Freedoms Mirror Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution Reviews
by Isabelle Headrick
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Republic of cuba was profoundly shaped by its proximity to and multi-layered relationship with Haiti, or Saint-Domingue as it was called earlier the 1803 Haitian Revolution. In the decades leading up to Saint-Domingue'due south 1791 slave defection, Cuban planters looked with green-eyed on the booming sugar economic system of their neighbour to the southeast and sought to emulate its success. Later on the revolution in Haiti, Cuba was able to take advantage of the implosion of Saint-Domingue's sugar manufacture. Sugar production machinery and human expertise vanished from Saint-Domingue and reappeared in Cuba. Inside twenty years of the first Haitian slave defection, Cuba had surged alee to become the largest sugar producer in the Caribbean. Necessary to that, of course, was human capital letter in the form of enslaved Africans or Afro-Caribbeans, some of whom may have been captives from Haiti. Between 1791 and 1821, slaves were imported into Cuba at a rate four times greater than in the previous 30-year menstruum. As a result, Cuban elites were forced to confront the growing probability, and then actual occurrence, of slave revolts.
Ferrer shapes her narrative around the "mirror," or reversal, of historical processes: the collapse of one colony's sugar economic system and the rapid growth of another'southward; the liberation gained past slaves on one island and the expansion of slavery and entrenchment of enslavement structures on the other; revolution and independence in one place and colonialist counterrevolution in the other; fears of re-enslavement on the part of former slaves and fears of defection on the part of the elites. She argues that for Republic of cuba, the Haitian Revolution in 1791 served every bit a temporal "swivel" between the "first and second slaveries." The second slavery distinguished itself from the outset in its larger scale and in its existence aslope a growing "specter" of abolitionist political movements and the reality of enslaved people successfully claiming and obtaining their own freedom.
The first one-half of Liberty'southward Mirror takes the reader up to Haitian independence and victory over Napoleon'southward forces in 1804. These chapters trace the development of Cuba'southward "sugar revolution," Cuban attempts to deter the import of negros franceses – Saint-Domingue slaves who might foment rebellion — and a short-lived alliance between the Spanish army based in the city of Santo Domingo (including soldiers from Cuba) and the Haitian rebels. The second half of the book showcases the conflicts resulting from the ascent of coffee plantations in lands occupied by communities of runaway slaves, the 1808 turmoil in Republic of cuba caused by Napoleon's installation of his brother on the Castilian throne, featuring discussions of independence and slavery abolitionism, and the 1812 Aponte Rebellion.
Freedom's Mirror, however, is not merely a story nigh the causal relationship between the Haitian Revolution and Cuba's transformation, and Ferrer does not confine her investigation to economical or political factors. What interests Ferrer are the "quotidian links – material and symbolic – between the radical antislavery movement that emerged in Saint-Domingue at the same time that slavery was expanding in colonial Republic of cuba" (11). In detail, she tracks the apportionment of knowledge, rumor, chat, religious symbolism, anxieties and hopes that mapped onto infrastructures of commerce, slave-trading, government activeness, and armed services action.
In 1801, for example, Toussaint Louverture'southward forces occupied Santo Domingo and issued public proclamations. These were carried past send crews and disseminated in Cuba, as were first-hand accounts of Spanish refugees from that occupation who had fled to Republic of cuba. This, according to Ferrer, is the mechanism by which Cubans came to know of the events of the rebellion and the "spectacular ascent" of Toussaint Louverture (153). Eleven years later, images of the coronation of the Haitian King Christophe appeared in the prison house holding suspects from Aponte's revolutionary move in Cuba. In the tradition of Lynn Chase'due south treatment of the "invention" of human rights, Ferrer uses her sources—urban center council minutes, port registers, trading licenses, letters, confessions of revolutionaries on the eve of their executions, and printed images of Haitian leaders—to certificate that this circulation of information and rumor transformed the interior experiences and decision-making of historical actors and ordinary people in both Republic of cuba and Haiti.
Liberty's Mirror situates Cuba in a regional history, primarily the interactions betwixt Cuba and Republic of haiti. Ferrer is fundamentally attuned to the apportionment of knowledge, symbolism, and ideas. In bringing those into the light, she shows us that economic, political, and military realities never cease to shape, and exist shaped by, subjective perceptions and individual deportment.
Y'all might also like:
Cuba's Revolutionary World
Ordinary Lives in the Early Caribbean: Religion, Colonial Competition, and the Politics of Profit, by Kristen Block (2012)
Che Guevara'south Last Interview
Blackness is Beautiful – And Profitable
Making History: Takkara Brunson
Other Articles by Isabelle Headrick:
Madeleine's Children: Family, Liberty, Secrets and Lies in France's Indian Ocean Colonies, past Sue Peabody (2017)
Edifice a Jewish Schoolhouse in Islamic republic of iran
Source: https://notevenpast.org/freedoms-mirror-cuba-and-haiti-in-the-age-of-revolution-by-ada-ferrer-2014/
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