Monsters by trade : slave traffickers in modern Spanish culture / Lisa Surwillo.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Surwillo, Lisa, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Spanish literature--19th century--History and criticism.

Spanish literature.

Spanish literature--20th century--History and criticism.

Slave trade in literature.

Slavery in literature.

Slave trade--Spain--History--19th century.

Slave trade.

Slavery--Cuba--History--19th century.

Slavery.

Collective memory.

History.

Colonies.

Spain--Colonies--America--History--19th century.

Spain.

Collective memory--Spain--History--20th century.

America.

Cuba.

Physical Description:

viii, 251 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2014.

Summary:

Transatlantic studies have begun to explore the lasting influence of Spain on its former colonies and the surviving ties between the American nations and Spain. In Monsters by Trade, Lisa Surwillo takes a different approach, explaining how modern Spain was literally made by its Cuban colony. Long after the transatlantic slave trade had been abolished, Spain continued to smuggle thousands of Africans annually to Cuba to work the sugar plantations. Nearly a third of the royal income came from Cuban sugar, and these profits underwrote Spain's modernization even as they damaged its international standing. Surwillo analyzes a sampling of nineteenth-century Spanish literary works that reflected metropolitan fears of the hold that slave traders (and the slave economy more generally) had over the political, cultural, and financial networks of power. She also examines how the nineteenth-century empire and the role of the slave trader are commemorated in contemporary tourism and literature in various regions in Northern Spain. This is the first book to demonstrate the centrality of not just Cuba, but the illicit transatlantic slave trade to the cultural life of modern Spain.

Contents:

Introduction : Blanco White and monsters of coloniality

Negro Tomás and the trader

The colony in the capital : El amigo Manso and Lo prohibido

Baroja's Atlantic, beyond slavery

Postimperial detours and retours : the ruta del indiano

Family ties and narrative confessions in Catalonia

Conclusion : the negrero resurfaces.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780804788793

0804788790

OCLC:

871820844