The American Revolutionary War and the 1778 reforms partially freeing trade for Spanish subjects between the metropolis and the Americas became the twin beginnings of an empire-wide change, turning the traffic of captive Africans into a vital part of the mainstream commercial activities associated with colonial and trans-imperial commerce in the Spanish Americas. This transformation took place a decade before the Spanish Crown deregulated the slave trade in 1789-1791, which allowed foreign and Spanish subjects to bring captives to the colonies without licenses. In fact, by the early 1780s, Spanish merchants based in the Americas were already conducting this horrific traffic to profit from exchanges with foreign traders through inter-colonial commerce. By focusing on coastal merchant elites living in the colonies, we examine how the availability of silver exports and credit backed by silver, defined the timing, direction, and size of the slave trade in Cuba, Venezuela, New Granada, and the Río de la Plata during the age of imperial fracture.
Alex Borucki is professor of history at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of From Shipmates to Soldiers: Emerging Black Identities in the Río de la Plata (2015), co-editor of From the Galleon to the Highlands: Slave Trade Routes in the Spanish Americas (2020), and co-editor of The Rio de la Plata from Colony to Nations (2021). Apart from other Spanish-language books and articles, he has published on the American Historical Review, Hispanic American Historical Review, William and Mary Quarterly, Colonial Latin American Review, The Americas, History in Africa, Itinerario, Atlantic Studies, and Slavery and Abolition. He is co-creator of the Intra-American Slave Trade Database at the SlaveVoyages website, https://www.slavevoyages.org/american/database, tracking the slave routes within the Americas.
