ABSTRACT
The Brazilian government's insistent fascination with emancipation laws, the outcomes of emancipation, and immigration, both Asian and European, in Spain's Caribbean colonies indicate not only the pressing nature of labor in Brazil but also that, in the nineteenth century, the interactions among different governments and slave societies shaped the destruction of Latin American slavery. Slavery and the African slave trade always figured centrally in the revolutionary and nation-building process, not least because, as the previous report indicates, slaves themselves took up arms to fight for liberation, especially in Spanish America. Slavery was at times undermined by anticolonial and interimperial warfare (Haiti and most of Spanish America) and at other times strengthened (Brazil). This chapter explores the factors that influenced the history of slavery in Cuba from an Atlantic perspective. Different approaches to conceptualizing Atlantic history help to comprehend the dynamics at work in Cuba and other parts of Latin America.
