Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 364 of 635 - First - Home
The Slaves
Were Forced To Celibacy On The Pretext Of Avoiding Moral Disorder.
The
Jesuits and the Bethlemite monks alone renounced that fatal prejudice,
and encouraged negresses in their plantations.
If the census, no doubt
imperfect, of 1775, yielded 15,562 female, and 29,366 male slaves, we
must not forget that that enumeration comprehended the totality of the
island, and that the sugar plantations occupy even now but a quarter
of the slave population. After the year 1795, the Consulado of the
Havannah began to be seriously occupied with the project of rendering
the increase of the slave population more independent of the
variations of the slave-trade. Don Francisco Arango, whose views were
ever characterized by wisdom, proposed a tax on the plantations in
which the number of slaves was not comprised of one-third females. He
also proposed a tax of six piastres on every negro brought into the
island, and from which the women (negras bozales) should be exempt.
These measures were not adopted because the colonial assembly refused
to employ coercive means; but a desire to promote marriages and to
improve the condition of the children of slaves has existed since that
period, when a cedula real (of the 22nd April, 1804) recommended those
objects "to the conscience and humanity of the planters."
The first introduction of negroes into the eastern part of the island
of Cuba took place in 1521 and their number did not exceed 300. The
Spaniards were then much less eager for slaves than the Portuguese;
for, in 1539, there was a sale of 12,000 negroes at Lisbon, as in our
days (to the eternal shame of Christian Europe) the trade in Greek
slaves is carried on at Constantinople and Smyrna.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 364 of 635
Words from 99355 to 99645
of 174507
