The substantial growth in the number of enslaved Africans transported to Brazil and Cuba following the Haitian Revolution and Britain’s abolition of its own slave trade in 1807 is now well documented. Such growth, which reflected the demand for slaves among Brazilian and Cuban sugar and coffee planters, was sustained by, among other things, inflows of capital, ships, and other resources from U.S. capitalists willing to assist transatlantic slave trafficking after 1815. Much less well-documented is how the growth in concern among local white populations within Brazil and Cuba about the sheer scale of slave imports after 1790, in combination with international efforts to outlaw slave trafficking, helped to bring about the ending of such imports between 1850 and 1867.
Graden’s purpose in this book is to explore this concern and its impact. In doing so, he offers valuable insights not only into the sociopolitical tensions that sustained slave imports...