It has long been assumed that sugar cultivation and its attendant production culture shaped the institutional and social framework of slavery throughout the Caribbean. Yet there was greater diversification of economic activities and contrasting conditions of servitude existed. This book expands the study of slavery outside the context of sugar, focusing on the peculiar characteristics of enslavement in areas where the agricultural economy was oriented towards small farming—the hato economy, as was the case in eighteenth-century Puerto Rico. Did the absence of labor-intensive agricultural produ ... More

It has long been assumed that sugar cultivation and its attendant production culture shaped the institutional and social framework of slavery throughout the Caribbean. Yet there was greater diversification of economic activities and contrasting conditions of servitude existed. This book expands the study of slavery outside the context of sugar, focusing on the peculiar characteristics of enslavement in areas where the agricultural economy was oriented towards small farming—the hato economy, as was the case in eighteenth-century Puerto Rico. Did the absence of labor-intensive agricultural production result in better living and working conditions for enslaved populations, and, if so, what exactly were the implications for demographic and family systems? To answer these questions, this book draws upon parish baptismal, marriage, and death registers and employs the use of family reconstitution to compute measures of demographic behavior that elucidate the relationship between commodity production, work regime, and demographic experiences of the enslaved in Puerto Rico. Living and working conditions linked with the hato economy resulted in relatively favorable conditions for marriage and family formation as well as high fertility rates and low mortality rates. Whereas slave populations throughout much of the Caribbean and the Americas were unable to sustain themselves without recourse to replenishment through the slave trade, natural growth occurred and enslaved populations in places like Puerto Rico registered positive rates of increase. These findings undermine generalizations about slavery and slave families based on the experience of typical sugar plantation societies.