REVIEWS: SLAVE SOCIETIES
Whereas Virginia began, and continued as a plantation society, this was not the case with Cuba. Until the latter half of the eighteenth century, Cuba remained an island of semi-feudal señorios devoted primarily to tobacco and cattle, and reasonably tight urban agglomerations . This is a very important factor in any comparative study of the two slave systems. For, traditionally, cattle-raising and non-plantation tobacco farming do not lend themselves to regimented, or exacting labour forces. So, like urban (and rural domestic) slavery, the conditions tend to be far milder, and the society far more patriarchal. Without denying the mitigating differences of the slave codes, and the less plausible – if no less popular – effects of cultural tradition, one could quite reasonably assume a more benevolent slave system in Cuba prior to 1800 than in Virginia. But that would not be comparing like systems. What happened when Cuba became a plantation society, as it did in the nineteenth century?
Only a thorough examination of this later period can balance the judgements and generalisations of the pre-plantation era. The enormous infusion of capital and the increased demands of plantation production make Cuba in the nineteenth century significantly different from the earlier colonial period. In fact, it begins to resemble more closely the Virginia pictured by Mr. Klein, in which’ “the plantation system was so predominant” ( p. 187).
The British capture of Havana, the reforms of Charles III, the destruction of Saint Domingue, the Civil wars on the nearby continent, provided the impetus for the economic, agricultural and social revolutions in Cuba in the nineteenth century. All these events arc interrelated: they destroyed rivals, uprooted citizens, and resulted in the arrival in Cuba of slaves to provide the labour force, and citizens with the wealth or the inclination (often both) to pursue the profitable cultivation of coffee and sugar. But, the greatest changes in the nature of Cuban society came from the revolutions in land-ownership and utility, and the consequent sugar revolution. Both events, which had a tremendous impact on the nature of slavery are completely neglected by Mr. Klein.
Between 1794 and 1817. spearheaded by their rising political influence and growing economic power, the Cuban elite (Criollos as well as Peninsulares) won a series of concessions from the Crown. These concessions successfully attacked ancestral latifundism, by making land alienable, and giving rights to the owners to cut and dispose of their forests, without regard to the demand of royal Beet construction. Latifundism, of course, did not disappear. But the foundations were laid which altered the traditional use of the old family-owned haciendas, and the political influence of their owners. Land values rose, sometimes five-fold. New towns sprung up, largely populated by the recent immigrants. Most important, the facility to parcel land legally, stimulated the rapid development of ingenios and caietales. Despite prevailing laws, it is hardly likely that those who owned slaves in Louisiana or St Dominique would treat their slaves any differently just because’ they were in Cuba. A plantation society does not recognise cultural and legal differences.
Mr Klien grossly overestimates the power of the Crown, and the mitigating influence of the Church in Cuba during the nineteenth century.
The group of Criollos and Pcninsulares who got their wealth from land speculation, slave-tradition. commerce in general. and coffee and sugar, formed a cohesive block which exerted enormous pressure on the Spanish Crown . They exploited the chronic political instability of Spain and the perpetual insolvency of the monarchy, and assumed a dominance in Cuban affairs far beyond their numerical strength. By the middle of the nineteenth century, they had usurped de facto political power in the’ island. The seat of effective authority lay no longer in Madrid, but with the Casino Espanol in Havana, in a small clique dominated by Julian de Zulueta and Tuan Poey. In fact, the rude expulsion of. Domingo Dulce, the Governor and Captain Central. on the night of June I, 1869, reveals the pinnacle of planter predominance. If the early Cuban white settlers had failed against the Crown of Castille (Klein, p. 22), their successors had finally succeeded against the representative of the Crown of Spain.
