At the conclusion of the Seven Years' War in 1763, the ministers of Carlos III decided to promote the development of slavery within the Spanish Empire. To this end, there is nothing better than promoting sugar plantations in the Caribbean similar to those already created by the French and the British. This implied sponsoring the creation of national companies of slave traders, whose ships displaced those of other powers dedicated to the trade of the valuable pieces of Indian women; and proceed to reduce the tariffs that were levied on it, until achieving free trade in slaves in 1789.
The expansion of the slave trade went hand in hand with another fact of singular relevance: the sovereign became the largest owner of captive labor in the Spanish Monarchy.
Half of its 20,000 slaves were housed in Cuba building fortifications in Havana or rendering their services at the Cobre mine in Santiago de Cuba. Another 8,500 worked on sugar and cattle ranches scattered throughout Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Chile. The remaining 1,500 were housed in the Iberian peninsula, in the Navy arsenals, especially in Cartagena, or carrying out public works in the vicinity of the Court, such as the 300 Algerian slaves who dismounted the ascent to Alto del León in the port of Guadarrama .
6,000 'Madrid' slaves
The apogee of slavery had to make itself felt in the nerve center of the Spanish Empire: at the dawn of the 1760s there were some 6,000 slaves in Madrid, which at that time were equivalent to 4% of its total population: their daily presence on the streets and squares gave the capital a multi-ethnic city aspect.
Most were part of the domestic service of royal palace complexes and residences belonging to the aristocracy, clergy and other fractions of the ruling class, owners par excellence of those considered then merchandise , whose enjoyment also gave them social recognition .
Along with the multiple work activities carried out in the homes of their masters, another smaller group worked in artisan workshops, while a few successfully cultivated the fine arts. This is the case of the member of the Black House of the New Palace (Royal Palace) Antonio Carlos de Borbón, architect of real works and author of the Porcelanas del Buen Retiro factory, or his brother Joseph Carlos de Borbón, Chamber painter , 10 of whose works are part of the Prado Museum collection. But even these "privileged" families, who after being released bore their master's name and surname, ended up dying in utter misery.
Resistance and rejection
At the end of Carlos III's reign, the enslaved man from Madrid is a black male who is less than 25 years old. Unlike the previous century, he is no longer a "Moor of prey ", that is, a Maghrebi or a subject of the Ottoman Empire who has been captured in a military campaign, but a black nation from the coasts of West Africa and , with increasing frequency, from the Spanish American colonies.
Said change in the phenotype, and the consequent distancing from the sources of supply of captive labor, will make its price in the Madrid slave market four times higher in the late eighteenth century than at the dawn of the century. However, the causes of the decline in slavery observed at that time were not only, nor mainly, economic, but have deeper social roots.
Because, lacking the most basic social rights, being marked with an iron on his face and suffering harsh corporal punishment, the enslaved man from Madrid, logically, yearned for freedom, which is why he carried out numerous acts of individual resistance. In order to discipline these incorrigible rebels and capture the maroons, the masters will need the help of the judicial, police and military institutions of the absolutist State, so that when it begins to fail, it will drag this type of bridged work into its fall.
An announced death
Finally, we cannot ignore the rejection that this brutal and lucrative institution caused among the popular classes of the metropolis, so that its members will not hesitate to help the slaves in distress or even proceed to lynch some master who mistreated their black on public roads in 1808.
From this perspective, the decree of the Spanish Cortes that in 1837 abolished legal slavery in the Iberian peninsula only put an end to the chronicle of an announced death.
This article constitutes a summary of a part of the work 'Slavery at the end of the Old Regime. Madrid, 1701-1837. From prey Moors to nation blacks. ' Madrid: Editorial Alliance, 2020, in which the curious reader can find all the bibliographic and archival references.
José Miguel López García is full professor at the Department of Modern History and Coordinator of the Madrid Team for Historical Research at the Autonomous University of Madrid.
This article was published in The Conversation. Read the original article.