First Blacks In The Americas

Book Chapters – General Sources Armanteros Martínez, Iván. “Towards the Atlantic Mediterranean. Catalan Participation in the Early Arlantic Slave Trade (Late Fifteenth-Early Sixteenth Century).” In Schiavitù e servaggio nell’economia europea, secc. XI-XVIII / Serfdom and Slavery in the European Economy, 11th-18th Centuries: atti della “Quarantacinquesima Settimana di studi,” 14-18 aprile 2013. 2 Vols. Simonetta Cavaciocchi, ed. Prato, Italy: Istituto Internazionale di Storia Economica […]

Articles – Sources Related to La Española Altman, Ida. “Marriage, Family, and Ethnicity in the Early Spanish Caribbean.”The William and Mary Quarterly 70.2 (April 2013): 225-250. Andrés-Gallego, José. “Macro y microhistoria en el estudio de la esclavitud de los negros.” Memoria y Civilización 4 (2001): 115-147. Belmonte Postigo, José Luis. “Bajo el negro velo de la ilegalidad, un análisis […]

Book Chapters – Sources Related to La Española Almedia Mendes, Antonio De. “The Foundations of the System: A Reassessment of the Slave Trade to the Spanish Americans in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.” In Extending the Frontiers: Essays on the New Transatlantic Slave Trade Database. David Eltis and David Richardson, eds. New Haven: Yale University Press, […]

Foundational scholarship on Dominican blackness Since the 1960s some scholars, most of them Dominican, have been making an important contribution to the vindication and dissemination of the study and public awareness about the Afro-Dominican past or collective Black-African heritage of the Dominican people. During more than five decades and until very recently, their effort has gone […]

Books – Sources Related to La Española Albert Batista, Celsa. Los africanos y nuestra isla: historia, cultura e identidad. Santo Domingo: Instituto Dominicano Estudios Africanos y Asiáticos Sebastián Lemba, 2001. Albert Batista, Celsa. Mujer y esclavitud en Santo Domingo. Santo Domingo: Ediciones CEDEE, 1993. Alegría, Ricardo E. Juan Garrido, el conquistador negro en las Antillas, Florida, México y […]

Manumission as a tool of slavery In modern times in the Western world, “manumission” was the word used to refer to the occasional practice by slave masters or owners granting full freedom to their slaves, after which these former slaves and their descendants would live enjoying social and legal liberty. Manumisión, as it was called in Spanish […]

A century between resistance and adaptation The Black Africans who were brought into La Española as enslaved laborers in the sixteenth century began to resist slavery as soon as they landed in this early European colony in the Americas, and they engaged in resisting slavery in a number of ways throughout the century. Sometimes they simply ran […]

The fundamental role of blacks in La Española’s economy From early on Black Africans performed a fundamental role in the functioning and the survival of La Española as a viable colony during the sixteenth-century and then throughout the entire long colonial period (see Manuscript No. 068). La Española was the first Black slavery-based economy of the Americas […]

Black women, present in La Española as early as black men The history of Black women in sixteenth-century La Española is one of the least researched aspects of the early history of Dominican society, and the same may probably be said about the society of the early colonial Americas in general. Yet, we have some rough indications about […]