Module Directory

This module will focus on the different plantation societies that were established in Brazil, British Jamaica, the French Caribbean (mainly 'Saint-Domingue', that is, present-day Haiti) and the Spanish colonies (Venezuela and Cuba).

The module will examine how local conditions (environment and geopolitics) and external factors (such as the demands on the world market, religion, law and customs of the colonial power, and the African cultural backgrounds of the slaves) combined to shape the characteristics of every slave society.

The aims of this module are:

• To introduce a range of historiographical and conceptual approaches to the study of Latin American and Caribbean Slavery, ca. 1500-1888.


• To promote a deep understanding of significance of slavery to Latin American and global history.


• To encourage wider understanding of and facilitate engagement with the various types of primary sources relating to this topic.


• To develop research and writing skills.

By the end of this module, students will be expected to be able to:

1. Show good understanding of the similarities and differences between the various plantation societies in Brazil and the Caribbean.


2. Demonstrate the ability to distinguish the variety of working and living conditions the enslaved were subjected to.


3. Show deep understanding of which primary sources exist on slavery and how to interpret them.


4. Show good understanding of the main differences in interpretation and the key issues around slavery in historiography.

The great majority of the 12 million enslaved Africans deported to the Americas during the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries ended up working on plantations in Brazil and the Caribbean. Sugar, cacao, indigo, tobacco, cotton and coffee were the main commodities slaves produced for the rapidly expanding European markets. But slavery did not only provide crucial inputs for developing capitalism, it also entered cultural representations of the other. Enlightened writers reflected about its legitimacy or the fundamental differences between what was increasingly perceived as 'races'. Hence slavery in the Americas contributed in many ways to the making of the modern world.

Introductory lectures on each colony will be followed by comparative sessions dealing with slave-holding elites and social structure more generally, slave women and the slave family, as well as the religion and culture of the enslaved. In the last sessions we will look at runaways, plots, and rebellions and other means whereby slaves sought to obtain freedom. The work in class will mainly deal with documents written by travellers, priests, and government officials and, more exceptionally, by overseers and the enslaved themselves. The discussion of these primary sources will allow us to gain new insights into the everyday reality of slavery.

Introductory Reading

• Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery (2010).


• Curtin, The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex (1998).


• Eltis and Engermann, The Cambridge World History of Slavery, vol. 3 (2011).


• Klein and Luna, Slavery in Brazil (2010).

This module will be delivered via:

• One 1-hour lecture per week.
• One 1-hour seminar per week.