In the Urban Texture¹: Rio de Janeiro and Havana in the urban woof (1816-1821)

Abstract:

This article aims to analyze how the state agencies responsible for the administration of Rio de Janeiro and Havana stitched the thin plot that enabled that in these two cities, that the significant increase of the slave population did not represent an danger on the security of both cities, which had unique importance in the political units that they were part. From the comparative analysis of documents produced between 1816 and 1820 by the authorities responsible for the good governance of these two cities, we intend to examine part of the dynamics experienced in the daily lives of those that have become the two largest slavery cities in the Americas.

Key-words:
urban slavery,Rio de Janeiro; Havana; control; slaves; America

Resumo:

O presente artigo pretende analisar de como os órgãos estatais responsáveis pela administração e funcionamento do Rio de Janeiro e Havana costuraram a fina trama que viabilizou que nas duas cidades, o aumento expressivo da população escrava não representasse um perigo efetivo à segurança desses dois espaços citadinos, que tinham importância ímpar nas unidades políticas de que faziam parte. A partir da análise comparada de documentos produzidos entre 1816 e 1820 pelas autoridades responsáveis pela boa governança das duas cidades, pretende-se examinar parte da dinâmica vivida no cotidiano daquelas que se tornaram as duas maiores cidades escravistas das Américas.

Palavra-chave:
escravidão urbana; Rio de Janeiro; Havana; controle; escravos; Américas

"It is perhaps happiness to the free states on that part of the world that America has not, however, more than six cities that reach 100,000 souls, which are Mexico, New York, Philadelphia, Havana, Rio de Janeiro and Bahia. In Rio de Janeiro there are 105,000 black among 135,000 inhabitants; Havana, whites make up 2/5 of the entire population."

In the early 19th century, the observation of the strong presence of "a colored population" (slave and free), in the cities of Havana and of Rio de Janeiro could have been taken as pure demographic description by a versatile European scientist who had embarked on an exploratory trip of the Americas. But, read in the context in which it was written, the verification of the stunning black presence in the cities of Havana and Rio de Janeiro must be analyzed from the ironic acidity with which Humboldt celebrated the fact that few American cities had reached 100 thousand inhabitants. If two of them did counting with a mass of black men and women (slaves in the majority), would it be worth having towns populated like this on this side of the Atlantic?

The sarcastic tone of the above citation appears in other moments of Ensayo político sobre la Isla de Cuba², making Humboldt's work an interesting gateway into the Atlantic world that had been simmering since 1789. Immediately, it is possible to observe the shock of a man versed in many sciences when faced with the slavery ravaging a large part of America³. As an avid critic of slavery, it is plausible that Humboldt loaded his ink accounting for the population of Rio de Janeiro and Havana exaggerating the percentage of the black population within the overall calculation of each one of the cities. However, inside a significant margin of error, the numbers of black inhabitants in both cities were worthy of note, particularly for a man who had not recounted closely with slavery, and who visited America in a moment in which the proslavery institution was increasingly criticized in the debates and political actions.

A scathing observer Humboldt seemed predict that Havana and Rio de Janeiro would establish slavery in the years after his visit. Soon, the same two metropolises that caught his attention by the large number of black (many of them slaves) in their respective populations, would become the largest slave cities in the Americas. Why? The answer to this question is the starting point of this article.

At the time that Humboldt visited Cuba, slavery was not a novelty for Rio de Janeiro and Havana. In reality, a good part of the large urban centers of the Americas - like Mexico, New York and Salvador, to mention only the large cities punctuated by Humboldt - had an impressive number of slaves who, since the XVI century they were performing a series of important activities for the functioning and development of urban life⁴. However, since the last quarter of the 18th century until the middle of the nineteenth century, the growth of the black and slave population of Rio de Janeiro and Havana were directly coupled to transformations that intoned the Atlantic World and the political choices taken by local elites and endorsed by the metropolitan authorities towards such changes⁵.

Therefore, the massive black population who got Humboldt's attention in Rio de Janeiro and Havana was not only part of the long past slavery of the two cities, but also reflected the focus on maintaining and increasing the slavery (via transatlantic traffic) as the driving force of agro-export oriented economies to foreign markets. The urban services employed a significant number of slaves, were added to the increase in port activities of the two cities, which served as much of enslaved Africans gateway disembarking in Brazil and Cuba since 1790, as well as outlets of tropical crops (cultivated by slave labor) which was in great demand in the world market.

From a comparative analysis of documents produced by the authorities responsible for the administration of Rio de Janeiro and Havana, and the reports made by some of the travelers who visited the two sites, this article aims to analyze the responsible state agencies that managed the operation of two cities sewing the fine texture which enabled the significant increase of the slave population, without creating effective danger to the security of both urban spaces. Like other comparative analyzes on urban slavery in the Americas, this work aims not only to measure the specifics of the slave dynamics in each of the cities, but also stress common relations between slavery and the urban area of Rio de Janeiro and Havana, in views that the two cities were closely tied to economic projects of political units that were part⁶.

The process announced by Humboldt that transformed Rio de Janeiro and Havana in the two largest cities slave of the Americas was relatively extensive and permeated by the intersection of a number of endogenous complexities - inherent in city slavery - and exogenous (concerning the relationship and position of these cities in Iberian world). Therefore, this article will focus on the analysis of a period that is considered key: the years between 1816 and 1820. In these five years, the authorities responsible for municipal administration of Havana and Rio de Janeiro could develop or revisit measures, laws and public policies that were based on experiences - sometimes bitter - in previous years, but also responded to the new demands created by the transformation of the Atlantic area from 1815⁷.

The dynamics of urban slavery, marked by great traffic mobility of the city slave was creating a wide range of situations in which the slaves sought loopholes to freedom, or decided to leave the city and captivity gambling on their luck and building hovels and quilombos. Different studies have shown how escape, the creation of solidarity networks, small crimes and offenses, and uses of urban space that were permitted were frequent practices of city slaves, forcing the authorities to always remain attentive. However, in the early years of the nineteenth century, this picture earned an important contribution: the Haiti ghost.

Although the fear of the Haiti or the fear of the "Haitianism" is outside the scope of this studie, it is important to note that in the years prior to 1815, slaves from different locations made different uses of the example set by the rebels of the newly liberated French colony. In the case of Havana, many captives joined freedmen and free blacks in a movement that wanted to put an end to slavery on the island: the Rebellion Point, which was discovered and dismantled in 1812 by the Cuban authorities. Already in Rio de Janeiro, although no such organized movement occurred more than once, slaves left the port streets chanting "kill all whites", like the Saint-Domingue insurgents had done⁸. In different ways, Haiti brought the slaves (mostly urban, who had more access to information) a new paradigm of freedom; which further complicated the work of the bodies responsible for monitoring the cities.

Ironically, this new paradigm goes against the choice made by the local elites of Brazil and Cuba that projected slavery for the future, paraphrasing Luis Felipe Alencastro⁹. Although the machinery investments and, above all, the importation of enslaved Africans did not leave margins for doubt of the real interests of the oligarchies beleaguered in Rio de Janeiro and Havana, the changes caused in the Atlantic World thanks to the fall of Napoleon and the resolutions taken at the Vienna Congress (1815) seemed to keep in check the perpetuation of slavery in the near future, in view of the attacks of the British abolitionists in that period. Not coincidentally, the possibility of disruption of the transatlantic slave trade, caused a significant stimulation of the infamous trade between the years 1816 and 1820¹⁰.

It was precisely because of this intricate game of interests that the authorities responsible for governance and "good order" of Rio de Janeiro and Havana had to ensure that the increase of the slave population did not represent the greatest dangers for the functioning of the city and, ultimately, to the very maintenance of slavery. What was done and how such attitudes conversed with decisions taken by the elites of the Iberian world and the growth of the captive segment and new slave resistance practices of these two cities, I presented below.

Dealing with the inconveniences of slavery

He had hardly been aware of his new responsibilities when the newly appointed Captain General Jose Maria Cienfuegos Jovellanos (1816 - 1819) received a report signed by seven of the most important sugar oligarchy of Cuba and the mayor of Hacienda, Alejandro Ramirez. In the document it was noted that:

If we want to banish frequent and rooted vices and crimes that plague our society; if we want to keep to our escaped slaves and the severe police able to guard them from the seduction of bandits and rebel, if we are to resist the attacks that are prepared for us by sea and land our envious rivals in retaliation prosperity and tranquility that we have enjoyed and we are enjoying the island of Cuba, almost single asylum of peace in all areas of the Spanish monarchy, we must pay for the instruments of police¹¹.

To justify their proposals, the document's authors made a quick history of security issues in Cuba - highlighting the turbulent times experienced since the Saint-Domingue Revolution (1791) until the end of the continental Napoleonic blockade (1814) - pointing what would be the appropriate action for the new Captain General would enjoy the peace and quiet during his rule. So that there remained no doubt that the purposes of the report were the more praiseworthy, the authors concluded the document stating that

Our desires are to remedy the vices and crimes, Improve education for the new generations springs in the fields and in the city the natural balance of the drawbacks of slavery: and all this by putting in place, not with romantic and arbitrary laws, but using the old laws consulted with maturity and detention by the ancient and experienced Magistrates of the first councils of the kingdom¹².

The report could therefore be read as a kind of invitation to the new Captain General to renew the alliance with the Cuban sugar oligarchy. The only peace asylum between all the Spanish dominions in the New World would maintain their allegiance to King Ferdinand VII, as long as the Spanish monarchy would guarantee the necessary security for inconvenience caused by slavery, both internally and externally. Although they would have argued that the measures requested were old laws secured by the Hispanic world, the measures proposed in the play punctuated that the Spanish Crown would have to make some changes, or better put, return to old rules that seemed to be out of favor¹³. Since the last decade of the eighteenth century, slavery was gaining increasing weight in Cuba, in the field and in the city, and so it was necessary to have a more capable and better-equipped police.

A significant part of the thirty-two measures listed in the report concerned the future role of the police in rural parties, which should be patrolled by five gangs, each consisting of eight men. However, in the opinion of the authors of the document, it was not enough just to reorganize the police force, it was necessary to remunerate it properly and, where possible, create specific encouragements as prizes and incentives for those who demonstrate greater commitment to the cause¹⁴. Despite the rural parties being the places with the highest incidence of robberies and vagrancies, the authors were also concerned about the inconvenience in the urban space which, curiously, was treated in the singular throughout the document: the report only expounded on Havana, more specifically in the extramural neighborhoods.

The Cuban sugar oligarchy had plenty of reasons to worry about the improvement of policing, especially regarding the extramural neighborhoods of Havana, Jesús María, Guadalupe, Regla and Jesús del Monte y Prensa. Regarded as "bottle necks" linking the capital to the western regions, east and south of the island¹⁵, the extramural neighborhoods were an obligatory passage for all sugar that would be exported from Havana; and since the late eighteenth century had become the dwelling place of less well-off families and the "colored population" (slave and free), thanks to increased transatlantic traffic in the last years of seventeen-hundreds, growing before our eyes.

Four years before the arrival of Captain General Cienfuegos Jovellanos, in 1812, the "throat" of Cuba, had been the scene of one of the largest island of insurrections: the Rebellion Point. The plans of the rebellion led by Jose Antonio Aponte (whose headquarters was the home of their leader in the district of Guadalupe) surprised the authorities not only for its revolutionary objectives - abolish slavery and African slave trade, end colonial rule on the island and create a less discriminatory society - but also for revealing a wide network of solidarity and information created by black men and women from Havana and its surroundings¹⁶. It would not be strange that this episode was still fresh in the memory of the authorities and Cuban oligarchy, that without any exaggeration related to Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) with the rebellion of Aponte (1812), insurrectionist movement fought by slaves and freedmen who had Toussaint L'Overture and the kings of Abyssinia as their heroes¹⁷. However, the manifesto signed by the main producers of sugar on the island left no room for interpretation: slavery remained. Best-case scenario: slavery should grow. However, it was necessary to adjust the balance of the disadvantages of slavery.

What, in 1816, Cienfuegos Jovellanos lacked was left to Paulo Fernandes Viana. General Police Intendant of the Rio de Janeiro Court since 1808, he was one of the main actors in the complex task of transforming the colonial capital into the new seat of power of the Portuguese Empire. Conquering the tropical travesty of swamps, marshes and damp heat that did not agree with Lisbonites' moods, was one of the challenges of the Intendant, who also needed to make the "inconveniences of slavery" lower than the dependence (growing) that the city had on slave labor.

The studies that have focused on the study of Brazil joanino period are unanimous in highlighting Paulo Viana as a key piece of transference of the Court and in the transformation of Rio de Janeiro into " miniature Lisbon"¹⁸. Deep knowledge of the new court everyday in the early years of the nineteenth century, Paulo Viana tried to unite business with pleasure reconciling the urban changes of the city with the most rational use of working urbanite slaves. A policy that Carlos Araújo baptized as "double captivity"¹⁹, the Police Quartermaster used the captives who were bound to many different city infrastructure works. Along with slaves rented directly from their owners and some freed captives who were in the dungeon and other city prisons, they were employed in the opening of roads, swamps ground, building construction and street paving.

In addition to reducing the costs of the Quartermaster Police, the use of slave prisoners policy (and not claimed by their owners) points to other instances of slavery in Rio de Janeiro. Although the imprisonment of urban slaves was a common practice in the city even before the nineteenth century, the rapid increase of the slave population after 1808, together with the mobile nature of city slavery caused Paul Viana to be the overseer of Rio de Janeiro at times. In the early years when he headed the Quartermaster, Paul Viana organized a series of measures that signaled to city slaves what Mary Karasch called, "invisible walls" of Rio de Janeiro²⁰. The notices that determined the times when slaves could move around in the streets of Rio de Janeiro, the prohibitions of the presence of captives in taverns and inns without the manor's authorization, and the patrols and night patrols made the urban slave a constant target of police actions. Not by chance, between the years 1808 and 1815, the largest number of arrests made by the police of the Court focused on the slave population²¹.

The good equation established between life in Court and the massive use of urban slaves remained even after the Rio de Janeiro was elevated to the office of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and Algarve. It would not be an exaggeration to take the case of the Court as a significant example of the policy adopted by King João VI in defense of slavery. In this sense, the figures relating to transatlantic slave trade are significant. Between the years 1816 to 1821, just over 122,000 enslaved Africans landed in Valongo, an amount equivalent to 43% of total landings made in Brazil²². Compared with the period between the years 1791 to 1815 it is possible to ascertain a doubling in growth. The average annual number of enslaved Africans landing in Rio jumped from 11,521 in 1791 to 20,745 in 1815. The percentage of Transatlantic slave trade volume to Rio de Janeiro from the total of realized landings increased from 34% to 43%

Between the years 1769 to 1831, the Valongo was retained as the main port of entry for Africans enslaved in Brazil keeping the same business logic that often puzzled foreign travellers, unaccustomed to the people trade. According to Spix and Martius, who visited the market in 1817, "as soon as the slaves are to Rio de Janeiro, they are billeted in the street of Valongo, near the ocean. Seen there are children from six years of age, and adults of both sexes, of all ages. They lie half naked, exposed to the sun on the patios or outside, around the house, or separated according to gender, in different rooms. ²³"

A significant number of captives sold in Valongo remainedin Rio de Janeiro for dealing with the growing demand of urban activities. In addition to those who were placed in the service of the Quartermaster Police, the townspeople slaves were allocated to a diverse range of occupations that ended up dictating the pace of the city. Foreign travellers who visited Rio in the years immediately after the arrival of the Court were often amazed by the number of blacks - slaves and freedmen, Africans and Creoles - that roamed the city streets running all sorts of jobs. Almost a decade after the elevation of Rio to the seat of the Portuguese Empire, the weight of slavery continued increasing in the city and causing strangeness to those who were unaware or unfamiliar with using slaves everyday.

Slavery was everywhere. Luccock compared, even in 1808, the Rio de Janeiro with the heart of Africa, with the difference, however, that, as pointed out Leithold, "black men and women greet European style: men taking off his hat with a slope the head, the women bowed"²⁴. Once landed in Rio de Janeiro in 1817, Jean-Baptiste Debret, reported like that "through the streets one is amazed at the prodigious amount of black people, wandering aroung half-naked and carrying out the more burdensome work"²⁵.

Foreigners who visited Rio de Janeiro also punctuated the fine things of day-to-day urban city. According to Leithold and Rango - two Prussians who were in the city in 1819 - most of the slaves were employed in household chores. According to the travellers, "small or large, {i} n most of the houses {...} there are no private {...} night vessels do the job, which are removed {...} by slaves"²⁶. The Prussians also observed that domestic slaves often had to take to the streets, as in the case of a slave who accompanied his master to purchase bundles of firewood²⁷. In many cases, particularly when it came to less affluent owners, it was common that the same slave exercised domestic activities in a part of the day, and had some other task in central locations of Rio de Janeiro.

The economic advantages of earning activities and employment of the slaves in the commercial area were directly responsible for the growth of the slave segment in the city. The high percentage of captives who were in the metropolis remained working on a diverse range of urban Rio services. Through post mortem inventory analysis, Luis Carlos Soares found that, in general, between the years 1810 and 1849, many of the captives inventoried, whose activities were declared, were destined for domestic services²⁸. Although the employment of women was very significant, there was also a significant number of men who looked after the affairs of the house for their masters. However, in the same survey, the author pointed out that of the 1,046 slaves inventoried men, 82 were earners, 188 held industrial activities (understood by the author as all kinds of handmade crafts and commercial activities) and 38 worked with sea and land transport.²⁹ In the women's case the occupation in domestic services rivaled the earning activities. Among the 1,737 women accounted, 239 worked in the homes of their masters while 227 were employed in activities such as seamstresses, laundresses and greengrocers.

Although the data collected by Luiz Carlos Soares is for the extended period of 1810-1849, when examined with other primary sources, this data helps to establish certain standards of slave occupations in Rio de Janeiro that were already announced by Mary Karasch's inaugural work³⁰. In a work that also examined the occupation of urban slaves in Rio de Janeiro between the years 1808 and 1860 through the post mortem inventories, Rodrigo Amaral also pointed out that it was in the Rio de Janeiro streets and roads that the most different types of services were performed by the slaves, including those related to the slaves of small slaveholders³¹.

The elevation of Rio de Janeiro to the highest headquarters of the Portuguese power not only resulted in the rapid urban and economic growth of the city, but also made it an increasingly expensive city to live. The opening of the ports and the increase in commercial activities attracted many foreign merchants, passing or not, just by inflating the prices of a number of goods and services. The same Prussians who were astonished at the lack of latrines in Rio residences, complained that,

"The rents here are too expensive. A really modest house, of which I described before, costs 14 to 16 escudos, , around 24 tales for Prussians, per month with no move. When a house is empty and they want to rent it out, they put a white sheet of paper on the indicating it is available. Interested parties inform the neighbours {...} The bigger house are proportionately more expensive than in Berlin"³².

The complaints of Leithold and Rango have strong precedence. Between 1815 and 1820, the average price of a healthy young slave spun between 180 and 200 réis³³. Thus, the money spent on a year's rent in central Rio de Janeiro was equivalent to the price of a slave put on sale in the same city. By analyzing the trajectory of Antonio Dutra, an African slave who arrived in Rio de Janeiro in 1809 and died free in the late 1830 leaving his daughter an inheritance of a house and thirteen captives, Zephyr Frank argues that during the first decades of nineteenth century, the slavery had become the most widespread type of property in the city³⁴. The high price of rents and houses, as well as the possibility of the future owner earning significant sums off his slaves' dailies were the reasons that slaves were in such great demand as merchandise in Rio de Janeiro³⁵.

The changes caused by the rise of Rio de Janeiro to the Portuguese Court and the consequent increase of the mercantile city activities which removed many of the wealthiest families from the nearby port regions and the main trade routes, who were looking for quieter places and with enough room for building their palaces and houses³⁶. Since 1808, many urban slaves used the proximity to their workplace to negotiate the possibility of living by themselves (in the central regions of Rio), which, in many cases, also seemed advantageous to the owners³⁷.

The central parishes of Rio (Santa Rita, Santana, Sacramento, Candelária and São Jose) were those that offered more job opportunities for slaves, thanks to numerous concentrated commercial activities. The data obtained by Frank showed why it would be more interesting to gain slaves worked in this area of​ the city. In these places, a slave rated at 160$00 réis received about $ 320 per day. So that in a year, the slave would have received between 50$000 to 70$000 having spent half that amount to sustain, and the other party to pay what he/she owed his/her master in a verbal agreement that regulates the gain activity. Making an optimistic calculation, in which the slave could save a quarter of what he received annually (if he/she worked 20 days every month), it would take almost four years for him to buy his freedom³⁸. Read from another viewpoint: in that same interval of four years, a man who had a slave in good condition working in the commercial parishes of Rio de Janeiro could have, through the work of his slave, the amount needed to buy another captive.

Map 1
Rio de janeiro on 1820

The map produced in 1820 helps us to understand the growth of the urban area of ​Rio de Janeiro a little better and how the activities carried out by the slaves were tied to this expansion. Marked with the letter A are the main piers of the city, showing once again the importance of port activity to the Court's economy. The letter B indicates three major Rio markets: Valongo (in the parish of Santa Rita), the Fish Market and Vegetable Market, both located in the vicinity of the Palace Square, one of the busiest areas of the city. The letter C indicates the seconded military buildings on the map, such as the Academy of the Navy, the Fortress of Ilha das Cobras (also administered by the Navy), the Dungeon and Arsenal of Weapons and the newly built Infantry house. Identified with the letter D are some administrative organs of the Rio de Janeiro, such as the Royal Court, the new building of the City Council, the Quartermaster Police and Detention House; the latter three located in the vicinity of Campo de Santana. Finally, the letter E indicates fundamental social areas for the dynamics of a life in court, as the Public Garden (which still obeyed the original track of Mestre Valentine), and the aforementioned Campo de Santana. Yet are highlighted in the map two-way indicating directions Rio's growth: São Cristóvão Way, fundamental to urbanization process of Engenho Velho parish, which until the early nineteenth century, was a dew of troops left the interior of the captaincy of Rio; and the Mata Cavalos Way (today street Riachuelo), route of extreme importance for the royalty of traffic in the city, and that facilitated the occupation of areas of Lapa and Gloria. It is noted then that it was not by chance that most of the slave segment lived in urban parishes of Rio. Although the city was growing, it was in Candelaria, Santa Rita, Sacramento, São José and Santana that the main markets and warehouses were located in the city.

As the gain slave enjoyed a great traffic mobility, which was often longed for slaves who worked in the platations, the large amount of enslaved Africans who landed annually in Valongo, in addition to thousands of Creoles and other so many freedmen and freedwomen, they made the internal market for manual labor of Rio de Janeiro an area of solidarity, but also of dispute, since on many occasions, the material survival of the slaves was in charge of themselves, further complicating the daily life of Rio de Janeiro.

The more space the slaves found to work in the city, more actions the Quartermaster Police needed to prepare in an attempt to control these slaves. An example of this can be attested from the desks of Bernardo Francisco Monteiro, Francisco Xavier Barreiro and Antonio Xavier da Rocha, officers of the Police General Quartermaster who, between the years 1819 and 1821, worked alongside Paulo Fernandes Viana, received piles of complaints denouncing the misfortunes of everyday life in Rio de Janeiro. And often, urban slaves were the subjects of such complaints. Thefts, insults, trails, trysts were some of the issues which forced the owners of the alleged captives had to sign Termo de Bem Viver (good life term) with those who had sought the authorities.

Sometimes such terms were signed in favor of those slaves. An example:

The third day of June one thousand eight hundred and twenty years in the Secretariat General of Police Quartermaster, Dona Anna Luiza attended by order of the Mr. Intendant Paulo Fernandes Vianna, and even Intendant determined that she signed term of not assaulting her slave Magnolia Mine, with the penalty of losing her slave if not fulfilled which was determined. What she heard and promised to achieve³⁹.

Dona Anna Luiza was not the only one whose attention was called due to the overly rude way in which was her slave. Four months later, José da Costa was also required to sign a waiver that was committed not spell his captive, under penalty of imprisonment. Apparently men and women who, in this case, preferred to remain anonymous, also resorted to the Police General Quartermaster to report situations where urban slaves became victims of their masters or others.

Not only that the administration of public works, but the curtailment practices were considered uncivilized, and even the care for the Court security, the Police General Quartermaster also had to deal with fine stories that compromised the order and the proper functioning of the city. Through complaints (some anonymous), the men who were subordinate to Paulo Fernandes Viana should investigate the charges, collect the evidence needed to judge after that call those involved to find a friendly output. Signed terms could be read as a kind of "vote of confidence", or as a last warning given by the authorities before stronger measures were taken; even because, with few exceptions, such terms dealt with issues that posed no serious danger to society. However, the banal and the picturesque that marked these documents allow us to observe the weight that slavery printed in the daily life of Rio de Janeiro.

This weight was to support the large and diverse transatlantic slave trade that, despite British pressure and resemblance to what took place in Havana, it continued to grow.

The choice for slavery in the urban space

During the period when Rio de Janeiro was highest seat of the Portuguese Empire, D. Joao and his ministers made the defense of slavery one of the main political platforms of the Portuguese Crown and despite numerous British convictions, received the strong support of American subjects⁴⁰. The effectiveness of the actions taken by the Portuguese Crown was such that they served as an incentive for the Cuban oligarchy, who used it as a positive example to the Spanish metropolitan power in transatlantic slave trade defense. However, the transformations that marked the second half of the 1810s, made the Portuguese Crown modify the terms of their negotiations with the British. The fall of Napoleon in 1815 decreased D. João's threat of a possible Portuguese-French alliance. At the Congress of Vienna (1815), Portugal and Spain joined in Transatlantic Slave trade protection. Nevertheless, the new political reordering, which propelled English abolitionism, forced the Portuguese Crown to negotiate directly with Britain⁴¹.

The defense of systematic pro-slavery policy by D. Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho between 1810 and 1811, was instrumental in the negotiations that resulted in the signing of the Additional Convention of 28 July 1817, so envied by the Creole elite of Cuba. Punctuated by Berbel, Marquese and Parron, despite the determination of the installation of the Joint Committees and the right to reciprocal visits (whose objective was to ensure the prosecution of slave ships that did not follow the terms of the agreement), the exact geographical demarcation of African regions where Transatlantic Trade under the Portuguese flag would be lawful was the ultimate example of the victory of King João VI, which gave the Portuguese empire a unique condition in the Atlantic world: the legality of maintaining the transatlantic slave trade, and the ability to design it for the future⁴² . The master class of Rio de Janeiro knew how to make good use of the conquest of the Portuguese monarch, transforming the capital of the Portuguese Empire one of the largest slave cities in the 1810s⁴³. The maintenance of transatlantic slave trade was beneficial for all the Brazilian masters who, through the conservation of this trade, managed to retain slavery as the main hand labor in Brazil. As seen in the case of Rio de Janeiro, this maintenance had the indispensable assistance of the Court Police Quartermaster.

It is likely that no other slaveholding city had such a repressive system in place as effective as that in Rio de Janeiro. This height was directly related to the odd situation that the city enjoyed in the Atlantic context, when it was elevated to the Portuguese Empire's Court in 1808. However, despite the political asymmetry, the authorities managing Havana between the years of 1816 and 1820 had to deal with slave daily life, which closely resembled that which Paulo Fernandes Viana faced in Rio de Janeiro in the same period. Thus, Captain General Cienfuegos Jovellanos' sharp look quickly replaced his inexperience, as the strength that slavery exercised in the Cuban capital leaped in front of his eyes. To typify a day in Havana, the new Captain General stressed that

as you enter the street, the morning vendors appear everywhere; tinkers, rag pickers, with their carts full of rags, fruit, grinders and hawkers of both sexes on the back of his old hairy horses; they carry needles, pins, metal and silk pieces, of various tastes and colors. They mix in the streets, their voices with the usual traffic noise in the city. The bay and the docks will, little by little, fill unoccupied people who see them move back and forth aimlessly. They wander among the black African and boots - white pedestrians refuse to mix with blacks in this work - they are singing their strange songs, weigh, load and pile up the carts with sugar or coffee boxes. Also there are wandering black maids and wet nurses, fat, lush, luxuriously dressed and adorned - earrings and necklaces from fake gold - bearing in their arms the children of their masters: some white and others are black with drops of blood from other colors⁴⁴.

According to the Captain General in the mornings, the streets of Havana were also made up of black people (slaves and freedmen) who worked at the seaport, in the streets, more affluent stately homes, but also for the unemployed; while the white pawns refused to labor along with the "colored population", slaves and their descendants remained the fundamental labor-work of the Cuban capital. However, as pointed out by Jovellanos himself, the working black man share his rare songs with Havana and, where possible, the exuberance of their clothing and other instances of their corporeality.

At night in Havana, it was even more evident what Africans and their descendants loaned the city, at this time Cienfeugos Jovellanos could envision other consequences arising from the force of slavery in the urban space. Describing the black people's songs and dance, Captain General added an illustrative note to his writing, which seemed to recognize some of the inconveniences that had been alerted by the Cuban elite. The dances frequented by the poorest sections of the city were places in which

{People} who sing and dance the most dirty and shameful things you can imagine. But this dance, say what you will, it is not available to anyone who intends to do it; to dance these dances you have to be black, sleeping on a hammock and eating coconut, cassava, and maple beef jerky, having skin that the Caribbean sun burned ⁴⁵

Nonetheless, as pointed out by Captain General himself, "in Havana people sing and dance everywhere"⁴⁶. If the common people (and black) played in profane dances, the elite of Havana, the one who lived in the mansions and palaces Intramuros, was attending the Opera with their ornate costumes and their ostentatious jewelry. And at the exit of the theater, it was once more the weight of slavery. Dozens of gleaming carriages, driven by slaves, waiting for the end of the show to drive their masters back home. Those who lived in the neighborhood were expected by slaves on foot, in charge of lighting the return of their masters. At the end of the presentations, the bells warn the curfew. Since then, silence took the streets of Havana, interrupted only by the murmur of the serenos⁴⁷. Though stereotypical, the night painted by Cienfuegos Jovellanos reveals interesting aspects of Havana. A city that was dawning with the singing of the slaves, and went to sleep with the songs of those who guarded the captives: one slave town in every way.

It was not for less. Since the last years of the eighteenth century, the same men who reported Cienfuegos Jovellanos on the need for a well-trained police to manage the slave population, were also organized in favor of setting up a agro export slave economy. In addition to new political arrangements with the Spanish authorities, partnerships with the US government, the opening of new fields for planting and import machinery, the increase of the enslaved Africans Transatlantic trade was one of the supporting pillars of the Cuban oligarchy stratagems⁴⁸.

Along with the increase of the slave segment all over the island, in the case of Havana it is observed that the transatlantic slave trade had increased effects on expanding the use of slave. The main newspapers of the city continued to be an important vehicle to buy and sell newly landed slaves and those who lived on the island for longer. Between the years of 1790 and 1815, it was found that the majority of male slaves announced in city newspapers was designed for one specific service, whereas the majority of women was proclaimed to perform more than one activity. What is observed from 1816 is the increase in the number of female and male slaves who were sold to work in various tasks⁴⁹. On July 8, 1816, for example, it was announced in the Diario del Gobierno de la Habana a ganga slave, 18, good cook, driver and hairdresser⁵⁰. Fifteen days later, the same newspaper announced another slave of the same age, only Creole, journeyman cobbler with principles, mason and cook⁵¹. The slaves, who were already everywhere, were being further exploited.

The pressure for the purpose of the Transatlantic Slave Trade has increased significantly the number of Africans landing in Havana. Although most of these slaves went to the sugar mills and to the island's coffee plantations, those in the capital held all sorts of services, because in a slave city, have Mason or cook principles was no longer much of a guarantee. Apparently all healthy slaves had "do everything" potential. Depending on the health, working conditions and of the relationship with his master, the slave could buy his freedom, the spot or forward, thus increasing the free segment in Havana⁵². Already in the market, most of those freed went to compete for work with slaves, reinforcing the idea that the island's working class was colored.

As was to be expected, not even the rationalization of urban space used by the Captain General who administered Havana between the years 1763 and 1815 had managed to avoid the need for slave labor, work and releases resulted in other city uses for these segments. With the significant growth in the number of slaves on the island, measures such as Las Casas - who pulled the cabildos de nación of the walled portion of Havana - didn't arise the same effect. Like the slave segment, the city had grown and to govern it, it was necessary to analyze it in its entirety⁵³. In order to effectively meet the inhabitants of the Cuban capital and implement a policy that restrict the fact of slaves and freed to appropriate the city space, in 1817, the metropolitan government (supported by the oligarchy of the island) made another Havana census, the first that covered the intramural and extramural neighborhoods of the city.

Table 1
Havana census in 1817

• Source: SAGRA,R. Op. Cit., p.5.

Compared to the Census in 1794, the population of Havana represented an even smaller percentage of the total island. Thanks to the development of coffee production and especially the sugar plantation, with a corresponding increase in the transatlantic slave trade in 1817, Cuba had 553,028 inhabitants, of which just over 15% lived in Havana⁵⁴. Although the population of the capital has decreased in proportion to the rest of the island, Havana was one among the five most populous cities of America⁵⁵. More than half of these people, 54% were men and women "of color."

Census data showed that the authorities responsible for the administration of Havana had a difficulty equation to solve. If, on the one hand, it was necessary to increase the white population of the city and sharply reduce vagrancy that affected this segment, on the other, reducing the number of slaves was not an option in the short term, in that it put at risk the good progress of economic project started decades earlier. One of the solutions found by the Spanish authorities was to create the Junta de Fomiento a la Poblacion Blanca⁵⁶. The idea for​this association - which had already been drafted in earlier times - was to attract the largest possible number of white men (especially peninsular) to the island, ensuring minimum working conditions. The failure of this initiative can be verified through ads in Havana's major newspapers. As previously noted from 1816, an increasing number of captives (regardless of gender) were being offered to perform two or more services. This trend continued in the following years, creating a more dynamic market increasingly noticeable by supply and not the demand for captives⁵⁷.

The revitalization of urban slaves in the Havana market was closely related to the signing of the Anglo-Spanish Treaty in September 1817. After tough negotiations between the Spanish and British, the Spanish Crown finally agreed to abolish the transatlantic slave trade by May 1820. The long debate and the numerous agreements signed between the British and the Spanish before the final signing of the Treaty on September 23, 1817 were examined in detail by David Murray⁵⁸. In the chapter examining the diplomatic issues of signing of this treaty, the author showed how the Hispanic authorities had to negotiate with both the British abolitionists and with representatives of the Cuban oligarchy. At the time, Spain was the only location that had not yet formally committed for the purpose of transatlantic slave trade, thanks to the advantages that this trade accounted for the few colonies that still remained under Spanish rule. In theory, in the short interval between the years of 1817 and 1820, the Spanish possessions in the Americas would have to import the manual labor required, giving priority to the purchase of female slaves that made reproduction amongst the captives possible. As might be expected, the increase in transatlantic slave trade in the previous year grew even more⁵⁹.

In February 1818, the Treaty of Madrid was published in Cuba generating a dual response of the Creole oligarchy. On the one hand, the elite began a harsh policy in an attempt to relax the treaty, using the terms of the agreement signed between Portugal and England for the abolition of transatlantic slave trade to Brazil as an argument⁶⁰. On the other, afraid that their arguments would have no effect, the sugar oligarchy invested more in the transatlantic slave trade. An example of this can be attested to with the figures of the year 1817: in the same year of the treaty was signed, more than twenty-five thousand enslaved Africans entered the island⁶¹.

The next three years, the import of Africans enslaved continued to be operated on this scale, making Havana a gateway to almost one hundred thousand enslaved Africans⁶². The large supply of slaves and the various ways that were made feasible the purchase of emancipation in Cuba incited to more competitive work in the urban world⁶³. As was pointed out, in the purchase and sale in Havana periodic between the years 1816 and 1820, what stands out is the tendency of slaves (both men and women, Africans and Creoles) were announced to perform an increasingly diverse range of activities. Or prospective sellers were gilding the pile of goods put to sale, or competition generated by the increased slave population was producing slaves (and consequently freedmen) who were increasingly versatile in meeting the demands of the city space, turning white manual into something expensive, and ultimately unnecessary.

Despite all efforts in his three years of government, Cienfuegos Jovellanos did not resolve the problems of slavery. First reason: the dynamics of urban slavery slave demanded greater mobility - a condition that was used by captives in very different ways. Second reason: the commitment to slavery and the increasingly autonomous position of Creole elites in relation to the Cuba economic policies could be translated into the waxen great number of enslaved Africans who continued to land on the island.

In the same year he took command of Cuba, Juan Manuel de Cajigal y Martínez - General Captain of Cuba, between the years 1819 and 1823 - published a Bando de Bueno de Gobierno. Keeping the structure of this legal device, the document formulated by Cajigal had no big news regarding the governing of slaves and the "colored population". However, the reissue of earlier measures in a context marked by the increase in the numbers of the black and mestizo population of the city as well as the expanded use of urban slaves, reveals some of the everyday implications of slavery in Havana, especially vices (almost sinful) that Captain General wanted to purge once and for all.

Juan Manuel de Cajigal y Martínez started the Bando with the alert of the need to introduce and educate slaves in the Christian faith (especially the thousands of uncultured), preventing them from speaking decomposed and obscene words on the streets, or blaspheming God. Even in the Catholic logic, the document stated that the townsmen masters, as well as the island too, should not force their captives to work on Sundays and holy days, treating them "with humanity they deserved"⁶⁴.

Although these standards were stipulated centuries before, many slave-owners did not follow it to the letter, allowing the exploitation of slave labor to speak louder than the possible salvation of those slaves. However, since the signing of the Treaty in 1817, Havana hosted one of the Joint Committees (composed of representatives of the Spanish and the British Crown) that was to judge the situation of Africans entering the island illegally⁶⁵. One of the Cuban oligarchy arguments for the justification of the transatlantic slave trade was precisely the defense that slavery had a civilizing character, in that it braked the barbarity of the African "nations". The Christian doctrine was the first vehicle for this alleged salvation. If the Cuban slave-owners were not able to teach the first steps of Christianity to their captives themselves, this would invalidate their fragile argument⁶⁶. Rightfully so, Cajigal arranged some measures, reaching stipulations that owners who do not baptize their uncultured slaves within two years after the purchase would have to pay fines and could lose the captive⁶⁷.

Catechism of the enslaved Africans was the first of many steps that you should take to ensure the proper functioning of a city slave. Other positions were reissued by Captain General, who did not hesitate to prohibit the carrying of weapons in the urban area - this ban was imposed upon all the inhabitants of Havana, but it was especially important and enforced in the case of slaves. And at that moment, in addition to rifles, knives and daggers, weapon there was every object that could endanger the safety of city residents. Even the slaves' working tools could be carried in Havana without prior authorization. The measure also extended to rural captives who sometimes visited the city. The concern about the possible arming of the captives was such that the penalty for such a measure consisted of two months of imprisonment in La Cabaña, in addition to the payment of a fine. This measure was doubly effective and was otherwise the Captain General found to increase control in extramural neighborhoods that connected the center of the capital to the agricultural regions⁶⁸.

If guns were not permitted, meetings or gangs a lot less. According to the Bando, after the last Mass of the day any gathering in the city or in the suburbs would be considered suspicious, and rightly so, could be undone by Alcaldes barrio, men who still had the power to arrest any black or mulatto (free or slave) who walked the streets of Havana without lighting⁶⁹. Even the meetings that, in theory, had strong links with the Catholic religion professed by the colored population of Havana have been the subjects of the document. Apparently, the picturesque tone with which Cienfuegos Jovellanos treated black balls in Havana did not produce the same commotion with Cajigal. In a much closer pitch to Las Casas, the Captain General Cajigal stipulated that the cabildos de nacíon and black balls could be celebrated only on Sundays or holy days in the city's borders under the supervision of a Commissioner who would be personally liable for any disorder that was not reported to other authorities. The Bando de Cajigal, as the document became known, tried to scrimp any appropriation that slaves and freedmen could have on the public space of Havana.

As was the made by Paulo Fernandes Viana ten years before, private spaces were also in Cajigal 's sights. The card games and pool houses - only places where illicit games could occur - they should work with the doors open, as other stores, according to their business hours. Those who infringed upon the rules would be subject to fines imposed by the Commissioners. Taverns and bodegas - which could run until later - had to control their public and were forbidden to receive women inside. The owners of these establishments were forbidden to offer alcoholic drinks and also could not allow the entry of slaves who had no master permission to live by themselves. In fact, since the seventeenth century, no free man had the right to rent the room or to put up slaves who did not have permission from their owners to sleep away from home.⁷⁰ It is likely that many slaves did assert the anonymity offered by the city world - and reinforced by the large number of blacks and mulattoes of Havana - to spend days away from the master look. How Cajigal could not control the transit of slaves during the day, Captain General tried to curtail the likely cronies of the slaves, defining those for welcoming urban slaves could lose their pensions or taverns and would still have to pass on to the owners the amount of money that the slaves received during the time they were under his roof.

This measure is part of a broader policy, which involved mapping all the inhabitants of Havana, regardless of social status. This project also specified that anyone who was to leave the city asked permission to the government under penalty of fine. Cajigal wanted to ensure peace and order in Havana transit and, undoubtedly, the escape of slaves - constantly advertised in the newspapers - and the possibility of them remain at large within the city were considerable reasons for the intensification in control of the city. On 22 March, for example, there was a black Mandingo, 25, put up for sale with the tacks "drunk and runaway"⁷¹. Other slaves took advantage of the facilities offered by the wide circulation of slaves and freedmen to hold off leaks, which should also be taken into account in the city administration.

Mobility and freedom were therefore words that can not be taken as synonymous in the slave cities, especially those who, besides having two of the largest slave populations of the Americas, were also important political power locus of empires that were part. What documentation produced by administrative bodies of Rio de Janeiro and Havana reveals is that the line that marked the boundary between these two words was tenuous. And it was precisely the interlace of legitimate mobility and those who longed for freedom to weave the intricate plot of the slave everyday in these two cities.

Sometimes this texture seemed like something "natural" to the slave cities as an unequal and violent game of slavery, it was more interesting (and safe) that slaves were taken as objects, as authorities and owners enjoyed the role of subjects of the historical process. In the last instance were not the slaves who recorded the facts. But read against the grain, each of the measures taken by the Police Intendant of Rio de Janeiro and the General Captains of Havana were driven by actions of urban slaves.

It is likely that the pressure suffered by the authorities responsible to maintain security and good progress of Rio de Janeiro and Havana was more bearable if the slaves (with all their complex differences) had been their only interlocutors. But the two cities were entangled in a web that went beyond the boundaries of villages and urban neighborhoods. And since the late eighteenth century, the interests that prevailed were precisely those who defended not only the maintenance, such as the increase of slavery.

In such a way, in the mid-1810s was not of great note the fact that Rio de Janeiro and Havana were cities whose "colored population" (slave and frees) grew in different proportions compared to other large cities in the Americas⁷². Despite the slave past of both cities, the increase in the number of slaves was a reflection of similar policies adopted by the elite of the Spanish and Portuguese empires, that since the last decade of the eighteenth century, not only defended the maintenance of slavery, such as investing in its most rapid spread via transatlantic trade⁷³. When the experience and sense of freedom gained other dimensions, the Iberian world bet on the growth of agro-export slave economy of Brazil and Cuba. Although this policy was directed to the large estates monoculture, it would be natural to assume that, at the dawn of the nineteenth century, slavery seen in the streets and houses of Rio de Janeiro and Havana was not the same as fifty years ago.

Final considerations

The transformations that marked the Atlantic world during the Seven Years War (1756-1763) won a new direction with the advent of the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804), the prohibition of transatlantic slave trade in the north of Ecuador (1807), and the imposition of other historical protagonists. In this context, coined as the Age of Revolution, the defense of slavery left no room for amateurisms⁷⁴.

Between the late eighteenth century and the year 1815, the colonial elites of Portuguese America took advantage of their experience in the transatlantic slave trade to expand its commercial network, especially after the rise of the Rio de Janeiro to the Portuguese Empire Court (1808), a situation which strengthened alliance between the Portuguese and Luso-Brazilian, decreasing until further notice possible emancipation movements. Thousands of enslaved Africans began to land in Valongo and, unlike what happened until then, an increasing percentage of slaves remained in the city, being allocated in urban activities, which have diversified even further thanks to the opening of ports and increasing the domestic trade generated by the transfer of the Royal Family. Thus, in Rio de Janeiro at the time, slavery expanded because the urban condition has been expanded and diversified.

In the same period, in Cuba, the choice of the Creole elite in the conformation of a slave plantation economy was also essential for the conservation of colonial condition in relation to Spain, mainly because the lack of experience in the transatlantic slave trade made the Hispanic crown the main safeguard Cuban elite in the expansion of this trade. And this elite was very attentive to the debates and positions taken by the Luso-Brazilians with regard to such issues, coming often trying to emulate the decisions taken by the Portuguese Prince Regent and his ministers. The strong alliance between the Cuban oligarchy and metropolitan authorities managed to control the slaves and kept the plantation project. There was no coincidence some slaves employed in a diverse network of urban services in what was considered the key to the Hispanic Atlantic, were increasingly allocated to activities that were - directly or indirectly - related to coffee production and, above all, sugar plantation.

The political arrangements that ensured that the choices made by creole elites of Cuba and Brazil count on the strong support of the metropolitan authorities, not limited only to the strategies used to increase the transatlantic slave trade. The experiences of the individuals appointed to administer cities increasingly using slaves are another kind of result of this alliance that, by the end of the 1810s, united the Iberian world on both sides of the Atlantic⁷⁵.

The first fifteen years of the nineteenth century were marked by a series of trials and errors of those responsible for Rio de Janeiro's and Havana's order and security. If on the one hand the high number of slaves prisons made by the Police Quartermaster of the Rio de Janeiro and the summary execution of the rebel leader José Aponte in Havana shows that the authorities were not to be trifled with. These two examples confirm that the forms of resistance of urban slaves were multiple, and more: slave resistances were subject to the vicissitudes of urban slavery, and also depended on the circulation of ideas in the Atlantic space.

And no teacher is better than the experience. As shown throughout this article, the interval between the years 1816 and 1820, the authorities responsible for the control of urban slaves in Rio de Janeiro and Havana solidified practices, attitudes and policies that needed to combine growth in the number of slaves in the cities, the increasing presence of this population in the urban service networks, and the danger, always imminent, leaks, uprisings and petty crime. Circumstantially, this experience was effective and served as support for the further development of slavery in Rio de Janeiro and Havana in subsequent years, when once again the concept of freedom would be reappropriated by different social actors and the World Iberian reorganized into new arrangements and polities.

For anyone who was in command of the intricate daily network slave cities, it was better safe than sorry. It was precisely the bet that the Rio Police Intendant and General Captains Havana made between the years 1816 and 1820: the systematized knowledge they had about the city, to know the best time to tighten and loosen the bonds of urban texture of Rio de Janeiro and Havana. The next thirty years - in which Rio and Havana began to share the rank of major slave cities of the New World - suggests that such authorities seemed to have found the balance possible to maintain control in cities whose slave population only increased. Once again, it fell to slaves entangle this plot.

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• ZEUSKE, Michael. "Comparing or interlinking? Economic comparisons of early nineteenth-century slave systems in the Americas in historical perspective" In.: LAGO, E. dal; KATSARI, C. (ed.) Slave System Ancient and Modern. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2008, pp. 148-184.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  Jan-Apr 2016