Shade-grown slavery: Life and labor on coffee plantations in western Cuba, 1790--1845

This dissertation is centered on exploring the world of slaves on coffee plantations in western Cuba during the plantation boom period that began around 1790 and stretched into the 1840s. The work fills a lacuna in the existing historiography of Cuban plantation agriculture and slavery that largely has focused on sugar plantations. Coffee plantations and the slaves who toiled on them were significant factors in the development of Cuban agriculture. Challenging the long-standing paradigm to expand the understandings of the experiences of slaves is one of the themes of this work.;A second major theme of this dissertation is that the type of crop produced on a farm was significant. Plantations that produced specific products developed in particular ways and as a result produced differences in labor and structure that shaped the experiences of slaves. Work on coffee plantations was less rigorous than on sugar cane plantations, resulting in distinct modes of management. Owners and their agents used slaves to construct showplace farms that created an ideal of rural wealth and refinement. They also designed their establishments to create a passive workforce. Realizing important differences existed in growing coffee for export, slave holders on coffee farms did not construct their slave populations according to the demographic model followed by their counterparts on sugar plantations. They purchased more women, creating a small but significant change in the social structure of coffee farms. A closer ratio of men to women on coffee farms, along with differences in labor, created conditions that led to more rapid creolization of the population in the coffee producing district. These conditions contributed to the exercise of agency by slaves on coffee farms; they challenged those who enslaved them in ways both subtle and overt.;This work, based on research in the archives and libraries of Cuba and Spain, contributes to the literature on slavery in Cuba and our knowledge of Cuban agricultural development. Coffee plantations were more than a footnote in Cuba's agricultural history. Rather, they were a vital element in the rise of the plantation system and the creation of Afro-Cuban culture.