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Author: Josep M. Fradera and
Christopher Schmidt-Nowara
ISBN: 9781785330261
Format: PB
Extent: 340 pp
Price: £22
Publication: December 2015
Publisher: Berghahn Books
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African slavery was pervasive in Spain’s Atlantic empire yet remained on the margins of the imperial economy until the end of the eighteenth century when the plantation revolution in the Caribbean colonies put the slave traffic and the plantation at the center of colonial exploitation and conflict.
The international group of scholars brought together in this volume explain Spain’s role as a colonial pioneer in the Atlantic world and its latecomer status as a slave-trading, plantation-based empire. These contributors map the broad contours and transformations of slave-trafficking, the plantation, and antislavery in the Hispanic Atlantic while also delving into specific topics that include:
- the institutional and economic foundations of colonial slavery
- the law and religion
- the influences of the Haitian Revolution, British abolitionism, antislavery and proslavery movements in Spain
- race and citizenship
- the business of the illegal slave trade.
[I]nnovative, well-organized, thoroughly-researched, and engagingly written collection. All contributions are informed by the most recent relevant historiographies as well as by pertinent theoretical literature. The book represents an original and significant contribution to an under-studied topic: the history of slavery, plantation slavery, and abolitionism in the Spanish imperial system. Jesus Cruz, University of Delaware
