On June 23, 1870, the Spanish Cortes approved a law initiating gradual emancipation in Cuba and Puerto Rico. Most historians who have examined this legislation have focused on the freedoms that it granted to children born of an enslaved mother after September 16, 1868, and to enslaved people over the age of 60. Less explored has been the freedom that two other categories of people received on that day: the emancipados (Africans who were found on captured contraband slaving ships) and state-owned enslaved laborers. With this law's passage, the Spanish state ceased to be a slaveholder on two islands where royal slaves had built major fortifications and public infrastructure and had participated in major military operations. Constructing the Spanish Empire in Havana is a lucid imperial history that tackles the Spanish government as enslaver.
Evelyn P. Jennings makes three major interventions in the current historiography on Cuba. She shows that...
