Slavery in the Spanish New World colonies
Encyclopedia
Slavery
in the Spanish colonies
began with the enslavement of the local indigenous peoples
in their homelands by Spanish settlers. Enslavement and production quotas were used to force the local labor to bring a return on the expedition and colonization investments. Slavery was rampant and abusive during the first decades of the colonization, costing many thousands of indigenous lives through forced labor in mines, and depopulating the West Indies of their native population in a matter of decades. This made colonists require a new source of labor sparking the transatlantic slave trade.
After decades of pressure, primarily from priests and friars who argued that slavery was incompatible with Christianity, the Council of the Indies, mandated to protect the Native People in the Laws of the Indies
, stopped the encomienda system and the enforced slavery of the natives. It did not however stop forced labor in the Spanish colonies which took on a new guise under the repartimiento
.
began with the capture and subjugation of local Indigenous peoples of the Americas
, first of the Native Caribbean people by Columbus on his four voyages. Initially, enslavement represented one means by which the Columbus and other Castilians (Spaniards) mobilized native labor and met production quotas. Unlike the Portuguese slave trade, los Reyes Católicos
were religiously against developing that for Castile and Aragon with the slaves of Columbus, ordering many of the survivors returned to their Caribbean homelands. The papal bull Sublimus Dei of 1537, to which Spain was committed also officially banned slavery. However, other forms of coerced labor used were the Indian Reductions
method, the encomienda
system, repartimiento
, and the mita
.
However after the issuing of the 1542 New Laws
the encomienda system saw its power greatly restricted. Later, the 1550 Valladolid debate
and the resulting issuing in 1573 of the new statutes within the "Ordinances Concerning Discoveries" forbade slavery and gave strict regulations on the treatment of the local population, such as the implementation of the "protector de indios", an ecclesiastical representative who acted as the protector of the Indians, and represented them in formal litigation.
Later in the 17th century, in the northern New Spain
Sonoran Desert
Sonora y Sinaloa Province
, the nomadic Indigenous people near the Sonoran missions
were forcibly relocated and under the excuse of being educated, were enslaved to hard work as underground miners. Jesuit Father Eusebio Francisco Kino worked to relieve the conditions as proscribed by the Laws of the Indies
(Leyes de Indias), for the rights of the various indigenous Sonoran tribes and their individual members. He successfully opposed the Slavery
and compulsory hard labor in the silver mines
that some Spaniards tried to force on native people.
The Franciscan Spanish missions in California
practiced Indian Reductions
of the Californian Native Americans with forced relocation and labor to support the mission industries. The enslavement was not by purchase but military enforcement. This was repeated in other Spanish colonies and provinces upon the Native residents
as locally sourced slaves.
began in 1502 and was finally outlawed in 1716 in all colonies with the exceptions of Cuba and Puerto Rico, where it remained in a semi-legal state until it was finally abolished 1866 and 1863 respectively. Native slavery was prohibited during the first half of the sixteenth century, although some enslavement continued under the guise of just war
. Most of the earliest black immigrants to the Americas were born in Spain
and were not slaves, men such as Pedro Alonso Niño
, a navigator who accompanied Christopher Columbus
on his first voyage, and the black colonists who helped Nicolás de Ovando
form the first Spanish settlement on Hispaniola
in 1502. The name of Nuflo de Olano appears in the records as that of a black slave present when Vasco Núñez de Balboa
sighted the Pacific Ocean
in 1513. Other blacks served with Hernán Cortés
when he conquered Mexico
and with Francisco Pizarro
when he marched into Peru
.
Estevanico
, one of the survivors of the unfortunate Narváez expedition
from 1527 to 1536, was a black slave. With three other survivors, he spent six years traveling overland from Texas
to Sinaloa
and finally Mexico City
, learning several Native American languages
in the process. Later, while exploring what is now New Mexico
for The Seven Cities of Gold
, he lost his life in a dispute with the Zuñi.
Juan Valiente
, another black person, led Spaniards in a series of battles against the Araucanian people of Chile
between 1540 and 1546. He was rewarded with an estate near Santiago
and control of several Native American villages.
José de Rodríguez was another prominent Black Spaniard who served as a buccaneer during the 17th century in the Caribbean waters at Spain's service. He was known for his brutality against British and Dutch prisoners.
(1484–1566) recorded the effects of slavery on the Native populations. Following what many of his contemporaries were suggesting, he initially preferred to replace Natives with African slaves to alleviate their suffering. However, he later spoke against African slavery as well once he saw it in action.
In 1502 the Spanish monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, granted permission to the colonists of the Caribbean to import African slaves. Opponents of their enslavement cited their weak Christian
faith and their penchant for escaping to the mountains. Proponents declared that the rapid diminution of the Native American population required a consistent supply of reliable work hands, since the Spanish population at the time was far too low to carry out all the manual labour needed to assure the economic viability of the colonies as the first years of Spaniard presence in America were marked by a terrible outbreak of a tropical epidemic flu in the Caribbean that decimated the populations of local natives and Spaniard explorers. In 1518 the first shipment of African-born slaves was sent to the West Indies. The Spaniards, although purchasers of slaves, mostly from the Portuguese and the British, did not engage on slave trade on the African coast themselves, and the number of African slaves in their colonies was sensibly inferior to those of Portuguese or British.
While enslaved Africans were vital to the initial conquest and colonization of Spain's American colonies, they were also employed in the empire's defense. Originally the Crown relied on private initiative and resources to protect colonial shipping and settlements. In some cases they were hired out or "donated" by residents or purchased outright by the Crown. All of these projects used enslaved African labor in some measure. Up through the end of the seventeenth century, however, those enslaved by the state itself were a smaller portion of the enslaved employed in defense works.¹
The slave populations were extremely low on Cuba
and Puerto Rico
until the 1760s, when the British
took Havana
, Cuba, in 1762. During this time more than 10,000 slaves - a number that would have taken 20 years to import on other islands - were brought in to the port. This change is almost directly related to the opening of Spanish slave trade to other powers in the 18th century, specially the contract between Spain and Great Britain created in 1713 that dealt with the supply of African slaves by the British to which the Spaniards replied by outlawing most of the slave trade of Africans.
While a larger focus has been placed on the production of sugar on plantations by enslaved workers in nineteenth century Cuba, the crucial role of the Spanish state before the 1760s has been largely obscured. In regards to Cuba, the Spanish colony ultimately developed two distinct but interrelated sources using enslaved labor, which converged at the end of the eighteenth century. The first of these sectors was urban and was directed in large measure by the needs of the Spanish colonial state, reaching its height in the 1760s. The second sector, which flourished after 1790, was rural and was directed by private enslavers involved in the production of export agricultural commodities, especially sugar. The scale and urgency of defense projects after 1763 forced the state to recruit and deploy many of its enslaved workers in ways that were to anticipate the work regimes on sugar plantations in the nineteenth century. Another important group of workers enslaved by the Spanish colonial state in the late eighteenth century were the king's enslaved laborers who worked on the city's fortifications.¹
Perhaps due in part to the Spanish colonies' late discovery of the money to be made on slave production of sugarcane
, particularly on Cuba, the Spanish colonies in the Caribbean were among the last to make any moves to abolish slavery. While the British colonies abolished slavery completely by 1834, Spain abolished slavery in Puerto Rico in 1863 and in Cuba in 1866. Mainland America saw the abolition of slavery along the 18th century although some countries like Peru re-legalized it for some decades after declaring independence from Spain.
, the first settlement of free slaves in North America.
Those African slaves also found refuge among Creek and Seminole Native Americans who had established settlements in Florida at the invitation of the Spanish government. In 1771, Governor John Moultrie wrote to the English Board of Trade that “It has been a practice for a good while past, for negroes to run away from their Masters, and get into the Indian towns, from whence it proved very difficult to get them back.” When British government officials pressured the Native Americans to return the runaway African slaves, they replied that they had "merely given hungry people food, and invited the slaveholders to catch the runaways themselves."
The Spanish American wars of independence emancipated most of the overseas territories of Spain, and divided
it in many different countries. Although slavery did not influence the war, the war was influenced by the ideas of the Age of Enlightenment
and economic affairs, which also led to the reduction and ending of feudalism. It was not an unified process, and some countries like Peru and Ecuador reintroduced slavery for some time after the independence.
In the treaty of 1814, the king of Spain promised to consider means for abolishing the trade; so, referring to this promise the king states in the treaty of September 23, 1817, with Great Britain that "having never lost sight of a matter so interesting to him and being desirous of hastening the moment of its attainment, he has determined to co-operate with His Britannic Majesty in adopting the cause of humanity." The king bound himself "that the slave trade will be abolished in all the dominions of Spain, May 30, 1820, and that after that date it shall not be lawful for any subject of the crown of Spain to buy slaves or carry on the slave trade upon any part of the coast of Africa." The date of final suppression was October 30. The subjects of the king of Spain were forbidden to carry slaves for any one outside of the Spanish dominions, or to use the flag to cover such dealings.³
The Assembly of Year XIII
of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata declared the freedom of wombs
. It did not end slavery completely, but emancipated the sons of slaves. Many slaves gained emancipation by joining the armies, either against royalists during the War of Independence, or during the Civil Wars. The Argentine Confederation
ended slavery definitely with the sanction of the Argentine Constitution of 1853
.
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
in the Spanish colonies
Spanish colonization of the Americas
Colonial expansion under the Spanish Empire was initiated by the Spanish conquistadores and developed by the Monarchy of Spain through its administrators and missionaries. The motivations for colonial expansion were trade and the spread of the Christian faith through indigenous conversions...
began with the enslavement of the local indigenous peoples
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
in their homelands by Spanish settlers. Enslavement and production quotas were used to force the local labor to bring a return on the expedition and colonization investments. Slavery was rampant and abusive during the first decades of the colonization, costing many thousands of indigenous lives through forced labor in mines, and depopulating the West Indies of their native population in a matter of decades. This made colonists require a new source of labor sparking the transatlantic slave trade.
After decades of pressure, primarily from priests and friars who argued that slavery was incompatible with Christianity, the Council of the Indies, mandated to protect the Native People in the Laws of the Indies
Laws of the Indies
The Laws of the Indies are the entire body of laws issued by the Spanish Crown for its American and Philippine possessions of its empire. They regulated social, political and economic life in these areas...
, stopped the encomienda system and the enforced slavery of the natives. It did not however stop forced labor in the Spanish colonies which took on a new guise under the repartimiento
Repartimiento
The Repartimiento was a colonial forced labor system imposed upon the indigenous population of Spanish America and the Philippines. In concept it was similar to other tribute-labor systems, such as the mita of the Inca Empire or the corvée of Ancien Régime France: the natives were forced to do...
.
Indigenous people enslaved by the Spanish
Spanish colonization of the AmericasSpanish colonization of the Americas
Colonial expansion under the Spanish Empire was initiated by the Spanish conquistadores and developed by the Monarchy of Spain through its administrators and missionaries. The motivations for colonial expansion were trade and the spread of the Christian faith through indigenous conversions...
began with the capture and subjugation of local Indigenous peoples of the Americas
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
, first of the Native Caribbean people by Columbus on his four voyages. Initially, enslavement represented one means by which the Columbus and other Castilians (Spaniards) mobilized native labor and met production quotas. Unlike the Portuguese slave trade, los Reyes Católicos
Catholic Monarchs
The Catholic Monarchs is the collective title used in history for Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon. They were both from the House of Trastámara and were second cousins, being both descended from John I of Castile; they were given a papal dispensation to deal with...
were religiously against developing that for Castile and Aragon with the slaves of Columbus, ordering many of the survivors returned to their Caribbean homelands. The papal bull Sublimus Dei of 1537, to which Spain was committed also officially banned slavery. However, other forms of coerced labor used were the Indian Reductions
Indian Reductions
Reductions were settlements founded by the Spanish colonizers of the New World with the purpose of assimilating indigenous populations into European culture and religion.Already since the beginning of the Spanish presence in the Americas, the Crown had been concerned...
method, the encomienda
Encomienda
The encomienda was a system that was employed mainly by the Spanish crown during the colonization of the Americas to regulate Native American labor....
system, repartimiento
Repartimiento
The Repartimiento was a colonial forced labor system imposed upon the indigenous population of Spanish America and the Philippines. In concept it was similar to other tribute-labor systems, such as the mita of the Inca Empire or the corvée of Ancien Régime France: the natives were forced to do...
, and the mita
Mita (Inca)
Mit'a was mandatory public service in the society of the Inca Empire. Historians use the hispanicized term mita to distinguish the system as it was modified by the Spanish, under whom it became a form of legal servitude which in practise bordered slavery.Mit'a was effectively a form of tribute to...
.
However after the issuing of the 1542 New Laws
New Laws
The New Laws, in Spanish Leyes Nuevas, issued November 20, 1542 by King Charles V of Spain regarding the Spanish colonization of the Americas, are also known as the "New Laws of the Indies for the Good Treatment and Preservation of the Indians", and were created to prevent the exploitation of the...
the encomienda system saw its power greatly restricted. Later, the 1550 Valladolid debate
Valladolid debate
The Valladolid debate concerned the treatment of natives of the New World. Held in the Colegio de San Gregorio, in the Spanish city of Valladolid, it opposed two main attitudes towards the conquests of the Americas...
and the resulting issuing in 1573 of the new statutes within the "Ordinances Concerning Discoveries" forbade slavery and gave strict regulations on the treatment of the local population, such as the implementation of the "protector de indios", an ecclesiastical representative who acted as the protector of the Indians, and represented them in formal litigation.
Later in the 17th century, in the northern New Spain
New Spain
New Spain, formally called the Viceroyalty of New Spain , was a viceroyalty of the Spanish colonial empire, comprising primarily territories in what was known then as 'América Septentrional' or North America. Its capital was Mexico City, formerly Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec Empire...
Sonoran Desert
Sonoran Desert
The Sonoran Desert is a North American desert which straddles part of the United States-Mexico border and covers large parts of the U.S. states of Arizona and California and the northwest Mexican states of Sonora, Baja California, and Baja California Sur. It is one of the largest and hottest...
Sonora y Sinaloa Province
Sonora y Sinaloa
Sonora y Sinaloa was a province in the Provincias Internas and under the jurisdiction of the Real Audiencia of Guadalajara of Viceroyalty of New Spain. After Independence Sonora y Sinaloa became one of the constituent states of the Mexican Republic...
, the nomadic Indigenous people near the Sonoran missions
Spanish missions in the Sonoran Desert
The Spanish missions in the Sonoran Desert are a series of Jesuit Catholic religious outposts established by the Spanish Catholic Jesuits and other orders for religious conversions of the Pima and Tohono O'odham indigenous peoples residing in the Sonoran Desert...
were forcibly relocated and under the excuse of being educated, were enslaved to hard work as underground miners. Jesuit Father Eusebio Francisco Kino worked to relieve the conditions as proscribed by the Laws of the Indies
Laws of the Indies
The Laws of the Indies are the entire body of laws issued by the Spanish Crown for its American and Philippine possessions of its empire. They regulated social, political and economic life in these areas...
(Leyes de Indias), for the rights of the various indigenous Sonoran tribes and their individual members. He successfully opposed the Slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
and compulsory hard labor in the silver mines
Silver
Silver is a metallic chemical element with the chemical symbol Ag and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it has the highest electrical conductivity of any element and the highest thermal conductivity of any metal...
that some Spaniards tried to force on native people.
The Franciscan Spanish missions in California
Spanish missions in California
The Spanish missions in California comprise a series of religious and military outposts established by Spanish Catholics of the Franciscan Order between 1769 and 1823 to spread the Christian faith among the local Native Americans. The missions represented the first major effort by Europeans to...
practiced Indian Reductions
Indian Reductions
Reductions were settlements founded by the Spanish colonizers of the New World with the purpose of assimilating indigenous populations into European culture and religion.Already since the beginning of the Spanish presence in the Americas, the Crown had been concerned...
of the Californian Native Americans with forced relocation and labor to support the mission industries. The enslavement was not by purchase but military enforcement. This was repeated in other Spanish colonies and provinces upon the Native residents
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
as locally sourced slaves.
Africans during the Spanish Conquest
The enslavement of Africans in the Spanish AmericasAmericas
The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...
began in 1502 and was finally outlawed in 1716 in all colonies with the exceptions of Cuba and Puerto Rico, where it remained in a semi-legal state until it was finally abolished 1866 and 1863 respectively. Native slavery was prohibited during the first half of the sixteenth century, although some enslavement continued under the guise of just war
Just War
Just war theory is a doctrine of military ethics of Roman philosophical and Catholic origin, studied by moral theologians, ethicists and international policy makers, which holds that a conflict ought to meet philosophical, religious or political criteria.-Origins:The concept of justification for...
. Most of the earliest black immigrants to the Americas were born in Spain
Black Ladino
Black Ladinos were Spanish-speaking black Africans born in Latin America, or exiled to the Americas after spending time in Castile .They were often referred to as negros ladinos , as opposed to negros bozales .Between 1502 and 1518, Spain exiled hundreds of black slaves who had spent time in...
and were not slaves, men such as Pedro Alonso Niño
Pedro Alonso Niño
Pedro Alonso Nino was a Spanish explorer, also known as El Negro .Born in Palos de Moguer, Spain, he explored the coasts of Africa, and accompanied Christopher Columbus during his third voyage that saw the discovery of Trinidad and the mouths of the Orinoco River...
, a navigator who accompanied Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents in the...
on his first voyage, and the black colonists who helped Nicolás de Ovando
Nicolás de Ovando
Fray Nicolás de Ovando y Cáceres was a Spanish soldier from a noble family and a Knight of the Order of Alcántara. He was Governor of the Indies from 1502 until 1509...
form the first Spanish settlement on Hispaniola
Hispaniola
Hispaniola is a major island in the Caribbean, containing the two sovereign states of the Dominican Republic and Haiti. The island is located between the islands of Cuba to the west and Puerto Rico to the east, within the hurricane belt...
in 1502. The name of Nuflo de Olano appears in the records as that of a black slave present when Vasco Núñez de Balboa
Vasco Núñez de Balboa
Vasco Núñez de Balboa was a Spanish explorer, governor, and conquistador. He is best known for having crossed the Isthmus of Panama to the Pacific Ocean in 1513, becoming the first European to lead an expedition to have seen or reached the Pacific from the New World.He traveled to the New World in...
sighted the Pacific Ocean
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...
in 1513. Other blacks served with Hernán Cortés
Hernán Cortés
Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro, 1st Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca was a Spanish Conquistador who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions of mainland Mexico under the rule of the King of Castile in the early 16th century...
when he conquered Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
and with Francisco Pizarro
Francisco Pizarro
Francisco Pizarro González, Marquess was a Spanish conquistador, conqueror of the Incan Empire, and founder of Lima, the modern-day capital of the Republic of Peru.-Early life:...
when he marched into Peru
Peru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
.
Estevanico
Estevanico
Estevanico , "Black Stephen", "Esteban", "Esteban the Moor", "Estevan", "Estebanico", "Stephen the Black", "Stephen the Moor", "Stephen Dorantes" after his owner Andres Dorantes, and "Little Stephen") was the first known person born in Africa to have arrived in the present-day continental United...
, one of the survivors of the unfortunate Narváez expedition
Narváez expedition
The Narváez expedition was a Spanish attempt during the years 1527–1528 to colonize Spanish Florida. It was led by Pánfilo de Narváez, who was to rule as adelantado....
from 1527 to 1536, was a black slave. With three other survivors, he spent six years traveling overland from Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
to Sinaloa
Sinaloa
Sinaloa officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Sinaloa is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 18 municipalities and its capital city is Culiacán Rosales....
and finally Mexico City
Mexico City
Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...
, learning several Native American languages
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
in the process. Later, while exploring what is now New Mexico
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
for The Seven Cities of Gold
Quivira and Cíbola
Quivira is a place first mentioned by Francisco Vazquez de Coronado in 1541, who visited it during his searches for the mythical "Seven Cities of Gold". The location and identity of the "Quivirans" has been much debated over a wide area, including Kansas, Nebraska, and Missouri...
, he lost his life in a dispute with the Zuñi.
Juan Valiente
Juan valiente
Juan Valiente , Spanish black conquistador.As many black conquistadors like Juan Garrido and Sebastián Toral in Mexico, Juan Bardales in Honduras and Panama, or Juan Beltrán , Valiente was born with another name in Western Africa till 1505 and arrived as slave to Mexico, where was bought by a...
, another black person, led Spaniards in a series of battles against the Araucanian people of Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
between 1540 and 1546. He was rewarded with an estate near Santiago
Santiago, Chile
Santiago , also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile, and the center of its largest conurbation . It is located in the country's central valley, at an elevation of above mean sea level...
and control of several Native American villages.
José de Rodríguez was another prominent Black Spaniard who served as a buccaneer during the 17th century in the Caribbean waters at Spain's service. He was known for his brutality against British and Dutch prisoners.
Spanish enslavement of Africans
Bartolomé de las CasasBartolomé de Las Casas
Bartolomé de las Casas O.P. was a 16th-century Spanish historian, social reformer and Dominican friar. He became the first resident Bishop of Chiapas, and the first officially appointed "Protector of the Indians"...
(1484–1566) recorded the effects of slavery on the Native populations. Following what many of his contemporaries were suggesting, he initially preferred to replace Natives with African slaves to alleviate their suffering. However, he later spoke against African slavery as well once he saw it in action.
In 1502 the Spanish monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, granted permission to the colonists of the Caribbean to import African slaves. Opponents of their enslavement cited their weak Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
faith and their penchant for escaping to the mountains. Proponents declared that the rapid diminution of the Native American population required a consistent supply of reliable work hands, since the Spanish population at the time was far too low to carry out all the manual labour needed to assure the economic viability of the colonies as the first years of Spaniard presence in America were marked by a terrible outbreak of a tropical epidemic flu in the Caribbean that decimated the populations of local natives and Spaniard explorers. In 1518 the first shipment of African-born slaves was sent to the West Indies. The Spaniards, although purchasers of slaves, mostly from the Portuguese and the British, did not engage on slave trade on the African coast themselves, and the number of African slaves in their colonies was sensibly inferior to those of Portuguese or British.
While enslaved Africans were vital to the initial conquest and colonization of Spain's American colonies, they were also employed in the empire's defense. Originally the Crown relied on private initiative and resources to protect colonial shipping and settlements. In some cases they were hired out or "donated" by residents or purchased outright by the Crown. All of these projects used enslaved African labor in some measure. Up through the end of the seventeenth century, however, those enslaved by the state itself were a smaller portion of the enslaved employed in defense works.¹
The slave populations were extremely low on Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
and Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...
until the 1760s, when the British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
took Havana
Havana
Havana is the capital city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city proper has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants, and it spans a total of — making it the largest city in the Caribbean region, and the most populous...
, Cuba, in 1762. During this time more than 10,000 slaves - a number that would have taken 20 years to import on other islands - were brought in to the port. This change is almost directly related to the opening of Spanish slave trade to other powers in the 18th century, specially the contract between Spain and Great Britain created in 1713 that dealt with the supply of African slaves by the British to which the Spaniards replied by outlawing most of the slave trade of Africans.
While a larger focus has been placed on the production of sugar on plantations by enslaved workers in nineteenth century Cuba, the crucial role of the Spanish state before the 1760s has been largely obscured. In regards to Cuba, the Spanish colony ultimately developed two distinct but interrelated sources using enslaved labor, which converged at the end of the eighteenth century. The first of these sectors was urban and was directed in large measure by the needs of the Spanish colonial state, reaching its height in the 1760s. The second sector, which flourished after 1790, was rural and was directed by private enslavers involved in the production of export agricultural commodities, especially sugar. The scale and urgency of defense projects after 1763 forced the state to recruit and deploy many of its enslaved workers in ways that were to anticipate the work regimes on sugar plantations in the nineteenth century. Another important group of workers enslaved by the Spanish colonial state in the late eighteenth century were the king's enslaved laborers who worked on the city's fortifications.¹
Perhaps due in part to the Spanish colonies' late discovery of the money to be made on slave production of sugarcane
Sugarcane
Sugarcane refers to any of six to 37 species of tall perennial grasses of the genus Saccharum . Native to the warm temperate to tropical regions of South Asia, they have stout, jointed, fibrous stalks that are rich in sugar, and measure two to six metres tall...
, particularly on Cuba, the Spanish colonies in the Caribbean were among the last to make any moves to abolish slavery. While the British colonies abolished slavery completely by 1834, Spain abolished slavery in Puerto Rico in 1863 and in Cuba in 1866. Mainland America saw the abolition of slavery along the 18th century although some countries like Peru re-legalized it for some decades after declaring independence from Spain.
Spanish liberation of British slaves
Since the beginning of the 18th century Spanish Florida was attracting a large number of Africans slaves who escaped from British slavery in North America. The slaves, once they made it to Florida, were given freedom after they converted to Roman Catholicism. Most of them settled down in a community called Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de MoseFort Mose Historic State Park
Fort Mose Historic State Park is a U.S. National Historic Landmark , located two miles north of St. Augustine, Florida, on the eastern edge of a marsh. It is also a Florida State Park...
, the first settlement of free slaves in North America.
Those African slaves also found refuge among Creek and Seminole Native Americans who had established settlements in Florida at the invitation of the Spanish government. In 1771, Governor John Moultrie wrote to the English Board of Trade that “It has been a practice for a good while past, for negroes to run away from their Masters, and get into the Indian towns, from whence it proved very difficult to get them back.” When British government officials pressured the Native Americans to return the runaway African slaves, they replied that they had "merely given hungry people food, and invited the slaveholders to catch the runaways themselves."
Ending of slavery
The influence of European demands for the abolition of slavery and the example of the French Revolution were increasingly in evidence in slave unrest. Later slave revolts were arguably part of the upsurge of liberal and democratic values centered on individual rights and liberties which accompanied the transition to capitalism in Europe. As emancipation became more of a concrete reality, the slaves' concept of freedom changed. No longer did they seek to overthrow the whites and re-establish carbon-copy African societies as they had done during the earlier rebellions; the vast majority of slaves were now creole and envisaged their freedom within the established framework of the existing society.²The Spanish American wars of independence emancipated most of the overseas territories of Spain, and divided
Balkanization
Balkanization, or Balkanisation, is a geopolitical term, originally used to describe the process of fragmentation or division of a region or state into smaller regions or states that are often hostile or non-cooperative with each other, and it is considered pejorative.The term refers to the...
it in many different countries. Although slavery did not influence the war, the war was influenced by the ideas of the Age of Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
and economic affairs, which also led to the reduction and ending of feudalism. It was not an unified process, and some countries like Peru and Ecuador reintroduced slavery for some time after the independence.
In the treaty of 1814, the king of Spain promised to consider means for abolishing the trade; so, referring to this promise the king states in the treaty of September 23, 1817, with Great Britain that "having never lost sight of a matter so interesting to him and being desirous of hastening the moment of its attainment, he has determined to co-operate with His Britannic Majesty in adopting the cause of humanity." The king bound himself "that the slave trade will be abolished in all the dominions of Spain, May 30, 1820, and that after that date it shall not be lawful for any subject of the crown of Spain to buy slaves or carry on the slave trade upon any part of the coast of Africa." The date of final suppression was October 30. The subjects of the king of Spain were forbidden to carry slaves for any one outside of the Spanish dominions, or to use the flag to cover such dealings.³
The Assembly of Year XIII
Asamblea del Año XIII
The Assembly of Year XIII was a meeting called by the Second Triumvirate governing the young republic of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata on October 1812....
of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata declared the freedom of wombs
Freedom of wombs
Freedom of wombs was a judicial principle applied in several countries in South America in the 19th century which automatically freed slaves' children at their birth, rather than becoming the property of the parents' owners.-By country:A movement for American freedom from Spain grew in the...
. It did not end slavery completely, but emancipated the sons of slaves. Many slaves gained emancipation by joining the armies, either against royalists during the War of Independence, or during the Civil Wars. The Argentine Confederation
Argentine Confederation
The Argentine Confederation is one of the official names of Argentina, according to the Argentine Constitution, Article 35...
ended slavery definitely with the sanction of the Argentine Constitution of 1853
Argentine Constitution of 1853
The Argentine Constitution of 1853 was the first constitution of Argentina, approved with the support of the governments of the provinces —though without that of the Buenos Aires Province, who remained separated of the Argentine Confederation until 1859, after several modifications to the...
.
See also
- Atlantic slave tradeAtlantic slave tradeThe Atlantic slave trade, also known as the trans-atlantic slave trade, refers to the trade in slaves that took place across the Atlantic ocean from the sixteenth through to the nineteenth centuries...
- European colonization of the AmericasEuropean colonization of the AmericasThe start of the European colonization of the Americas is typically dated to 1492. The first Europeans to reach the Americas were the Vikings during the 11th century, who established several colonies in Greenland and one short-lived settlement in present day Newfoundland...
- Slavery in the British and French CaribbeanSlavery in the British and French CaribbeanSlavery in the British and French Caribbean refers to slavery in the parts of the Caribbean dominated by France or the British Empire.-Conditions:The Lesser Antilles islands of Barbados, St...