Spain and the Abolition of Slavery in Cuba, 1817–1886

Corwin, Arthur F., Spain and the Abolition of Slavery in Cuba, 1817–1886, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968.

Reviewed by Roger T. Anstey in Race & Class , Volume 10 (4): 538.

Reviewed in The Journal of Economic History September 1968.

From the book cover:

This book explores the abolition of Negro slavery in Spanish Cuba 1817–1886 - from the first Anglo-Spanish agreement to abolish the slave trade until the removal from Cuba of the last vestige of black servitude. Making extensive use of heretofore untapped research sources from the Spanish archives, the author has developed new perspectives on nineteenth century Spanish policy in Cuba. He skillfully interrelates the problem of slavery with international politics, with Cuban conservative and liberal movements, and with political and economic developments in Spain itself. Professor Corwin finds that the study of this problem falls naturally into two phases, the first of which, 1817 - 1860, traces the gradual reduction of African traffic to the Spanish Antilles, and constitutes in effect a study in anglo-Spanish diplomacy. (...) The American Civil War, which destroyed the greatest bulwark of Negro slavery in the New World, marked the opening of a new phase, 1860 - 1886. The author strongly emphasizes here such influences as the rise of the Creole reform movement in Cuba and Puerto Rico, which, reading the signs of the times, gave the initial impulse to a Spanish abolitionist movement and contributed to closing the Cuban slave trade in 1866...

Crown and Clergy in Colonial Mexico, 1759–1821

Farriss, N. M. Crown and Clergy in Colonial Mexico, 1759–1821: The Crisis of Ecclesiastical Privilege, London: The Athlone Press, 1968.

Reviewed in Journal of Latin American Studies (1969),.
Reviewed in Historia Mexicana © 1969.

From the Preface:

The purpose of this book is to explore a relatively neglected aspect of the relations between Church and State in colonial Mexico -- the exercise of royal control over the conduct and activities of the clergy, a function which the Spanish Crown considered as vital to the interests of the State as the more fully treated question of the royal control over the Church's administration. I have concentrated on the last decades of Spanish rule as a period of crisis in relations between Church and State, marking the transition from the interdependence and close identification of interests of the Habsburg era to the open antagonism that has been so prominent a feature of Mexican history since independence. (...) This study is based principally on primary sources in the archives and libraries of Spain, Mexico and England. The Archivo General de Indias in Seville provided the major part of the pertinent manuscript material, in particular the expedientes and correspondence on jurisdictional disputes in the sections Audiencia de Guadalajara and Audiencia de Mexico.

Cuatemo, Last of the Aztec Emperors

Walker, Cora, Cuatemo, Last of the Aztec Emperors, New York, Dayton Press, 1934.

From the Introduction:

This introduction is very important because it gives understanding of the real character of Cuatemo and of the other leading men in the history of his time. The purpose of this story is to show that centuries before Columbus discovered America, Mexico was inhabited by a civilized and highly advanced people, the Aztecs. (…) When Europe was still “in the woods”, the Aztecs were living in fine marble palaces, and had stately temples, extensive aqueducts and luxurious baths. When the Hebrews were still nomads, wandering about from place to place, and subsisting on wild figs, olives and berries, the inhabitants of Mexico were cultivating fields of cereals, and baking bread.

La Negritud

Anson, Luis María, La Negritud, Madrid: Ediciones Castilla S.A., 1971.

De la carpeta:

Luis María Anson analiza las diversas manifestaciones culturales de la Negritud desde las artes plásticas y la música, a la filosofía y la política, desarrollando sugerentes teorías, algunas de extraordinario interés y originalidad.

Luis María Anson Oliart (llamado originalmente Luis María Ansón Oliart),1 nacido en Madrid el 8 de febrero de 1935, es un periodista y escritor español. Preside el suplemento El Cultural de El Mundo y el periódico *El Imparcial. Es miembro de la Real Academia Española, donde ocupa el sillón "ñ" minúscula. Se trata de uno de los periodistas más relevantes de la España contemporánea... La ideología de Anson oscila entre una fidelidad histórica a la monarquía y un liberalismo conservador.

La Formación del Pueblo Puertorriqueño, La Contribución de los Catalanes, Baleáricos y Valencianos

Cifre de Loubriel, Estela, La Formación del Pueblo Puertorriqueño, La contribución de los Catalanes, Baleáricos y Valencianos, Puerto Rico: Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, 1975.

Library of Conbgress:

Lists 5,574 brief biographies with genealogical information about 19th-century immigrants to Puerto Rico from Lérida, Gerona, Barcelona, Tarragona, Castellón, Valencia, Alicante, and the Balearic Islands. Tables show the number of immigrants from each town in Spain, the number of residents in Puerto Rican towns from each of the above provinces. Three maps of Puerto Rico show towns having ten or more residents in the 19th century from Catalonia, Valencia, or the Balearics. ...

Les desseins de son Eminence de Richelieu pour l’Amérique

R.P. André Chevillard, Les desseins de son Eminence de Richelieu pour l’Amérique, 1659, Reproduction de cette édition en 1973 à BasseTerre, par la Société d’Histoire de la Guadeloupe, in "Bibliothèque d’histoire antillaise"

Cited in Journal of Social History © 2004.

Andre Chevillard was a Dominican priest who worked to convert Amerindian and African slaves in Guadeloupe.

Cuba: Order and Revolution

Domínguez, Jorge I., Cuba: Order and Revolution, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978.

Available on-line.

Reviewed in Foreign Affairs.
Reviewed in The Hispanic American Historical Review © 1979.
Reviewed in Political Science Quarterly © 1980.
Reviewed by Juan Goytisolo in The New York Review of Books.

Sumario de la Natural Historia de las Indias

Fernández de Oviedo, Gonzalo, Sumario de la Natural Historia de las Indias, [Edición, introducción y notas de José Miranda], México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1950.

Natural History of the West Indies.

Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo:

Tras su segunda estancia en América, publicó el Sumario de la Natural Historia de las Indias (1526), dedicada a Carlos I como un adelanto del "tratado que tengo copioso de todo ello", pues ya había empezado a redactar su obra más famosa, la Historia general y natural de las Indias, islas y tierra firme del mar océano, que relata acontecimientos que van de 1492 a 1549. Su primera parte se imprimió en 1535; la impresión de la segunda parte en Valladolid quedó interrumpida por la muerte del autor en 1557 y sólo se editó completa entre 1851 y 1855 en cuatro volúmenes al cuidado de José Amador de los Ríos y encargados por la Academia de la Historia. El Sumario fue traducido al inglés, italiano (Venecia, 1532) y latín y alcanzó en un siglo 15 ediciones, transformándose en un clásico de la etnografía y la antropología. Tras una breve disquisición sobre la navegación al Nuevo Mundo, trata de La Española, Cuba y otras islas de las Antillas, así como de Tierra Firme, ocupándose de los habitantes y sobre todo de los animales y vegetales; los minerales le merecen muy poca atención, a excepción del oro.

Los Libros del Conquistador

Leonard, Irving A. Los Libros del Conquistador, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1953.

An Interview with Irving A. Leonard: Irving A. Leonard and John J. Tepaske, in The Hispanic American Historical Review © 1983.

On the Mexican Book Trade, 1683: Irving A. Leonard, in The Hispanic American Historical Review © 1947.

Del autor:

Este es un libro que trata de libros, especialmente de libros de ficción. Sus principales personajes no son los héroes de la conquista y de la colonia española en el siglo XVI, sino mas bien los libros que ellos y sus descendientes conocieron y leyeron; los escritos amenos que encendieron la imaginación de estos adelantados y estimularon sus incomparables hazañas entreteniendo sus inquietos ocios y consolando sus amargas desilusiones. Estos trabajos impresos de espíritus creadores jugaron un papel silencioso, pero no enteramente pasivo, en el desarrollo de los acontecimientos del primer acto en el drama de la europeización del mundo, y su influencia es un capitulo no escrito aun de la historia de aquella gran empresa. En esta narración, los trabajos seglares meramente instructivos y los que no son de ficción figuran como personajes secundarios, en tanto que la literatura puramente religiosa y teológica, aunque dominante en aquellos tiempos, solo aparece tratada a la ligera. Por consiguiente, esta apreciación de la parte que corresponde a las letras de una aventura crucial de la humanidad, no pretende ser un ensayo crítico sobre la literatura española de la época, ni mucho menos una historia de las ideas en los comienzos de Hispano-América; solo procura enfocar la atención sobre un aspecto olvidado de la difusión de la cultura europea en las porciones del mundo que acababan de descubririse, y demostrar la existencia de una circulación de libros relativamente libre en las primeras colonias españolas, hecho hasta ahora oscurecido por prejuicios y aprensiones.

Slavery in the Americas: A Comparative Study of Virginia and Cuba

Klein, Herbert S. Slavery in the Americas: A Comparative Study of Virginia and Cuba, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967.

Reviewed in The William and Mary Quarterly © 1968.
Cited in Free Blacks in a Slave Society: New Orleans, 1718-1812, by Thomas N. Ingersoll.
Cited in Slavery, by Orlando Patterson in Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 3. (1977), pp. 407-449.

From the author's Preface:

Recent studies on the Negro in contemporary Latin American society...clearly demonstrate the primacy of socioeconomic classifications in contemporary Latin American race relations, in contrast to the United States.3 But as yet sociologists and anthropologists have not synthesized their findings with the new comparative historical models in their rapid surveys of the slave heritage. As for the historians, neither the critics nor defenders of the new comparative historical school have attempted to go beyond the legal materials to the social and economic dynamics of the New World slave systems to test the assumptions and conclusions that have been proposed. This is the aim of my study...

The Two Variants in Caribbean Race Relations

Hoetink, Harmannus, The Two Variants in Caribbean Race Relations: A Contribution to the Sociology of Segmented Societies, London, New York and Toronto: Institute of Race Relations, 1967. [Second copy with author's dedication: "To Tom, To serve as a token of great esteem and friendship. January 1970"]

Reviewed in Comparative Politics © 1972.
Cited by Sydney Mintz in Comparative Studies in Society and History © 1971.
See also Ethnicity in the Caribbean: essays in honor of Harry Hoetink by Gert Oostindie.

From the book cover:

In this study, translated from the Dutch, of the segmented societies of the Caribbean (in which are here included the Southern States of the USA), Dr. Hoetink distinguishes two variants: the Iberian or Latin, in those parts of the area colonized by Spain or Portugal; and the North-West European, in the areas where the colonial power was British, French or Dutch. He gives much attention to the difficulties, for the metropolitan outsider, of achieving objectivity in studies such as these. Dr. Hoetink discusses the origins, 'racial' and cultural, of these segmented societies, social mobility - or the lack of it - within them, and the psychological issues involved. Ultimately he sees the world as itself similarly segmented, with all the problems and possibilities inherent in a segmented society.

Catálogo de Extranjeros Residentes en Puerto Rico en el Siglo XIX

Cifre de Loubriel, Estela, Catálogo de extranjeros residentes en Puerto Rico en el Siglo XIX, Río Piedras: Ediciones de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1962.

Estela Cifre de Loubriel:

Nació en el pueblo de Sabana Grande, Puerto Rico hija de Antonio Cifre Alberti, natural de Mallorca, España y de Amanda Amill Negroni (descendiente de corsos), natural de Yauco, quienes tuvieron 10 hijos. Recibió su bachillerato en artes en la. Universidad de Puerto Rico en 1944. Realizó su maestría, en el Colegio de Ciencias Políticas de Columbia University con concentración en historia, en 1950. Se recibió de doctora. en filosofía. y letras en la Universidad de Madrid en 1958. Ejerció como catedrática en la Universidad de Puerto Rico y dictó cursos de Historia de Puerto Rico a miles, de estudiantes.

Library of Congress:

Entries on 4,806 foreigners, giving place of birth, age, profession, place of residence, accompanying family members, and citation of sources. Seventy-four countries of origin are noted. Maps show precise distribution of French, Venezuelans, Italians, Dominicans, immigrants from Curacao and Santa Cruz, North Americans, and Englishmen.

Capitalism & Slavery

Williams, Eric, Capitalism & Slavery, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1944.

Reviewed in The American Historical Review © 1945.

See Reckoning with Williams: Capitalism and Slavery and the Reconstruction of Early American History by Russell R. Menard.

See also Capitalism & Slavery and Caribbean Historiography: An Evaluation by Selwyn H. H. Carrington in The Journal of African American History © 2003, and Eric Williams: British Capitalism and British Slavery by Seymour Drescher in History and Theory © 1987.

The Negro in the Caribbean

Williams, Eric, The Negro in the Caribbean, Westport Connecticut: Negro Universities Press, 1969.

Available online.
Reviewed in The Journal of Negro History © 1943.

From the Editorial Foreword:

To give the layman a panoramic but not superficial over-view of the Caribbean area, its islands and their people, is in itself a large service. But this study goes further to set the West Indies meaningfully in the perspective of their historical past, as well as to present the problems of the present in a challenging and constructive interpretation looking toward their future. At a time when the Caribbean has become one of the crucial foci of national, hemispheric and international politics, such an approach, and the more comprehensive understanding it makes possible, seem imperative.

El Pentagonismo, Sustituto del Imperialismo

Bosch, Juan, El Pentagonismo, Sustituto del Imperialismo, 2nda Edición, México: Siglo XXI Editores, 1973.

Reseña del Dr. Jorge Rodríguez Beruff.

Del Prefacio:

Este libro fue presentado como tesis del autor a la Tercera Conferencia Interamericana de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales que tuvo lugar en la Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo – Republica Dominicana- en el mes de noviembre de 1967, y al mismo tiempo apareció allí mismo, su primera edición, hecha por “Publicaciones ¡Ahora! C por A.”

Catálogo de Publicaciones y Discos

Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña Catálogo de Publicaciones y Discos, San Juan: ICP, 1978.

Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña.

Doctor Ramón Emeterio Betances: Su Vida y su Obra

Suárez Díaz, Ada, Doctor Ramón Emeterio Betances: Su vida y su obra, San Juan de Puerto Rico, Ateneo Puertorriqueño, 1968.

Conferencia dictada en el Ateneo Puertorriqueño bajo los auspicios de la Sección de Historia, el 30 de noviembre de 1965.

Ramón Emeterio Betances y Alacán (April 8, 1827 – September 16, 1898) was a Puerto Rican nationalist. He was the primary instigator of the Grito de Lares revolution and is considered to be the father of the Puerto Rican independence movement. Since the Grito galvanized a burgeoning nationalist movement among Puerto Ricans, Betances is also considered "El Padre de la Patria" (Father of the Puerto Rican Nation). Because of his charitable deeds for people in need, he also became known as "The Father of the Poor."

Crime and Punishment in the Caribbean

Brana-Shute, Rosemary, & Gary Brana-Shute, Eds. Crime and Punishment in the Caribbean, Gainesville: Center for Latin American Studies, 1980.

Contents

Delroy Chuck – The Role of the Sentencer in Dealing With Criminal Offenders in the Commonwealth Caribbean
Dudley Allen – Urban Crime and Violence in Jamaica
Dudley Allen – Crime and Treatment in Jamaica
Kenneth Pryce & Daurius Figueira – Rape and Socio-Economic Conditions in Trinidad and Tobago
Rafael Santos del Valle – Reflections on the Problem of Urban Crime and Violence in Puerto Rico
Max Carre – A Profile of the State of Criminology in Haiti
Michael Parris – Urban Crime and Violence in Guyana
Michael Parris – A Survey of the Guyanese Prison Population: A Research Note
A. Leerschool-Liong A Jin – Planned Research into the Criminological Consequences of the Mass Transmigration of the Bush Negroes in Suriname
J.M.M. Binda – Women and Violent Crime in Suriname

Reviewed in Caribbean Quarterly © 1983.