Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868-1898
TL;DR: Ferrer as discussed by the authors examines the role of black and mulatto Cubans in nationalist insurgency from 1868, when a slaveholder began the revolution by freeing his slaves, until the intervention of racially segregated American forces in 1898.
Abstract: In the late nineteenth century, in an age of ascendant racism and imperial expansion, there emerged in Cuba a movement that unified black, mulatto, and white men in an attack on Europe's oldest empire, with the goal of creating a nation explicitly defined as antiracist. This book tells the story of the thirty-year unfolding and undoing of that movement. Ada Ferrer examines the participation of black and mulatto Cubans in nationalist insurgency from 1868, when a slaveholder began the revolution by freeing his slaves, until the intervention of racially segregated American forces in 1898. In so doing, she uncovers the struggles over the boundaries of citizenship and nationality that their participation brought to the fore, and she shows that even as black participation helped sustain the movement ideologically and militarily, it simultaneously prompted accusations of race war and fed the forces of counterinsurgency. Carefully examining the tensions between racism and antiracism contained within Cuban nationalism, Ferrer paints a dynamic portrait of a movement built upon the coexistence of an ideology of racial fraternity and the persistence of presumptions of hierarchy. |Examines the tensions between racism and anti-racism in Cuba's struggle to become a nation between 1868 and 1898.
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11 Jan 2010TL;DR: This chapter discusses mosquito determinism and its limits in the context of Atlantic empires and Caribbean ecology, as well as revolutionary fevers in Haiti, New Granada, and Cuba, 1790-1898.
Abstract: Part I. Setting the Scene: 1. The argument: mosquito determinism and its limits 2. Atlantic empires and Caribbean ecology 3. Deadly fevers, deadly doctors Part II. Imperial Mosquitoes: 4. From Recife to Kourou: yellow fever takes hold, 1620-1764 5. Cartagena and Havana: yellow fever rampant Part III. Revolutionary Mosquitoes: 6. Lord Cornwallis vs anopheles quadrimaculatus, 1780-1 7. Revolutionary fevers: Haiti, New Granada, and Cuba, 1790-1898 8. Epilogue: vector and virus vanquished.
195 citations
Book•
27 Jul 2009TL;DR: The authors examines the dramatic expansions and contractions of the institution of slavery and the impact of violence, economics, and civil society in the ebb and flow of slaves and antislavery during the last five centuries.
Abstract: In one form or another, slavery has existed throughout the world for millennia. It helped to change the world, and the world transformed the institution. In the 1450s, when Europeans from the small corner of the globe least enmeshed in the institution first interacted with peoples of other continents, they created, in the Americas, the most dynamic, productive, and exploitative system of coerced labor in human history. Three centuries later these same intercontinental actions produced a movement that successfully challenged the institution at the peak of its dynamism. Within another century a new surge of European expansion constructed Old World empires under the banner of antislavery. However, twentieth-century Europe itself was inundated by a new system of slavery, larger and more deadly than its earlier system of New World slavery. This book examines these dramatic expansions and contractions of the institution of slavery and the impact of violence, economics, and civil society in the ebb and flow of slavery and antislavery during the last five centuries.
138 citations
TL;DR: Scholars of slaves' lives in Latin America are giving renewed attention to the study of the law as discussed by the authors, and a specialized subfield of legal historians seems to be in the making.
Abstract: Scholars of slavery in Latin America are giving renewed attention to the study of the law. Although this literature is not as developed and sophisticated as in the United States, where slavery has been a central concern of legal historians for quite some time, a specialized subfield seems to be in the making. This is a welcome development. After all, every important aspect of slaves' lives in the Iberian colonies, from birth and nourishment to marriage, leisure, punishment, and rest, was regulated in theory by a vast, indeed massive, array of positive laws. Some of these regulations had been part of the traditional statutes of Castile for centuries, others were passed by the Crown or by local organs of administration and power.
98 citations
Book•
24 Nov 2014TL;DR: The Haitian Revolution and the slave society in the shadow of Haiti and Haiti's sugar revolution was studied in this article, where Haiti, Haiti, Cuba, and history were discussed. But the authors focused on the afterlives of antislavery and revolution.
Abstract: Introduction: the Haitian Revolution and Cuban slave society 1. 'A colony worth a kingdom': Cuba's sugar revolution in the shadow of Saint-Domingue 2. 'An excess of communication': the capture of news in a slave society 3. An unlikely alliance: Cuba and the black auxiliaries 4. Revolution's disavowal: Cuba and a counterrevolution of slavery 5. 'Masters of all': echoes of Haitian independence in Cuba 6. Atlantic crucible: 1808 between Haiti and Spain 7. A black kingdom of this world: making history, imagining revolution in Havana, 1812 Epilogue: Haiti, Cuba, and history: afterlives of antislavery and revolution.
85 citations
Book•
31 May 2017TL;DR: The American and Latin American independence movements emerged from distinctive settings and produced divergent results, but they were animated by similar ideas Patriotic political theorists throughout the Americas offered analogous critiques of imperial rule, designed comparable constitutions, and expressed common ambitions for their new nations' future relations with one another and the rest of the world as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The American and Latin American independence movements emerged from distinctive settings and produced divergent results, but they were animated by similar ideas Patriotic political theorists throughout the Americas offered analogous critiques of imperial rule, designed comparable constitutions, and expressed common ambitions for their new nations' future relations with one another and the rest of the world This book adopts a hemispheric perspective on the revolutions that liberated the United States and Spanish America, offering a new interpretation of their most important political ideas Simon argues that the many points of agreement among various revolutionary political theorists across the Americas can be attributed to the problems they encountered in common as Creoles - that is, as the descendants of European settlers born in the Americas He illustrates this by comparing the political thought of three Creole revolutionaries: Alexander Hamilton of the United States, Simon Bolivar of Venezuela, and Lucas Alaman of Mexico
81 citations
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11 Jan 2010TL;DR: This chapter discusses mosquito determinism and its limits in the context of Atlantic empires and Caribbean ecology, as well as revolutionary fevers in Haiti, New Granada, and Cuba, 1790-1898.
Abstract: Part I. Setting the Scene: 1. The argument: mosquito determinism and its limits 2. Atlantic empires and Caribbean ecology 3. Deadly fevers, deadly doctors Part II. Imperial Mosquitoes: 4. From Recife to Kourou: yellow fever takes hold, 1620-1764 5. Cartagena and Havana: yellow fever rampant Part III. Revolutionary Mosquitoes: 6. Lord Cornwallis vs anopheles quadrimaculatus, 1780-1 7. Revolutionary fevers: Haiti, New Granada, and Cuba, 1790-1898 8. Epilogue: vector and virus vanquished.
195 citations
Book•
27 Jul 2009TL;DR: The authors examines the dramatic expansions and contractions of the institution of slavery and the impact of violence, economics, and civil society in the ebb and flow of slaves and antislavery during the last five centuries.
Abstract: In one form or another, slavery has existed throughout the world for millennia. It helped to change the world, and the world transformed the institution. In the 1450s, when Europeans from the small corner of the globe least enmeshed in the institution first interacted with peoples of other continents, they created, in the Americas, the most dynamic, productive, and exploitative system of coerced labor in human history. Three centuries later these same intercontinental actions produced a movement that successfully challenged the institution at the peak of its dynamism. Within another century a new surge of European expansion constructed Old World empires under the banner of antislavery. However, twentieth-century Europe itself was inundated by a new system of slavery, larger and more deadly than its earlier system of New World slavery. This book examines these dramatic expansions and contractions of the institution of slavery and the impact of violence, economics, and civil society in the ebb and flow of slavery and antislavery during the last five centuries.
138 citations
TL;DR: Scholars of slaves' lives in Latin America are giving renewed attention to the study of the law as discussed by the authors, and a specialized subfield of legal historians seems to be in the making.
Abstract: Scholars of slavery in Latin America are giving renewed attention to the study of the law. Although this literature is not as developed and sophisticated as in the United States, where slavery has been a central concern of legal historians for quite some time, a specialized subfield seems to be in the making. This is a welcome development. After all, every important aspect of slaves' lives in the Iberian colonies, from birth and nourishment to marriage, leisure, punishment, and rest, was regulated in theory by a vast, indeed massive, array of positive laws. Some of these regulations had been part of the traditional statutes of Castile for centuries, others were passed by the Crown or by local organs of administration and power.
98 citations
Book•
24 Nov 2014TL;DR: The Haitian Revolution and the slave society in the shadow of Haiti and Haiti's sugar revolution was studied in this article, where Haiti, Haiti, Cuba, and history were discussed. But the authors focused on the afterlives of antislavery and revolution.
Abstract: Introduction: the Haitian Revolution and Cuban slave society 1. 'A colony worth a kingdom': Cuba's sugar revolution in the shadow of Saint-Domingue 2. 'An excess of communication': the capture of news in a slave society 3. An unlikely alliance: Cuba and the black auxiliaries 4. Revolution's disavowal: Cuba and a counterrevolution of slavery 5. 'Masters of all': echoes of Haitian independence in Cuba 6. Atlantic crucible: 1808 between Haiti and Spain 7. A black kingdom of this world: making history, imagining revolution in Havana, 1812 Epilogue: Haiti, Cuba, and history: afterlives of antislavery and revolution.
85 citations
Book•
31 May 2017TL;DR: The American and Latin American independence movements emerged from distinctive settings and produced divergent results, but they were animated by similar ideas Patriotic political theorists throughout the Americas offered analogous critiques of imperial rule, designed comparable constitutions, and expressed common ambitions for their new nations' future relations with one another and the rest of the world as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The American and Latin American independence movements emerged from distinctive settings and produced divergent results, but they were animated by similar ideas Patriotic political theorists throughout the Americas offered analogous critiques of imperial rule, designed comparable constitutions, and expressed common ambitions for their new nations' future relations with one another and the rest of the world This book adopts a hemispheric perspective on the revolutions that liberated the United States and Spanish America, offering a new interpretation of their most important political ideas Simon argues that the many points of agreement among various revolutionary political theorists across the Americas can be attributed to the problems they encountered in common as Creoles - that is, as the descendants of European settlers born in the Americas He illustrates this by comparing the political thought of three Creole revolutionaries: Alexander Hamilton of the United States, Simon Bolivar of Venezuela, and Lucas Alaman of Mexico
81 citations