Pre-Abolition Spanish Colonial Cuba Slave Contract Listing 38 Enslaved Individuals Including Families, 1875

Slavery Cuba

Manuscript & Autographs

[Slavery] [Cuba] Spanish colonial slave sale manuscript recording the transfer of thirty-eight enslaved individuals in Cuba in 1875, materializing the sheer scale and organization of enslaved labor within the island’s plantation economy during the final decade before abolition. The document enumerates a large group of enslaved people, including multiple family units with young children, demonstrating how slavery functioned as both an economic system and a hereditary condition sustained through the sale and reproduction of enslaved populations. Created eleven years prior to the abolition of slavery in Cuba in 1886, the manuscript documents the continued legality and normalization of large-scale slave transactions despite decades of international pressure and earlier prohibitions on the transatlantic trade, offering concrete evidence of how internal markets sustained the institution in its final phase.

Official Cuban slave contract documenting the sale of thirty-eight enslaved individuals for the sum of 126,000 pesetas, formalized before a public notary or legal authority. Single manuscript leaf written in Spanish cursive in black ink on both recto and verso, densely filled with names, ages, and relational identifiers. Measures 8.5" x 12.25". The text lists individuals sequentially, including men, women, and children, with repeated references to kinship structures such as mothers with multiple children, indicating the sale of family groupings rather than isolated individuals. The script reflects extended passages detailing ownership, exclusions, and conditions of transfer. A partial watermark of the official coat of arms of Cuba is visible.
By 1875, Cuba remained one of the last major slave societies in the Atlantic world, with sugar production driving demand for large, controlled labor forces. Even after Spain curtailed the official slave trade earlier in the century, illegal importation persisted into the 1860s, and alternative systems of coerced labor, including Chinese indenture, supplemented plantation workforces. The scale of this transaction demonstrates the consolidation and redistribution of enslaved labor within domestic markets, while the inclusion of children underscores the long-term economic logic of slavery as a self-reproducing system. Moderate toning and foxing concentrated along the edges, with numerous small closed wormholes, a few affecting portions of the text. Light edge wear present. Overall in good condition. This document provides unusually extensive nominal data on a large enslaved population, encompassing the roles of kinship, valuation, and labor organization in late Spanish colonial Cuba.

Item #23124

Price: $2,250.00