March 22, 2015
Today is Emancipation Day, a Puerto Rican holiday. It celebrates the day, in 1873, when slaves were freed on the island.
Emancipation came relatively late to the Spanish Antilles. The Abolition Law ended slavery in the British West Indies in 1834, with a six year transition period. In the French Antilles, slavery ended on April 27, 1848, with a national proclamation from Paris. In the US, of course, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation as a presidential proclamation and executive order, on January 1, 1863, during the height of the Civil War. The reasons for the Spanish tardiness had to do with the strength of the English Abolitionists, the popularity of a liberal movement in France, a defeat of the Spanish Army in the Dominican Republic, in 1860, and revolutions in Cuba and Puerto Rico in the 1860s. Oh, and sugar cane.
Sugar was first extracted from sugar cane in New Guinea, about 8,000 BC, and the technology flowered in India, particularly during the Gupta dynasty, about 350 AD. The Persians brought the idea of sugar (the word is derived from the Arabic, sukkar) to the Middle East, and it was introduced (as was coffee) to Europe during the period of Arab expansion. In response to growing demand, the Portuguese started sugar cane plantations in Madeira and the Algarve; the Spanish in Andalusia.
Sugar cane plantations are labor intensive in both growing and harvesting. The cane is bulky and difficult to transport, meaning that sugar extraction was most economically done on or near the plantation. The conversion of cane to sugar began with crushing operations to extract the cane juice, and then several boiling operations to produce the crystallized sugar. Sugar cane plantations required a cheap source of labor, and African slaves were introduced to the Portuguese and Spanish plantations as early as the 1440s. The African slave trade began, and was largely driven by, the labor needs of sugar cane plantation owners.
Christopher Columbus brought sugar cane with him on his second voyage to the New World, to Hispaniola, in 1493. About the same time, the Portuguese introduced the cane plant to Brazil. There was thus an early understanding the Caribbean and South American climates were well-suited for sugar cane production, given the plant’s requirement for relatively high temperatures and copious amounts of water. This also set the stage for trade in African slaves to the Americas and the Caribbean.
The early sugar industry in the New World was dominated by the British, French and Portuguese, with the Dutch and Danish colonies playing minor roles, as the Spanish were more interested in exploiting the mineral resources of Mexico and, especially, Peru. The British plantation owners, in Barbados and then Jamaica, developed essentially sugar cane monocultures, and had to import food, draft animals and an increasing number of African slaves to maintain production. The French followed suit, and soon their colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) became a large sugar exporter. The French efforts were helped by trade laws more rational than the British sugar laws, especially in taxation polices, and that the French allowed the export of the semi-refined sucre blanc rather than the cheaper but less desirable muscovado form of semi-refined sugar.
The Caribbean sugar economies were fuelled by increases in demand for sugar throughout Europe, but especially in England. Consumption tripled between 1700 and 1740. Sugar became the most valuable commodity in Caribbean and European trade. While the British and French colonies were profiting from the sugar trade, the islands of the Spanish Antilles lagged behind. In fact, in the 1700s, Puerto Rico was essentially an impoverished island, with military and government officials but little or no agricultural exports.
The English Abolitionists gained strength in Parliament, and against the strong objections of the plantation owners, passed, in 1833, the Abolition Law, which declared slavery illegal in British colonies, starting on August 1, 1834. This meant, by one census, 664,970 slaves were freed and converted to an apprenticeship arrangement, to last no more than six years. This arrangement proved difficult to manage, and the Abolition Law was amended and freed all slaves in the British West Indies, as of August 1, 1838. The French followed suit with their abolition proclamation of April 27, 1848.
The British and French plantation owners experienced labor shortages, and began to import contracted laborers, from Sierra Leone, Ireland, England, Germany, the US, Canada, and Portugal, especially Madeira. Plantation owners in Trinidad imported 2,500 laborers from China as well, but the labor shortages persisted and sugar production decreased in the British and French colonies.
Puerto Rico and especially Cuba expanded existing and began new sugar cane plantations to meet the unmet demand. By 1860, Cuba had become the largest sugar exporter, producing 541,695 tons for export. Puerto Rico was second, producing in that year more than 50,000 tons, while Jamaica exported 26,040 tons, a significant drop from earlier levels.
But plantation owners in the Spanish Antilles had their own sets of troubles. The British had forced Spain to sign treaties to stop the trade in African slaves, and the Royal Navy searched vessels entering Cuban and Puerto Rican waters. The Puerto Ricans managed for a while by bringing in slaves from the French colonies, while Cuba began importing Chinese laborers. Plantation owners on both islands still attempted to smuggle African slaves but that source diminished over time.
In Spain, a liberal government had taken power in the 1850s and worked slowly to address the issues of the Reformistas. The Cortes (Spanish parliament) in 1865 formed the Comite de Informacion de Ultramar (Foreign Affairs Committee) to study the labor and other problems in the Antilles and make recommendations to the Spanish government. The Comite was composed of 20 representatives, 16 from Cuba and four from Puerto Rico, each selected by a special election held in March 1866.
The Comite finished their work in 1867, but by that time the conservatives were back in power and the Comite’s recommendations were ignored. Indeed, the Spanish levied burdensome new taxes on plantation owners.
Meanwhile, Spain had fought an unsuccessful action to regain the Dominican Republic, and revolutionaries on both Puerto Rico and Cuba, upset by the Comites lack of success, took note of Spain’s presumed weakness. A Cuban revolt began in 1867, in Bayamo, in eastern Cuba. In August of 1868, more than 600 armed revolutionaries captured the town officials and Spanish merchants in Lares, and proclaimed the birth of the Republic of Puerto Rico. The Spanish mobilized quickly and crushed the revolt, at the cost of 551 lives. The Cuban insurrection was more successful, in part because of the support of the Cuban Junta, based in the US, that provided them arms and funds.
Spain, not wanting to lose more income from her colonies, mobilized to maintain control of Cuba, a move made more palatable by rumors that the US, under President U S Grant, in response to domestic pressures from abolitionists and hawkish newspapers, was preparing to annex Cuba. The Spanish foreign minister, Segismundo Moret, proposed abolition as one means of retaining control over the Antilles.
In any event, slavery was crumbling in Puerto Rico, as owners realized that salaried workers were cheaper than slaves. The number of slaves fell from 41,000 in 1869, to 31,041 in December 1872. The Cortes finally passed the Law for the Abolition of Slavery in Puerto Rico which, when it took effect on March 22, 1873, freed the last of the 29,335 slaves on the island.
Cuba, in the midst of what became known as the First Ten Years War of Independence, greeted the news with widespread protests, as Cuban sugar production was increasing even during the war. Cuban slaves and Chinese laborers were finally freed in February, 1878, as part of the Zanjon Pact, after the Spanish army defeated the revolutionaries.
So, the next time you put sugar in your morning coffee, think about sugar cane plantations and the peoples that system displaced around the world. And be thankful that most of the world’s sugar now comes from sugar beets.
References: For more information, see the Wikipedia entries for sugar and history of sugar.
See also From Columbus to Castro – The History of the Caribbean by Eric Williams, Random House NY, 1970.
I found History of the Caribbean, by Frank Moya Pons, Markus Weiner, Princeton, NJ, 2007, to be informative and in all ways a pleasure to read.
Our friend Vionette told me of several public works of art celebrating emancipation, I’ll find them and add images to the post.