This article analyzes the ways that discussions regarding the abolition of the slave trade held at the Congress of Vienna (1814–1815) affected slavery in the Iberian empires. Drawing from newspaper coverage, diplomatic correspondence, and conference minutes, we reassess the conditions under which Portuguese and Spanish agents negotiated with their British counterparts; highlight the Iberian political dilemmas that surfaced at the Congress; and elucidate the plenipotentiaries’ subsequent resolutions addressing the transatlantic slave trade. As a result of the talks held in Vienna, Spanish subjects in Cuba and Portuguese subjects in Brazil established political and diplomatic strategies to support slavery in order to maintain their positions in the world market of tropical goods. In other words, while slavery was undergoing reconfiguration in Brazil and Cuba, slave-owners and their political representatives were forced to engage with the hegemonic, abolitionist discourse systematically established by the British at the Congress in order to formulate their proslavery response. The article thus demonstrates that the Congress of Vienna was integral to the international consolidation of the politics of “second slavery” in the Americas. In other words, Brazil and Cuba were forced to engage with the hegemonic discourse systematically established by the British at the Congress in reconfiguring slavery and formulating their proslavery defense.
In his introduction to a special issue of The Americas in 2006, Ben Vinson III noted how easily the history of Latin America had been dissociated from that of the African Diaspora. “When looking at the broad trajectory of historical writings on Latin America outside of the Caribbean and Brazil, it has long been possible to do Latin American history without referencing blackness or the African Diaspora.” A decade later, it is safe to say that the tables have turned. What were before scattered efforts to recognize black individuals' contributions to the history, culture, economy, and political developments of the region as a whole have evolved into a growing field meriting its own name: Afro-Latin American Studies. Born of the cross-pollination of scholarly debates that were previously disparate, the field of Afro-Latin American Studies has grown and developed in response to the rise of Black Studies and in connection to new realities in countries where Afro-descendants have pushed for social and economic equality.
Resumo O objetivo central dessa pesquisa é analisar como foram recebidas em Cuba as notícias relativas às conturbações políticas que despontavam na América de colonização ibérica a partir de 1810quando a sensação de vazio de poder ocasionado pela substituição de monarquias no trono espanhol, operada pela ocupação napoleônica, deu lugar a uma série de eventos que transformariam de maneira decisiva as relações entre as duas partes do Império. Pretende-se entender a fidelidade cubana à monarquia espanhola e a conseqüente permanência do sistema colonial nesta ilha num contexto de intensas transformações e reordenamento político no mundo ocidentalcom atenção especial ao mundo iberoamericano-, um caminho que contrasta com a insurgência e guerras independentistas observadas em grande parte dos antigos domínios coloniais ibéricos no Novo Mundo. Para tanto, são analisados periódicos da época a fim de identificar o modo como foram percebidos e noticiados em Cuba tais acontecimentos. A particularidade da escravidão em Cuba forma o prisma para enxergar e entender o porvir político cubano à luz dos eventos acima mencionados.
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