Sallow
The Big Bad Wolf.
Our forgotten slavery horror: The shameful, untold history of America and the Cuban slave trade
As Cuba opens, it's time to recognize our proxy role in Cuba's slave trade, and the Monroe Doctrine's real purpose
Of the 12.5 million enslaved Africans who were brought to the Americas from 1501 to 1867, approximately 4 percent arrived in North America. Another 7 percent were taken to Cuba to work in what is now recognized as an “agro-industrial graveyard” of sugar and coffee production. Historians use this term for good reason: the life expectancy of enslaved Africans from the time of their arrival in Cuba was often calculated in single digits. These catastrophic mortality rates meant that Cuban slavery depended on the slave trade. Although the U.S. and England banned the slave trade in 1808, fully 85 percent (759,669) of the slaves to be transported to Cuba were brought after the U.S. ban. By this time, Americans had decided that Cuban slavery made good economic sense and were actively intensifying their participation in the regime.
After the American Revolution, the young United States was deeply in debt and on the verge of a rapid expansion of the cotton frontier. But the U.S. merchants who ran the nation’s banks and insurance companies could only provide agricultural loans with a reliable source of specie (gold and silver), and sugar and coffee to back their notes and offset trade deficits with the financial centers of Europe. If coffee, sugar and specie unlocked the doors of European and Asian markets for U.S. investors, slave ships were their key. By the early 1800s, Cuban slavery was at the center of this exchange, and American statesmen, including every U.S. president from Thomas Jefferson to John Quincy Adams, worked doggedly to protect it.
Our forgotten slavery horror: The shameful, untold history of America and the Cuban slave trade - Salon.com
As Cuba opens, it's time to recognize our proxy role in Cuba's slave trade, and the Monroe Doctrine's real purpose
Of the 12.5 million enslaved Africans who were brought to the Americas from 1501 to 1867, approximately 4 percent arrived in North America. Another 7 percent were taken to Cuba to work in what is now recognized as an “agro-industrial graveyard” of sugar and coffee production. Historians use this term for good reason: the life expectancy of enslaved Africans from the time of their arrival in Cuba was often calculated in single digits. These catastrophic mortality rates meant that Cuban slavery depended on the slave trade. Although the U.S. and England banned the slave trade in 1808, fully 85 percent (759,669) of the slaves to be transported to Cuba were brought after the U.S. ban. By this time, Americans had decided that Cuban slavery made good economic sense and were actively intensifying their participation in the regime.
After the American Revolution, the young United States was deeply in debt and on the verge of a rapid expansion of the cotton frontier. But the U.S. merchants who ran the nation’s banks and insurance companies could only provide agricultural loans with a reliable source of specie (gold and silver), and sugar and coffee to back their notes and offset trade deficits with the financial centers of Europe. If coffee, sugar and specie unlocked the doors of European and Asian markets for U.S. investors, slave ships were their key. By the early 1800s, Cuban slavery was at the center of this exchange, and American statesmen, including every U.S. president from Thomas Jefferson to John Quincy Adams, worked doggedly to protect it.
Our forgotten slavery horror: The shameful, untold history of America and the Cuban slave trade - Salon.com