But was slavery a purely colonial affair,as these statements indicate?
Slavery in early-modern Spain: a few remarks
Despite this general amnesia, slaves and the descendants of slaves were present in early-modern Spain, and their numbers were not particularly small. To cite just a few examples, we know that in mid-sixteenth-century Seville 7.4 percent of censused inhabitants were slaves[7]and that between 1682 and 1729 the slave population of Cádiz was extremely large, making up perhaps as much as 15 percent of the total urban population.[8]In other cities, such as Málaga, Granada, Las Palmas, Huelva, and Palos de la Frontera, as many as one in ten residents may have been slaves. Between 1539 and 1699, 1,384 slave children were baptized in the small Andalucian town of Lucena, with an average of 400 children every thirty years.[9]Similar numbers may have been true also for Córdoba.[10]Historians who studied slavery in Spain thus concluded that Renaissance and perhaps even early-modern Spain may have had the largest African population in Europe.[11]Where did these slaves come from?
We know that in the fifteenth century slaves arrived in the peninsula through the slave markets of Barcelona, Valencia, and Baleares and that in the sixteenth century Lisbon became the major slave provider. The custom house (alfândega) of Mourão, a Portuguese settlement on the border between Portugal and Spain, testified to this trade, registering the massive entry of African slaves to Extremadura from Portugal.[12]Seville was also an important market, selling perhaps as many as 1,000 slaves per year in the late sixteenth century and as many as 1,400 in the early seventeenth century.[13]During this period, secondary markets also existed in Valencia, Málaga, Burgos, and Valladolid.[14]Slavery, in short, was not restricted to some areas: although the presence of slaves was particularly important in the south, slavery was a general phenomenon, present all over the peninsula. Furthermore, slaves were not necessarily luxury items, and people belonging to very different social groups and of radically different economic means could be slaveholders.[15]
Indeed, in some places slavery was so widely present (or rather omnipresent) that contemporaries complained about it
. In both the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the authorities of Seville thus remarked that the number of African slaves was so great that they outnumbered the regular citizens.Because of their presence, Seville looked like a chessboard, alternating between white and black (“se parecían a los trebejos del ajedrez tanto prietos como blancos, por los muchos esclavos que hay en la ciudad”).[16]
Not only didSpain have a huge population of slaves, a population that by the late sixteenth century was mostly composed of individuals of African descent, and not only were slaves present (although in varying numbers) all over the peninsula and in all social milieus, but also their numbers did not necessarily drop at the end of the sixteenth century as historians once believed.[17]Recent research suggests that slavery and the presence of Africans continued to be important factors in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and even into the early nineteenth century.[18]Indications for this continuity are everywhere to be found: in 1837 the Cortes debated a law to abolish slavery in the peninsula; and in 1851 the proposal for a new civil code included the issue of peninsular slavery (neither in 1837 nor in 1851 was action taken, and indeed slavery was never formally abolished in Spain—it is possible that it gradually died out on its own). We also know that slaves were massively present in eighteenth-century Cádiz, still forming perhaps as much as 10 percent of the local population, and local newspapers continued to advertise their sale.[19]The situation in Granada may have been similar.[20]In both cities, however, there are indications that while slavery may have persisted into the early nineteenth century, by the mid-eighteenth century the numbers of slaves may have been dropping. It is also possible that, by that time, most slaves were held by people who had contacts with the Americas or were recent arrivals, which perhaps helps explain the connection made between slavery and colonialism.
How did Africans disappear?
Most historians studying African slavery in Spain were mainly interested in uncovering how and why this population disappeared. That is, they wanted to explain why there were no Africans or people with clear African traits in present-day Spain.
The answers they gave differed over time. Many historians dismissed the problem altogether by offering commonsense solutions. Following this method, an older generation of scholars suggested that most slaves had integrated into Spanish society. Spanish society, they claimed, was not racist: it allowed for mixed marriages and it produced mixed offspring. It also allowed many ex-slaves to become well-known and successful individuals.[21]Rather than race, social divisions in early-modern Spain followed religion. Thus, Africans who “freely accepted Christianity and Spanish culture” were allowed to incorporate fully into the economic, social, and religious life, helping to create the so-called ethnic diversity of the early-modern age.[22]Among other things, this was possible because most slaves were brought to Spain at a young age. As children or adolescents, they learned to speak Spanish and adopted Spanish customs, Spanish manners, and Spanish names and surnames.[23]
Yet these claims for (an almost) white legend have been rebuffed by a new generation of historians who have stressed, on the contrary,
that in Spain as elsewhere slavery was a repressive institution.[24]Because over time slavery became associated with Africans, and Africans with slavery, in Spain as elsewhere freed Africans were discriminated against both legally and socially.[25]That is to say, religious conversion may have been important and may have won some acceptance, but by the late fifteenth century and certainly thereafter even in Spain “identities were no longer so easily shed by embracing new faiths, learning new languages or accepting new laws.”[26]Contrary to the older generation, the newer generation of researchers thus insists that in Spain (as elsewhere) there was no rapid integration and that most descendants of slaves, even after they were freed, remained marginalized.[27]
For those maintaining that there was no integration the answer to the mystery of where this African populationwentlies in demographic trends. According to their calculations, many slaves and freed Africans may have immigrated back to Africa or ended up in the Americas. Furthermore, many Africans had no descendants or their descendants died at a young age. This may have happened because slaves were not encouraged to marry or reproduce, and many Africans were freed when they were too old to bear children.[28]
But even if we believe that biological mixing, immigration, or reproductive failure explains the lack of African descendants after the demise of slavery in the early nineteenth century, we still have no answer to the question of why in the seventeenth and eighteenth century people living in Spain (and witnessing the large African population there) still considered slavery a colonial affair. Were all these people blind
Originally Posted by Taiguaitiaoghyrmmumin
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks