Title The power of their will : slaveholding women in nineteenth-century Cuba / Teresa Prados-Torreira

Published Tuscaloosa : The University of Alabama Press, [2021]

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Description 1 online resource (xii, 132 pages) : illustrations, maps Contents Female slaveholders in Havana, Santiago, and other towns -- Visiting the sugar mill -- Coffee plantation mistresses -- "I bequeath": slaveholding women's wills -- Amas and the Ten Years' War Summary "In the early nineteenth century, while abolitionism was rising and the slave trade was declining in the Atlantic world, Spain used this opportunity to massively expand plantation slavery in Cuba. Between 1501 and 1866, more than 778,000 Africans were torn from their homelands and brought to work for the Cuban slaveholding class. An understudied aspect of Cuban slaveholding society is the role of the white Cuban slave mistress (amas). The Power of Their Will: Slaveholding Women in Nineteenth-Century Cuba illuminates the interaction of female slaveholders and the enslaved during this time. Teresa Prados-Torreira shows, despite the lack of political power in a highly patriarchal society, Cuban women as property owners were instrumental in supporting the long duration of slavery, whether by enforcing the disciplining of the enslaved in the domestic sphere or helping to create the illusion of slavery as a humane institution. Thousands of Creole slaveholding women relied on slaves to lead a comfortable life. Even the subsistence of many poor women depended on the income derived from the hiring out of their enslaved. In this accessible cultural history, culled from government documents, fiction, newspaper articles, traveler's accounts, women's wills, and archival research, Prados-Torreira coalesces a valuable narrative out of the often paradoxical and conflicting stories of the human bonds between the female owner and the enslaved. Narrative chapters, enlivened by vignettes, describe the daily life of slave mistresses in the main cities of Havana and Santiago and other towns, workings of sugar mills and coffee plantations, how slaveholding women coping with slave rebellions and wartime during the Ten Years' War, and how personal relationships could occasionally affect the balance of power"-- Provided by publisher Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 117-123) and index Notes Description based on online resource; title from resource home page (ProQuest Ebook Central, viewed April 7, 2021) Subject Slaveholders -- Cuba -- History -- 19th century Slavery -- Cuba -- History -- 19th century Women plantation owners -- Cuba -- History -- 19th century Women -- Cuba -- Social conditions -- 19th century Women -- Social conditions Women plantation owners Slavery Slaveholders Cuba Genre/Form History Form Electronic book ISBN 9780817393359 0817393358

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