Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Freedom, Identity, and the Social History of Empire in Atlantic Cuba, 1795–1817

2014; Frank Cass & Co.; Volume: 35; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/0144039x.2013.878992

1743-9523

José Guadalupe Ortega,

Asian American and Pacific Histories

AbstractThis essay examines a maritime case involving a Charleston-based French privateer in 1795 as well as members, subjects, and citizens of multiple societies from Western Africa, Cuba, Spain, and Great Britain in order to reveal the fluid legal foundations of trans-Atlantic regimes with respect to slavery and freedom. The French maritime seizure of a British slaving vessel in the Caribbean and the subsequent transfer of enslaved African peoples from British to French to Spanish authority in Cuba set the stage for nearly 40 years of litigation in both hemispheres. The case led to legal disputes in Philadelphia, Madrid, and Havana as members of this Atlantic society sought to confront the most prominent political and social issues of this era. While officials in Philadelphia sought to avoid entanglement in the imperial wars between France and Great Britain, officials in Madrid and Havana competed with each other in order to define the legal identities of a group of Carabalí-Oru peoples onboard the British vessel. For their part, this group of Carabalí-Oru peoples exploited the ambiguities created by a system of Atlantic jurisprudence while relying on their memory of the Middle Passage in order to challenge their unjust enslavement in Cuba. AcknowledgementsThe author thanks Alan Karras, Adrián López Denis, and Rachel Sarah O'Toole for reading earlier versions of this article. He is grateful to the Slavery & Abolition readers and editors for their insightful suggestions.Notes[1] 'Felipe Alwood como apoderado de los interesados en la fragata Dos Hermanos sobre el interés de unos siervos que en ella conducía Ignacio Pica', Archivo Nacional de Cuba (hereafter cited as ANC), Tribunal de Comercio (hereafter cited as TC), leg. 113, no. 6; 'Venta de la fragata Dos Hermanos', Archivo General de Indias, Sevilla (hereafter cited as AGI), Ultramar, leg. 131, no. 30.[2] 'Aguas de caimán grande … quedo prisionero de guerra Ignacio Pica y otros individuos de la tripulación', 28 April 1817 and 'Juan Gariscan Teniente de navio de la marina Francesa y comandante de la corveta Brutus', 15 March 1795, AGI, Ultramar, leg. 28, no. 6.[3] Lauren A. Benton, 'The Legal Regime of the South Atlantic World, 1400–1750: Jurisdictional Complexity as Institutional Order', Journal of World History 11, no. 1 (2000): 28–9; Bianca Premo, 'An Equity Against the Law: Slave Rights and Creole Jurisprudence in Spanish America', Slavery & Abolition 32, no. 4 (2011): 513, note 9; Recently, scholars have documented several individual cases involving slavery, freedom, and law across Atlantic legal systems. Rebecca Scott examines the extensive documentation left behind by Adélaïde Métayer in her transatlantic travels and the individuals and institutions who sought to enslave her, see Rebecca J. Scott, 'She … Refuses to Deliver up Herself as the Slave of Your Petition: Émigrés, Enslavement, and the 1808 Louisiana Digest of the Civil Laws', Tulane European and Civil Law Forum 24 (2009): 115–36. See also: Rebecca J. Scott, 'Paper Thin: Freedom and Re-enslavement in the Diaspora of the Haitian Revolution', Law and History Review 29, no. 4 (2011): 1061–87. Martha Jones discusses the journey of several slaves through Atlantic port cities as they were transferred, sold, and manumitted. See Martha Jones, 'Time, Space, and Jurisdiction in Atlantic World Slavery: The Volunbrun Household in Gradual Emancipation New York', Law and History Review 29, no. 4 (2011): 1031–60.[4] This essay borrows approaches from social network analysis; few have applied the methods to peoples of African descent. For an overview of this methodology and recent historical works which adopt this technique, see: Barry Wellman, 'The Place of Kinfolk in Personal Community Networks', Social Networks: Critical Concepts in Sociology 3 (2002): 82–107; Harold John Cook, Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007); Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, 'Private Letters and Public Diplomacy: The Adams Network and the Quasi-War, 1797–1798', Journal of the Early Republic 31, no. 2 (2011): 283–311; R. Darrell Meadows, 'Engineering Exile: Social Networks and the French Atlantic Community, 1789–1809', French Historical Studies 23, no. 1 (2000): 67–102.[5] Kenneth Pomeranz, 'Social History and World History: From Daily Life to Patterns of Change', Journal of World History, 18, no. 1 (2007): 86–8.[6] Ibid.[7] Robert J. Alderson, This Bright Era of Happy Revolutions: French Consul Michel-Ange-Bernard Mangourit and International Republicanism in Charleston, 1792–1794 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2008).[8] Charles G. Fenwick, The Neutrality Laws of the United States (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment, 1913), Appendix, pp. 172–5.[9] New York Weekly Chronicle, 27 Aug. 1795; Philadelphia Gazette, 28 Aug. 1795; The Brutus captured nine prizes during the month of March 1795, see The New Jersey State Gazette, 5 May 1795; Maeva Marcus and James R. Perry, eds., The Documentary History of the Supreme Court of the United States, 1789–1800, vol. 7 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 115, note 7, 750–60.[10] The Newport Mercury, 15 March 1796.[11] José Guadalupe Ortega, 'Cuban Merchants, Slave Trade Knowledge, and the Atlantic World, 1790s–1820s', Colonial Latin American Historical Review 15, no. 3 (2006): 225–51.[12] The Mercury (Massachusetts), 11 Sept. 1795; The Newport Mercury (Rhode Island), 7 June 1796.[13] Elliott Ashkenazi, 'Admiralty Law and Neutrality Policy in the 1790s: An Example of Judicial, Legislative, and Executive Cooperation', Journal of Supreme Court History 25, no. 1 (2000): 1–7.[14] Ordenanza de S. M. para el regimen y gobierno militar de las matrículas de mar (Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1802); Santos Sanchez, Colección de todas las pragmáticas, cédulas, provisiones, circulares, autos acordados, vandos y otras providencias publicadas en el actual reynado del Señor Don Carlos IV. Con varias notas instructivas y curiosas. 1794–1796 (Madrid: Imprenta de Marin, 1797), 168.[15] 'Capitán General Someruelos, Habana', 30 Oct. 1802, 'Declaraciones del Rey, Cedulas de 22 de febrero de 1800', 22 Feb. 1800, and 'Carta del gobernador Capitán General que fue de la Habana Conde de Santa Clara', 14 May 1798, AGI, Ultramar, leg. 28, no. 6; 'Expediente del Gobernador de Habana mando cuenta de autos seguidos en Tribunal del Consulado y Juzgado de Alzadas por Mariano Carbo y Pedro Diago', 4 May 1802, AGI, Santo Domingo, leg. 2212, book 4.[16] As 'slaves made claims and pressed for benefits' they provided 'social meaning to the abstract rights regulated in the positive laws'. Through these legal interactions, slaves acted like subjects, compelling Spanish magistrates and court officials to treat them as such. See Alejandro de la Fuente, 'Slave Law and Claims-Making in Cuba: The Tannenbaum Debate Revisited', Law and History Review 22, no. 2 (July 1, 2004): 341–2; David Thomas Konig, 'Long Road to Dred Scott: Personhood and the Rule of Law in the Trial Court Records of St. Louis Slave Freedom Suits', UMKC Law Review 75, no. 1 (2006): 54–5.[17] 'Expediente del Gobernador de Habana mando cuenta de autos seguidos en Tribunal del Consulado y Juzgado de Alzadas por Mariano Carbo y Pedro Diago', 4 May 1802, AGI, Santo Domingo, leg. 2212, book 4.[18] Alejandro de la Fuente, 'Slaves and the Creation of Legal Rights in Cuba: Coartación and Papel', Hispanic American Historical Review 87, no. 4 (November 2007): 679.[19] Antony Honoré, 'The Nature of Slavery', in The Legal Understanding of Slavery: From the Historical to the Contemporary, ed. Jean Allain (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2012), 9–10.[20] 'Tribunal Especial de Guerra y Marina en Sala 2ª', 19 July 1814, AGI, leg. 28, no. 6.[21] 'Real Orden de 8 de Junio 1798', 8 June 1798, 'Carta del gobernador Capitán General que fue de la Habana Conde de Santa Clara', 26 Sept. 1813 and 'Fiscal de Nueva España dice que lo resuelto por S.M.', 16 June 1817, AGI, Ultramar, leg. 28, no. 6.[22] 'Carta del gobernador Capitan General que fue de la Habana Conde de Santa Clara', 14 May 1798, 26 Sept. 1813, and 'Declaran libre los 207 sin perjuicios las mismas facultades que se le concedieron en Real Cedula de 22 de Febrero 1800 respeto a la libertad de 94 negros bozales', 20 Aug. 1817, AGI, Ultramar, leg. 28, no. 6; Emily Berquist argues that a domestic anti-slavery movement existed in the Spanish Empire in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. See Emily Berquist, 'Early Anti-Slavery Sentiment in the Spanish Atlantic World, 1765–1817', Slavery & Abolition 31, no. 2 (2010): 183.[23] 'Esmo. Segundo del Real Consulado de Agricultura y Comercio de esta Ciudad de la Habana', 3 Dec. 1818, ANC, TC, leg. 182, no. 4; Diario del Comercio, 2 Jan. 1819; Diario del Comercio de la Habana, 6 Jan. 1819.[24] 'Juan Bautista Lanz sobre que de razón de los cuatro negros que saco de la armazón de Pica', 18 March 1820, ANC, TC, leg. 270, no. 2.[25] For varying interpretations on the effectiveness of síndicos in their roles as slave representatives, see Robert L. Paquette, Sugar Is Made with Blood: The Conspiracy of La Escalera and the Conflict between Empires over Slavery in Cuba (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1988), 63; Rebecca Jarvis Scott, Slave Emancipation in Cuba: the Transition to Free Labor, 1860–1899 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), 75; de la Fuente, 'Slaves and the Creation of Legal Rights in Cuba', 665–7; Claudia Varella, 'El canal administrativo de los conflictos entre esclavos y amos. Causas de manumisión decididas ante síndicos en Cuba', Revista de Indias 71, no. 251 (2011): 109–36.[26] 'El Fiscal de Nueva España dice que lo resuelto por S.M.', 16 June 1817, AGI, Ultramar, leg. 28, no. 6; Autos acordados de la Real audiencia pretorial de la Habana, vol. 1, 3 vols. (Havana, Cuba: Imprenta de la Real audiencia pretorial por S.M., 1847), appendix, 10–11.[27] Only a handful of autobiographical accounts of the Middle Passage by peoples of African descent exist. See Jerome S. Handler, 'Survivors of the Middle Passage: Life Histories of Enslaved Africans in British America', Slavery & Abolition 23, no. 1 (2002): 25–56.[28] Ralph A. Austen, 'The Slave Trade as History and Memory: Confrontations of Slaving Voyage Documents and Communal Traditions', The William and Mary Quarterly 58, no. 1 (2001): 229–44.[29] 'Interrogatorio que presenta Bárbara Falero para que su tenor sea examinado Don Carlos Soulette', ANC, TC, leg. 263, no. 3.[30] 'Interrogatorio que presenta Bárbara Falero por medio de su defensor judicial' and 'Interrogatorio presentado por la misma examinada María del Rosario Gómez', ANC, TC, leg. 263, no. 3.[31] Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas: Restoring the Links (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 41; Manuel Barcia Paz, Seeds of Insurrection: Domination and Resistance on Western Cuban Plantations, 1808–1848 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana University Press, 2008), 36–8.[32] Hall, Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas, 44; Rosanne Marion Adderley, 'New Negroes from Africa': Slave Trade Abolition and Free African Settlement in the Nineteenth-Century Caribbean (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 97.[33] 'Bárbara Falero de nación Carabalí sobre su libertad, y la de cuatro hijos como correspondientes a la expedición del Capitán Ignacio Pica', ANC, TC, leg. 263, no. 3.[34] 'Conde de la Casa Barreto contra Don Joaquín Gómez sobre cierto contrato de negros'. 30 April 1821, ANC, Escribanías, Vergel, leg. 262, no. 10.[35] 'Interrogatorio que presenta Bárbara Falero por medio de su defensor judicial', 'Interrogatorio que presenta Bárbara Falero para que por su tenor declare el Capitán del Regimiento Infantería de la Habana Don Nicolás Naranjo', and 'Interrogatorio presentado por la misma examinada María del Rosario Gómez', ANC, TC, leg. 263, no. 3.[36] 'Interrogatorio que presenta Bárbara Falero para que por su tenor declare el Capitán del Regimiento Infantería de la Habana Don Nicolás Naranjo', ANC, TC, leg. 263, no. 3.[37] Ibid.[38] 'Don José Victoriano del Cristo por mi poder sustituido en las diligencias que en este Tribunal Mercantil han promovido mis esclavas Bárbara Falero y sus hijas sobre libertad', ANC, TC, leg. 263, no. 3.[39] 'Bárbara Falero, morena libre, por medio de mi defensor el procurador publico, Juan Antonio Torrents', ANC, TC, leg. 263, no. 3.[40] Ibid.[41] Ibid.[42] De la Fuente, 'Slave Law and Claims-Making in Cuba', 364, note 72; Luz Mena, 'Stretching the Limits of Gendered Spaces: Black and Mulatto Women in 1830s Havana', Cuban Studies 36, no. 1 (2005): 87–104.[43] 'Interrogatorio presentado por la misma examinada María del Rosario Gómez', ANC, TC, leg. 263, no. 3.[44] 'Interrogatorio que presenta Bárbara Falero para que su tenor declare el capitán del regimiento infantería de la Habana, Don Nicolás Naranjo', ANC, TC, leg. 263, no. 3.