Abstract
In the Blood of Our Brothers seeks to provide a comprehensive history of the end of the slave trade in Spain's Atlantic empire, focusing on the production, circulation and reception of abolitionist ideas in the Peninsula and in its most important Caribbean colony, Cuba. Organized chronologically, it tracks the uneven development of anti-slave-trade and abolitionist intellectual currents and political initiatives in Spain, situating these against the backdrop of a wider struggle between liberal and imperial agendas. The book's principal argument is that Spanish abolitionism never followed the same historical trajectory as in Britain, France or the United States, and that the end of its slave trade was largely attributable to external factors. Whereas in these other empires and nations, abolitionism developed as an essential part of political liberalism, this was not the case in Spain. Despite initially campaigning against the slave trade, prominent Spanish liberals like Agustín Argüelles subsequently turned their backs on this cause as opposing political and ideological forces coalesced around a single pressing priority: protecting the last of the empire's overseas dominions from independence or annexation. According to Jesús Sanjurjo, the adoption of ever more coercive anti-slave-trade measures and rhetoric by Britain, and the increasing isolation of Spain's position following the Union's victory in the American Civil War, ultimately tipped the scales against the slave trade more so than any other factors.
The chapters are organized chronologically, allowing readers to follow the political and economic developments in nineteenth-century Spain that served as a backdrop to debates on the slave trade. The first chapter examines early Spanish anti-slave-trade discourses between 1802 and 1814, showing how British ideological influence was the primary inspiration for liberal politicians like Argüelles, who first proposed a ban on the slave trade before the Cortes in 1811. Chapter 2 charts the fragmented development of abolitionist ideas in Spain between 1814 and 1823 as absolutist and liberal forces fought to influence the slave-trade debate. In the third chapter, Sanjurjo shows how, following the restoration of absolutist rule in 1823 and the exile of Spanish liberals, the main impetus of abolitionist discourse fell to Britain, whose uncompromising whip strategy failed to force Spain's compliance with its various anti-slave treaties, instead strengthening Anglophobia and a sense of victimhood. Shifting the focus to Cuba, the fourth chapter traces the emergence of several competing strands of abolitionism on the island in the 1840s: racist abolitionist discourses espoused by the local intellectual class; abrasive British abolitionist interventionism; and the threat, perceived or real, of a grass-roots uprising among the enslaved, which ultimately only further entrenched the belief among liberals and imperialists alike of the need to preserve Spanish rule in Cuba. The last chapter analyses the abrupt end of the slave trade to Cuba in the 1860s, which Sanjurjo attributes to: geopolitical developments in the Atlantic World, increased British anti-slavery pressure, and the institutionalization of Spain's own abolitionist movement.
The book presents a novel attempt to analyse Spanish discourses on the slave trade and abolitionism in the ‘context of intellectual debates in the Atlantic world’ (4). Sanjurjo claims that much of the existing historiography has been hampered by a nationalist approach, and he convincingly demonstrates how Spanish pro- and anti-slave-trade agendas were informed by, and responded to, wider intellectual currents and political events. Sanjurjo’s critical approach to liberalism in Spain is particularly illuminating, and he effectively argues that the lack of an established ideological canon meant that the ‘Spanish abolitionist movement was never likely to develop along the same lines as the British, the French, or the American versions’ (121). In fact, Sanjurjo catalogues various examples that challenge the reader's assumptions about liberalism, none more so than the deafening silence of Spanish liberal politicians towards the slave trade question in the 1820s and 1830s. That an anti-slave-trade report written in 1816 was produced by authorities within the absolutist regime, and not by liberals, further illustrates these contradictions. Another insightful, albeit short, section of the book compares the effect that abrasive British anti-slave-trade measures had on public opinion in Spain and Brazil. Sanjurjo argues that British abolitionist policies and naval patrolling on the high seas provoked patriotic rhetoric in both contexts, but whereas an indignant sense of national honour in Brazil paradoxically inspired a revolution in public opinion to embrace anti-slave-trade principles as a means to reclaim sovereignty from Britain, Spain took a different course. Ultimately, imperial priorities trumped all other concerns: ‘the idea of preserving Spanish rule in Cuba necessarily meant preserving the slave trade’ (63).
In the Blood of Our Brothers largely relies on published primary sources and archival collections that will be well known to scholars of colonial Spain and Cuba, although there is a smattering of new material. This includes previously overlooked letters between William Wilberforce and the Cortes deputy the Count of Toreno, which demonstrate overt British attempts to influence Spanish Members of Parliament. While not the stated focus of the book, Sanjurjo could have done more to engage with recent perspectives and scholarship on the key role the enslaved themselves played in abolition. Indeed, the main takeaway is that the end of the slave trade in the Spanish Empire was largely a result of factors extraneous to the efforts of white and Black Cubans and Spanish activists – a perspective that only tells part of the story. At 123 pages of body text, the book is also short, and a more thorough attempt to link and explain the end of the slave trade in 1867 to the abolition of slavery in Cuba in 1886 would have been welcome. So too would a more in-depth discussion on how Spanish officials tried ex post facto to claim agency over the process of abolition (only very briefly mentioned in the final chapter), and the continuing influence of this on current debates in Spain surrounding the legacies of slavery and colonialism.
Subject specialists may question whether this book presents a significant departure from previous studies by Josep M. Fradera, Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, Emily Berquist Soule and others. 1 However, its effectiveness in laying out a coherent history of pro- and anti-slave-trade currents in the Spanish Empire – at least among white political and intellectual elites – will appeal to general audiences interested in, and teaching on, abolition and anti-slavery in the Atlantic World. Likewise, its compelling analysis of the inextricable relationship between Spain's colonial power in the Atlantic and the continuance of the slave trade will also appeal to maritime historians.