Continental Origins of Insular Proslavery: George Dawson Flinter in Curaçao, Venezuela, Britain, and Puerto Rico, 1810s-1830s

Schmidt-Nowara, Christopher

doi:10.1590/2236-463320140804

Abstract

This article traces the career and migrations of George Dawson Flinter, a naturalized Spanish subject of Irish origin, who became a prominent apologist for slavery and Spanish colonial rule in the Caribbean in the 1820s and 1830s. It argues that Flinter's experiences in the revolutionary Americas, especially in Venezuela, shaped his attitudes toward slavery, freedom, race, and social order, which he promoted on behalf of the Spanish regime as a propagandist in Britain and in Puerto Rico. Flinter's writings, loyalties, and migrations throw new light on the sources of proslavery thought, not only in the Spanish Caribbean, but also in the broader Atlantic world during the consolidation of the second slavery.

Keywords:
violence; fear; second slavery; independence; refugees; revolution

Resumo

Este artigo acompanha a carreira e as migrações de George Dawson Flinter, um indivíduo naturalizado espanhol, de origem irlandesa, que se tornou um proeminente defensor da escravidão e do domínio colonial espanhol no Caribe nas décadas de 1820 e 1830. O artigo argumenta que as experiências de Flinter no continente americano em revolução, especialmente na Venezuela, deu forma às suas posições em relação à escravidão, liberdade, raça e ordem social, que ele propagou em nome do regime espanhol no Reino Unido e em Porto Rico. Os escritos de Flinter, seus tratos de lealdade, migrações, lançam uma nova luz sobre as origens do pensamento escravocrata, não só no Caribe espanhol, mas também em todo o Atlântico, durante a consolidação do período da segunda escravidão.

Palavras-chave:
violência; medo; segunda escravidão; independência; refugiados; revolução

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Full text available only in PDF format.

*
Several friends and colleagues made invaluable comments on an earlier version of this article. My thanks to Joselyn Almeida, Benjamin Carp, Gabriel Paquette, Lisa Surwillo, and the participants in the Johns Hopkins History Department Seminar. Support for this article was provided by grant HAR2012-32510 from Spain's Ministry of Science and Innovation and a sabbatical from Tufts University
1
GATTEL, Frank Otto. Puerto Rico in the 1830's: The Journal of Edward Bliss Emerson. The Americas 16 (July 1959), 79. Edward was the younger brother of Ralph Waldo Emerson. He moved to the Caribbean in 1831 for his health. He passed away in 1834.
2
Ibidem, p. 68.
3
Ibidem, p. 70.
4
Ibidem, p. 73.
5
Ibidem, p. 75.
6
Ibidem, p. 71.
7
FLINTER, George Dawson. An Account of the Present State of the Island of Puerto Rico. 7. London: Longman, 1834. But Francisco Scarano has found that his observations on the sugar plantations were especially disingenuous; slave labor predominated. See SCARANO, Francisco. Sugar and Slavery in Puerto Rico: The Plantation Economy of Ponce, 1800-1850. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984. p. 25-34.
8
FLINTER, George Dawson, Op. Cit., p. 6.
9
MARQUESE, Rafael and PARRON, Tâmis. International escravista: a política da Segunda Escravidão. Topoi, n. 12, Jul/Dec/2011. p. 97-117.
10
Recent studies of refugees and revolution include: PYBUS, Cassandra. Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and Their Global Quest for Liberty. Boston: Beacon, 2006; SCHAMA, Simon. Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves, and the American Revolution. New York: Ecco, 2006; WHITE, Ashli. Encountering Revolution: Haiti and the Making of the Early Republic. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010; JASANOFF, Maya. Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World. New York: Knopf, 2011; SCOTT, Rebecca and HÉBRARD, Jean. Freedom Papers: An Atlantic Odyssey in the Age of Emancipation. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2011; and SPIELER, Miranda Frances. Empire and Underworld: Captivity in French Guiana. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012.
11
On Spanish refusal to recognize the independent republics until after the death of Ferdinand VII (and much later in some cases, such as Santo Domingo), see: VAN AKEN, Mark. Pan-Hispanism: Its Origin and Development to 1866. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1959; COSTELOE, Michael P. Response to Revolution: Imperial Spain and the Spanish American revolutions, 1810-1840. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986; NAVARRO GARCÍA, Jesús Raúl. Puerto Rico a la sombra de la independencia continental, 1815-1840. Seville and San Juan: CSIC and Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Puerto Rico y el Caribe, 1999; ____________ (ed.) Insurgencia y republicanism. Seville: CSIC, 2006. Flinter wrote a widely read and commented upon work in favor of diplomatic recognition soon after Ferdinand's death in 1833. See his Consideraciones sobre la España y sus colonias, y ventajas que resultarían de su mutua reconciliación. Madrid: Imprenta que fue de Bueno, 1834. The works cited above treat its reception.
12
See KNIGHT, Franklin. Slave Society in Cuba during the Nineteenth Century. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1970; CARRIÓN, Arturo Morales. Puerto Rico and the Non-Hispanic Caribbean: A Study in the Decline of Spanish Exclusivism. Río Piedras: University of Puerto Rico, 1974; _________. Auge y decadencia de la trata negrera en Puerto Rico (1820-1860). San Juan: Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Puerto Rico y el Caribe/Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, 1978; MORENO FRAGINALS, Manuel. El ingenio: complejo económico social cubano del azúcar. Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1978; FRADERA, Josep M. La participació catalana en el tràfic d'esclaus (1789-1845). Recerques n. 16, 1984, p. 119-139; DORSEY, Joseph C. Slave Traffic in the Age of Abolition: Puerto Rico, West Africa, and the Non-Hispanic Caribbean, 1815-1859. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003; and DELGADO RIBAS, Josep M. The Slave Trade in the Spanish Empire (1501-1808): The Shift from Periphery to Center. In: FRADERA, Josep M. and SCHMIDT-NOWARA (eds.) Slavery and Antislavery in Spain's Atlantic Empire. New York: Berghahn Books, 2013, p.13-42.
13
SCARANO, Francisco, op. cit.; CUBANO IGUINA, Astrid. El hilo en el laberinto: claves de la lucha política en Puerto Rico (siglo XIX). Río Piedras: Ediciones Huracán, 1990; and FIGUEROA, Luis. Sugar, Slavery, and Freedom in NineteenthCentury Puerto Rico. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.
14
For a good recent summary of the changes brought about in Puerto Rico by the 1815 cédula de gracias see CHINEA, Jorge Luis, Race and Labor in the Hispanic Caribbean: The West Indian Immigrant Worker Experience in Puerto Rico, 1800-1850. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005, p.1-27. On immigration and its impact, see MALUQUER DE MOTES, Jordi. Inmigración y comercio catalán en las Antillas españolas durante el siglo XIX, Siglo XIX, n. 2, 1987, p.160-181; PÉREZ VEGA, Ivette, El efecto económico, social y político de la emigración de Venezuela en el sur de Puerto Rico (Ponce), 1810-1830. Revista de Indias, XLVII, n. 181, 1987, p. 869-885; and SCARANO, Francisco A. (ed.) Inmigración y clases sociales en el Puerto Rico del siglo XIX , 3. ed. Río Piedras: Ediciones Huracán, 1989.
15
GONZÁLEZ MENDOZA, Juan R. Puerto Rico's Creole Patriots and the Slave Trade after the Haitian Revolution. In: GEGGUS, David P. (ed.), The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001, p. 58-71; GONZÁLEZRIPOLL, Maria Dolores et al., El rumor de Haití en Cuba: temor, raza, y rebeldía, 1789-1844. Madrid: CSIC, 2004; and FERRER, Ada, Cuban Slavery and Atlantic Antislavery. Slavery and Antislavery in Spain's Atlantic Empire, p. 134-157.
16
CORWIN, Arthur, Spain and the Abolition of Cuban Slavery, 1817-1886. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967; MURRAY, David. Odious Commerce: Britain, Spain, and the Abolition of the Cuban Slave Trade. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980; and PAQUETTE, Robert L. Sugar is Made with Blood: The Conspiracy of La Escalera and the Conflict between Empires over Slavery in Cuba. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1988.
17
See REID ANDREWS, George. Afro-Latin America, 1800-2000. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004, chs. 1-3; and BLANCHARD, Peter, Under the Flags of Freedom: Slave Soldiers and the Wars of Independence in Spanish South America. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008.
18
On the Spanish crown's policies toward the slave trade, see Delgado, "The Slave Trade in the Spanish Empire".
19
See especially CHILDS, Matt, The 1812 Aponte Rebellion in Cuba and the Struggle against Atlantic Slavery. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. On Puerto Rico, see Gullermo Baralt, Esclavos rebeldes: conspiraciones y sublevaciones de esclavos en Puerto Rico (17951873). Río Piedras: Ediciones Huracán, 1981.
20
ANTILLÓN, Isidoro de, Disertación sobre el origen de la esclavitud de los negros, motivos que la han perpetuado, ventajas que se le atribuyen y medios que podrían adoptarse para hacer prosperar nuestras colonias sin la esclavitud de los negros. Mallorca: Imprenta de Miguel Domingo, 1811, p. 75. See also WHITE BLANCO, Joseph, Bosquexo del comercio en esclavos y reflexiónes sobre este tráfico considerado moral, política y cristianamente. London: Ellerton and Henderson, 1814.
21
On the global framework of the "second slavery," see TOMICH, Dale, Through the Prism of Slavery: Labor, Capital, and World Economy. Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield, 2004. See also BERBEL, Márcia, MARQUESE, Rafael, and PARRON, Tâmis, Escravidão e política: Brasil e Cuba, 1750-1850. São Paulo: Editora Hucitec/FAPESP, 2010; and MARQUESE, Rafael and PARRON, Tâmis. Op. Cit.
22
See the overview in FRADERA, Josep M., Moments in a Postponed Abolition. In: Slavery and Antislavery in Spain's Atlantic Empire, p. 256-290.
23
ARANGO Y PARREÑO, Francisco de. Representación de la ciudad de la Habana a las Cortes, el 20 de julio de 1811, con motivo de las proposiciones hechas por D. José Miguel Guridi Alcocer y D. Agustín de Argüelles, sobre el tráfico de esclavos y esclavitud de los negros; extendida por el Alferez Mayor de la Ciudad, D. Francisco de Arango, por encargo del Ayuntamiento, Consulado y Sociedad Patriótica de la Habana. In: Obras de D. Francisco de Arango y Parreño. Havana: Dirección de Cultura, Ministerio de Educación, 1952, t. II, p. 145-187. For more on Arango's views on slavery, see the extensive studies in GONZALEZ RIPOLL, Dolores and ÁLVAREZ CUARTERO, Izaskun. Francisco Arango y la invención de la Cuba azucarera. Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad Salamanca, 2009.
24
ARANGO y PARREÑO, Francisco de. Op. Cit. p. 167.
25
SCHMIDT-NOWARA, Christopher. Spain and the Politics of the Second Slavery, 1808-1868. Review: Journal of the Fernand Braudel Center, forthcoming.
26
Flinter recounted his exploits in A Letter to His Most Gracious Majesty, George the Fourth, King of Great Britain and Ireland, Trinidad: Port of Spain Gazette, 1829; and in his Hoja de servicio, Archivo General Militar de Segovia (AGMS), sección 1a, legajo 1493, which is dated 15 June 1836.
27
The list of officers dated 4 March 1816 noted that Lieutenant Flinter was absent "with leave". The British National Archives, War Office (BNA/ WO), 1/117.
28
Flinter said that his father-in-law, Don Francisco Aramburco, was "one of the wealthiest landed proprietors and ship-owners in Caracas," who had fled with his family to Curaçao in 1813 and then, after a brief return to Caracas, to Spain in 1817. See An Account, 242.
29
On mercenaries and the recruitment, see BROWN, Matthew. Adventuring through Spanish Colonies: Simón Bolívar, Foreign Mercenaries and the Birth of New Nations. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2006; and on British responses to the foreign enlistment, see WADDELL, D. A. G. British Neutrality and Spanish American Independence: The Problem of Foreign Enlistment. Journal of Latin American Studies 19, 1987, p. 1-18.
30
His efforts are recounted in Archivo Histórico Nacional, Estado (AHN/E), legajo 5511, expediente 1, which collects his letters requesting compensation, naturalization, and a military commission, as well as reports and letters of support from his Spanish patron the Duke of San Carlos, Spain's ambassador to London, with whom he worked hand-in-glove to head off the mercenary expeditions.
31
FLINTER, George Dawson, A Letter, Op. Cit., p. 12.
32
Ibidem, p. 15.
33
Ibidem, p. 6-7. For a similar monarchist, counterrevolutionary perspective on the Americas and the impact of revolutions, see Gabriel Paquette's study of the Brazilian political economist and official José da Silva Lisboa: PAQUETTE, Gabriel. José da Silva Lisboa and the Vicissitudes of Enlightened Reform in Brazil, 1798-1824. In ____________(ed.) Enlightened Reform in Southern Europe and its Atlantic Colonies, 17501830. Burlington: Ashgate, 2009, p. 361-388.
34
See the report from the Ministry of State praising Flinter's earlier service to Ferdinand VII and his letter to George IV, as well as a letter on the Spanish American revolutions addressed to the Duke of Wellington that the Puerto Rican government published in the Gaceta de Puerto Rico, Madrid, 21/oct/1830, Archivo General de Indias (AGI), Estado, legajo 94, n, 99.
35
See VILLAR GARCÍA, María Begoña (ed.) La emigración irlandesa en el siglo XVIII. Málaga: Universidad de Málaga, 2000.
36
See the essays on Díaz in NAVARRO GARCÍA, Jesús Raúl. Op. Cit.; and ____________Insurgencia y republicanismo. On Díaz and Venezuelan loyalism, see STRAKA, Tomás. La voz de los vencidos: Ideas del partido realista de Caracas, 1810-1821. Caracas: Comisión de Estudios de Postgrado, Facultad de Humanidades y Educación, Universidad Central de Venezuela, 2000; ____________ (ed.) Contra Bolívar: Una selección y un análisis de los terribles artículos de José Domingo Díaz contra El Libertador. Caracas: Libros Marcados, 2009. Díaz's correspondence in 1821 with de la Torre from Madrid indicates that even as he planned their transfer to Puerto Rico he believed that Ferdinand VII and loyalists like themselves would never abandon the hope of subduing New Granada. For example, see the letter dated Madrid, 18 December 1821, AHN/E, legajo 8739, expediente 242, número 1323, in which Díaz reports to de la Torre that news of Mexico's independence, negotiated by the Spanish general O'Donojú, had hardened Ferdinand's resolve. Moreover, when Flinter left Puerto Rico for Spain, he soon found himself slightly out of step with the colonial reactionaries who had embraced him upon his flight from Venezuela. De la Torre, his erstwhile benefactor, banned from Puerto Rico his 1834 pamphlet urging Spain to recognize Spanish American independence after Ferdinand VII's death even though it was far from being pro-revolutionary. See NAVARRO GARCÍA, Jesús Raúl. Control social y actitudes políticas en Puerto Rico (1823-1837). Seville: Diputación Provincial de Sevilla, 1991, p. 272. Likewise, when Flinter arrived in Puerto Rico in 1829, Díaz, in his capacity as editor of the official organ La Gaceta del Gobierno de Puerto Rico, heavily edited Flinter's article on the Spanish American republics, removing any hint of conciliatory policies towards them. See NAVARRO GARCÍA, Jesús Raúl. Un ejemplo de censura en el Puerto Rico decimonónico: la Carta al Duque de Wellington de Jorge D. Flinter. In _________ Puerto Rico a la sombra, Op. Cit., p.143-156.
37
FLINTER, George Dawson, An Account, Op. Cit., p. 12.
38
Address to the British Subjects, going out in the Expedition to South America. By a British Officer, Who has been on the Scene of Action since the Commencement of the Revolution. In: AHN/E, legajo 5511, expediente 1; and A History of the Revolution of Caracas; comprising an impartial narrative of the atrocities committed by the contending parties, illustrating the real state of the contest, both in a commercial and political point of view. Together with a description of the llaneros, or people of the plains of South America. London: Printed for T. and J. Allman, 1819.
39
These foreign legions are the subject of Brown's Adventuring through Spanish Colonies.
40
In fact, in the 1820s, several independent Latin American governments defaulted on loans from British banks and the expected commercial bonanza fizzled. See COSTELOE, Michael, Bubbles and Bonanzas: British Investors and Investments in Mexico, 1821-1860. Landham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2011. Joselyn Almeida's work shows the widespread British interest in Latin American revolution and independence, as expressed in the literature of the era. See ALMEIDA, Joselyn. British Romanticism and Latin America, 2: Atlantic Revolution and British Intervention. Literature Compass, n. 7, 2010, p. 1-22.
41
The scholarship on this topic is immense but see the cogent discussion in BROWN, Mathew. Adventuring through Spanish Colonies, op. cit., p. 13-38.
42
See WADDELL, D.A.G. British Neutrality, op. cit.".
43
On the course of the independence movements and the Spanish counter-insurgency, especially in Venezuela, see STOAN, Stephen K. Pablo Morillo and Venezuela, 1815-1820. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1974; LYNCH, John. Simón Bolívar: A Life. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006; and GÓMEZ, Alejandro. La revolución de Caracas desde abajo. Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos. On line. Débats, mis en ligne le 17 mai 2008, consulté le 24 avril 2014. URL : http:// nuevomundo.revues.org/32982; DOI: 10.4000/ nuevomundo.32982.
44
Address to British Subjects, Op. Cit., p. 1.
45
See ADELMAN, Jeremy. Colonialism and National Histories: José Manuel Restrepo and Bartolomé Mitre. In SCHMIDT-NOVARA, Christopher and NIETO-PHILLIPS, John. (eds.). Interpreting Spanish Colonialism: Empires, Nations, and Legends. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005, p. 163-186.
46
Address to British Subjects, Op. Cit., p. 4.
47
Ibidem, p. 2.
48
Ibídem.
49
Ibídem.
50
Ibídem.
51
On the use of political violence and terror in this phase of the war and in the Spanish American revolutions more broadly, see THIBAUD, Clément "Coupé têtes, brûlé cases": peurs et désirs d'Haiti dans l'Amérique de Bolívar. Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 58, n. 2, 2003. p. 305-331; _____________". The Rites of Statehood: Violence and Sovereignty in Spanish America, 1789-1821. Hispanic American Historical Review 90, Aug/2010. p. 391-422; and RACINE, Karen. Message by Massacre: Venezuela's War to the Death, 1810-1814. Journal of Genocide Research, 15, n. 2, 2013. p. 201-217.Flinter was still in Curaçao during this period of the war in Venezuela but news of atrocities by loyalist and patriot forces began to appear in dispatches from the island by the end of 1813. See, for example, the dispatch in which the governor Hodgson informs the minister Bathurst of the massacre of Spanish prisoners held in prison in La Guaira, dated Curaçao, 12 April 1814, BNA/WO 1/115: "this horrid act of was carried into execution in the most cruel and horrid manner. I transmit an Extenuating Manifesto published by the Independent Government but it will be very difficult to wipe away the foul stain, this barbarous action has so indelibly stamped on that Government". See Flinter's rendering of the event below.
52
FLINTER, George Dawson. History of the Revolution of Caracas, Op. Cit., p. 148.
53
On the long trajectory of the Las CasasSepúlveda debate, see ADORNO, Rolena. The Polemics of Possession in Spanish American Narrative. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007. On nineteenth-century renderings of the Black Legend that inflected its meanings toward backwardness and away from violence, see KAGAN, Richard. Prescott Paradigm: American Historical Scholarship and the Decline of Spain. merican Historical Review, n. 101, 1996, p. 423-446.
54
FLINTER, George Dawson. History of the Revolution of Caracas, Op. Cit., p. 86.
55
MELLOR, Anne E. Making a 'monster': an introduction to Frankenstein. Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley ed. Esther Schor. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 12. Paraphrasing David Punter, The Literature of Terror.
56
MALCHOW, H. L. Gothic Images of Race in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996, p. 3.
57
FLINTER, George Dawson. History of the Revolution of Caracas, Op. Cit., p. 43 and 66-67.
58
Ibidem, p. 58-59.
59
Ibidem, p. 90.
60
Ibidem, p. 137.
61
Ibidem, p. 86.
62
Ibidem, p. 146.
63
Ibidem, p. 148-149.
64
Ibidem, p. 178-179.
65
Examen del estado actual de los esclavos de la isla de Puerto Rico bajo el gobierno español: en que se manifiesta la impolítica y peligro de la prematura emancipación de los esclavos de la india occidental. New York: Imprenta Española del Redactor, 1832, p. 7-8.
66
The intent of his Account of the Present State of the Island of Puerto Rico. In hindsight, a patent falsehood as the growth of slavery until midcentury demonstrates but one well accepted in the British press, which reviewed Flinter's work widely.
67
DRESCHER, Seymour. The Might Experiment: Free Labor versus Slavery in British Emancipation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 120.
68
See MALUQUER DE MOTES, Jordi. La burgesia catalana i l'esclavitud colonial: Modes de producció i pràctica política, Recerques, n. 3, 1974, p. 83-136; FRADERA, Josep M. Colonias para después de un imperio. Barcelona: Bellaterra, 2005; and RODRIGO Y ALHARILLA, Martin. Spanish Merchants and the Slave Trade: From Legality to Illegality, 1814-1870. In: FRADERA, Josep M. and SCHMIDT-NOWARA (eds.) Slavery and Antislavery, Op. Cit., p. 176-199.
69
See especially the works by Tomich and Marquese et al., cited above; ZEUSKE, Michael and GARCÍA MARTÍNEZ, Orlando. La Amistad: Ramón Ferrer in Cuba and the Transatlantic Dimensions of Slaving and Contraband Trade. In: FRADERA, Josep M. and SCHMIDT-NOWARA (eds.) Slavery and Antislavery, op. cit., p. 200-228; and HARRIS, John. Spies, Slave Traders, and Networks: The Illegal Atlantic Slave Trade, 1859-1866. Unpublished manuscript, cited by the author's permission.
70
"International escravista."
71
See the works cited in n. 10.
72
FLINTER, George Dawson. An Account, Op. Cit. 14.
73
FLINTER, George Dawson. History of the Revolution of Caracas, Op. Cit., p. 19-20.

Publication Dates

Publication in this collection
Dec 2014

History

Received
Nov 2013
Accepted
Apr 2014

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License

[1] *
Several friends and colleagues made invaluable comments on an earlier version of this article. My thanks to Joselyn Almeida, Benjamin Carp, Gabriel Paquette, Lisa Surwillo, and the participants in the Johns Hopkins History Department Seminar. Support for this article was provided by grant HAR2012-32510 from Spain's Ministry of Science and Innovation and a sabbatical from Tufts University

[2] 1
GATTEL, Frank Otto. Puerto Rico in the 1830's: The Journal of Edward Bliss Emerson. The Americas 16 (July 1959), 79. Edward was the younger brother of Ralph Waldo Emerson. He moved to the Caribbean in 1831 for his health. He passed away in 1834.

[3] 2
Ibidem, p. 68.

[4] 3
Ibidem, p. 70.

[5] 4
Ibidem, p. 73.

[6] 5
Ibidem, p. 75.

[7] 6
Ibidem, p. 71.

[8] 7
FLINTER, George Dawson. An Account of the Present State of the Island of Puerto Rico. 7. London: Longman, 1834. But Francisco Scarano has found that his observations on the sugar plantations were especially disingenuous; slave labor predominated. See SCARANO, Francisco. Sugar and Slavery in Puerto Rico: The Plantation Economy of Ponce, 1800-1850. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984. p. 25-34.

[9] 8
FLINTER, George Dawson, Op. Cit., p. 6.

[10] 9
MARQUESE, Rafael and PARRON, Tâmis. International escravista: a política da Segunda Escravidão. Topoi, n. 12, Jul/Dec/2011. p. 97-117.

[11] 10
Recent studies of refugees and revolution include: PYBUS, Cassandra. Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and Their Global Quest for Liberty. Boston: Beacon, 2006; SCHAMA, Simon. Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves, and the American Revolution. New York: Ecco, 2006; WHITE, Ashli. Encountering Revolution: Haiti and the Making of the Early Republic. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010; JASANOFF, Maya. Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World. New York: Knopf, 2011; SCOTT, Rebecca and HÉBRARD, Jean. Freedom Papers: An Atlantic Odyssey in the Age of Emancipation. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2011; and SPIELER, Miranda Frances. Empire and Underworld: Captivity in French Guiana. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012.

[12] 11
On Spanish refusal to recognize the independent republics until after the death of Ferdinand VII (and much later in some cases, such as Santo Domingo), see: VAN AKEN, Mark. Pan-Hispanism: Its Origin and Development to 1866. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1959; COSTELOE, Michael P. Response to Revolution: Imperial Spain and the Spanish American revolutions, 1810-1840. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986; NAVARRO GARCÍA, Jesús Raúl. Puerto Rico a la sombra de la independencia continental, 1815-1840. Seville and San Juan: CSIC and Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Puerto Rico y el Caribe, 1999; ____________ (ed.) Insurgencia y republicanism. Seville: CSIC, 2006. Flinter wrote a widely read and commented upon work in favor of diplomatic recognition soon after Ferdinand's death in 1833. See his Consideraciones sobre la España y sus colonias, y ventajas que resultarían de su mutua reconciliación. Madrid: Imprenta que fue de Bueno, 1834. The works cited above treat its reception.

[13] 12
See KNIGHT, Franklin. Slave Society in Cuba during the Nineteenth Century. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1970; CARRIÓN, Arturo Morales. Puerto Rico and the Non-Hispanic Caribbean: A Study in the Decline of Spanish Exclusivism. Río Piedras: University of Puerto Rico, 1974; _________. Auge y decadencia de la trata negrera en Puerto Rico (1820-1860). San Juan: Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Puerto Rico y el Caribe/Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, 1978; MORENO FRAGINALS, Manuel. El ingenio: complejo económico social cubano del azúcar. Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1978; FRADERA, Josep M. La participació catalana en el tràfic d'esclaus (1789-1845). Recerques n. 16, 1984, p. 119-139; DORSEY, Joseph C. Slave Traffic in the Age of Abolition: Puerto Rico, West Africa, and the Non-Hispanic Caribbean, 1815-1859. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003; and DELGADO RIBAS, Josep M. The Slave Trade in the Spanish Empire (1501-1808): The Shift from Periphery to Center. In: FRADERA, Josep M. and SCHMIDT-NOWARA (eds.) Slavery and Antislavery in Spain's Atlantic Empire. New York: Berghahn Books, 2013, p.13-42.

[14] 13
SCARANO, Francisco, op. cit.; CUBANO IGUINA, Astrid. El hilo en el laberinto: claves de la lucha política en Puerto Rico (siglo XIX). Río Piedras: Ediciones Huracán, 1990; and FIGUEROA, Luis. Sugar, Slavery, and Freedom in NineteenthCentury Puerto Rico. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.

[15] 14
For a good recent summary of the changes brought about in Puerto Rico by the 1815 cédula de gracias see CHINEA, Jorge Luis, Race and Labor in the Hispanic Caribbean: The West Indian Immigrant Worker Experience in Puerto Rico, 1800-1850. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005, p.1-27. On immigration and its impact, see MALUQUER DE MOTES, Jordi. Inmigración y comercio catalán en las Antillas españolas durante el siglo XIX, Siglo XIX, n. 2, 1987, p.160-181; PÉREZ VEGA, Ivette, El efecto económico, social y político de la emigración de Venezuela en el sur de Puerto Rico (Ponce), 1810-1830. Revista de Indias, XLVII, n. 181, 1987, p. 869-885; and SCARANO, Francisco A. (ed.) Inmigración y clases sociales en el Puerto Rico del siglo XIX , 3. ed. Río Piedras: Ediciones Huracán, 1989.

[16] 15
GONZÁLEZ MENDOZA, Juan R. Puerto Rico's Creole Patriots and the Slave Trade after the Haitian Revolution. In: GEGGUS, David P. (ed.), The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001, p. 58-71; GONZÁLEZRIPOLL, Maria Dolores et al., El rumor de Haití en Cuba: temor, raza, y rebeldía, 1789-1844. Madrid: CSIC, 2004; and FERRER, Ada, Cuban Slavery and Atlantic Antislavery. Slavery and Antislavery in Spain's Atlantic Empire, p. 134-157.

[17] 16
CORWIN, Arthur, Spain and the Abolition of Cuban Slavery, 1817-1886. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967; MURRAY, David. Odious Commerce: Britain, Spain, and the Abolition of the Cuban Slave Trade. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980; and PAQUETTE, Robert L. Sugar is Made with Blood: The Conspiracy of La Escalera and the Conflict between Empires over Slavery in Cuba. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1988.

[18] 17
See REID ANDREWS, George. Afro-Latin America, 1800-2000. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004, chs. 1-3; and BLANCHARD, Peter, Under the Flags of Freedom: Slave Soldiers and the Wars of Independence in Spanish South America. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008.

[19] 18
On the Spanish crown's policies toward the slave trade, see Delgado, "The Slave Trade in the Spanish Empire".

[20] 19
See especially CHILDS, Matt, The 1812 Aponte Rebellion in Cuba and the Struggle against Atlantic Slavery. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. On Puerto Rico, see Gullermo Baralt, Esclavos rebeldes: conspiraciones y sublevaciones de esclavos en Puerto Rico (17951873). Río Piedras: Ediciones Huracán, 1981.

[21] 20
ANTILLÓN, Isidoro de, Disertación sobre el origen de la esclavitud de los negros, motivos que la han perpetuado, ventajas que se le atribuyen y medios que podrían adoptarse para hacer prosperar nuestras colonias sin la esclavitud de los negros. Mallorca: Imprenta de Miguel Domingo, 1811, p. 75. See also WHITE BLANCO, Joseph, Bosquexo del comercio en esclavos y reflexiónes sobre este tráfico considerado moral, política y cristianamente. London: Ellerton and Henderson, 1814.

[22] 21
On the global framework of the "second slavery," see TOMICH, Dale, Through the Prism of Slavery: Labor, Capital, and World Economy. Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield, 2004. See also BERBEL, Márcia, MARQUESE, Rafael, and PARRON, Tâmis, Escravidão e política: Brasil e Cuba, 1750-1850. São Paulo: Editora Hucitec/FAPESP, 2010; and MARQUESE, Rafael and PARRON, Tâmis. Op. Cit.

[23] 22
See the overview in FRADERA, Josep M., Moments in a Postponed Abolition. In: Slavery and Antislavery in Spain's Atlantic Empire, p. 256-290.

[24] 23
ARANGO Y PARREÑO, Francisco de. Representación de la ciudad de la Habana a las Cortes, el 20 de julio de 1811, con motivo de las proposiciones hechas por D. José Miguel Guridi Alcocer y D. Agustín de Argüelles, sobre el tráfico de esclavos y esclavitud de los negros; extendida por el Alferez Mayor de la Ciudad, D. Francisco de Arango, por encargo del Ayuntamiento, Consulado y Sociedad Patriótica de la Habana. In: Obras de D. Francisco de Arango y Parreño. Havana: Dirección de Cultura, Ministerio de Educación, 1952, t. II, p. 145-187. For more on Arango's views on slavery, see the extensive studies in GONZALEZ RIPOLL, Dolores and ÁLVAREZ CUARTERO, Izaskun. Francisco Arango y la invención de la Cuba azucarera. Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad Salamanca, 2009.

[25] 24
ARANGO y PARREÑO, Francisco de. Op. Cit. p. 167.

[26] 25
SCHMIDT-NOWARA, Christopher. Spain and the Politics of the Second Slavery, 1808-1868. Review: Journal of the Fernand Braudel Center, forthcoming.

[27] 26
Flinter recounted his exploits in A Letter to His Most Gracious Majesty, George the Fourth, King of Great Britain and Ireland, Trinidad: Port of Spain Gazette, 1829; and in his Hoja de servicio, Archivo General Militar de Segovia (AGMS), sección 1a, legajo 1493, which is dated 15 June 1836.

[28] 27
The list of officers dated 4 March 1816 noted that Lieutenant Flinter was absent "with leave". The British National Archives, War Office (BNA/ WO), 1/117.

[29] 28
Flinter said that his father-in-law, Don Francisco Aramburco, was "one of the wealthiest landed proprietors and ship-owners in Caracas," who had fled with his family to Curaçao in 1813 and then, after a brief return to Caracas, to Spain in 1817. See An Account, 242.

[30] 29
On mercenaries and the recruitment, see BROWN, Matthew. Adventuring through Spanish Colonies: Simón Bolívar, Foreign Mercenaries and the Birth of New Nations. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2006; and on British responses to the foreign enlistment, see WADDELL, D. A. G. British Neutrality and Spanish American Independence: The Problem of Foreign Enlistment. Journal of Latin American Studies 19, 1987, p. 1-18.

[31] 30
His efforts are recounted in Archivo Histórico Nacional, Estado (AHN/E), legajo 5511, expediente 1, which collects his letters requesting compensation, naturalization, and a military commission, as well as reports and letters of support from his Spanish patron the Duke of San Carlos, Spain's ambassador to London, with whom he worked hand-in-glove to head off the mercenary expeditions.

[32] 31
FLINTER, George Dawson, A Letter, Op. Cit., p. 12.

[33] 32
Ibidem, p. 15.

[34] 33
Ibidem, p. 6-7. For a similar monarchist, counterrevolutionary perspective on the Americas and the impact of revolutions, see Gabriel Paquette's study of the Brazilian political economist and official José da Silva Lisboa: PAQUETTE, Gabriel. José da Silva Lisboa and the Vicissitudes of Enlightened Reform in Brazil, 1798-1824. In ____________(ed.) Enlightened Reform in Southern Europe and its Atlantic Colonies, 17501830. Burlington: Ashgate, 2009, p. 361-388.

[35] 34
See the report from the Ministry of State praising Flinter's earlier service to Ferdinand VII and his letter to George IV, as well as a letter on the Spanish American revolutions addressed to the Duke of Wellington that the Puerto Rican government published in the Gaceta de Puerto Rico, Madrid, 21/oct/1830, Archivo General de Indias (AGI), Estado, legajo 94, n, 99.

[36] 35
See VILLAR GARCÍA, María Begoña (ed.) La emigración irlandesa en el siglo XVIII. Málaga: Universidad de Málaga, 2000.

[38] 37
FLINTER, George Dawson, An Account, Op. Cit., p. 12.

[39] 38
Address to the British Subjects, going out in the Expedition to South America. By a British Officer, Who has been on the Scene of Action since the Commencement of the Revolution. In: AHN/E, legajo 5511, expediente 1; and A History of the Revolution of Caracas; comprising an impartial narrative of the atrocities committed by the contending parties, illustrating the real state of the contest, both in a commercial and political point of view. Together with a description of the llaneros, or people of the plains of South America. London: Printed for T. and J. Allman, 1819.

[40] 39
These foreign legions are the subject of Brown's Adventuring through Spanish Colonies.

[41] 40
In fact, in the 1820s, several independent Latin American governments defaulted on loans from British banks and the expected commercial bonanza fizzled. See COSTELOE, Michael, Bubbles and Bonanzas: British Investors and Investments in Mexico, 1821-1860. Landham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2011. Joselyn Almeida's work shows the widespread British interest in Latin American revolution and independence, as expressed in the literature of the era. See ALMEIDA, Joselyn. British Romanticism and Latin America, 2: Atlantic Revolution and British Intervention. Literature Compass, n. 7, 2010, p. 1-22.

[42] 41
The scholarship on this topic is immense but see the cogent discussion in BROWN, Mathew. Adventuring through Spanish Colonies, op. cit., p. 13-38.

[43] 42
See WADDELL, D.A.G. British Neutrality, op. cit.".

[44] 43
On the course of the independence movements and the Spanish counter-insurgency, especially in Venezuela, see STOAN, Stephen K. Pablo Morillo and Venezuela, 1815-1820. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1974; LYNCH, John. Simón Bolívar: A Life. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006; and GÓMEZ, Alejandro. La revolución de Caracas desde abajo. Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos. On line. Débats, mis en ligne le 17 mai 2008, consulté le 24 avril 2014. URL : http:// nuevomundo.revues.org/32982; DOI: 10.4000/ nuevomundo.32982.

[45] 44
Address to British Subjects, Op. Cit., p. 1.

[46] 45
See ADELMAN, Jeremy. Colonialism and National Histories: José Manuel Restrepo and Bartolomé Mitre. In SCHMIDT-NOVARA, Christopher and NIETO-PHILLIPS, John. (eds.). Interpreting Spanish Colonialism: Empires, Nations, and Legends. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005, p. 163-186.

[47] 46
Address to British Subjects, Op. Cit., p. 4.

[48] 47
Ibidem, p. 2.

[49] 48
Ibídem.

[50] 49
Ibídem.

[51] 50
Ibídem.

[52] 51
On the use of political violence and terror in this phase of the war and in the Spanish American revolutions more broadly, see THIBAUD, Clément "Coupé têtes, brûlé cases": peurs et désirs d'Haiti dans l'Amérique de Bolívar. Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 58, n. 2, 2003. p. 305-331; _____________". The Rites of Statehood: Violence and Sovereignty in Spanish America, 1789-1821. Hispanic American Historical Review 90, Aug/2010. p. 391-422; and RACINE, Karen. Message by Massacre: Venezuela's War to the Death, 1810-1814. Journal of Genocide Research, 15, n. 2, 2013. p. 201-217.Flinter was still in Curaçao during this period of the war in Venezuela but news of atrocities by loyalist and patriot forces began to appear in dispatches from the island by the end of 1813. See, for example, the dispatch in which the governor Hodgson informs the minister Bathurst of the massacre of Spanish prisoners held in prison in La Guaira, dated Curaçao, 12 April 1814, BNA/WO 1/115: "this horrid act of was carried into execution in the most cruel and horrid manner. I transmit an Extenuating Manifesto published by the Independent Government but it will be very difficult to wipe away the foul stain, this barbarous action has so indelibly stamped on that Government". See Flinter's rendering of the event below.

[53] 52
FLINTER, George Dawson. History of the Revolution of Caracas, Op. Cit., p. 148.

[54] 53
On the long trajectory of the Las CasasSepúlveda debate, see ADORNO, Rolena. The Polemics of Possession in Spanish American Narrative. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007. On nineteenth-century renderings of the Black Legend that inflected its meanings toward backwardness and away from violence, see KAGAN, Richard. Prescott Paradigm: American Historical Scholarship and the Decline of Spain. merican Historical Review, n. 101, 1996, p. 423-446.

[55] 54
FLINTER, George Dawson. History of the Revolution of Caracas, Op. Cit., p. 86.

[56] 55
MELLOR, Anne E. Making a 'monster': an introduction to Frankenstein. Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley ed. Esther Schor. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 12. Paraphrasing David Punter, The Literature of Terror.

[57] 56
MALCHOW, H. L. Gothic Images of Race in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996, p. 3.

[58] 57
FLINTER, George Dawson. History of the Revolution of Caracas, Op. Cit., p. 43 and 66-67.

[59] 58
Ibidem, p. 58-59.

[60] 59
Ibidem, p. 90.

[61] 60
Ibidem, p. 137.

[62] 61
Ibidem, p. 86.

[63] 62
Ibidem, p. 146.

[64] 63
Ibidem, p. 148-149.

[65] 64
Ibidem, p. 178-179.

[66] 65
Examen del estado actual de los esclavos de la isla de Puerto Rico bajo el gobierno español: en que se manifiesta la impolítica y peligro de la prematura emancipación de los esclavos de la india occidental. New York: Imprenta Española del Redactor, 1832, p. 7-8.

[67] 66
The intent of his Account of the Present State of the Island of Puerto Rico. In hindsight, a patent falsehood as the growth of slavery until midcentury demonstrates but one well accepted in the British press, which reviewed Flinter's work widely.

[68] 67
DRESCHER, Seymour. The Might Experiment: Free Labor versus Slavery in British Emancipation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 120.

[69] 68
See MALUQUER DE MOTES, Jordi. La burgesia catalana i l'esclavitud colonial: Modes de producció i pràctica política, Recerques, n. 3, 1974, p. 83-136; FRADERA, Josep M. Colonias para después de un imperio. Barcelona: Bellaterra, 2005; and RODRIGO Y ALHARILLA, Martin. Spanish Merchants and the Slave Trade: From Legality to Illegality, 1814-1870. In: FRADERA, Josep M. and SCHMIDT-NOWARA (eds.) Slavery and Antislavery, Op. Cit., p. 176-199.

[70] 69
See especially the works by Tomich and Marquese et al., cited above; ZEUSKE, Michael and GARCÍA MARTÍNEZ, Orlando. La Amistad: Ramón Ferrer in Cuba and the Transatlantic Dimensions of Slaving and Contraband Trade. In: FRADERA, Josep M. and SCHMIDT-NOWARA (eds.) Slavery and Antislavery, op. cit., p. 200-228; and HARRIS, John. Spies, Slave Traders, and Networks: The Illegal Atlantic Slave Trade, 1859-1866. Unpublished manuscript, cited by the author's permission.

[71] 70
"International escravista."

[72] 71
See the works cited in n. 10.

[73] 72
FLINTER, George Dawson. An Account, Op. Cit. 14.

[74] 73
FLINTER, George Dawson. History of the Revolution of Caracas, Op. Cit., p. 19-20.

Brasil

Brasil

Origens Continentais da Ideologia Escravocrata Insular: George Dawson Flinter em Curaçao, na Venezuela, Reino Unido, e Porto Rico, nas décadas de 1810-1830

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