Interview on Book “Slave Society in Cuba” by Prof Franklin Knight
Thanks very much for agreeing to be interviewed on your book “Slave Society in Cuba during the Nineteenth Century”. The book is based on your doctoral dissertation and was published in 1970, 40 years ago.
Yes, it is hard to imagine that the book has been published so long ago. I think that it has been out of print for some years now, but the remarkable thing was that the University of Wisconsin Press kept it in print for so long.
Is it a common practice for a doctoral dissertation to be published as a book? How did you go about getting the book published? How many copies were sold? How can one obtain a copy of the book?
Many doctoral dissertations end up as books after being revised, so there was nothing unusual in my case. My doctoral dissertation committee was quite impressed by the work and recommended it to the University Press. They sent me a letter saying they were interested and would I give them first refusal on the revised manuscript– that is send it to them first. After revising it over the period of a year I did so. Their anonymous outside readers were impressed and the press decided to publish the book. As a first book with the copyright in the hands of the press, there was not much I could do about it. I cannot recall how many copies were sold – probably some 5,000 between hardcover and paperbacks. Somewhere in the chaos of my records I have the information supplied by the press. Unfortunately the book has been out of print for some years now and is hard to find, although some used book stores may very well have the odd copy around. Amazon.com has a number of used copies at various prices.
Historical reality does not change, but its interpretation does change, subject as it is to political and cultural influences. How has the historical interpretation of slave societies – in Cuba and elsewhere – changed over the last 40 years?
The historical interpretation of slave societies has changed dramatically over the past 40 years, and I am proud to say that Slave Society in Cuba (SSC) was responsible for some of those changes. SSC not only challenged the insupportable view that differences of amelioration existed across slave systems in the Americas but suggested that the most insightful manner of examining slave systems was systadially (that is, by comparable stages of development) rather than synchronically (on the same time scale.) Then there was the focus on resistance, but that remains a rather constricted view of looking at the complexity of social formation and development. Today slavery is viewed as one among several forms of coerced labor organizations in which slave societies vary considerably even within the same imperial system and where meaningful differences can be made between slave societies and slave-holding societies (in which the role of slavery is less important economically or socially.) The normal pattern of evolution is for slaveholding societies to evolve into slave societies.
What are the outstanding commonalities and the salient different between slave societies in the Caribbean, Central America, South America, and the Southern United States?
This is a huge and complex question. It can be approached geographically as well as temporally. The United States was the most unusual system, and the only one that maintained and expanded itself from endogamous reproduction. British North America/USA imported only about 5% of the total Africans transported to the Americas. The Caribbean and Brazil imported about 45% each. But within both territories were islands or areas where Africans did not inundate European settlers. Of great significance was the time when Africans arrived in the New World. Many of the earliest arrivals such as those who accompanied Christopher Columbus or the early Spanish explorers were free men, or at least semi-free men. Perceptions and daily experiences differed depending on whether the people of African ancestry comprised a marginal exotic group, a minority, or a majority of the local population. Eventually a combination of time, place and circumstances determined the daily conditions of slavery across the hemisphere. Location and economic activity greatly influenced patterns of slavery. Sugar producing areas were, generally, the most deleterious for the enslaved.
Can you explain the research methodology used by modern-day historians? How has the research methodology been impacted by the advances in computers?
Research today is much more sophisticated than forty years ago. Primary sources are getting richer and more varied by the day. Computers and digitalization have enabled the accessibility and examination of a vast amount of information that would previously have been impossible. DNA testing now permits connections previously only guessed at. Evidentiary sources have moved beyond documents to involve bones, graveyards, architecture, tools and weapons, and art. The period of the slave trade was too recent for effective carbon testing however. Today’s researcher also needs to be multi-lingual to consult the deposits in archives outside the United States and Great Britain and its English-speaking ex-colonies. Local archival sources have also greatly enriched our historical repertoire and we can see the superb results of this rich new variety in works on Jamaica by Barry Higman as well as Brian Moore and Michelle Johnson, or Rebecca Scott on Cuba, or Jane Landers on the Atlantic Diaspora – to cite but a few examples .
What events and causes leading up to and following the British occupation of Cuba in 1763? What impact – if any - did the British occupation have on subsequebt development in Cuba?
France and Spain were allied during the Seven Years War (1756-1763) a major international political dispute. The British dominated the oceans and Havana was a major collection point for the much envied Spanish gold and silver brought in mainly from Mexico and Peru. But the British occupation provided a major fillip for the agricultural transformation of Cuba – the first Cuban sugar revolution. After the British occupation Spain and its American colonies would never be the same again. The most dramatic change was in Cuba. Of course the same could be said of the British and French. The former lost their North American possessions except Canada between 1776 and 1783. The French loss was greater. The lost the richest colony in the world at that time – Saint-Domingue—to revolution. The loss eventually led to the French sale of the vast Louisiana territory to the United States giving it access to the Pacific Ocean and continental span. The Saint-Domingue/Haitian revolution also destroyed a considerable part of the French army thereby effectively disabling its performance in the Iberian campaigns as well as at Waterloo.
At the end of the Introduction of the book, you allude to the political isolation of Cuba with the words: “May the present restraints prove temporary”. Did you in 1970 anticipate that the isolation imposed on Cuba by the United States Government would last with such severity up until the present day? [page xxi].
In my optimism of the late 1960s I was confident that enlightened political leadership in the USA would lead to restored diplomatic relations with Cuba and improved relations with Latin America during the following decade, especially since the USA was already on the run in Viet Nam. Well, time really is longer than rope, as the South Africans say.
Towards the end of the concluding chapter, you intimate that minimal progress was made in eradicating the stain of slavery in Cuba until the advent of the Fidel Castro. What progress has been made in this regard in the intervening years by the Castro Government? [page 193].
This is a sad story. Castro removed institutional support for racism and discrimination in the early years of the revolution and the results were manifest until the late 1980s. But the Special Period in Time of Peace following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 seems to have restored the pre-1959 status quo. Yet it is fair to say that in Cuba there is not now any official support for discrimination based on race and ethnicity. Despite the enormous changes in the past few decades, I am not as optimistic about race relations anywhere in the Americas as I once was.
What was the rationale for the hostility Britain exhibited to the slave trade after the end in 1807 of their involvement? Why were they so determined – such as by deploying naval squadrons in various areas - to eradicate the slave trade not only in the South Atlantic (in their former sphere of influence) but also the Arab slave trade in the Indian Ocean (where they had no prior involvement)?
That is simple. Great Britain found that it could buy sugar cheaper in a free trade sugar market than continue to support subsidized West Indian sugar that was limited in quantity and high in price. And as an industrializing country Britain began to see that ex-slaves were potentially an elastic source of good customers if they had disposable wages and money. To be successful free trade had to be universal. That is why the British aggressively pursued their policy of abolishing the trade in slaves but seemed to care very little for the condition of the freed ex-slaves.
You describe the Spanish colonial policy as fluctuating between indecision and indifference. How would you describe and contrast the colonial policies of the other imperial nations: Britain, France, Holland, and United States? [page 155].
The principal difference in colonial policy between Spain and the Northwest Europeans was that Spain had more than 100 years head start in an area which was initially considered as the private domain of the monarchs of Castile. Europeans had much to learn about trans-oceanic transport and administration. It was a gradual process of trial and error. France, England and Holland initiated American colonialism under various auspices, mostly commercial consortia. They could quickly borrow the Spanish experience and leap-frog them. All imperial systems evolved over time. The Dutch, French and English converted some of their early settler colonies into crude forms of exploitation entities. The Spanish were slow to do so largely because of the wealth generated by bullion – gold and silver – that until the eighteenth century was regarded as the principal measures of wealth. By the end of the eighteenth century, as Adam Smith demonstrated in the Wealth of Nations, wealth was calculated in trade volume rather than hoarded bullion. This change gave the Caribbean region great economic significance as the rapid development of French Saint Domingue or English Jamaica demonstrated during the eighteenth century.
There is a marked distinction in Cuba between whites born in Cuba and whites born abroad (mostly in Spain). Would you agree this distinction was much less pronounced – to the extent of not being relevant – in the other colonies in the Caribbean? Would you mind explaining the reason for this distinction? [page 88].
I would not agree. Puerto Rico was a bit like Cuba and both demonstrated less pronounced anti-Creole hostility than on the mainland. In nineteenth century Cuba many Creoles had reason to feel superior to Iberian born individuals. Cuba also had a relatively large home-grown aristocratic element. But the distinction was not confined to the Spanish sphere of the Americas. One only has to read Lady Nugent’s Journal written during her short stay in Jamaica to realize the similarity in snobbery. Of course the irony is that Lady Nugent was born in New Jersey – and not even in one of the better parts of that state. Moreau de Saint Méry shows similar attitude in French Saint-Domingue in the later eighteenth century. The historian, Jeremy Popkin, captures some of this in his book, Facing Racial Revolution Eyewitness accounts of the Haitian Revolution. Even after they got defeated, Europeans in general still held a less than favorable view of people born in the overseas colonies.
I was much amused by the phrase “obedezco pero no cumplo” (I obey but I do not execute) uttered by a Spanish colonial administrator. Would you agree that this sentiment is not unique to Spanish colonial administrators but is widespread today in corporate and governmental and even academic institutions? [page 122].
Yes, I would agree – and even admit that there is less inclination nowadays to obey anyone.
How come Cuba, Santo Domingo, and Puerto Rico were bypassed by the avalanche of liberation from Spanish control that swept South America in the early nineteenth century?
Islands were more vulnerable to naval forces than continents at that time in the Americas. The main cause of the delay in the nineteenth century however was the determination of the Cuban and Puerto Rican elites to develop a slave system and their perceived need to have the security of a large army such as that of their metropolis, Spain, so that they might avoid the calamitous example of French Saint-Domingue in 1791. Also it was harder and more expensive to build a slave society after the abolition of the British and American slave trades in 1808.
The triangular trade, involving the continents of Europe, Africa and the Americas and centered on the Atlantic Ocean, is a mainstay of the popular history and folklore of the slave trade. Yet in your book you say that the triangular trade is the grossest simplification of historical reality. Now in the period and location covered by your book, the Cuban slave trade is bilateral, from Cuba to Africa and back. But the Atlantic slave trade extended from the sixteenth through to the nineteenth century. What is the basis in general for the claim of grossest simplification? [page 49].
By the end of the seventeenth century ships became more specialized for the cargo they were transporting and so it was not really viable to have a triangular trade. Most trade, therefore were bi-lateral. Slave ships needed a lot of water as well as live animals – which was the way they got their meat – on the hooves, as it were. Those ships were in no condition to transport sugar and other commodities to Europe or anywhere else, although some did carry exchange commodities, mostly food and recreational products between the Americas and Africa. With current data we can follow the routes of slave ships, so reconstituting routes, captains, cargoes, and logistics is much easier. But we have known for a very long time, since Elizabeth Donnan started her compilation of slave ship records, that the notion of a triangular trade represented excessive simplification to the point of error.
One could conduct a study of the African origins of a country such as Jamaica by analyzing the slave ship records where the arrival port is in Jamaica. Has such a study been attempted?
The answer is absolutely. Paul Lovejoy and his colleagues at York University have been meticulously collecting slave records for some time now, and David Eltis and his colleagues at Emory University have produced an amazing sequence of slave ship data available on CD-Rom. It is now possible to reconstruct slave ship routes and secure much new data on their passengers. DNA analysis is also being used to shed light on the African origins of the black population in a former slave country. New researchers in Africa are also doing ethnographic studies of locales where slaves were acquired and the impact of slave trading on local communities. Africans were, after all, necessary participants in the transatlantic slave trade since the African environment was hostile to large-scale long-term European residence before the nineteenth century.
It seems that a historian needs to be a master of numerous academic trades in the humanities: politics, economics, sociology, languages, anthropology, etc. Analyzing the agricultural-industrial complex of the Cuban sugar industry shows that it is necessary to delve further into the fields into of science, engineering, and business management. The fact finding tour conducted by Francisco de Arango y Parreño of the sugar industries in Barbados and Jamaica in 1795 would in today’s business parlance be called “benchmarking”. It seems that Cuba took full advantage of benchmarking comparisons of the sugar industries in Barbados and Jamaica to put their own sugar industry on the path to economic dominance. [page 20].
I guess that the Cuban activity could be termed “benchmarking” but it also constituted an early form of research and development. The Cubans did this until 1828 when the commissioners confidently asserted that in their opinion the Cuban industry was ahead of any of its Caribbean competitors. There are many observations here. One is that in any competitive industry up-to-date information represents a major factor. Another is that complacency undermines competitiveness. Yet another is that continuous research and development pays great dividends. The number of sugar production industrial patents issued to Cubans during the nineteenth century is quite impressive. It is also worth recalling that Cuba was the second country in the Americas to introduce the railroad and steam power as factors in agricultural production. Applying the results of the industrial revolution to sugar production in Cuba allowed a single Cuban factory to out-produce the entire British West Indies by the end of the nineteenth century.
A fact finding tour 30 years later by the Cubans shows flaws in the Jamaican sugar industry: lack of awareness of the latest chemical developments in England, and shipping unrefined sugar instead going the additional step of processing refined sugar. [page 20].
Cuba realized that they could exploit their comparative advantages of land and technology and dominate the sugar market – and they did in the later nineteenth century. Yet even as they were focused on out-producing their Caribbean neighbors they seemed to have lost sight of the changing nature of the sugar market in the nineteenth century. By 1850 more sugar was produced more cheaply from sugar beet than from sugar cane. Beet takes about 120 days from planting to harvest and is simpler to process than sugar cane that needs nine to fifteen months and a much more complicated manufacturing process.
This is the end if Part I of the interview. Part II of the interview will follow.
References
1. Franklin W. Knight, “Slave Society in Cuba during the Nineteenth Century”, University of Wisconsin Press, 1970.
2. Franklin W. Knight, “The Caribbean: The Genesis of a Fragmented Nationalism”, Second Edition, Oxford University Press, 1990.
3. Franklin W. Knight, “A Caribbean Quest for the Muse of History”, pp 174-203, “Becoming Historians”, James M. Banner and John R. Gillis editors, Chicago University Press, 2009.
