Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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In The Sixteenth
Century The Slave-Trade Was Not Free In Spain; The Privilege Of
Trading, Which Was Granted By The Court, Was Purchased In 1586, For
All Spanish America, By Gaspar De Peralta; In 1595, By Gomez Reynel;
And In 1615, By Antonio Rodriguez De Elvas.
The total importation then
amounted to only 3500 negroes annually; and the inhabitants of Cuba,
who were wholly engaged in rearing cattle, scarcely received any.
During the war of succession, French ships were accustomed to stop at
the Havannah and to exchange slaves for tobacco.
The Asiento treaty
with the English in some degree augmented the introduction of negroes;
yet in 1763, although the taking of the Havannah and the sojourn of
strangers gave rise to new wants, the number of slaves in the
jurisdiction of the Havannah did not amount to 25,000; and in the
whole island, not to 32,000. The total number of African negroes
imported from 1521 to 1763 was probably 60,000; their descendants
survive among the free mulattos, who inhabit for the most part the
eastern side of the island. From the year 1763 to 1790, when the
negro-trade was declared free, the Havannah received 24,875 (by the
Compania de Tobacos 4957, from 1763 to 1766; by the contract of the
Marquess de Casa Enrile, 14,132, from 1773 to 1779; by the contract of
Baker and Dawson, 5786, from 1786 to 1789). If we estimate the
introduction of slaves in the eastern part of the island during those
twenty-seven years (1763 to 1790) at 6000, we find from the discovery
of the island of Cuba, or rather from 1521 to 1790, a total of 90,875.
We shall soon see that by the ever-increasing activity of the
slave-trade the fifteen years that followed 1790 furnished more slaves
than the two centuries and a half which preceded the period of the
free trade.
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