Slavery in Cuba

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Atlantic slavery in Cuba arose with the colonization of Cuba since 1510.

Since the sparsely populated island did not offer enough workers, the Spanish colonists used African slaves in urban economic areas from 1502 onwards . The labor of slaves also played an important role in the cultivation of sugar cane and coffee . Slavery was not abolished in Cuba until 1886, 12 years before Spain gave up its claim to the island.

history

The island's indigenous people proved unsuitable for cheap labor as they were too vulnerable to European diseases such as measles and smallpox . Because of their traditional way of life, they were not suitable for efficient use in a colonial production system. In Cuba, the indigenous population was literally exterminated ( see also: Bartolomé de las Casas ). Indian slavery was banned several times by the Spanish crown. Initially, black slaves came mainly from the Iberian Peninsula, especially from Andalusia. In 1526 the first deliveries of slaves directly from Africa reached the island of Cuba . During the 16th and 17th centuries, more than 600,000 African slaves made their way into the Spanish colonies of America alive. The number of slaves captured and transported was of course much higher, as many died on the grueling journey to the coast and during transport on the slave ships . Up to 1789 (clearance of the slave trade by the Spanish crown), around 50,000–60,000 African slaves came to Cuba.

The Haitian Revolution Saint-Domingue 1791–1803 and the first industrial revolution led to a completely new form of slavery in western Cuba. While until then the slaves largely (i.e. with a few exceptions e.g. in the ore mines of Greek and Roman antiquity) worked in the rhythm of rural production methods and were not used on a large scale and mostly even belonged to the household of Creole elites, the use of steam engines the slave labor adapted to the rhythm of the machines. Steam-powered sugar mills in Cuba, cotton- processing machines for the buyers of cotton from the southern states of the USA completely changed the character of slave labor. The more the machines could process in the course of technical progress, the harder and more massive the use of slaves became. The work of slaves in Cuba, for example, had to adapt to the immense processing capacity of the steam-powered sugar mills of the 19th century. Hundreds of the slaves were housed in barracks in large camps and their labor was used to the limit of exhaustion. The whip became the common driving force at work. Slave revolts such as in Haiti and Cuba at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century were the result of inhumane working conditions. Despite terrible punishments, slaves as cimarrones fled again and again into the impassable forests. Special troops of slave hunters (rancheadores) with dogs specially trained for slaves were supposed to track them down there. If the runaway slaves were found, they were threatened with public execution, usually in a hideous manner, to deter others.

From 1807 there was an end to the slave trade . In that year, a ban on the slave trade was passed in Great Britain for economic and religious reasons (valid from 1808), as did the USA. In order not to suffer competitive disadvantages, Great Britain put pressure on other colonial powers to also stop the slave trade. While slavery had been forbidden in Prussia since 1713, the slave trade in Portugal, Spain / Cuba, France and Brazil was only gradually banned from 1815 onwards under British pressure (see: Congress of Vienna ). Great Britain signed a treaty with the Spanish crown in 1817 that banned the slave trade to Cuba from 1820. The Spanish-Cuban slave traders ( negreros ) did not adhere to the treaty (which was tightened in 1835 and 1845); In 1820 a phase of intensive human smuggling between Africa and Cuba began, which lasted until 1878 and led to the deportation of around 780,000 to 1 million people to Cuba [hidden Atlantic] . British warships pursued Spanish-Cuban slave ships, the freed abductees were formally freed ( emancipados , approx. 40,000–60,000), but remained in Cuba and worked as a kind of state slaves, mainly in export agriculture and construction.

Especially after the tightening of the treaty of 1835, there were so-called “rearing programs” in Cuba, in which slave children were the replacement for the missing supplies from Africa. In addition, more and more children were abducted from Africa to Cuba in illegal human trafficking . In addition, around 125,000 Chinese coolies , mostly from Canton , were recruited between 1847 and 1874 . Female slaves developed abortion methods (e.g. the use of papaya seeds ) to prevent them from having children whose fate was slavery. Often there was suicide by slaves.

Enormous slaves joined the independence movement since 1868 , which included the liberation of slaves in its program late. When the Spaniards withdrew from Cuba in 1898 after the lost Spanish-American War , the former slaves became wage laborers without any significant improvement in their social situation. While until then they were kept alive as "work animals" even during the rest periods of sugar production, a lack of work now led to layoffs and hunger.

Possessed only on February 13, 1880 Spain patronage (patronato) , a transition to emancipation, and on 7 October 1886, the Slavery in Cuba was abolished by law (Abolition) .

See also

literature

  • Miguel Barnet : The Cimarrón. The life story of an escaped Negro slave from Cuba . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt / M. 1999, ISBN 3-518-39540-8 .
  • Laird Bergad: The Comparative Histories of Slavery in Brazil, Cuba, and the United States. Cambridge University Press, 2007, ISBN 0521694108 .
  • Michael Zeuske : Black Caribbean: Slaves, Slavery Culture and Emancipation. Rotpunkt, Zurich 2004, ISBN 978-3858692726 .
  • Michael Zeuske: Out of the Americas: Slave Traders and the Hidden Atlantic in the 19th Century. A research project at the historical seminar of the University of Cologne. In: AHF Yearbook of Historical Research in the Federal Republic of Germany (2009), pp. 37–57 (at: www.ahf-muenchen.de/Forschungsberichte/jahrbuch2009/AHF_Jb2009_Zeuske.pdf).
  • Michael Zeuske: Historiography and Research Problems of Slavery and the Slave Trade in a Global-Historical Perspective. In: International Review of Social History. Vol. 57: 1 (April 2012), pp. 87-111.
  • Michael Zeuske: Mongos and Negreros: Atlantic slave traders in the 19th century and the Iberian slave trade 1808 / 1820–1878. In: Periplus. Yearbook for non-European history. 20th year (2010) (= Hatzky, Christine ; Schmieder, Ulrike (ed.): Slavery and post-emancipation societies in Africa and in the Caribbean ), pp. 57–116.
  • Michael Zeuske: The History of the Amistad. Slave trade and people smuggling in the Atlantic in the 19th century. Philipp Reclam, Ditzingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-15-020267-8 .