Race, Colonial Exploitation and West Indian Immigration in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico, 1800-1850

Abstract

“Unlike some Latin American mainland societies which still contain large numbers of indigenous peoples,” Jorge Duany observed, “Caribbean societies are immigrant societies almost from the moment of their conception.” Médéric-Louis-Élie Moreau de Saint- Méry likened the latter to “shapeless mixtures subject to diverse influences.” Their population, Dawn I. Marshall reminds us, “is to a large extent the result of immigration—from initial settlement, forced immigration during slavery, indentured immigration, to the present outward movement to metropolitan countries.” Throughout their history, David Lowenthal noted, limited resources and opportunities kept West Indian societies in a constant state of flux, impelling continuous transfers of people, technology, and institutions within the area. Despite the frequency and importance of these population movements, the bulk of scholarship on American migration history has traditionally concentrated on areas favored by European settlement. Moreover, the overwhelming quantity of research on immigration to the United States, Canada, Argentina, and Brazil has tended to overshadow the study of similar processes in other American regions. Due to its historical association with the arrival of involuntary settlers, migratory currents in the Caribbean have been too narrowly identified with bondage, penal labor and indentured workers. Nowhere is the imbalance more conspicuous than in the study of trans-Caribbean migratory streams during slavery. Discussions on pre-1838 population shifts have centered largely on inter-island slave trading and the exodus prompted by Franco-Haitian revolutionary activity in the Caribbean. The parallel legacy of motion hinted by Neville N.A.T. Hall's “maritime” maroons and Julius S. Scott's “masterless” migrants has attracted noticeably less attention.

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