Envisioning Plantations in New Granada’s Caribbean Coast: The Shattered Dreams of Antonio Narváez y La Torre

In 1778, Antonio Narváez y la Torre, then governor of the province of Santa Marta and Río Hacha in the viceroyalty of New Granada, drafted a long report on the state of the province. In his diagnosis, Narváez decried the current “state of misery and poverty” of the province and, based on what he saw as its near-infinite agricultural possibilities, envisioned a prosperous future for it. The problem, he and many other reformers throughout Spanish America believed, was clear: lack of labor. The solution was equally clear: “to facilitate through all possible means the introduction of African slaves,” who would turn the province’s immense potential into a reality of abundance. Over the next two decades, a number of royal ordinances, most notably the Real Cédula of 24 November 1791, eased the acquisition of African slaves. This measure, several scholars have recently demonstrated, produced dramatic demographic, economic, and social transformations throughout Spain’s American territories, most notably in Cuba and Venezuela. The results in New Granada’s Caribbean provinces were far from satisfactory. Drawing comparisons with Cuba, this paper presents quantitative evidence of the numbers of slaves that entered New Granada in the aftermath of the passing of the Real Cédula liberating the slave trade and offers an explanation for the sharp contrast between Cuba’s impressive numbers and New Granada’s disappointing ones. In doing so, it proposes an interpretation of the emergence of capitalist plantation societies that emphasizes that the rise of capitalism is as much a story of successful cases as one of unfulfilled projects and shattered dreams.