Rebecca J. Scott is Charles Gibson Distinguished University Professor of History and Professor of Law at the University of Michigan.
In this lucid and incisive study, Rebecca Scott has broadened the
scholarly debate over the causes of the abolition of slavery in
Cuba. . . . An excellent and groundbreaking work.-- "Hispanic
American Historical Review"
Rebecca Scott's Slave Emancipation in Cuba supersedes everything
written on the subject and is also the most imaginative and
meticulously researched work I have read on any aspect of Hispanic
American slavery and emancipation. Professor Scott has a firm grasp
of the soundest social history methodology, and she has gained
access to sources in Cuba that give a fascinating picture of local
diversity and of the underlying social processes that led to the
end of a profitable institution. Her quantitative work reveals
surprising variations in the origins and demography of Cuban
slaves. Her arguments concerning slavery and technology, the
coexistence of slave and free agricultural labor, and the effect on
slavery of various competing ideologies challenge conventional
assumptions about the fate of slavery in various new world colonies
and nations.-- "David Brion Davis, Yale University"
The intent of [Slave Emancipation in Cuba] is to examine the
complicated means through which slavery in Cuba came to an end and
the process by which former slaves joined Cuban society as free men
and women. . . . The account is told with poise, with sensitivity
but without sentimentality. Based on archival sources and
manuscript collections located in the United States, Spain and
Cuba--some of which were previously unworked--the study employs
methodologies of the social sciences tempered by the grace of the
humanities. The book, further, stands as a heartening example of
the type of scholarship that is possible, under the best of
circumstances, when Cuban and North American scholars are permitted
to collaborate, unimpeded and unhampered.-- "Florida Historical
Quarterly"
Those . . . in the rich field of comparative slavery and plantation
systems will find much to applaud in this work. . . . The merits of
a study such as this transcend its evident historiographical worth:
it keeps the social scientist honest and, perhaps, humble.--
"Journal of Interdisciplinary Study"
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