Authors: Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Gwendolyn M. Hall
ISBN-13: 9780807120835, ISBN-10: 0807120839
Format: Paperback
Publisher: LSU Press
Date Published: June 1996
Edition: 1st Edition
First published in 1971, Gwendolyn Midlo Hall's comparison of two developing sugar plantation systems - St. Domingue's (Haiti) in the eighteenth century and Cuba's in the nineteenth century - changed the focus in comparative slavery studies: the prevailing static treatment, which assumed that the European colonizer determined the nature of slave systems and that slaves were powerless and insignificant beneficiaries of the paternalism of Latin American masters, gave way to a dynamic, multifaceted approach employed by Hall. In Social Control in Slave Plantation Societies, Hall establishes that slavery and race relations in any given time and place were determined by strategic needs; the raison d'etre of the colony; evolving economic and demographic factors; and above all, by the need to preserve social order in colonies where the slave population was large, active, competent, resourceful, and independent-minded. She delineates a pattern of racism rising and entrenching itself as a matter of public policy, as a means of bolstering the exploitative system - a pattern that recurred throughout the hemisphere.
**** Reprint of the work originally published by Johns Hopkins U. Press in 1971 and distinguished by inclusion in BCL3. Based on Hall's thesis, U. of Michigan. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Preface | ||
Symbols | ||
I | Methods and Overview | 1 |
II | The Problem of the Survival of the Slave Population | 13 |
Mortality and Overwork | 16 | |
Suicide among Slaves | 20 | |
Growing Concern about Survival of the Slave Population | 23 | |
Institutionalization of the Illegal African Slave Trade | 28 | |
III | Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion | 32 |
European Belief in Witchcraft | 37 | |
Efforts to Convert the Slaves Deteriorate | 40 | |
Abandonment of Religious Education of Estate Slaves in Nineteenth-Century Cuba | 42 | |
Religious Education and Social Stability | 50 | |
IV | Black Resistance and White Repression | 52 |
Slave Revolts in the Spanish Caribbean | 52 | |
The Conspiracy of the Ladder | 57 | |
Systematic Resistance in St. Domingue | 62 | |
Theft and the Market | 66 | |
Murder | 68 | |
Poison: Real or Imaginary? | 71 | |
Herbalism in Africa | 73 | |
Attempts to Control the Slaves | 74 | |
Enforcement of Security Measures | 78 | |
V | Protective Aspects of Slave Law | 81 |
The French System | 84 | |
Spanish Slave Law before the Bourbon Reforms | 89 | |
The Street Slaves | 90 | |
Marriage and the Family | 92 | |
The Bourbon Reform Period | 96 | |
Spanish Slave Codes of the Reform Period | 102 | |
The Myth of Protective Spanish Slave Law | 105 | |
Slave Law of Nineteenth-Century Cuba | 108 | |
The Impact of Corruption in Public Office | 110 | |
VI | Emancipation and the Status of the Free | 113 |
The Predominance of Military Considerations during the Pre-plantation Period | 114 | |
Policy toward Emancipation and the Needs of Plantation Agriculture | 119 | |
The Evolution of French Policy toward Emancipation | 122 | |
The Evolution of Spanish Policy toward Emancipation | 124 | |
The Impact of the Haitian Revolution upon Racial Policies in Nineteenth-Century Cuba | 125 | |
Growing Hostility toward the Free-Colored Population in Nineteenth-Century Cuba | 127 | |
The Emancipados | 132 | |
VII | Racism as an Instrument of Social and Political Domination | 136 |
Origin of the Colored Elite of St. Domingue | 139 | |
Social Conflict between the Colored and White Elite of St. Domingue | 144 | |
Manipulation of Racial Conflict in the Face of the Independence Threat | 147 | |
Epilogue | 152 | |
Bibliography | 155 | |
Index | 161 |