Transatlantic Bondage

Slavery and Freedom in Spain, Santo Domingo, and Puerto Rico

Edited by Lissette Acosta Corniel

Subjects: Caribbean Studies, History, Cultural Studies, Black Studies, Hispanic Studies
Series: SUNY series, Afro-Latinx Futures
Hardcover : 9781438497938, 304 pages, June 2024
Expected to ship: 2024-06-01

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Table of contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction
Lissette Acosta Corniel

1. Spanish Slave Legislation: From Slavery to Abolition in Spain and the Americas
Aurelia Martín Casares

2. Legislation and Slavery from a Local Perspective: Slaves in the Municipal Ordinances of Extremadura, 1500–1800
Rocío Periáñez Gómez

3. Slavery and the Pursuit of Freedom in Sixteenth-Century Santo Domingo
Richard Lee Turits

4. African Slavery and Laws in La Española: The Beginnings of Modern Colonization in the Americas (1520s–1540s)
Anthony R. Stevens-Acevedo

5. Black Women in Sixteenth-Century Santo Domingo: Free, Enslaved, Founders, and Explorers
Lissette Acosta Corniel

6. Transgressing Social, Gender, and Sexual Norms in Colonial Santo Domingo (1716–1719)
Jacqueline Jiménez Polanco

7. Fostering a Sense of Community in Seventeenth-Century Puerto Rico: The Godparenthood of Enslaved Infants, Children, and Adults in San Juan, 1672–1706
David M. Stark

8. A Tradition of Contraband: Secreting and Silencing the Illegal Importation and Exploitation of Enslaved Africans in Spanish Colonial Puerto Rico
Jorge L. Chinea

Contributors
Index

Related Media

A deeply researched, pathbreaking collection of original and newly translated essays on slavery in Spain, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico.

Description

This groundbreaking volume addresses the enslavement and experiences of Black Africans in Spain and the Spanish Caribbean, particularly La Española (or Hispaniola) and Puerto Rico, two of the earliest colonies. Spanning nearly four hundred years and rooted in extensive archival research, Transatlantic Bondage sheds light on a number of relatively underexamined topics in these locales, including the development and application of slavery laws, disobedience and its consequences, migration, gender, family, lifestyle, and community building among the free Black population and white allies. In bringing together new and recent work by leading scholars, including two essays translated into English here for the first time, the book is also a call for further study of slavery in the Spanish Caribbean and its impact on the region.

Lissette Acosta Corniel is Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies in the Department of Ethnic and Race Studies at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, the City University of New York.

Reviews

"What an important, innovative book! Dedicated to original archival research, this volume goes a long way toward correcting the neglect of Spanish Santo Domingo and Puerto Rico in studies of the African diaspora in the Americas. Acosta Corniel and contributors open our eyes to difficult new questions in places that should become more familiar to readers." — Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, author of Haunted by Slavery: A Memoir of a Southern White Woman in the Freedom Struggle

"Transatlantic Bondage makes a unique and welcome contribution to the study of race and slavery over a period of four centuries in Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and peninsular Spain. The volume will appeal to a wide set of scholars and students in Caribbean history, the history of slavery in Spain and Latin America, and African Diaspora studies. It is a superb collection." — David Wheat, author of Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570–1640