Antislavery Sentiment in Colonial Spanish America

This paper argues that the antislavery movement, the abolition of the slave trade, and the end of slavery itself are part of a deeper Hispanic historical tradition running throughout the colonial period on both sides of the Spanish Atlantic. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a select few religious men wrote publicly against the slave trade -- and in one case, even slavery itself. Their works demonstrate the strange intimacy between Catholicism and antislavery in the Hispanic world, a relationship that was convoluted and contradictory, but also provided a unique venue to advocate on behalf of the slaves. While public antislavery discourse was effectively silenced for much of the eighteenth century, liberal intellectuals like Isidoro Antillón and José Blanco White renewed public debate about the legality of slavery and the slave trade in early-nineteenth century Spain. During the Napoleonic Wars, these questions moved into the popular political arena for the first time during the Spanish Cortes of 1810-1812, and abolitionist measures were even considered for inclusion in the Spanish Constitution of 1812. Ultimately, none of these advances for slaves and their descendants moved beyond debate and discussion. The slave trade to Spanish America would only be outlawed after great international pressure and a resulting series of Spanish-British accords. But if we listen closely to the voices of antislavery in the Spanish Empire, we find a homegrown movement against the slave trade that had deep roots in Catholic belief and was fostered by antislavery and abolitionist advocates on both sides of the Atlantic. Although their efforts were ultimately unsuccessful, taken together, they comprise a significant antislavery and abolitionist movement based on both sides of the Spanish Atlantic, one that drew inspiration from Catholic thought, Spanish political tradition, and the work of foreign abolitionists.