| This dissertation explores the circulation of people and ideas in Cuba during the Age of Revolutions. It analyzes how the mobility of political, anti-slavery, and abolitionist ideas, and the traffic of people who espoused these kinds of ideas, influenced Cuban colonial authorities' efforts at social control. Conversely, it also examines the impact these ideas had on free people of color and slaves in Cuba during the period 1791 to 1844, exploring the connection between ideologies of liberty, freedom, and equality and popular resistance. The central claim is that slaves and free people of color developed popular networks of communication and mobility that operated outside of the colonial government's scope of authority and challenged efforts at social control. As social spaces beyond the purview of authorities, these networks provided free blacks and slaves the opportunities to learn of and engage with transnational ideas. Moreover, people of African descent, slave and free, utilized their experiences of living in Cuban slave society to radicalize the transnational ideas they appropriated from the Atlantic world, including memories brought to the Caribbean by some African-born slaves. This project treats the movement of people and ideas as a serious subject of historical inquiry, tracing when, how, and under what conditions ideas reached slaves and free people of color, and uncovering points of contact between these subordinate groups and transatlantic ideas. |
