AFRICAN SLAVERY IN COLONIAL LATIN AMERICA

I. Introduction: Comparative Perspectives

A. Latin American–United States (Frank Tannenbaum, Slave and Citizen, 1946; Alejandro de la Fuente, 2004)
B. Portuguese–Spanish

II. Dimensions of Slavery in the Americas

A. Forms of Labor

1. Plantation agriculture: numerically most important
2. Diversity as well: skilled, domestic etc.

B. Geography: Coasts and cities

C. Demography: Approximate Slave Population, circa 1800 (the first number is living slave population, in parentheses are number imported to date, the third is the ratio of slaves to free people of color)

Caribbean: 1,042,000 (total imports not available)

French: 575,000 19:1
British: 467,000 35:1
Spanish: 80,000 1:2

Brazil: 1,000,000 (2,5000,000) 2.5:1

USA: 575,000 (350,000) 18:1

Mainland Span Am: 271,000 (900,000) 1:2.5

III. Slavery and the Catholic Church

To what degree did the Catholic Church provide protection for African slaves?

A. Protections

1. Souls as well as commodities
2. Access to sacraments: baptism, marriage
3. Religious brotherhoods
4. Priests denounce abuses
5. Religious holidays

B. Limitations

1. Marriages rare
2. Godparents: not owners
3. Church owned slaves and did not call for abolition

IV. Slavery and the Law

What legal protections existed for slaves and who was best able to claim them?

A. Protections and Limits

1. Judges hear complaints
2. Option to seek a new owner
3. Relative access to courts
4. Better enforcement in Spanish America compared to Brazil

B. Manumission

1. Conditions favoring manumission

a. different legal systems and traditions
b. access to other labor

i. Indigenous labor?
ii . Access to slave market?

c. ability of slave to acquire funds

2. Why higher rates for women, children, mulattoes? (Finished on Nov. 5, 2009)

a. owners more willing to sell them, especially children who often died before reaching productive age
b. family strategy to buy them first
c. prices lower for women and children
d. male slaves paid higher wages, but slaveowner had greater control; female slaves earned less, but owner had less knowledge
e. mulattoes: children of slaveowners, because born in Americas, contacts and knowledge

V. Slaves’ Quest for Freedom

A. Manumission: not always upward mobility; in 19th-century Rio, standard of living for free people of color lower on the average than for slaves.
B. Escape: individual or collective

Questions:

To what degree did the Catholic Church provide protection for African slaves?

What legal protections existed for slaves and who was best able to claim them?

I.D. Terms:

manumission

On the Transatlantic Slave Trade, visit: http://slavevoyages.org/tast/index.faces

Images painted by travelers to Brazil:

For more images, visit: http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/Slavery/index.php

“Slave Women from Different African Nations”
Slave market
Sugar mill
Diamond Mining
Diamond Washing
Shoemaker with slaves
Porters
Sedan Chair
Patriarchal household
Peddlers
Dance

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Last updated October 27, 2008
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