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The happy circumstance of tracing the origins of the captain of the slaving schooner Amistad to the Balearic island of Ibiza (known in Catalan as Eivissa) has brought to light unpublished data from Ibizan archives regarding Ramón Ferrer, his brother Damián and other sailors from that island. The latter were Gabriel Matutes, Joan Prats, and probably Vicente Arabí, who joined the Ferrer brothers in illegal slave trafficking in Caribbean waters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers two key moments in the Dominican War of Restoration (1863-1865), fought against the Spanish reoccupation of the territory after annexation in 1861. The course of the fighting demonstrates how residents of the former republic had a keen sense of regional context. Specifically, Dominicans were acutely conscious of the ongoing threat of slavery that surrounded them and the attacks and reversals of the period in general. Documents reveal that memory of the institution also persisted in the territory itself. New archival research promises to reveal more about popular thought of the era, as well as bonds of connection to citizens (and institutions) in Haiti. The War of Restoration is an example of these connections, exhibiting ideologies of political federation whose roots extend to the beginning of the century. It is a story that connects the radicalism of pan-Caribbean visions of the period of the Haitian Revolution and continental independence to movements at the end of the nineteenth-century and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jamaica's criminalization of Obeah after Tacky's 1760 Revolt resulted in many accusations and prosecutions of alleged clients and practitioners by planters who intended to prevent similar future slave rebellions and eliminate rivals who competed for enslaved people's loyalty. Such efforts produced many slave laws and policing efforts, which legitimized and expanded slaveholders' dominance and power, but ironically, increased enslaved people's bargaining powers. Exploring how legal definitions of poison and Obeah changed over time and the political and social purposes poison and Obeah accusations served, reveals the complex ways in which the enslaver and enslaved struggled for dominance and survival within Jamaica's slave society. While poison and Obeah laws, accusations and prosecutions give us good insights into the complicated conflicts, tensions and negotiations between enslaver and enslaved and among members of slave communities, they yield an unfortunate legacy that defame Obeah as witchcraft and fraud and erroneously attribute poison as a key element. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present article I study the slave conspiracy of the Day of the Kings in Puerto Rico in 1812, using the reports of the colonial authorities and the declarations of the slaves envolved in it. My goals are: first, to highlight the fact that external factors were decisive in the forge of the cited plot, especially the news of the coronation of Henri Christophe in Northern Haiti and of the abolitionist debate in the Spanish Cortes de Cadiz, which reached the Hispanic Caribbean from mouth to mouth; second, to show that the said conspiracy, as well as the Aponte rebellion in Cuba and the black plot in Santo Domingo, all of whom took place in 1812, were not independent slave plots, but rather three different echoes of the same wave of uneasiness that shook the Spanish Antilles at that moment. For that purpose, I have articulated my exposition in five sections: first, I analyze the antecedents of the plot of the Day of the Kings; then, I describe the external factors that favored it, recovering the testimony of the slaves involved in that episode; third, I study the development of the conspiracy; after that, I analyze the punishment of the slave leaders; finally, I sum up my conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Césaire is one of the greatest French poets of the 20th century and his oeuvre has been studied by many scholars in its slightest recesses. In what way could a geographic analysis lead to a better understanding of Césaire's poetry and his process of identity-making? Actually, the geographic dimension of his writings has not really been analyzed, though it is one of the main backdrops of his poetry. Césaire invents his own geography of imagination as he claims it. What are the frames of his map of the word for personal use? Césaire's purpose is to find again his latitude and longitude lost in the wake of the slave ships. To exist, an uprooted person, as Césaire was, has to write a new relationship with the Earth according to the philosophy of geography developed by Eric Dardel. The author of this paper analyzes the influence of Césaire's poetry and his vision of the world in the process of identity-making. Césaire's poetry is first a personal revolt against colonial domination. But thanks to the strength of his writings, he overcame his inner wound to build a new Caribbean identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents, based on new archival foundings, a new perspective of the Cuban and the Atlantic dimensions of the Amistad "case", different to the traditional interpretations. In this context the new archival material from Havana, New Haven, London, Lisboa, Madrid, Arenys de Mar, and Praia (Cape Verde island) shows the real history of the catalan captain killed in the rebellion of the captives of the schooner Amistad in 1839. First the article presents Ferrer as the owner of not only one little coastal schooner, but of two or three ships (one of them the modern steamer Vapor Principeño). These ships did not only coastal transport but also contraband trade to Africa. Ferrer and his partners used the profits of the giant Atlantic business for the accumulations of new capitals and invested it in promoting new sugar and slave areas in Cuba and in the modern technologies like railsroads and steamers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The novel Sab (1841) by Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda is a major critical contribution concerning patriarchal society and the enslavement of the subject of African descent in Cuba. However, Sab is not an abolitionist text: the discourse on race coincides with the expectations of the white dominant culture. This article places Avellaneda's narrative within the socio-cultural project of Creole reformists who promoted a gradual end of slavery with financial compensation for the slave owners, a transition from slave to free salaried labor, and, most importantly, the whitening of Cuban society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]