towards abolishing absolute

slavery. Furthermore, he noted that the ability to work for pay and eventual manumis-

sion had the added benefit of being such encouragement to industry, that even the

most indolent [slaves] are tempted to exert themselves. In 1784, after having read

Sharps ideas on the subject, Bielby Porteus, Bishop of London, also discussed coarta-

cion, declaring: there is something wonderfully pleasing and benevolent in this insti-

tution. It is greatly wished that some expedient of this kind might be tried. . . in some

of the English islands.17 It seems that to these early abolitionists, the fact that the

Spanish decreed parameters for slavery overrode their reputation as a despotic and

cruel nation at least in this limited context. How did they come to overlook theever popular Black Legend of Spains barbarity?

We can begin to understand this paradoxical twist of discourse by examining the

imperial contours of slavery in the British and Spanish Empires. While slavery was

not mandated by empire-wide legislation in Great Britain, the Spanish King issued

royal decrees about slavery and the treatment of slaves in the entire Empire, thus

providing for stricter controls and theoretically better life conditions.18 Such legal

oversight of slavery was not an innovation of the Bourbon monarchs the precedent

of humane treatment of slaves in Hispanic law was derived from the medieval Siete

Partidas code, which in part stated that although slaves had no civil rights, they didpossess human rights similar to those of minor children.19 Throughout the colonial

period, court rulings in the Indies often confirmed that slaves were human beings

and specified that masters who grossly mistreated them could be punished. Further-

more, slaves in the Spanish Empire frequently brought suits against errant masters,

often using the expertise of the court-appointed Defender of the Poor, Indians, and

Slaves, a royal bureaucrat who was paid to represent the disenfranchised in their

legal battles.20

In the 1780s and 1790s, the Spanish Crown combined these Hispanic precedents

with certain elements of the French slave Code Noir of 1685, which it believed had

been largely responsible for spectacular rises in production and profits in theFrench Caribbean.21 In 1785 the Crown decreed its Carolinian Slave Code for Santo

184 Emily Berquist


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Domingo (the Spanish side of the island of Hispaniola, or what would today be the

Dominican Republic.) Though at its core it intended to promote the institution of

slavery through making it more profitable, this document also contained several

measures intended to improve or ameliorate the life conditions of slaves; including

teaching them Catholic religious practices and love of the Spanish nation, and extend-ing the right ofpeculio, or the possession of a small plot of land cultivated for personal

use.22 The 1785 code outlined 10 specific circumstances including saving the life of a

white person, completing 30 years of faithful service, or surviving a shipwreck during

the transatlantic crossing under which slaves could be given freedom. It also estab-

lished the right of slaves to marry, even with persons who lived on distant haciendas.23

The subsequent 1789 Slave Code, Royal Instructions for the Education, Trade, and Work

of Slaves, intended for the entire Spanish Empire, made no mention of the slaves right

to a peculio; nor did it discuss any circumstances under which slaves might be given

freedom. However, the 1789 code decreed many specific rules for slave owners.Masters were not allowed to punish slaves with any more than 25 whippings, and

owners who caused serious injury, loss of blood, or mutilation were to be punished

corresponding to the crime committed, as if the injured person were free.24 The code

also provided for several measures by which local authorities would monitor how

owners treated their slaves.25 Clerics who administered to hacienda slaves were to

observe living conditions, and if anything was found amiss, they were to alert local

authorities. While these laws were of course inconsistently applied, they do suggest

that on paper, at least, the Spanish Crown sought to exert a much stronger influence

over the daily politics of slavery than was possible in the British world, where the

Crown could not control local slave legislation.While royal decrees provided official controls on slavery, the Spanish Empire also

relied on the Catholic tradition of charitable works in order to sustain a culture of

social institutions that theoretically mitigated the conditions of slave life in the Hispa-

nic world. Slaves and free people of colour were permitted to join cofradas, or reli-

gious brotherhoods, which provided religious instruction as well as social outlets

and community assistance. The Crown managed charitable hospitals that served

slaves and free people of colour. Service in local militias provided men of African

descent with opportunities for social advancement and possible emancipation. Cer-

tainly, none of these institutions were without insidious undercurrents forexample, masters who found no more use for their elderly slaves often abandoned

them at hospitals.26 Nevertheless, the Spanish Empires social institutions for slaves

do comprise a comparably extensive network of social provisions that in theory, at

least, improved the lives of slaves and lessened the need for direct anti-slavery

agitation.

It was these mitigating factors of Spanish slavery, both legal and social, which

proved attractive to the early British evangelical abolitionists who cited Spanish

slave codes in some of their anti-slavery writings. However, while to Sharp, Wilber-

force, and Porteus (who wrote from a distance) Spanish slave codes seemed relatively

liberal and humane, scholars of Spanish American slavery have rightly recognised thatthere were often drastic differences between written law and real behaviour.27



7/26

Furthermore, it is undeniable that the codes were largely intended to improve the

institution of slavery in order to increase the profits it generated.28 For instance, in

1789, the same year of the Royal Instruction, the Crown also liberalised the slave

trade in the Empire, allowing Spaniards to travel to foreign slave markets to purchase

slaves, and permitting foreigners to import slaves directly to the Americas.29 Thesemandates confirm that at no point did the Crown consider its slave codes as early

steps towards abolition of the trade or slavery itself.

What then, do the Spanish slave codes and social institutions and British aboli-

tionists perceptions of them reveal about the history of slavery and anti-slavery in

the late Spanish Empire? First, they remind us of the transnational nature of early anti-

slavery dialogue. Ideas supporting and opposing chattel slavery developed in the

Spanish, British, and French Empires. Intellectuals and policy makers transmitted

these ideas from their national points of origin into the broader Atlantic arena

where they were picked up and transformed to suit local contexts. Furthermore, theEmpires built-in checks on the system of slavery help to explain the Spanish silence

on matters of anti-slavery and abolition. British reformers, who had no comparable

legal codes or social institutions to turn to for the benefit of slaves, began to build

public outrage against the slave trade on an individual basis through sermons and

publications. In Bourbon Spain and Spanish America, in contrast, legislation and

institutions were mandated on a top-down basis, which meant that the Spanish

crown oversaw all efforts to improve the conditions of slavery. On paper, the

Spanish were making attempts (however compromised) to ameliorate the condition

of slaves. In so doing, they surpassed any official contemporaneous amelioration

efforts in Britain, thus earning the admiration of early British anti-slave trade agitators.While these laws and institutions never comprised an abolitionist campaign per se,

they demonstrate that the Spanish Crown was thinking about fair treatment of

slaves, even if it was doing so in order to protect the institution of slavery.

Spanish attempts to consolidate interest in the slave trade

At the same time the Spanish Crown sought to improve the conditions of slavery with

ameliorationist measures, it was also busy promoting its own slave interests. These

little-known efforts to expand slavery are central to understanding the nature ofearly anti-slavery and abolitionist sentiment in the Spanish Empire. Just like the

slave codes, Spains efforts at gaining a foothold in the lucrative slave trade were spon-

sored and managed by the Crown. In October 1765, after some initial fumbles, the

Crown granted a slave-trade asiento to four merchants who were to form a Spanish

equivalent to the South Seas Company that would be called the Cadiz Company.30

Despite official enthusiasm, the Cadiz Company did not fare well initially: a lack of

connections along slave-trade channels and opposition by the other Atlantic powers

appear to have hampered its early operations. But by 1773 it hit its stride, introducing

13,864 slaves to Cuba by 1779.31 Then suddenly, in September of that year, the Crown

gave up on the Cadiz Company, terminating its monopoly contract.32 Why wouldSpain invest so much in its own slave-trading company only to withdraw its

186 Emily Berquist


8/26

support so capriciously? The answer lies in the 1777 Spanish-Portuguese Treaty of San

Ildefonso that opened new possibilities for Spains future as a slave-trading empire.

This agreement ostensibly settled border disputes in the vast Amazonian territory

and was on the face of it much more advantageous for the Spanish than for their

rivals in America. It provided no new territory for the Portuguese, simply allowingthem to maintain their rights over the island of Santa Catarina and to control the

Rio Grande de San Pedro.33 Spain secured the valuable city of Colonia del Sacramento,

situated across the Rio de la Plata from Buenos Aires, and the disputed Amazonian

territory that had been home to the Jesuits and Guaran Indians.34 When the treaty

was ratified in March of the following year, the Spanish also received the West

African coastal islands of Fernando Po and Annobon, both of which had previously

been a part of the Portuguese possessions in Africa.35 These were located near the

islands of Sao Tome and El Principe, where the Portuguese had already established

slave-trading forts. The Iberian powers agreed that their ships could pass peacefullythrough the area and seek harbour or supplies as needed. They also concurred that

both parties could use their African islands for an open and free commerce and

trade in slaves that would be undoubtedly advantageous for both. 36

To the Spanish, obtaining these mountainous volcanic islands on the middle-

western coast of Africa seemed to be an incredible stroke of luck. They were strategi-

cally located in the Bight of Biafra, the major slave-trade region of the period, but they

were not yet home to coastal settlements of rival European slave traders. On 17 April

1778, less than a month after the treaty turning over the islands was signed, an

expedition of three Spanish ships lifted anchor in Montevideo to begin its journey

to Spains first African territories. On 29 June, the ships arrived without incident atEl Principe, the designated location for the official handover of Fernando Po and

Annobon. Unfortunately, this was to be the last aspect of the Fernando Po episode

that unfolded in Spains favour. The Portuguese official who had been designated to

oversee the transfer of the islands did not arrive for another three months. In the

meantime, the governor of the settlement had not yet heard of the treaty that ceded

his neighbouring islands to the Spanish and thus would not allow Spanish troops to

disembark. While waiting in the harbour, the Spanish incurred significant damage

to their ships and their health, and also used up many of the expeditions precious

supplies. On 9 August, three English warships tried to blockade one of the Spanishships in the Sao Tome harbour. Overall, the situation was so bad that the expeditions

captain began to think that the Portuguese had tricked the Spanish and never actually

intended to hand over the islands. Even worse, well before the Spanish were actually in

possession of their new territories, the British, French, and Danish slave ships in the

area became aware of the Spanish plans to establish slave-trade posts. Naturally,

they were not pleased. 37

Once the islands were officially named Spanish territory, the expeditions bad luck

continued. The original captain died on the short trip from Sao Tome to Annobon.

When the ships made landfall there on 26 November, the local Bubi tribe proved

less than welcoming, fearing that the change of sovereignty indicated that theSpanish had come to enslave them. The Spanish settlers fell ill in the tropical



9/26

climate. The British took to interfering in the expeditions communication with Spain

whenever possible. The second captain of the expedition, Primo de Rivera, was

kidnapped during a mutiny of his disgruntled crew. While he waited for Spanish

reinforcements to rescue him, the Bubi burned down the Spanish settlement on

Fernando Po. By the time Spanish troops arrived in the final months of 1780,Primo de Rivera had essentially given up the expedition and was preparing to

return to Montevideo. He suffered one last humiliation when on 23 and 24 of Septem-

ber 1781, British interlopers tried to board and seize one of the ships in his care. On 30

December, he abandoned the Fernando Po mission. Almost two months later, he

received a royal order reminding him of his duty to form a Spanish settlement on

Fernando Po that would serve as a depot providing slaves to Spanish America.

Needless to say, this order went unheeded. Although in 1785, the Spanish placed

Fernando Po in the hands of the newly founded Philippines Company, it was

unable to make inroads and the area remained unexploited.

38

The Spanish wouldnot regain effective control of the area until 1844, when it became part of what

would be known as Equatorial Guinea, which remained a Spanish colony until its

independence in 1968.39

The stories of the Cadiz Company and the Fernando Po mission confirm that the

Spanish Crown made every effort to gain a strong foothold in the lucrative traffic of

souls, even if these efforts were disastrously unsuccessful. On 28 February 1789, the

Bourbons decided that the most efficient way to ensure a sufficient slave population

was to allow Spaniards in the Caribbean and Mexico to trade directly with foreign mer-

chants for slaves. Within several years, the decree was extended to allow direct impor-

tation of slaves to Cartagena, Ro de la Plata, Lima, Guayaquil, and Panama.40 TheSpanish Empire became increasingly involved in the slave trade, with 405 Spanish

vessels sailing on slave trading voyages between 1789 and 1817, resulting in a total

of 92,464 slaves disembarking in mainland Spanish America.41 The Cadiz Company

and the Fernando Po mission are stark reminders that official Crown policy towards

the slave trade in this period privileged economic benefits over humanitarian ones;

and in the interest of pragmatism, focused on expansion and entrenchment of the

trade and of slavery itself.

From royal interest to anti-slavery discourse

Throughout the final third of the eighteenth century, the Spanish crown fought bit-

terly for a stake in the lucrative trade while the British struggled to prevent its

success. Both empires were concerned with securing their positions in the Atlantic

economy of slavery. Yet at the same time, in the British world, Evangelical Christians

and Quakers were initiating the anti-slavery movement. However, their Spanish con-

temporaries, who were known for imagining schemes to improve everything from

Indian education to agricultural output, appear to have offered no public comment

on the life conditions of the slaves and the trade itself. Their silence is particularly con-

founding upon considering how public intellectuals such as Pedro Campomanes usedthe same discourse of improvement for Spanish Americas indigenous populations

188 Emily Berquist


10/26

that British abolitionists would employ when discussing how to improve the African

race in the newly founded free black colony of Sierra Leone.42

Although it seems logical that many of the reformers of the Spanish Enlightenment

would have been theoretically opposed to the violence and injustice of the system of

slavery, the fact remains that they do not appear to have addressed their anti-slaveryfeelings in the public record. After the death of Carlos III in 1788, the successive

chief royal ministers Floridablanca, Aranda, and Godoy became increasingly conserva-

tive as events in France threatened the very nature of absolutist rule. Soon the reform-

oriented agenda of the Bourbons in the 1770s and 1780s was replaced with a renewed

focus on military might and government control over the people.43 The resulting

clampdown affected periodicals and other publications: for instance, from 1790 to

1791, other than small papers comprised of want ads and lost and found lists, the

only periodical with official permission to publish in Spain was theDiario de Madrid.44

However, just 19 years after the Bourbon crown clarified its official line on slaveryby liberalising the trade throughout the Empire, the culture of political discussion in

Spain changed drastically during the Napoleonic Wars. In October 1807, the Spanish

King Carlos IV and his unpopular favourite, Manuel de Godoy, signed the treaty of

Fountainbleau and decreed a French-Spanish invasion of Portugal (a suspected ally

of their shared enemy, Great Britain.) By November, Lisbon had been captured.

Napoleon then famously reneged on his agreement with the Spanish, and French

troops invaded San Sebastian, Pamplona, and Barcelona. In the resulting tumult,

the unpopular King abdicated and Napoleon installed his own brother as Spains

puppet monarch.45 Hispanic legal principle stated that in the absence of the rightful

King, sovereignty reverted to the pueblos, who would now rule in a series of represen-tative bodies, including the Spanish Cortes of 1810 1812, a parliament considered to

have been truly a modern national assembly which produced a strikingly liberal

constitution that featured widespread enfranchisement, freedom of the press, and

the end of tribute.46

The Cortes and the Constitution of 1812 did provoke a sea change in Spanish

Empire politics, but they did not necessarily engender a wholesale replacement of

the existing political culture or its major players. In many ways, the so-called liberal

politics of the period were closely linked to the Bourbon reform agendas that immedi-

ately preceded them. Both groups believed in renovating the plebeian public througheducation and social improvement. Both worked within the traditional rights of

Spanish subjects to negotiate with absolutist government; in fact, recent scholarship

suggests that such negotiations gave birth to an incipient public sphere in the late

eighteenth-century Empire.47 It was in this environment, with increased freedom to

question royal policy, and perhaps more importantly, to publish about it, that some

nineteenth-century liberals soon began to question openly the slave trade and the

institution of slavery itself. Building on these ideas, they proposed locally calibrated

solutions that were unique to the situation of slavery in the Spanish Empire.

Although nineteenth-century periodicals most probably contain a larger body of

Spanish abolitionist literature that awaits further investigation,48 liberal Spaniardsalso produced longer anti-slavery tracts that are especially valuable in fleshing out



11/26

the contours of the liberal turn against slavery. The first is a lengthy speech delivered by

a law student named Isidoro Antillon in Madrid in 1802.49 While scholars of abolition

in the Spanish Empire are aware of his work, it is most often treated as a sidelined

anomaly, an almost outrageous deviation from peninsular Spains silence on the

issue of slavery.50 However, further research suggests that Antillon was in fact partof a broader network of liberals who spoke out against the slave trade and slavery, a

network whose efforts have not been properly recognised by historians, perhaps

because these individuals did not immediately achieve the results they worked for.

Antillons Dissertation began with the history of the slave trade from its origins in

Africa to the beginnings of the African slave trade in Europe and the Americas. Well

aware that other Europeans often fingered Spanish Dominican Bartolome de las

Casas as the inventor of transatlantic slavery, Antillon argued that this fatal occur-

rence was not due to innate malevolence, but was instead the result of an excess of

biased piety.

51

Despite his defence of Las Casas, Antillon was generally unafraid toindict the Iberian Empires for their role in the trade, pointing out that until the eight-

eenth century, the Spanish and Portuguese almost single-handedly maintained the

traffic in slaves, as they were the only ones interested in capturing, transporting,

and selling human cargo.52 The speech also described the effects of the trade on

Africa, detailing how the coast of Guinea was depopulated by slave trafficking, and

explaining in vivid detail how slaves were captured, tortured, and imprisoned for

their final hours of tears and desperation before they boarded the slave ships that

they believed would deliver them to certain death.53 Throughout, Antillon referenced

popular abolitionist sources, such as the work of Mungo Park, the young British tra-

veller in Africa. He quoted Thomas Clarksons Letters on the Slave Trade and knew thework of French abolitionists Abbe Gregoire and Jacques Brissot.

Antillon also outlined various ameliorationist strategies to improve the conditions

of slavery. He suggested that owners promise liberty to slavewomen who successfully

raised their children to the age of six and that slaves not be denied leisure time for

music or dancing. He argued that slave traders should pay more attention to the plea-

sures of procreation54 and import equal numbers of female and male slaves. He was

confident that such changes would make the yoke of slavery more gentle. He argued

that fed, dressed better, alleviating the blacks from excessive work, they would be able

to make them desire life, when now in the grip of their pain and desperation theyprefer and procure death.55 In arguing first for amelioration and not more radical

abolition, Antillon was in fact following the order of the day. As Christopher Brown

argues, even in the British world, the first impulses toward reform were amelioration-

ist rather than abolitionist . . . activists . . . aimed to make slavery more humane or

more Christian, not to liberate the enslaved.56

These ameliorationist suggestions were not revolutionary; in many ways they mirror

the concessions Cuban planters offered the Spanish government in return for per-

mission to carry on direct trade in slaves.57 However, the next section of the Disser-

tation makes abundantly clear that for Antillon, amelioration must inevitably lead

to abolition, because the growing depopulation of Africa meant that eventually themine of men that the Europeans knew as Africa will come to be lacking.58 Therefore,

190 Emily Berquist


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Antillon suggested several options for replacing the labour of African slaves in order to

abolish their servitude. One idea was to utilise better the unique advantage afforded by

Spains imperial possessions the Indians of America. He pointed out that the

millions of Indian vassals living there could easily be encouraged towards activity

and cultivation by the sweetness and humanity with which they are treated, thereforeassuring that their work could replace the labor of slave hands brought from the center

of Africa.59 In sum, he argued, (loosely quoting the Spanish reformer Bernardo Wards

famous Proyecto Economico) once the power of their labour was harnessed, the Indians

would be what they should be, the great treasure, the true mine of America.60

Antillon also offered a second option: instead of purchasing the people of Africa, the

Spanish could purchase the goods cultivated there. This would be managed through

Spanish settlements on the Angolan coast, which quite conveniently would give us

the same productions as the Americas, without the bitterness of owing them to the

sweat of slaves.

61

According to Antillon, the coast of Angola was an ideal locationthat boasted fertile soil, moderate rains, and a temperate climate, all of which

meant that there the earth produced by itself . . . that which in other countries is

not seized without the force of [human] arms. Perhaps to make the proposal more

compelling to the projected Spanish colonists, he pointed out that in the area, iron

and copper were abundant, but the local Africans were uninterested in extracting it,

because, they claimed, we cannot eat gold.62 In addition to their lack of interest in

mining, these Africans would make ideal neighbours because they were industrious,

tranquil, sweet, and [most importantly] too cowardly to oppose the foundation of a

colony.63 Instead of living as slaves of the Spanish, these docile Africans would live

in their own towns and sell products they raised on their own lands to their new Euro-pean neighbours. Antillon thought that they would soon come to see those who

occupy their lands as benevolent gods who teach them to cultivate, instead of expa-

triating them forever.64 He also pointed out that moving away from the slave trade

would help to free Spain from dependence upon the other European powers

because products such as sugar, tobacco, and chocolate could be locally produced

and sold at lower prices within the Empire.

Much like Malachy Postlethwayt, Henry Smeathman, and other British reformers

who advocated African slaves be repatriated and taught commercial values in order

to effect their improvement, Antillon was sure that living near and trading with Eur-opeans would only be beneficial for Africans.65 Like his predecessors in the Hispanic

culture of reform the administrators, ecclesiastics, and bureaucrats of the Bourbon

era, he believed in the civilising power of commerce to effect change in the lives of the

plebeian classes.66 The Bourbon reformers were limited by the political culture of their

time and could only apply this rhetoric to native peoples. But in the relatively liberal-

ised climate of the nineteenth century, and especially during the period of the Spanish

Cortes and the resulting freedom of the press, Antillon was able to extend this dis-

course of commercial humanism to slaves and people of African descent.67

Although it appears that the Dissertation is Antillons only surviving public state-

ment on slavery and the slave trade, in 1809, a request from the Spanish poet andrenowned liberal Manuel Quintana brought Antillon back into the liberal intellectual



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circles where anti-slavery sentiment was vocalised. 68 Capitalising upon the current

freedom of the press in order to develop a liberal journalistic tradition in Spain, Quin-

tana planned to found a new periodical staffed with some of Spains most prominent

young liberals. He proposed that Antillon become co-editor of this new publication,

which he would call the Weekly Patriot.69

To work alongside Antillon, Quintana suggested another young liberal, Jose Maria

Blanco y Crespo, a figure who is more often recognised by his self-chosen redundantly

Anglicised name, Jose Blanco White. Blanco White was a controversial player in the

history of the early nineteenth-century Spanish Empire; when he felt that his efforts

at Quintanas paper were not producing the desired political results, he became disil-

lusioned with Spanish liberalism, left the paper, and in 1810 he permanently relocated

to Great Britain.70 There, he built a career as a journalist, publishing a periodical called

The Spaniard (18101814) in which he commented on events in his old patria. The

Spaniard was partially subsidised by the British Foreign Office, which distributedcopies in Cadiz in order to promote British interests, including those against the

slave trade.71 In a May 1811 edition, Blanco White penned an editorial called Abol-

ition of Slavery, and the following autumn he published extracts from Wilberforces

Letter on the Slave Trade, including the story of Paul Cuffee, the African-American

ship captain who became involved in the anti-slave trade campaign after reading

Thomas Clarkson. In 1814, this same group urged Blanco White to publish a

Spanish translation of Wilberforces Letter. He called his book Sketch of the Slave

Trade, and Reflections about this Traffic considered according to Morals, Politics, and

Christianity.72

The resulting text translated Wilberforces famous abolitionist tract into Spanish,but as he worked on Wilberforces prose, Blanco White realised that, regardless of

the quality and importance of the work, it was too little to Spanish taste, and it

would behove him to add his own analysis and address my countrymen in the

language of my own heart.73 Therefore, he read as widely as possible in the existing

anti-slavery literature, from Mungo Park to Thomas Clarkson, and incorporated

their data into his finished product. The second section of the book, entitled The

Commerce in Slaves Considered According to the Laws of Human Morality, argued

that the main responsibility of human society was to preserve the liberty of individ-

uals.74

In the subsequent chapter, which considered the political ramifications ofslavery, Blanco White compared Spanish American slaveholders to a colony of

pirates asking the maritime nations that they continue to allow them to commit

their robberies and murders against a certain town until their settlement has been

enriched to the satisfaction of each individual.75 However, it was in his look at

slavery according to Christian values that Blanco White made the arguments that

were most likely to be effective in an empire whose identity rested upon the Catholic

Faith. He directly refuted the books from the centuries of ignorance which claimed it

was the Christians duty to make war on pagans and heretics in order to show them the

true religion.76 Such behaviour, he asserted, profanes the morality of Christ.77 Instead

of spreading Christianity, he wrote, the slave trade closes the entry to the light of rev-elation in Africa, and extends vice and corruption throughout all of America.78 He

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repeatedly referred to the suspect morality and self-interest of the Empires most vocal

pro-slavery agitators, the Cuban planters who, despite their claims for wanting to ame-

liorate slavery, continued bringing slaves with violence and in chains.79 Much like

Antillon, Blanco White was sure that stopping the trade in slaves would result in

the better treatment of existing slaves, gradually preparing the way for abolition.Echoing the rhetoric used by the Bourbon reformers in discussing the improvement

of Indians, he argued that slave children should be educated, so that once they were

freed, they could become happy, useful citizens. He also proposed that slaves should

be given two days a week to work on their own (much like the coartacion early

British anti-slavery writers admired), so that they would eventually be able to purchase

their liberty.80

The commonalities between Antillon and Blanco Whites writings indicate that there

were strong epistemological connections between these two early anti-slavery theorists.

Both men studied and referenced other abolitionist writers in order to make themaccessible to a broader Spanish audience that might not have been able to read

English or French. In their attempts to develop and spread anti-slavery and abolitionist

sentiment in the Spanish Empire, both were unafraid to accuse their own countrymen

of wrongdoing: Antillon noted that along with the Portuguese, the Spanish had been

largely responsible for sustaining the slave trade, while Blanco White directly con-

fronted the Cuban slave owners who claimed to benefit the slaves while they sought

only to exploit them. Although their approaches and methodologies were strikingly

different Antillons appeals were largely based on utilitarian arguments about

supply, demand, and international commerce, while Blanco White focused on the

incompatibility of slavery and Christianity both centred their anti-slavery workson ideologies that were embedded in the consciousness of the Spanish Empire.

Slavery in the Spanish Cortes and Constitution of 1812

While Antillon and Blanco Whites publications represent the work of individual

abolitionists, periodicals, pamphlets, and speeches were not the only forum for

anti-slavery and abolitionist sentiment in early nineteenth-century Spain. Concerns

about the welfare of slaves and the future of the trade were repeatedly raised in the

Spanish Cortes of 18101812, often brought to the forefront by the same individualswho travelled in the liberal circles of Antillon and Blanco White. Their proposals were

ultimately unsuccessful, but they nevertheless demonstrate that there was an indepen-

dent legislative movement towards the abolition of slavery and the slave trade in the

Spanish Empire, and that this movement was not promoted solely by American

delegates, as scholarship sometimes suggests.81

One of the most vocal opponents of slavery and the slave trade in the Cortes was

Manuel Quintana, the liberal poet who had first brought together Antillon and

Blanco White to work on the Weekly Patriot. On 9 January 1811, he proposed that

the Cortes banish forever even the memory of slavery.82 Even more radical was his

suggestion that while abolition was being enacted, slaves should be given a represen-tative in the Cortes, a European who would speak on their behalf. Pressing this same



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point a few weeks later, he reminded his compatriots that slaves were deserving of such

representation because we all have a rational soul, and we are all Sons of Adam.83

Agustn Arguelles, another prominent Spanish liberal and anti-slavery advocate,

also headed the fight against slavery, even designing a proposal for ending the slave

trade, which he submitted to the Cortes on 2 April 1811. It asserted that the infamoustraffic was not only opposed to the purity and liberality of the feelings of the Spanish

Nation, but also to the spirit of religion. He reasoned that the abolition of the trade

would probably produce similar results in the Spanish Empire as it had in the

British: the same planters and slave owners . . . because they wouldnt be able to intro-

duce new blacks . . . would have to treat . . . [their slaves] better to conserve the ones

they had, and they would multiply.84 He also cautioned that Spain should take advan-

tage of the opportunity to abolish the traffic for itself before the British imposed

abolition of the trade from the outside.85

What was the fate of Arguelles April proposal to abolish the slave trade? The causewas taken up by his fellow liberal, the Ecuadorian deputy Jose Meja, who had already

proven his sympathy for people of African descent when in the previous October, he

had proposed equal representation for free men of colour in Spanish America, passio-

nately proclaiming that slaves too are men, and some day policy, justice, and the

Christian religion will show us how they also should be considered.86 In defence of

Arguelles bill, Meja argued that stopping the transatlantic trade was essential

because in many parts of America, the slave population had rapidly grown to a pre-

carious number that easily outnumbered the white, mestizo, and Indian residents,

thus creating a high risk of rebellion and uprising. Like his compatriot, he pointed

out that the British had abolished slavery in their own Empire, and were looking toextend this policy to the rest of the Atlantic.87 He also moved to enhance Arguelles

original proposal to abolish the trade with several measures intended to ameliorate

the conditions of slavery: a free womb law, better treatment for slaves, and a guarantee

that if slaves saved enough money to be able to purchase their own freedom, they could

not be prohibited from doing so.88 Meja recommended that this enhanced prop-

osition be moved into the hands of a commission specially selected to deal with the

matter, because a smaller group would provide for a more expedient outlawing of

the trade. Unfortunately, he had no control over who would sit on the special commis-

sion to discuss the anti-slave trade proposal, and one of those selected was none otherthan Andres Juaregu, a Cuban representative who, not surprisingly, was a major

opponent of ending the slave trade.89 Cuba had a large part in seeing to it that this

bill for the abolition of the slave trade in the Spanish Empire did not succeed.

Havanas powerful planters reacted to the news of the discussion of the bill with

nothing less than hysteria, convoking an emergency session of the Havana cabildo

(town council) and even examining the possibility of declaring independence from

Spain in order to be annexed to the United States, which would be better prepared

and more inclined to protect their slaveholding interests. However, the Cuban propo-

sals for secession never moved beyond the planning stage, because the Cortes dropped

the anti-slave trade measure. In the end, the special commission never decided one wayor the other.90

194 Emily Berquist


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One year later, the issue of slavery and people of African descent returned to the

political arena during the creation of the Spanish Constitution of 1812, a document

that imagined a new Spanish nation composed of territories on the Iberian Peninsula

and in Spanish America. The Spanish Constitution of 1812 was exceptionally liberal in

granting full representation to indigenous peoples, abolishing Indian forced labour,establishing freedom of the press, and gaining control over the church. Yet this new

conception of the Spanish nation did not immediately make clear what the role of

people of African descent would be therein. Although there does not appear to have

been any discussion of abolition of slavery or the slave trade at this time, there was

much heated debate over whether free Americans of African descent should be

included as citizens and therefore be counted towards the number of American

delegates in the Cortes. American deputies, seeking to ensure they would not be over-

whelmed by peninsular representatives, pushed for the inclusion of free men of African

descent in the new definition of Spanish citizens.

91

This cause might have had a strongadvocate in the eloquent Jose Meja, who most probably would have argued again for

their inclusion, but on 24 August 1811, he took his leave of the Cortes because his con-

stituency at home was moving towards war against the Spanish metropolis, and no

longer recognised the Cortes authority.92 Lines were drawn on the other side of the

Atlantic as well. Spanish liberals sought to consolidate the transatlantic Spanish

nation, but simultaneously wished to preserve their own predominance in this

reimagination of empire. Arguing as peninsular delegates rather than as advocates

of abolition, they pushed through a definition of citizens of the Spanish Nation as

freemen born in the Spanish dominions on both sides of the Spanish Atlantic. This

meant that Spanish citizens were Spaniards, Creoles, mestizos, and Indians notpeople of African descent regardless of whether they were enslaved or free.

However, for those who advocated rights for people of African descent, the loss was

not total. The Cortes further debated the constitutional future of free men of colour,

with Agustin Arguelles arguing that the conditions of slaves could not be allowed to

worsen, but at the same time insisting that the security of colonies with large slave

populations must be protected. He proposed that the slaves be excluded from citizen-

ship, but that the constitution also include a clause that would allow for certain excep-

tional men of African descent to become Spanish citizens.93 The resulting Article 22 of

the Spanish Constitution declared that for men of African origin, the door of virtueand merit to becoming citizens remains open. This group included those who had

proved themselves to be exemplary Spanish citizens, such as men who had completed

qualified service to the nation in militias, or men who exercise a useful profession,

trade, or industry with their own capital.94 While in providing such a legal caveat

the Constitution of 1812 was indeed exceptional, in denying political rights and citi-

zenship to people of African descent, the document was aligned with other European

powers and constitutions of the era.95

How did Arguelles and the Spanish liberals turn from impassioned speeches against

the slave trade and slavery to deciding to exclude slaves from citizenship altogether?

One answer to this quandary lies in the turbulent political times in which the consti-tution was written. A prominent historian of liberal Spain has argued that the years



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18101812 were characterised by a dual process that featured on the one hand, the

growing dominance of liberals in the metropolis, and on the other, an increasing pre-

ference for independence in Spanish America, which essentially amounted to the

death warrant96 of the liberal victory. More and more Spanish territory on the penin-

sula was falling to Napoleon. Embattled at home, Spain was in dire need of economicand political support from its American territories. At the same time, Creoles across

the Atlantic began to turn against the peninsula. The issue of representation in the

Cortes only magnified their differences with the metropolis.

Conclusions: the 1817 Treaty and the end of the trade

If the Constitution of 1812, the Spanish Cortes, and the liberal abolitionists were not

able to put an official end to the slave trade in the Hispanic Empire, what finally did? It

turns out that Mejas fear that the British would target the Spanish slave trade was infact correct. British pressure against the trade continued to expand, especially under

ambassador Henry Wellesley, who served from 1811 to 1822. After several failed

attempts at negotiation, in July 1814, he secured a Spanish treaty stating that

Spanish traders would sell slaves only within the Empire. The Spanish king responded

with a traditional bureaucratic blow-off, agreeing in theory but in practice doing

nothing.97 By 1816, the British were, to say the least, exasperated at the Spanish,

who they referred to in an official Inquiry into the Right and Duty of Compelling

Spain to Relinquish Her Slave Trade in Northern Africa as the worlds most fatal

enemy to the common welfare and beneficent intercourse of mankind. The report rec-

ommended that British warships board and seize Spanish slavers in order to redirectthem to the newly founded freed slave colony of Sierra Leone.98

In the meantime, the Cortes and the Constitution they created had been dissolved

after the return of King Ferdinand to the Spanish throne in 1814. Three years later he

put an official end to the slave trade. In addition to British pressure, the increasingly

bad outlook for the wars in Spanish America finally resulted in royal capitulation to

British anti-slave trade desires. However, the September 1817 Spanish-British Treaty

that officially ended the slave trade in the Empire was not signed without concessions.

In the Royal Decree explaining the end of the slave trade that Ferdinand distributed

throughout his Empire, he made sure to mention that slavery had existed in Africalong before the Europeans arrived, and that the transatlantic slave trade brought the

Africans the benefits of civilisation and gave them . . . the incomparable benefit of

being instructed in the knowledge of the True God.99 Although the Spanish slave

trade North of the Equator was to end almost immediately, the British paid Spain

400,000 in compensation. The Spanish also secured for themselves the right to con-

tinue the trade south of the Equator until 30 May 1820. During these three years, they

managed 250 more slave-trade voyages that produced 66,425 slaves for mainland

Spanish America.100

Clearly, Antillon, Blanco White, Quintana, and Arguelles would have preferred the

Spanish to abolish the slave trade of their own accord, but this was not to be. TheBritish indeed played a central role. They and the Spanish worked together, or at

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times against each other, to hammer out the future of slavery in the Spanish Empire, but

the strong influence of the British does not mean that they were the only actors involved

in early Spanish abolition. From the practice of gradual self-purchase to the debates in

the Spanish Cortes, there remained a small but vocal minority of Spaniards who advo-

cated the gradual end of the slave trade, and sometimes the end of slavery itself.However, their anti-slavery sentiment did not exist in a vacuum; rather, it was con-

stantly in dialogue with various policies from around the Atlantic arena that promoted

and sustained slavery and the slave trade. In sustaining a seemingly paradoxical policy

that chipped away at the institution of slavery yet advanced the slave trade, the Bourbon

monarchs and the Spanish Cortes were continuing the long-established Spanish

tradition of compromise and negotiation between the rulers and the ruled.

Historians are now beginning to reveal how this policy of contradictions was

reflected in Bourbon dealings with socially disadvantaged yet economically crucial

populations. For instance, even though Indians were legally exempted from involun-tary mine work by the late eighteenth century, mine owners were still able to secure

dispensations permitting forced native labour. Recently, Yana Yannakakis has argued

that this ambiguity highlights how the Bourbon administration subordinated political

principle in favour of the maximisation of profit.101 Likewise, in his study of Bourbon

policy towards frontier Indians, David Weber highlights how the interminable power

struggle among the Crown, ecclesiastics, military officers, and local elites resulted in a

fragmented policy towards unincorporated Indians, one that was easily mutable

depending on local circumstance.102 The Spanish Crown acted similarly in the case

of slavery, passing various ameliorationist measures yet continuing to promote slave

traffic. Such a policy kept the social graces of eighteenth-century civic humanismon the table, yet ultimately privileged the bottom line. Thus, the study of the strangely

symbiotic relationship between slavery and anti-slavery confirms Webers notion that

the Bourbon monarchs narrowed but never closed the gap between policy and prac-

tice in their imperial rule.103 Mounting evidence suggests that in some areas, at least,

this contradiction was intentional: by gesturing towards ameliorating the conditions of

slavery, the Spanish Crown was able to maintain interest in a very profitable economic

sector for much longer than it may have been able to otherwise.

As the Napoleonic wars unleashed a more vibrant liberal culture and a public sphere

began to grow in early nineteenth-century Spain, reformers found greater liberties forcritiquing slavery and the slave trade. Perhaps because their efforts were overshadowed

by political upheaval, historians have not adequately acknowledged their early anti-

slavery agendas. However, recognising them as a part of late eighteenth- and early

nineteenth-century political culture in the Spanish Empire highlights the culture of

critical emulation that Gabriel Paquette claims was common throughout the Atlantic

world at the time. Antillon, Blanco White, and the other anti-slavery advocates

engaged with the broader anti-slavery discourse in the Atlantic world, borrowing

from it when appropriate and rejecting it when it did not suit their needs. In the

process, they imagined a set of solutions to the problems of the slave trade and

slavery that dialogued with external anti-slavery discussions while attempting toreshape them better to fit the Spanish context.



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Notes

Here I employ the terms anti-slavery and abolitionist in the sense they are most often used in the

United States historiography; anti-slavery indicates earlier movements to end the slave trade itself,

while abolition connotes a desire to fully abolish the institution of slavery.

[1] Jennings, French Anti-slavery, Dubois, A Colony of Citizens, Sala-Molins, Dark Side of the Light,Brown, Moral Capital, Marques, The Sounds of Silence.

[2] See, for instance, the work of Herman Bennett , Sherwin Bryant, Mara Elena Daz, Marcela

Echeverri, Nicole Von Germeten, Lyman Johnson, Ben Vinson, and Tamara Walker.

[3] Klein, African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean, 232.

[4] Kamen, Empire: How Spain Became a World Power, 136. Newsom and Minchin, From Capture

to Sale, ch. 1. Of course, the official Spanish policy on the subject does not necessarily mean

that no Spanish vessels were engaged in direct trade for slaves.

[5] Klein and Vinson state that in the late eighteenth century, the Spanish West Indies had

approximately 80,000 slaves, while the British West Indies had 467,000 and the French

West Indies was home to 575,000. The continental figures similarly suggest the relatively

smaller slave population in the Spanish Empire: while Brazil was home to one millionslaves and the new United States housed approximately 575,420, mainland Spanish

America had only 271,000. African Slavery in Latin America, 273.

[6] On Haiti, see the work of Geggus, Dubois, and Fick.

[7] Schmidt-Nowara, Empire and Antislavery, esp. ch. 1.

[8] Gonzalez and Gonzalez, Christianity in Latin America, 74.

[9] Mercator, Slave Trade Felony Act.

[10] Brown, Moral Capital, 155.

[11] Mercator, Slave Trade Felony Act, 373.

[12] Murray, Odious Commerce, 39.

[13] Corwin, Spain and the Abolition of Slavery in Cuba, 21.

[14] The historiography of slavery and abolition in the Spanish Empire and Latin America is themost developed for the cases of Cuba and Puerto Rico. See the work of Matt D. Childs, Ale-

jandro de la Fuente, Ada Ferrer, Manuel Moreno Fraginals, David R. Murray, Francisco

A. Scarano, Rebecca Scott, and Dale Tomich.

[15] I found the work of Gabriel Paquette, particularly his argument about critical emulation as a

policy strategy employed throughout the Atlantic during this period, especially useful in

thinking about the broader importance of early Spanish anti-slavery. Enlightenment, Govern-

ance, and Reform in Spain, 14.

[16] Browns Moral Capital first brought this matter to my attention, especially chs 1, 4, and 5.

[17] Bielby Porteus, The Civilization, Improvement, and Conversion of the Negro Slaves, 72.

Alejandro de La Fuente has recently written on coartacion in Cuba, arguing that by the late

eighteenth century, gradual self-purchase was a customary right that was accompanied by

the right of papel, or requesting transfer to another owner in case of blatant mistreatment.

de la Fuente, Slaves and the Creation of Legal Rights in Cuba, 633.

[18] For explorations of slave law throughout the Atlantic world, see Watson, Slave Law in the

Americas.

[19] Burns, Introduction to the Fourth Partida, xxiv.

[20] Konig The Codigo Negrero of 1789, 141. Johnson, A Lack of Legitimate Obedience and

Respect.

[21] Echeverri, Enraged to the Limit of Despair.

[22] Extracto del Codigo Negro Carolino, Formado por la Audiencia de Santo Domingo, Con-

forme a lo Prevenido en el Real Orden de 23 de Septiembre de 1783 para el Gobierno

Moral, Poltico, y Economico de los Negros de Aquella Isla, Santo Domingo, 14 March

1785, in Coleccion de Documentos para la Historia de la Formacion Social de Hispanoamerica,

198 Emily Berquist


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14831810, vol. III, edited by Richard Konetzke (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Invesstiga-

ciones Cientficas, 1953), 565.

[23] Konetzke, Coleccion. There were two prior codes as well. The first Spanish Black Code was

written for the island of Santo Domingo in 1768, but never officially approved by the

Council of the Indies. Its main focus was to prevent slave desertions. In 1769, Spain

decreed a slave code for Louisiana, which it had received from France in 1766. This code

was meant to be an exact translation of the French Code Noir that had previously managed

slaves in the territory. It remained in place until 1800, when Spain lost Louisiana. See

Liliana Obregon, Black Codes in Latin America, Africana, 245249.

[24] Konetzke, Coleccion, Aranjuez, 31 de Mayo de 1789. R. Instruccion sobre la educacion, Trato, y

Ocupacion de los Esclavos. Konetzke, Coleccion, 649.

[25] Konetzke, Coleccion, 650.

[26] On cofradas, see the work of Nicole von Germeten; on hospitals for blacks, see the work of

Nancy Van Deusen. For blacks in colonial militias, see Ben Vinsons Bearing Arms for His

Majesty: The Free-Colored Militia in Colonial Mexico (Stanford: Stanford University Press,

2001.)

[27] Currently, the work of Sherwin Bryant, Maria Elena Daz, Alejandro de la Fuente, and LymanJohnson treats this issue.

[28] Konig, The Codigo Negrero of 1789, 143.

[29] King, Evolution of the Free Slave Trade Principle, 51.

[30] At first, the Spanish tried a system of multiple, smaller asientos given to Spanish merchants,

but the plan proved too cumbersome. In 1760, a Cadiz merchant named Miguel de Uriarte

received a 10-year asiento that lapsed a year later when Spain became involved in the Seven

Years War. In 1765, Uriarte was granted another asiento that stipulated he would build a

slave fort in Puerto Rico. However, this initial plan still allowed for British involvement:

lacking experience in direct slave trade, the Spaniards would not purchase slaves in Africa

themselves, but would instead buy them second-hand from British traders. The fort in

Puerto Rico would serve as the clearing-house for British imported slaves to be distributedthroughout Spanish America. For background, see King, Evolution of the Free Slave Trade

Principle.

[31] Paquette discusses the Companys success in Enlightenment, Governance, and Reform, 107.

[32] King, 44. For more on the Company, see Torres, La Compania Gaditana de Negros.

[33] The treaty agreement looks less unfair upon realising that Santa Catarina island was strategi-

cally located off the Brazilian mainland, and thus was an ideal location for military garrisons.

It also had a good harbour which facilitated the passage of large ships (including slave ships)

to the coast. Stearns, The Brazilian Judicial Police.

[34] Silva, Imperial Re-organization.

[35] See Sundiata, From Slavery to Neoslavery.

[36] Tratado de Amistad, Garantia y Comercio, Ajustado y Concluido entre el Rei. N.S. V La ReinaFidelisima y ratificado por Su Majestad en el Pardo a 25 de Marzo de 1778. En el cual se reva-

lidan y explican los demas tratados precedentes que subsistan entre las Coronas de Espana y

Portugal, cediendose a favor de la primera algunos Territorios y Derechos (Madrid: Imprenta

Real de la Gazeta, 1778.)

[37] Castro and de la Calle, Origen de la Colonizacion Espanola. Also see Castro and Ndongo,

Espana en Guinea, Randall Fegley, Equatorial Guinea: An African Tragedy and Equatorial

Guinea (World Biographical Series).

[38] On the Philippines Company, see Schurz, The Manila Galleon, 409418.

[39] Castro, Origen de la Colonizacion.

[40] King, Evolution of The Free Slave Trade Principle, 50 52.



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[41] These statistics are in stark contrast to the only 11 voyages producing 3537 slaves from 1765 to

1789. The Atlantic Slave Trade Database, Emory University, http://slavevoyages.org/tast/

index.faces

[42] In 1787, the same year that the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was founded,

British abolitionists established the African colony of Sierra Leone, as a new home for freed

slaves from Britain (and later North America.) The first settlers moved with the assistance

of Granville Sharp, who believed that Sierra Leone should be a self-governing, Christian settle-

ment, whose inhabitants would produce agricultural goods for trade with the British. See

Blyden, West Indians in West Africa, 110.

[43] See Lynch, Bourbon Spain, especially ch. 10.

[44] Martnez, Los Grupos Liberales, particularly ch. 3.

[45] See Esdaile, Spain in the Liberal Age.

[46] The defining work on the Cortes and Constitution of 1812 remains Rodrguezs The Indepen-

dence of Spanish America, 82.

[47] See Smith, The Emerging Female Citizen, 455 and Uribe-Urban, The Birth of a Public

Sphere.

[48] A survey of abolitionist sentiment in nineteenth-century Spanish periodicals will be a centralquery of my impending book-length project on early anti-slavery and abolitionist sentiment

in the Spanish Empire.

[49] For background on Antillon, see Martnez Quinteiro, as well as studies by Don Ricardo

Beltran and Agustn Hernando.

[50] Publication and circulation details of the tract are sketchy. Matt Childs and David Murray

briefly reference Antillon as an early Spanish abolitionist, and Martnez Quinteiro broadly

traces his liberal publications, but to date, there has been no thorough evaluation of his aboli-

tionist ideas and their relationship to the broader anti-slavery discourse of the British and

Spanish Atlantic worlds in the early nineteenth century. See Childs, The 1812 Aponte Rebellion,

30. Murray, Odious Commerce, 34. Martnez, Los Grupos Liberales, chs 153.

[51] Antillon, Dissertacion sobre el Origen de la Esclavitud de los Negros, 19.[52] Antillon, Dissertacion.

[53] Antillon, Dissertacion, 34.



[56] Brown, Moral Capital, 28.

[57] Childs, The 1812 Aponte Rebellion, 3536.



[60] Antillon, Dissertacion, 67. Here he is borrowing from Bernardo Ward, whom he references in

previous pages. In 1779 Ward famously wrote that The Indians . . . are the true Indies and the

richest mine of the world. Ward, Proyecto Economico, 247.[61] Antillon, Dissertacion, 54.


[63] Antillon, Dissertacion, 60


[65] Brown, Moral Capital, ch. 5.

[66] For a discussion of how Bourbon reformers applied the discourse of commercial humanism to

the native peoples of the Americas, see Berquist, Bishop Martnez Companons Practical

Utopia.

[67] On commercial humanism, see Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and History. The connections

between Iberian and British political economy are clearly outlined for the Portuguese

Empire in the work of Kenneth Maxwell. See Pombaland Naked Tropics.

200 Emily Berquist
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[68] Quintana himself was a central figure in Antillons circle of young liberals, and he made his

abolitionist sentiments well known through a poem he wrote about an African girl who

had been captured and sold into slavery, and later through his abolitionist discourses in

the Spanish Cortes. Glendinning, A Literary History of Spain, 84.

[69] For the connections between Antillon, Manuel Jose Quintana, and Jose Blanco White, see

Duran, Cronicas de Cortes del Semanario Patriotico. Martnez, Los Grupos liberales. Murphy,

Blanco White. On the Semanario Patriotico, see Obra Completa de Jose Blanco White, edited

by Silva and Rico.

[70] On Blanco White, see Moreno, Divina Libertad and Murphy, Blanco White.

[71] Murphy, Blanco White, 8391.

[72] Moreno Introduccion, in Moreno Alonso, ed., Bosquejo del Comercio, 2241.

[73] Alonso, Bosquejo, footnote 17.

[74] Alonso, Bosquejo, 138.




[78] Alonso, Bosquejo, 178.[79] Alonso, Bosquejo, 176.


[81] For instance, Klein and Vinson argue that the main abolitionist activity in the Cortes was pro-

moted by Cuban or Puerto Rican creoles, and that it was the colonial delegates who promoted

the most progressive anti-slavery measures. African Slavery in Latin America, 233.

[82] Numero 105: Sesion del da 9 de Enero de 1811, Diario de Sesiones, 327.

[83] Numero 119: Seson del Da 23 de Enero de 1811, Diario de Sesiones, 420.

[84] Numero 185: Sesion del Da 2 de Abril de 1811, Diario de Sesiones, 812.

[85] Numero 185: Sesion del Da 2 de Abril de 1811, Diario de Sesiones, 812.

[86] The records of the Cortes sessions are not uniformly complete, especially when dealing with

sensitive subjects. Mejas speech is quoted in King, The Colored Castes, 41. On Meja, seeAstuto, A Latin American Spokesman.

[87] Numero 185: Sesion del Da 2 de Abril de 1811, Diario de Sesiones de las Cortes, 811.

[88] Numero 185: Sesion del Da 2 de Abril de 1811, Diario de Sesiones de las Cortes, 813.

(Although he did not call this coartacion per se, the practice he was referring to was undoubt-

edly that.)

[89] Rieu-Millan, Los Diputados Americanos, 169.

[90] Murray, Odious Commerce, 33.

[91] Rodrguez, Equality! The Sacred Right of Equality!, 112.

[92] King, The Colored Castes and American Representation, 52.

[93] King, The Colored Castes.

[94] La Constitucion Espanola de 1812, available at the Biblioteca Virtual Cervantes, http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/portal/1812/constitucion.shtml, 10.

[95] Rodrguez, The Independence of Spanish America, 92.

[96] Esdaile, Spain in the Liberal Age, 31.

[97] Murray, Odious Commerce, ch. 7.

[98] An Inquiry into the Right and Duty.

[99] Real Cedula Circular a Indias Expedida por el Rey Fernando VII Sobre Prohibicion de la Trata

Negrera.

[100] Eltis, The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database.

[101] Yannakakis, The Art of Being In-between, 167.

[102] Weber, Barbaros, 154.

[103] Weber, Barbaros, 5.

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