Case Study: Cuba
Across the pond, coffee labor was quite different. José María de la Torre created the first Cuban cafetal in 1748 with coffee seeds from Saint Domingue. To keep slaves passive, coffee plantations allowed slaves to grow their own food and maintain their own culture, making them ‘lucky’ compared to slaves on nearby sugar plantations.
Still, human subordination was a reality. Forcing slaves to build the living quarters for their slave owner emphasized hierarchy on the coffee plantation. As William Van Norman writes, “Their compulsory participation in their own domination reinforced their subordinate position. By their own hands, they transformed the space of the plantation from its natural state to a structured environment meant to maintain themselves in a state of bondage” (Van Norman).
Unsurprisingly, planters of the 1830s did not respond to fluctuating market prices with twenty-first century rationale, and the slow growth of the coffee plant inhibited planters from instantly increasing production to meet market demands.
Viewing Cuban coffee with a lens of territoriality and globalization derived from Charlie Bright’s lecture, it is unsurprising that groups in both the U.S. and Cuba during the 1840s and 1850s supported annexation. This was not only a scheme by pro-slavery planters, but was also supported in New Orleans by shipping interests and capitalists in Boston who saw this as an economic opportunity for America. Defining boundaries and obtaining land became increasingly important during globalization (Van Norman).
Gender
Within slave communities, workers developed a patriarchal structure. The gender demographics of coffee plantations reflected their stage of maturation. The coffee plant has a life cycle of twenty-five to thirty years. On average, commercialization occurred after five years of hard preparatory work as workers prepared for the first major harvest. Once the first seedlings were planted, it was not until the fourth or fifth year that the plants reached productive maturity. Typically, more expensive male slaves were purchased to construct the buildings and sew the first seeds on a new plantation, and women were brought in as the plants matured, since women were typically better coffee pickers. This demographic trend could be extrapolated as the region paralleled the individual farm. The territory southwest of Havana saw dozens of plantations constructed from the 1790s through the first decade of the 1800s. Consequently, the population at this time was primarily male. As the region matured during the 1810s and 1820s, first-generation farms were in full swing; the number of women in the region drastically increased. As the number of female slaves rose, so did the growing African and Afro-Cuban population (Van Norman).
Still, human subordination was a reality. Forcing slaves to build the living quarters for their slave owner emphasized hierarchy on the coffee plantation. As William Van Norman writes, “Their compulsory participation in their own domination reinforced their subordinate position. By their own hands, they transformed the space of the plantation from its natural state to a structured environment meant to maintain themselves in a state of bondage” (Van Norman).
Unsurprisingly, planters of the 1830s did not respond to fluctuating market prices with twenty-first century rationale, and the slow growth of the coffee plant inhibited planters from instantly increasing production to meet market demands.
Viewing Cuban coffee with a lens of territoriality and globalization derived from Charlie Bright’s lecture, it is unsurprising that groups in both the U.S. and Cuba during the 1840s and 1850s supported annexation. This was not only a scheme by pro-slavery planters, but was also supported in New Orleans by shipping interests and capitalists in Boston who saw this as an economic opportunity for America. Defining boundaries and obtaining land became increasingly important during globalization (Van Norman).
Gender
Within slave communities, workers developed a patriarchal structure. The gender demographics of coffee plantations reflected their stage of maturation. The coffee plant has a life cycle of twenty-five to thirty years. On average, commercialization occurred after five years of hard preparatory work as workers prepared for the first major harvest. Once the first seedlings were planted, it was not until the fourth or fifth year that the plants reached productive maturity. Typically, more expensive male slaves were purchased to construct the buildings and sew the first seeds on a new plantation, and women were brought in as the plants matured, since women were typically better coffee pickers. This demographic trend could be extrapolated as the region paralleled the individual farm. The territory southwest of Havana saw dozens of plantations constructed from the 1790s through the first decade of the 1800s. Consequently, the population at this time was primarily male. As the region matured during the 1810s and 1820s, first-generation farms were in full swing; the number of women in the region drastically increased. As the number of female slaves rose, so did the growing African and Afro-Cuban population (Van Norman).
Works Cited:
Van Norman, William C. Shade-Grown Slavery: The Lives of Slaves on Coffee Plantations in Cuba (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2013),
accessed March 18, 2015, http:// muse.jhu.edu.proxy.lib.umich.edu/books/9780826519160/
Van Norman, William C. Shade-Grown Slavery: The Lives of Slaves on Coffee Plantations in Cuba (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2013),
accessed March 18, 2015, http:// muse.jhu.edu.proxy.lib.umich.edu/books/9780826519160/