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Scholarship on slavery in the Caribbean frequently emphasizes sugar
and tobacco production, but this unique work illustrates the
importance of the region's hato economy-a combination of livestock
ranching, foodstuff cultivation, and timber harvesting-on the
living patterns among slave communities. David Stark makes use of
extensive Catholic parish records to provide a comprehensive
examination of slavery in Puerto Rico and across the Spanish
Caribbean. He reconstructs slave families to examine incidences of
marriage, as well as birth and death rates. The result are
never-before-analyzed details on how many enslaved Africans came to
Puerto Rico, where they came from, and how their populations grew
through natural increase. Stark convincingly argues that when
animal husbandry drove much of the island's economy, slavery was
less harsh than in better-known plantation regimes geared toward
crop cultivation. Slaves in the hato economy experienced more
favorable conditions for family formation, relatively relaxed work
regimes, higher fertility rates, and lower mortality rates.
Scholarship on slavery in the Caribbean frequently emphasizes sugar
and tobacco production, but this unique work illustrates the
importance of the hato economy-a combination of livestock ranching,
foodstuff cultivation, and timber harvesting-to the region. David
Stark makes use of extensive Catholic parish records to provide a
comprehensive examination of slavery in Puerto Rico and across the
Spanish Caribbean. He reconstructs slave families to examine
incidences of marriage, as well as birth and death rates. These
records provide never-before-analyzed details about how many
enslaved Africans came to Puerto Rico, where they came from, and
how their populations grew through natural increase. Stark
convincingly argues that when animal husbandry drove much of the
island's economy, slavery was less harsh than in better-known
plantation regimes geared toward crop cultivation. Slaves in the
hato economy experienced more favorable conditions for family
formation, relatively relaxed work regimes, higher fertility rates,
and lower mortality rates. Slave Families and the Hato Economy in
Puerto Rico offers a fresh counterpoint to the focus on sugar and
tobacco cultivation that has dominated the historiography of the
Spanish Caribbean.
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