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The Specter of Las Casas: José Antonio Saco and the Persistence of Spanish Colonialism in Cuba1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2010

Christopher Schmidt-Nowara
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Extract

The empire of absolutist Spain haunted the debates over the empire of liberal Spain. To take one example, José Arias y Miranda, an unemployed civil servant who would later work as the librarian for the Ministerio de Ultramar (Overseas Ministry), responded to the Real Academia de la Historia's query on the effects of the American empire on Spain's economy and society in words that would have been familiar to a seventeenth-century arbitrista. After reviewing America's drain on the sparse Spanish population and the corrupting effects of gold, silver, and land on Spanish work habits, Arias y Miranda concluded ‘that America was […] the determining cause of Spain's decadence’.

Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , July 2001 , pp. 93 - 109
Copyright
Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 2001

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References

Notes

2 Quintana, Manuel José, Fray Bartolomé de las Casas (Santiago de Chile 1922) 82Google Scholar. This edition is excerpted from the author's Vidas de españoles celebres (Madrid 1845).

3 Ortiz, Fernando, ‘Introducción’ in: José Antonio Saco, Historia de la esclavitud de los indios en el nuevo mundo I (Havana 1932) XLIXGoogle Scholar.

4 Miranda, José Aríasy, Examen crítico-histórico del influje que tuvo en el comercio, industria y poblacion de Espana su dominatión en América: Obra premiada por la Real Academia de la Historia en el concurso de 1853 (Madrid 1854) 114Google Scholar. On the arbistristas, see Elliott, J.H., ‘Self-perception and Decline in Early Seventeenth-Century Spain’ in: Elliott, J.H., Spain and Its World, 1500–1700 (New Haven 1989) 241–261Google Scholar.

5 Miranda, José Aríasy in Congreso Internacional de Americanistas, Actas de la cuarta reunién: Madrid, 1881 I (Madrid) 120Google Scholar.

6 Keen, Benjamin, ‘Introduction: Approaches to Las Casas, 1535–1970’ in: Keen, Benjamin and Friede, Juan eds, Bartolome de las Casas in History: Toward an Understanding of the Man and His Work (DeKalb 1974) 3–63Google Scholar.

7 Antonio María Fabié, Actas I, 120.

8 Ibid., 121.

9 Fabié's image of Spanish colonialism was embedded in a dense fabric of discussion in Spain and Cuba over the meaning and history of Spanish colonialism. Typically, pro-Spanish thinkers from either country contrasted Spanish humanitarianism and ‘cultural’ colonialism, to the barbarism and the ‘economic’ colonialism of the British. For example, see del Perojo, José, Ensayos de política colonial (Madrid 1885)Google Scholar; and Castelar, Emilio, Historia del descubrimiento de América (Madrid 1892)Google Scholar. For an important recent discussion of the Black Legend and its impact on North American scholarship, see Kagan, Richard, ‘Prescott's Paradigm: American Historical Scholarship and the Decline of Spain’, American Historical Review 101 (1996) 423–446Google Scholar. See also the stimulating debate on the Black and White Legends by Lewis Hanke and Benjamin Keen: Keen, Benjamin, ‘The Black Legend Revisited: Assumptions and Realities’, Hispanic American Historical Review 49 (1969) 703–719Google Scholar; Hanke's response, ‘A Modest Proposal for a Moratorium on Grand Generalizations: Some Thoughts on the Black Legend’, Hispanic American Historical Review 51 (1971) 112–127Google Scholar; and Keen's response to Hanke, ‘The White Legend Revisited: A Reply to Professor Hanke's “Modest Proposal”’ Hispanic American Historical Review 51 (1971) 336–355Google Scholar.

10 There is now a large literature on Spanish retrenchment in the Caribbean (diough the same is not true for the Philippines). For an introduction, see Fradera, Josep M., Gobernar colonias (Barcelona 1999)Google Scholar.

11 Important intellectual and political biographies of Saco include Ortiz, ‘Introducción’; Fraginals, Manuel Moreno, José A. Saco: Estudio y bibliografia (Santa Clara 1960)Google Scholar; Torres-Cuevas, Eduardo and Sorhegui, Arturo, ‘Introducción’ in: José A. Saco: Acerca de la esclavitud y su historia (Havana 1982) 3–115Google Scholar; and David Murray, José Antonio Saco, Cuban Historiography and the Development of Cuban Nationalism’, article under review. Cited by the author's permission. For an example of Saco's political writings, see the pamphlets collected in Obras de Don José Antonio Saco I–II (New York 1853).

12 Fraginals, Manuel Moreno, El Ingenio I–III (Havana 1978)Google Scholar; Murray, David, Odious Commerce: Britain, Spain and the Abolition of the Cuban Slave Trade (Cambridge 1980)Google Scholar; and Scott, Rebecca, Slave Emancipation in Cuba (Princeton 1985)Google Scholar.

13 Moreno Fraginals, José A. Saco, 23.

14 Saco, José Antonio, Historia de la esclavitud desde los tiempos mas remotos hasta nuestros dias, segunda edition I (Havana 1936) 5Google Scholar.

15 Moreno Fraginals, José A. Saco, 30; and Torres-Cuevas and Sorhegui, ‘Introducción’, 100, 114.

16 Stahl's position was not an uncommon one throughout the history of colonial Spanish America. See Brading, David, The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots, and the Liberal State, 1492–1867 (Cambridge 1991)Google Scholar.

17 Stahl, A., Los indios borinquenos (Puerto Rico 1889)Google Scholar. This debate over the reliability of the chronicles and alternative sources was an old one in Spain and Spanish America. See MacCormack, Sabine, ‘The Fall of the Incas: A Historiographical Dilemma’, History of European Ideas 6 (1985) 421–445Google Scholar; Esguerra, Jorge Cañizares, ‘Spanish America in Eighteenth-Century European Travel Compilations: A New “Art of Reading” and the Transition to Modernity’, Journal of Early Modern History 2 (1998) 329–349Google Scholar. See also the seminal article on historians and antiquarians by Momigliano, Arnaldo, ‘Ancient History and the Antiquarians’, Studies in Historiography (New York 1966) 1–39Google Scholar.

18 Moreno Fraginals, José A. Saco, 30.

19 On the autonomy of the subjected nation, see Chatterjee, Partha, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton 1993)Google Scholar chapter 1. On the continuity through time of the nation, see Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities (London 1990)Google Scholar chapter 11. See also Scarano, Francisco, ‘The jíbaro Masquerade and the Subaltern Politics of Creole Identity Formation in Puerto Rico, 1745–1823’, American Historical Review 101 (1996) 1398–1431Google Scholar, for a discussion of national authenticity and autonomy under colonialism.

20 On the Real Academia de la Historia in the nineteenth century, see Martin, Ignacio Peiro, Los guardianes de la historia: La historiografia académica de la Restauratión (Zaragoza 1995)Google Scholar.

21 Fradera, Josep Maria, Cultura national en una sotietat dividida: Patriotisme i cultura a Catalunya (1838–1868) (Barcelona 1992)Google Scholar; Juaristi, Jon, El bucle melancólico: Historias de nationalistas vascos (Madrid 1997)Google Scholar; Boyd, Carolyn, Historia Patria: Politics, History, and National Identity in Spain, 1875–1975 (Berkeley 1997)Google Scholar; Junco, Jose Alvarez, ‘La natión en duda’ in: Pan-Montojo, Juan ed., Más se perdió en Cuba: España, 1898 y elfin de siglo (Madrid 1998) 405–475Google Scholar; Serrano, Carlos, El nacimiento de Carmen: Simbolos, mitos y nación (Madrid 1999)Google Scholar; and Jesús Martínez Millán and Carlos Reyero eds, ‘El siglo de Carlos V y Felipe II: La constructión de los mitos en el siglo XIX’, forthcoming.

22 Marx, Karl, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (New York 1981) 15Google Scholar.

23 Ticknor, George, History of Spanish Literature I [second edition] (New York 1854) 566–567Google Scholar.

24 On the history of Las Casas's manuscript and its eventual publication, see Hanke, , Bartolomé de las Casas, Historian (Gainesville 1952)Google Scholar.

25 Keen, ‘Introduction: Approaches to Las Casas, 1535–1970’, 25–26. For a useful guide to writings on Las Casas, see Hanke, Lewis and Fernández, Manuel Giménez, Bartolomé de las Casas, 1474–1566: Bibliografia critica y cuerpo de materiales (Santiago de Chile 1954)Google Scholar.

26 ‘La Historia General de Indias del rvdo. P. Fray Bartolomé de las Casas: Informes de 1821 y 1856’, Boletin de la Real Academia de la Historia LXXVIII (1921) 278Google Scholar.

27 Ibid., 282–283.

28 See Schmidt-Nowara, Christopher, Empire and Antislavery: Spain, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, 1833–1874 (Pittsburgh 1999)Google Scholar.

29 Saco, José Antonio, ‘Historia de las Indias por el P. Casas’ in: Saco, , Historia de la esclavitud de la raza africana el Nuevo Mundo y en espetial en los países américo-hispanos (Barcelona 1879) 377Google Scholar. Emphasis in the original. This is a reprint of the original article which appeared in the Revista Hispano-Americana (12 February 1865).

30 Ibid., 380.

31 Quintana, Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, 3.

32 Gutiérrez, Carlos, Fray Bartolomé de las Casas. Sus tiempos y su apostolado (Madrid 1878) 6Google Scholar.

33 Emilio Castelar, ‘Prólogo’, Gutiérrez, Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, XXXVI.

34 Castelar, ‘Prólogo’, XXXIV–XXXV.

35 Scarano, Francisco, Sugar and Slavery in Puerto Rico: The Plantation Economy of Ponce, 1800–1850 (Madison 1984)Google Scholar; and Scott, Slave Emancipation in Cuba. On colonial politics, see Fradera, Gobernar colonias.

36 See Schmidt-Nowara, Empire and Antislavery, chapters 6–8.

37 See Moreno Fraginals, José A. Saco; and Torres-Cuevas and Sorhegui, ‘Introducción’.

38 See Lewis, Gordon, Main Currents in Caribbean Thought (Baltimore 1983) 100–103Google Scholar, for a discussion of this trope in Caribbean historiography.

39 Saco, Historia de la esclavitud de la raza africana, 56.

40 For example, see his book review in which he posited a race war in the Carribbean, ‘Notices of Brazil in 1828 and 1829 by Rev. R. Walsh, author of a journey from Constantinople &c (Noticias del Brasil en 1828 y 1829 por el Pbro. R. Walsh, autor de un viaje de Constantinopla &c.)’, Revista Bimestre Cubana (1832) 173–230.

41 On Cuban slavery at midcentury, see Bergad, Laird, Cuban Rural Society in the Nineteenth Century: The Social and Economic History of Monoculture in Matanzas (Princeton 1990)Google Scholar.

42 Saco, Historia de la esclavitud de la raza africana, 101.

43 Ibid.

44 For instance, see Saco, José Antonio, L'Esclavage à Cuba et la révolution d'Espagne (Paris 1869)Google Scholar; and the speech of Emilio Castelar in Spain, Cortes, 1869–1871, Diario de las Sesiónes de las Cortes Constituyentes 14 (Madrid 1870) 8984–8991.

45 Martínez-Fernández, Luis, Torn between Empires: Economy, Society, and Patterns of Political Thought in the Hispanic Caribbean, 1840–1878 (Athens 1994)Google Scholar.

46 Pérez, Louis A. Jr. ‘Between Baseball and Bullfighting: The Quest for Nationality in Cuba, 1868–1898’, Journal of American History 81 (1994) 493–517CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality, and Culture (Chapel Hill 1999).

47 Domingo del Monte to José Antonio Saco, Madrid, 17 November 1851, Archivo Nacional de Cuba, Donativos y Remisiónes, fuera de caja 47–10.

48 See Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments, chapter 1; Anderson, Imagined Communities, chapter 11; and Scarano, ‘The Jíbaro Masquerade’.

49 Pérez, ‘Between Baseball and Bullfighting’.