Slave Society in Cuba During the Nineteenth Century

Perhaps a society cannot endure forever half-slave and half-free but it certainly can endure a long time in that condition. In Cuba slavery survived for more than forty years after its abolition in the other Caribbean plantation societies. It survived further into an age when technological change made slave labor both inefficient and redundant. Here Franklin W. Knight examines the conditions that maintained slavery in Cuba in the nineteenth century and perceptively analyzes the sociological effect of the institution on the islands politics culture and economy.