Author Description

Perhaps a society cannot endure forever half-slave and half-free, but it certainly can endure a long time in that condition. In Cuba, slavery survived for more than forty years after its abolition in the other Caribbean plantation societies. It survived, further, into an age when technological change made slave labor both inefficient and redundant. Here, Franklin W. Knight examines the conditions that maintained slavery in Cuba in the nineteenth century, and perceptively analyzes the sociological effect of the institution on the island's politics, culture, and economy.