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Finalist of the Paul E. Lovejoy Book Prize


IN THE
BLOOD
OF OUR BROTHERS

Abolitionism and the End of the Slave Trade in Spain’s Atlantic Empire, 1800–1870

JESÚS SANJURJO

THE AUTHOR | ORDER NOW! | BOOK TOUR | ESPAÑOL

Finalist of the Paul E. Lovejoy Book Prize

IN THE

BLOOD

OF

OUR

BROTHERS

Abolitionism and the End of the Slave Trade in Spain’s Atlantic Empire, 1800–1870

 

JESÚS SANJURJO

It was a

momentous night

It was a momentous night. The British Prime Minister William Wyndham Grenville rose from the red benches in the House of Lords to move a second reading of the Bill for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. “What right do we derive from any human institution, or any divine ordinance,” he asked, “to tear the natives of Africa, to deprive them by force of the means of laboring for their own advantage, and to compel them to labor for our profit?”¹ The legislation was passed. Watching from the chamber’s public gallery, a young Spaniard, Agustín de Argüelles, felt that he had witnessed an event of monumental significance. Little did he know that three years later he would attempt to put an end to the “infamous traffic” across the dominions of the Spanish crown.

 

Argüelles had arrived in London in 1806 and was working for the Spanish government as a secret agent. He would become one of the most important statesmen of his generation and a central figure in Spanish politics for more than forty years. The abolition of the slave trade and slavery would be a recurrent concern during his life, and in many ways his inconsistent convictions and thoughts, his changing attitudes and political action, mirror the complex ways in which Spaniards from both sides of the Atlantic thought about the slave trade and slavery.

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1802 - 1814

1802

1814

Early Spanish Anti–Slave Trade Discourses, 1802–1814

«Trading in the blood of our brothers is horrendous, atrocious and inhumane and the National Congress must not hesitate for a single moment between its high principles and the interest of certain individuals.»

 

— Agustín de Argüelles, 1810

Agustín de Argüelles and British politician and abolitionist William Wilberforce never met in person. Most likely, Wilberforce did not encounter his name until 1811, when Argüelles, member of parliament for the northern region of Asturias, become a central figure in Spanish politics. But Argüelles knew well who Wilberforce was. Wilberforce’s fight represented, in Argüelles’s mind, the very best of the British political system, capable of conducting a radical transformation from the benches of a freely elected parliament, respecting the tradition while embodying the passion of a true Jacobin. Argüelles admired Wilberforce, and if he had the chance, he wanted to become him.

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1814 - 1823

1814

1823

Defining a New Discourse on the Slave Trade

Absolutist Nuances, Toreno’s Commitment, and Varela’s Utopia

«The longer that the People have lost their liberty, the stronger becomes in them their anxiety to recover it.»

 

— Council of the Indies, 1816

The Spanish king Fernando VII was no abolitionist. Contrary to what he occasionally expressed, his political actions demonstrated a general disregard for the lives of those enslaved and transported across the ocean to labor for others for free in his dominions. However, the Spanish state was heterogeneous and exposed to the new ideas circulating in the Atlantic World. Abolitionism was so persuasive as to pervade the court of the absolutist king, with important consequences for the political counsel he was given at certain junctures.

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“A crucial addition to the history of abolitionism in the Age of Revolution.”
Manuel Barcia
Manuel BarciaUniversity of Leeds
“Grounded in a skillful close reading of rich archival materials, Sanjurjo sheds new light on Spanish liberalism.”
Lisa Surwillo
Lisa SurwilloStanford University
“A vital new addition to the study of abolitionism in the Atlantic World.”
Karen Racine
Karen RacineUniversity of Guelph
“A tremendous addition to the historiography.”
Gabriel Paquette
Gabriel PaquetteUniversity of Maine
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1823 - 1835

1823

1835

Abolitionism, Exile, and the “Necessary Evil” Argument, 1823–1835

«It is well known, that every river on the coast of Africa, where slaves are to be obtained, still swarms with slave-ships, bearing openly the flag of Spain.»

 

— Lord Palmerston, 1831

In April 1823, some 95,000 French soldiers invaded Spain in response to the call for help made by Fernando VII to the so-called Holy Alliance of the Austrian and Russian Empires and the kingdoms of France and Prussia. The host commanded by Louis Antoine of France, Duke of Angoulême, wrested control of the country without significant opposition. The Liberal government sought refuge in Cadiz, but on August 31 the French army conquered the city. Fernando was restored as absolute monarch, the Liberal constitution of 1812 annulled, along with all ancillary civil liberties. Thousands of Spaniards sought political asylum abroad, in many instances resuming work for their previous causes—or new ones— from their new havens.

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1833 - 1845

1833

1845

Political Exclusion, Racism, and Abolitionism in the 1840s

«In vain are my efforts to arouse any repugnance in myself at the thought that a man of color might sit at my side on these benches.»

 

— Domingo María Vila, 1837

By 1833 Spain was a very different country from the one that had resisted the Napoleonic invasion. The independence of most of the American territories, the civil war, the repression and the long exiles of some of its key Liberal political figures had created a much darker political climate, in which many pledged to preserve what was left of a shrinking empire at any cost— even if for some, like Agustín de Argüelles, this meant arguing against what they had passionately fought for twenty-five years before. The new regime restricted the liberties and rights of colonial subjects, excluded their representatives from the parliament, and ignored those “philanthropic theories” that had inspired the debates of Cadiz. All in the name of the preservation of what was left: Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines.

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1845 - 1868

1845

1868

The End of the Slave Trade in the Spanish Empire

«Horrible slavery! (. . .) Who in righteous anger does not burn? / Who, heartbroken, does not groan / and to God and the world cry for their help?»

 

— Concepción Arenal, 1866

The end of the slave trade had been regarded for decades as inevitable. The political efforts of slave owners, abolitionists, and authorities had concentrated on the question of just how long the trade could persist, rather than contestation of whether it could be tolerated indefinitely. In the two decades leading up to the 1860s, the forces opposed to abolitionism had profited from a general atrophy in this debate, and as such the Spanish slave trade of the late 1850s was as profitable and dynamic as ever before. There was little hope in the abolitionist camp of seeing a sudden end to the “odious commerce.”

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About the author

Dr Jesús Sanjurjo (BA Oviedo, MA PhD Leeds, FRHistS) is a Leverhulme & Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. Before joining Strathclyde, he taught at the universities of Cambridge, Cardiff and York. He earned his PhD in July 2018 from the University of Leeds, for which he was awarded an AHRC-WRoCAH Doctoral Studentship.

His first book, In the Blood of Our Brothers. Abolitionism and the End of the Slave Trade in Spain’s Atlantic Empire, 1800–1870 (University of Alabama Press, 2021) was selected as a finalist for the prestigious Paul E. Lovejoy Prize, an annual award provided by Brill and the Journal of Global Slavery for excellence and originality in a major work on any theme related to global slavery. In 2023, the Spanish edition of the monograph was published by Editorial Comares.

The book analyses how anti-slavery ideas were shaped, received, transformed and developed in the Spanish Empire during the nineteenth century. In doing so, this study reveals the complex development of abolitionist and anti-abolitionist discourses in the public life of Spain and the Spanish speaking-Caribbean up until the end of the transatlantic slave trade. It unravels the history of the ideological, political and diplomatic battle fought across the Atlantic for the abolition of the slave trade in Spain’s Atlantic empire.

More recently, he has co-edited, together with Professor Manuel Barcia, the book, New Approaches to the Comparative Abolition in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, which will be published by Routledge in Spring 2023. Taking the theme of ‘abolition’ as its point of departure, this book builds on the significant growth in scholarship on unfree labour in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds during the past two decades. The essays revisit some of the persistent problems posed by the traditional comparative literature on slavery and indentured labour, as well as identify new and promising areas for future research.

He has published various articles, special issues and book reviews, both in English and Spanish. His most recent publication, commissioned by the journal European History Quarterly, is the special issue ‘Centering Blackness in European History’, published in January 2023. This collection of essays engages with the methodological and intellectual challenges that we as historians face when centring the lives of Black people in the history of Europe. We conclude that no matter the difficulties, these new approaches have proven genuinely liberating and have allowed historians to shun traditional narratives that consistently ignore the intellectual, political, social and cultural contribution of Black people to European History.

His current major research project, ‘Black Soldiers of the Caribbean: Race, Slavery and Radical Politics,’ interrogates the intersection of Blackness, radical politics, slavery and self-emancipation in the Caribbean during the Age of Revolutions. It proposes that General Lorenzo’s uprising of 1836 in Santiago de Cuba is a fundamental episode in the history of revolutions in the Atlantic World and explores the motivations, fears and aspirations of the Black soldiers who participated in this failed rebellion. This project intends to contribute significantly to the debates on colonial slavery, the role of Black people (Black soldiers in particular) to imagine post-emancipation societies, and the relationship between liberal and modern thinking and the legacies of slavery.

sanjurjo.jpg

Dr Jesús Sanjurjo (BA Oviedo, MA PhD Leeds, FRHistS) is a Leverhulme & Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. Before joining Strathclyde, he taught at the universities of  Cambridge, Cardiff and York. He earned his PhD in July 2018 from the University of Leeds, for which he was awarded an AHRC-WRoCAH Doctoral Studentship.

His first book, In the Blood of Our Brothers. Abolitionism and the End of the Slave Trade in Spain’s Atlantic Empire, 1800–1870 (University of Alabama Press, 2021) was selected as a finalist for the prestigious Paul E. Lovejoy Prize, an annual award provided by Brill and the Journal of Global Slavery for excellence and originality in a major work on any theme related to global slavery. In 2023, the Spanish edition of the monograph was published by Editorial Comares.

The book analyses how anti-slavery ideas were shaped, received, transformed and developed in the Spanish Empire during the nineteenth century. In doing so, this study reveals the complex development of abolitionist and anti-abolitionist discourses in the public life of Spain and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean up until the end of the transatlantic slave trade. It unravels the history of the ideological, political and diplomatic battle fought across the Atlantic for the abolition of the slave trade in Spain’s Atlantic empire.

More recently, he has co-edited, together with Professor Manuel Barcia, the book, New Approaches to the Comparative Abolition in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, which will be published by Routledge in Spring 2023. Taking the theme of ‘abolition’ as its point of departure, this book builds on the significant growth in scholarship on unfree labour in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds during the past two decades. The essays revisit some of the persistent problems posed by the traditional comparative literature on slavery and indentured labour, as well as identify new and promising areas for future research.

He has published various articles, special issues and book reviews, both in English and Spanish. His most recent publication, commissioned by the journal European History Quarterly, is the special issue ‘Centering Blackness in European History’, published in January 2023. This collection of essays engages with the methodological and intellectual challenges that we as historians face when centring the lives of Black people in the history of Europe. We conclude that no matter the difficulties, these new approaches have proven genuinely liberating and have allowed historians to shun traditional narratives that consistently ignore the intellectual, political, social and cultural contribution of Black people to European History.

His current major research project, ‘Black Soldiers of the Caribbean: Race, Slavery and Radical Politics,’ interrogates the intersection of Blackness, radical politics, slavery and self-emancipation in the Caribbean during the Age of Revolutions. It proposes that General Lorenzo’s uprising of 1836 in Santiago de Cuba is a fundamental episode in the history of revolutions in the Atlantic World and explores the motivations, fears and aspirations of the Black soldiers who participated in this failed rebellion. This project intends to contribute significantly to the debates on colonial slavery, the role of Black people (Black soldiers in particular) in imagining post-emancipation societies, and the relationship between liberal and modern thinking and the legacies of slavery.

Contact

Developed by Jesús Sanjurjo in association with Pensar Consulting and Trisquelmedia.

With the support of the University of Cambridge, Cardiff University, Corpus Christi College, the University of Alabama Press, Comares Editorial and the Leverhulme and Isaac Newton trusts. 

Website Copyright © 2021 Dr Jesús Sanjurjo. All rights reserved. Inquiries about reproducing material from this website should be addressed to Dr Jesús Sanjurjo.

Texts: Copyright © 2021 University of Alabama Press. All rights reserved.

Website and book cover image: Section of ‘Seascape 6, with Alizarin Crimson’ by Jake Wood-Evans, 120 x 104 cm, oil on linen, 2018 | www.jakewoodevans.com

Book cover design: Michele Myatt Quinn.

Website illustrations: Cinthya Álvarez |  www.cinthyaalvarez.com

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Introduction

Spain officially abolished the slave trade in 1820, but its effective eradication took place only around fifty years later. An intricate system of slave traders, planters, financial backers, and public institutions introduced more than 700,000 African men, women, and children into Cuba, the most important remaining colony of a shrinking empire, between 1800 and 1870. The slave trade in the Spanish imperial territories was profitable until its very last day, and its abolition and much later eradication can be comprehensibly explained only as the consequence of a complex and fragmented process. Since the early abolitionist discourses advanced by Isidoro de Antillón, José María Blanco White, Miguel Guridi, and Argüelles in the 1800s and 1810s, to the antislav- ery poetry of Concepción Arenal in the second half of the 1860s, discourses against the slave trade and slavery adopted multiple forms and were advocated by Liberal and Absolutist, progressive and conservative, egalitarian and racist actors.

Early Spanish Anti–Slave Trade Discourses, 1802–1814

Early Spanish Anti–Slave Trade Discourses, 1802–1814

 

The 1811 parliamentary proposal of Argüelles to abolish the slave trade, which adopted and adapted the moral condemnation elaborated by the British abolitionist movement, was crucial in expressing a new ideological stance within Spanish political discourse. His initiative was the result of a coordinated strategy with the British authorities and was key to the construction of early abolitionist discourses in Spain. This chapter explores the political, ideological, and diplomatic influence of Britain in the development of early anti-slavery and anti–slave trade discourses in Spain, between 1802 and 1814, and demonstrates the centrality of Argüelles’s proposal.

The economic reforms applied by the Bourbon monarchs in the previous four decades of the eighteenth century laid the foundations for a new political, social, and economic order that brought crucial changes to Cuba. The freedom to import enslaved Africans, established by the Reales Cédulas (royal decrees) of 1789 and 1791, started an agrarian revolution in Cuba, which radically transitioned the conditions of production on the island from a small-holding and livestock model to a plantation system.

The 1811 parliamentary proposal of Argüelles to abolish the slave trade, which adopted and adapted the moral condemnation elaborated by the British abolitionist movement, was crucial in expressing a new ideological stance within Spanish political discourse. His initiative was the result of a coordinated strategy with the British authorities and was key to the construction of early abolitionist discourses in Spain. This chapter explores the political, ideological, and diplomatic influence of Britain in the development of early anti-slavery and anti–slave trade discourses in Spain, between 1802 and 1814, and demonstrates the centrality of Argüelles’s proposal. The economic reforms applied by the Bourbon monarchs in the previous four decades of the eighteenth century laid the foundations for a new political, social, and economic order that brought crucial changes to Cuba. The freedom to import enslaved Africans, established by the Reales Cédulas (royal decrees) of 1789 and 1791, started an agrarian revolution in Cuba, which radically transitioned the conditions of production on the island from a small-holding and livestock model to a plantation system.

Defining a New Discourse on the Slave Trade

In the aftermath of the restoration, Fernando VII’s government was forced by the British authorities to define a new official stance on the slave trade and to accommodate some aspects of an anti–slave trade rhetoric. This new policy was built upon a conservative tradition, but also on the ideological influence of British and early Spanish abolitionism. In practice the Absolutist regime continued to protect and even promote the continuity of the slave trade in the Spanish colonies. This chapter explores the characteristics of the new official discourse on the trade and the ideological inconsistencies reared within the Spanish imperial administration as part of this process.

During the short constitutional period of 1820–1823, both abolitionist and proslavery discourses found in the reestablished Cortes a prominent platform. Some important Liberal figures, such as José María Queipo de Llano (Count of Toreno), José María Calatrava, and Francisco Martínez de la Rosa, argued against the slave trade and, in collaboration with the British authorities, proposed different strategies to implement anti–slave trade legislation. The Cuban planters in the parliament advanced a consistently pro–slave trade discourse, urging the abrogation of all agreements reached by Spain that re- solved toward abolition. This chapter suggests that both sides failed to meet their conditions of victory. The anti–slave trade discourse cemented during the previous constitutional period (1810–1814) could not be eroded, but a combination of factors interfered decisively with the passage of effective anti–slave trade legislation. By 1823 slavery and the illicit slave trade were “indispensable” engines of the new colonial economic system.

Abolitionism, Exile, and the “Necessary Evil” Argument, 1823–1835

Chapter three of the book addresses the absence of abolitionist discourse produced by Spanish Liberal exiles in London. Considering the actions of the refugees provides us with an insight into the fragility of the abolitionist discourse that had developed within the Spanish Liberal tradition.

In addition, the third chapter explores the breaks and turns in the construction of abolitionist and antiabolitionist discourses in the aftermath of the formal prohibition of the slave trade in Spain. It charts the state of the reactionary turn against enforcement of abolition and concomitant developments in the expression of pro–slave trade ideas. In its last section, the chapter unpicks the threads of the various processes leading to the drafting of an anti–slave trade treaty in 1835 and the unexpected long-lasting consequences that this fresh agreement would have in consolidating the traffic of enslaved Africans into Cuba and Puerto Rico.

Political Exclusion, Racism, and Abolitionism in the 1840s

In this context, new antislavery activism and voices emerged. But not all of them came about in an attempt to protect the dignity of the enslaved Africans. A new anti–slave trade discourse, articulated by key Cuban intellectuals, emerged as a political response to Spain’s inertia. José Antonio Saco publicly advocated the eradication of the slave trade in Cuba as a necessary first step to “whitening” the island, promoting its economy, and advancing political rights for its white population. Saco’s racist anti–slave trade ideas were to become the most successful strain of abolitionism to operate in Cuba during the 1840s.

Chapter 4 of In the Blood of Our Brothers explores the construction of abolitionist and antiabolitionist discourses following the proclamation of the Constitution of 1837, the impact of Britain’s “abrasive” diplomatic strategy, and the reaction to the political and military repression that followed the conspiracy of La Escalera.

The End of the Slave Trade in the Spanish Empire

The final chapter of the book traces the impact of US annexationism with regard to Cuba in the debates on the continuity of the slave trade and the construction of Spain’s “balancing-act strategy,” by which the Spanish authorities managed to disregard British demands for more effective legislation against the slave trade and simultaneously succeeded in persuading London against the pursuit of unilateral action. It tackles how “national dignity” and a “sense of honor” characterized a new phase in the anti–slave trade discourse that operated within the Spanish colonial administration during the 1850s and 1860s.

Finally, the chapter charts the international and domestic factors leading to the end of the slave trade and how the Spanish political actors reassessed their position and built a new narrative that stressed the need for change in order to preserve what was left of a decaying empire.