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Slave Families And The Hato Economy In Puerto Rico

“Deftly uses the available parish registers to document the stages of the coming of African men and women to Puerto Rico in the eighteenth century and reveals patterns of family formation and bonds of solidarity among the African slaves and with the rest of society.”— Fernando Pico, author of Puerto Rico Remembered   “An exceptionally well researched, highly original, cogently argued and engagingly written work.”—Franklin W. Knight, coeditor of Contemporary Caribbean Cultures and Societies in a Global Context   “A welcome contribution to the history of eighteenth-century Puerto Rico and an important model for anyone using sacramental records to study slave life in colonial Latin America.”—David Wheat, Michigan State University   Scholarship on slavery in the Caribbean frequently emphasizes sugar and tobacco production, but this unique work illustrates the importance of the region’s hato economy—a combination of livestock ranching, foodstuff cultivation, and timber harvesting—on the living patterns among slave communities. David Stark makes use of extensive Catholic parish records to provide a comprehensive examination of slavery in Puerto Rico and across the Spanish Caribbean. He reconstructs slave families to examine incidences of marriage, as well as birth and death rates. The result are never-before-analyzed details on how many enslaved Africans came to Puerto Rico, where they came from, and how their populations grew through natural increase. Stark convincingly argues that when animal husbandry drove much of the island’s economy, slavery was less harsh than in better-known plantation regimes geared toward crop cultivation. Slaves in the hato economy experienced more favorable conditions for family formation, relatively relaxed work regimes, higher fertility rates, and lower mortality rates.  

Hardcover: 304 pages

Publisher: University Press of Florida (March 3, 2015)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0813060435

ISBN-13: 978-0813060439

Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.6 x 9 inches

Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

Best Sellers Rank: #1,028,191 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #473 in Books > History > World > Slavery & Emancipation #906 in Books > History > Americas > Caribbean & West Indies #965 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > International & World Politics > Caribbean & Latin American

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of slavery in Puerto Rico or anyone who has slave ancestors and has had questions on their family life. The book incorporates history, parish records and detailed statistical analysis of those vital records to make very sound conclusions about slave family life in the Hatos of Puerto Rico.Most Puerto Rico history books I have read jump from early colonial period to about 1815. This book focuses primarily on that overlooked period of 1660-1815. Hope all readers enjoy the book as much as I did.

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