The 1812 Aponte Rebellion in Cuba and the Struggle against Atlantic Slavery / Edition 1

by Matt D. Childs

Overview

In 1812 a series of revolts known collectively as the Aponte Rebellion erupted across the island of Cuba, comprising one of the largest and most important slave insurrections in Caribbean history. Matt Childs provides the first in-depth analysis of the rebellion, situating it in local, colonial, imperial, and Atlantic World contexts.

Childs explains how slaves and free people of color responded to the nineteenth-century "sugar boom" in the Spanish colony by planning a rebellion against racial slavery and plantation agriculture. Striking alliances among free people of color and slaves, blacks and mulattoes, Africans and Creoles, and rural and urban populations, rebels were prompted to act by a widespread belief in rumors promising that emancipation was near. Taking further inspiration from the 1791 Haitian Revolution, rebels sought to destroy slavery in Cuba and perhaps even end Spanish rule. By comparing his findings to studies of slave insurrections in Brazil, Haiti, the British Caribbean, and the United States, Childs places the rebellion within the wider story of Atlantic World revolution and political change. The book also features a biographical table, constructed by Childs, of the more than 350 people investigated for their involvement in the rebellion, 34 of whom were executed.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807857724
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	11/27/2006
Series:	Envisioning Cuba
Edition description:	1
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.71(d)

About the Author

Matt D. Childs is assistant professor of Caribbean history at Florida State University and coeditor of The Yoruba Diaspora in the Atlantic World.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

By situating this first-ever study of the Cuban slave revolts of 1812 within the larger context of the Spanish empire, Childs reveals the Aponte rebels to be realists who acted upon news of abolitionist activities and black resistance elsewhere in the Atlantic world. A truly outstanding work that combines prodigious research with passion and imagination.—Douglas R. Egerton, author of Gabriel's Rebellion: The Virginia Slave Conspiracies of 1800 and 1802



This is a masterful book, rigorously researched and powerfully written. Lively and dynamic in its treatment of a fascinating event, it will be useful for scholars and students of Cuba, the Caribbean, the African Diaspora, and comparative slavery.—Ada Ferrer, New York University

Editorial Reviews

A welcome contribution to the debates about slave rebellion and also about the nature of the societies of both the slave-owning Caribbean islands and of the free people of colour. Its detail is always fascinating and telling, and its argument sound and much needed.—Journal of Latin American Studies



An impressive array of archival sources. . . . Provides an engaging model.—Hispanic American Historical Review



A passionately written book that will prove to be a valuable contribution to slavery studies, as well as to the historiography of Cuba and the African diaspora.—The Journal of Interdisciplinary History



Childs should be praised for redirecting the 'Aponte Rebellion' into the general literature of African diaspora studies.—Colonial Latin American Historical Review



A careful and multi-layered account of the uprisings and the people who planned and carried them out. . . . Childs brilliantly renders this historical complexity.—The International History Review



A groundbreaking study that is impressively researched and captivatingly written.—Slavery and Abolition



[Contains] important appendix of demographic data on the 381 individuals arrested for participation in the rebellion.—CHOICE



Matt Childs . . . provides a new interpretation of classic data, making his one of the most important works in Cuban Studies published in the last fifteen years.—The Americas



The first in-depth analysis of insurrections in Cuba in 1812.—Black Issues Book Review



Framed in an engaging narrative . . . a welcome contribution to the study of African slavery in the New World.—Estudios Interdisciplinarios de America Latina y el Caribe

From the Publisher