Whither Loyalty? The Strategies of Slaves and Morenos Libres during the British Siege and Occupation of Havana, 1762–63

The British invasion and occupation of Havana at the end of the Seven Years’ War was a convulsion of violence and commerce that pulled in and pushed out people, news, and goods throughout the Atlantic world.  In 1762, 12,000 troops and 600 slaves aboard 200 ships from Britain, Jamaica, Martinique, and North America descended upon Havana, the hemisphere’s third most populous city.  In the wake of the British victory, as many as 700 merchant ships rushed into harbor from Europe, North America, the West Indies, and West Africa to sell food, merchandize, and thousands of enslaved Africans to the surrendered city.
My paper will use research performed in Cuban, Spanish, British, Jamaican, and U.S. archives to show the variety of strategies employed during this moment of crisis both by people of color living on the island and others from far away who arrived there on merchant or battle ships.  Besides volunteering to fight, these include running away by foot or ship, deserting to the other side, spying, stealing, murdering, and/or fighting on after the capitulation.  I argue that slaves and free blacks were more vulnerable to reenslavement and violence, but also more mobile and better positioned and equipped than those of strictly European descent to move between sides in this imperial stand-off and realignment.  
The slave supply into Cuba up until 1762 flowed almost exclusively from Jamaica, so you had the confounding situation of slaves fighting on opposite sides of an imperial conflict who could potentially have been shipmates on the Middle Passage.  Ultimately, my paper will show how the choices these individuals made and the openings they exploited in a besieged and occupied Havana reveal one of the many ways in which populations that made war against each other in the 18th-century Atlantic were also profoundly interconnected.