Slavery & Puerto Rico

With the semester over, I have started to work on a chapter that looks at people abducted into slavery in Puerto Rico and Vieques. One of the transformations I am interested in is the change on migration policies on the island. During parts of the eighteenth century, enslaved people fled to the island to seek sanctuary from slavery on the neighboring islands. It was not unique in that regard, of course, as other parts of the Spanish empire had similar systems of sheltering runaways. Yet by the early nineteenth century, slaveholders sought out the island to build new plantation complexes. Many of those forced migration violated laws of the French or British empire, which is the subject of my book.

Not a comprehensive photo or list, but the major title’s I’ve been at work at are:

• Baralt, Guillermo A. Slave Revolts in Puerto Rico : Conspiracies and Uprisings, 1795-1873. Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2007.

• Cuchí Coll, Isabel, y Cayetano Coll y Toste. Historia de la esclavitud en Puerto Rico (información y documentos). San Juan: P. R., Sociedad de Autores Puertorriqueños, 1972.

• Díaz Soler, Luis M. Historia de la esclavitud negra en Puerto Rico. 4. edición. San Juan: Editorial Universitaria, Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1974.

• Dorsey, Joseph C. Slave Traffic in the Age of Abolition : Puerto Rico, West Africa, and the Non-Hispanic Caribbean, 1815-1859. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003.

• Figueroa, Luis A. (Luis Antonio). Sugar, Slavery, & Freedom in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.

• Fradera, Josep Maria, and Christopher Schmidt-Nowara. Slavery and Antislavery in Spain’s Atlantic Empire. New York: Berghahn Books, 2013.

• Scarano, Francisco A. (Francisco Antonio). Sugar and Slavery in Puerto Rico : The Plantation Economy of Ponce, 1800-1850. Madison, Wis: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984.

• Schmidt-Nowara, Christopher. Empire and Antislavery : Spain, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, 1833-1874. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999.

• University of Puerto Rico . Centro de Investigaciones Históricas. et al. La Institución de la esclavitud y su crisis, 1823-1873. San Juan, P.R: Centro de Investigaciones Históricas, Facultad de Humanidades, Universidad de Puerto Rico, Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, 1974.