Louisiana State University Press
The Great African Slave Revolt of 1825: Cuba and the Fight for Freedom in Matanzas
Key Metrics
- Manuel Barcia
- Louisiana State University Press
- Hardcover
- 9780807143322
- 9.1 X 6.1 X 1 inches
- 1.1 pounds
- History > Caribbean & West Indies - Cuba
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
In June 1825 the Cuban countryside witnessed a large African-led slave rebellion -- a revolt that began a cycle of slave uprisings lasting until the mid-1840s. The Great African Slave Revolt of 1825 examines this movement and its participants for the first time, highlighting the significance of African warriors in New World plantation society.
Unlike previous slave revolts -- led by alliances between free people of color and slaves, blacks and mulattoes, Africans and Creoles, and rural and urban populations -- only African-born men organized the uprising of 1825. From this year onwards, Barcia argues, slave uprisings in Cuba underwent a phase of Africanization that concluded only in the mid-1840s with the conspiracy of La Escalera, a large movement organized by free colored men with ample participation of the slave population.
The Great African Slave Revolt of 1825 offers a detailed examination of the sociopolitical and economic background of the Matanzas rebellion, both locally and colonially. Based on extensive primary sources, particularly court records, the study provides a microhistorical analysis of the days that preceded this event, the uprising itself, and the days and months that followed. Barcia gives the Great African Revolt of 1825 its rightful place in the history of slavery in Cuba, the Caribbean, and the Americas.
Author Bio
I studied History at undergraduate level at the University of Havana. I then took a Masters in Comparative History and a PhD in History at the University of Essex. After concluding my PhD I went on to teach at the universities of Essex and Nottingham before coming to Leeds in 2006.
My research focuses on the history of slavery and the slave trade in the nineteenth-century Atlantic world. I am also a contributor to The Washington Spectator, The Huffington Post, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph, and Al Jazeera in English.
In 2014 I was awarded a prestigious Philip Leverhume Prize in History, given every year to researchers whose work has already attracted international recognition and whose future career is exceptionally promising. I have been a non-resident fellow at the Hutchins Center's Afro-Latin American Institute (Harvard University) and a visiting fellow at the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition (Yale University).
I am currently working on a new project that will examine western policies to suppress ‘piracy’ in the nineteenth century across the world.
Source: University of Leeds
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