Histoires d'esclaves dans la Peninsule Iberique (review)

A couple of decades ago, the common assumptions were that early modern Iberian slavery, outside Andalusia and parts of Portugal, was of small importance in the economy and that most slaves were domestics who did little more than wash clothes, cook meals, and demonstrate the wealth of their owners. In the last ten years, scholars have considerably altered that picture, often through the detailed examination of parish registers and notarial documents and through adopting the methodology and interpretations of scholars of slavery in the Americas. These studies are more extensive in Spain, especially where slavery was most prevalent: Andalusia, Extremadura, the southeastern coastal regions, and the Balearic and Canary Islands.

Alessandro Stella summarizes this material and adds new archival sources, mainly from Cádiz, that show the slaves as actors in the life stories that gives the book its title. This approach is not entirely novel in Spanish history. As one example, the late medieval kingdom of Valencia had a public official whose agents interviewed slaves before they could be publicly sold. Many of the recorded interviews allow glimpses of, at least, part of the lives of slaves. Testimony remains from slaves who sought sanctuary in churches, and the detailed accounts of the Inquisition include vivid details of the lives of slaves, when they testified as defendants or as witnesses.

Among the most fascinating are those highlighting spatial mobility as slaves moved through the world-encompassing Iberian empires. For example, in 1773, Manuel de Amat y Barrueta married Rosa María de la Piedra (or de la Concepción). Both were Africans. Manuel had been born in Angola, where other native Angolans captured him when he was nine years old and sold him to the Portuguese, who had him baptized by the Jesuits in Luanda. Taken to Buenos Aires, the viceroy of Lima bought him and later gave him to the governor of Santiago de Chile. When the latter died, his widow returned to Spain and took Manuel with her. A year later, she freed him. His intended bride was from the Congo and went to Lisbon at the age of nine as a slave. Ten years later a prominent Spanish merchant bought her and took her to Cádiz, where, two years later, he permitted her to marry Manuel.

Not all the stories ended so gracefully. Antón Zape, an African slave, passed through the Portuguese slaving station in the Cape Verde islands and later Lisbon before ending up in the Spanish silver mines of Guadalcanal in 1559. At the end of four months, Antón and three companions fled the mines. He and one other fugitive were captured and they escaped again by wounding their jailer. After he was captured a second time, his captors put leg irons on him. He was injured in the process and died from the resulting infections.

Stella, who has previously written a number of articles on Mediterranean slavery, effectively uses the stories he has uncovered and succeeds in recovering the voices of many slaves. Slavery in Spain was a multiracial phenomenon, and though Stella mentions Turks and other Muslims, he concentrates on slaves of African origin. Warfare at sea produced captives throughout the period he covers, but Stella only discusses the Muslims that Christians captured, neglecting the Christians who became captives of the Muslims. Despite these lapses, the book will serve as reliable guide to the latest studies in early modern Iberian slavery.