Collection on Enslavement in Cuba
Call Number
Date
Creator
Extent
Language of Materials
Abstract
The time period covered by this collection was the final century of 400 years of Spanish colonization of the island of Cuba. Although Spain and Great Britain agreed to end the trade of enslaved people in Spanish colonies by 1820, an estimated one million enslaved Africans were brought to Cuba by Spanish colonists. Cuba formally ended its participation in the Transatlantic Slave Trade in 1867, and abolished the legal enslavement of people in 1886. Enslaved people endured family separation, harsh manual labor on sugar plantations and in sugar mills, and labor within an enslaver's household. Enslaved women were often victims of sexual assault and exploitation. From 1847-1874, hundreds of thousands of Chinese men were trafficked to Cuba as indentured laborers by the Spanish, French, British, and Americans. The group of Chinese indentured workers, later known as "coolies," were subjected to conditions analog to slavery. This collection consists of documents concerning slavery in Spanish-colonized Cuba between 1809 and 1898, and the infrastructure that supported Spanish and American plantation owners at the expense of enslaved and indentured individuals. Materials include telegrams, contracts, identification papers, travel licenses, birth notices, marriage and baptism records, death and burial certificates, purchase and insurance documents, and manumission records documenting various aspects of enslavement in Cuba, including the economics of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, demographics of Cuban populations, England's abolition of slavery, the transportation of indentured Chinese laborers to Cuba, family relationships in the context of slavery, living and working conditions on sugar cane plantations, and manumission processes.
Historical Note
The time period covered by this collection was the final century of 400 years of Spanish colonization of the island of Cuba. Although Spain and Great Britain agreed to end the trade of enslaved people in Spanish colonies by 1820, an estimated one million enslaved Africans were brought to Cuba by Spanish colonists. Cuba formally ended its participation in the Transatlantic Slave Trade in 1867, and abolished the legal enslavement of people in 1886. Enslaved people endured family separation, harsh manual labor on sugar plantations and in sugar mills, and labor within an enslaver's household. Enslaved women were often victims of sexual assault and exploitation.
From 1847-1874, hundreds of thousands of Chinese men were trafficked to Cuba as indentured laborers by the Spanish, French, British, and Americans. The group of Chinese indentured workers, later known as "coolies", were subjected to conditions analog to slavery. In port cities like Hong Kong and Macao, Chinese men were kidnapped or coerced into signing contracts by enslavers posing as recruitment agents. Although the contracts offered freedom after eight years, this freedom was not enforced, and the laborers often died before the term ended due to malnourishment and abusive conditions.
Arrangement
This collection has not been arranged by an archivist. The materials are arranged in the order in which they were received from the seller.
Scope and Contents
This collection consists of documents concerning slavery in Spanish-colonized Cuba between 1809 and 1898 and the infrastructure that supported Spanish and American plantation owners at the expense of enslaved and indentured individuals. Materials include telegrams, contracts, identification papers, travel licenses, birth notices, marriage and baptism records, death and burial certificates, purchase and insurance documents, and manumission records documenting various aspects of enslavement in Cuba, including the economics of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, demographics of Cuban populations, England's abolition of slavery, the transportation of indentured Chinese laborers to Cuba, family relationships in the context of slavery, living and working conditions on sugar cane plantations, and manumission processes.
Spanish transcriptions of selected documents are available by request to Special Collections staff.
Glossary of frequently used terms throughout the collection:
Bozal: A juridical as well as colloquial term used to designate a person who either was recently trafficked from Africa and therefore had not learned the colonial language and customs, or someone who, despite having arrived earlier, had still not given up their own language and traditions, often perceived as not speaking the colony's proper language.
Carabalí: Also known as Kalabari, or Karabali. People from the Bight of Biafra, parts of present-day eastern Nigeria, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, and northern Gabon.
Cimarrón: Maroon. A person who was enslaved but has run away.
Colono: Term used to refer to the Chinese indentured workers in their contracts, literally translating to colonist or settler.
Congo: A person from West Central Africa.
Criollo: Born in the colony, in this case, Cuba.
Ganga: Most probably derived from Kanga. Used for people from Sierra Leone.
Lucumí: Yoruba person from present-day Nigeria, Benin, and Togo.
Makua: Also referred to as Wamakua; also written Macua. Bantu-speaking people from northern Mozambique and the southern Tanzania border.
Mandinga: Also written Mandinka. Person from Senegambia.
Moreno: Dark-skinned. Used to refer to Black people.
Pardo: Used to refer to mixed people of Spanish and African origin.
Subjects
Genres
Topics
Places
Conditions Governing Access
Materials are open without restrictions.
Conditions Governing Use
Materials in this collection, which were created in 1809-1898 range, are in the public domain. Permission to publish or reproduce is not required.
Preferred Citation
Identification of item, date; Collection on Enslavement in Cuba; MSS 569; box number; folder number or item identifier; Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Materials in this collection were purchased from bookseller Kevin Jackson by Timothy V. Johnson, NYU Librarian for Africana Studies, Anthropology and Food Studies in December 2014; original provenance is unknown. The collection was transferred to the Fales Library and Special Collections in 2017. The accession number associated with this purchase is 2019.010.
Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements
Iron gall ink present in many documents in the collection has caused paper loss. Some documents are partially legible as a result.
Separated Materials
Folder 1 in the inventory contained a grouping of 80 documents related to the case of five enslaved people at a sugar mill in Rio Nuevo who killed a man they believed to be the Governor General of Cuba on July 8, 1842. This item was removed from the collection and cataloged separately as HV6535.C9 C66 1842.
About this Guide
Processing Information
Documents with brittle paper were rehoused to prevent immediate loss and documents with ink damage were housed in mylar with paper backing for additional support. Materials were described on the collection-level. The folder-level inventory was created by the collection's seller and modified by an archivist to remove derogatory terms and contextual details not relevant to the items.
In August 2022, narrative description and individual folder titles were edited to employ the recommendations in P. Gabrielle Foreman's community-sourced document "Writing About Slavery/Teaching About Slavery: This Might Help," as well as the Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia's Anti-Racist Description Resources. These item-level titles and descriptions were written by non-Spanish language speakers who are not experts in the history of enslavement in Spanish-colonized Cuba. Some spellings are approximate. Future changes to correct inaccuracies or inappropriate language are anticipated.
Researchers can access previous versions of the finding aid in our GitHub repository at https://github.com/NYULibraries/findingaids_eads/commits/master/fales/mss_569.xml.
In 2025, the collection materials and collection guide were reviewed by Grecia Márquez García, a short-term research fellow, who provided corrected item titles and descriptions throughout the inventory, and transcribed selected documents in Spanish.
