WEBVTT 1 00:00:11.250 --> 00:00:17.870 align:center line:-1Keith: Why don't we start, again, with your name and what your... what your role is here, what your role at Pitt is? 2 00:00:17.880 --> 00:00:25.370 align:center line:-1 Dr. George Reid Andrews: Yeah. My name is George Reid Andrews. I'm a professor of history and I've been at Pitt since 1981. 3 00:00:25.380 --> 00:00:28.130 align:center line:-1 Keith: Nice, oh you've seen that... you've seen a lot of changes at Pitt since... 4 00:00:28.140 --> 00:00:30.290 align:center line:-1 Dr. George Reid Andrews: Many changes, yeah, yeah. 5 00:00:30.790 --> 00:00:41.990 align:center line:-1 Keith: So I'm going to start off with a home run here. Can you tell me a little bit about how slavery, enslavement in Latin America 6 00:00:42.000 --> 00:00:48.920 align:center line:-1 ended and the... the abolition process? Was it a... was it a clean break and it just... 7 00:00:48.930 --> 00:00:53.280 align:center line:-1 it just stopped and everything was hunky-dory? Yeah, did it take forever? 8 00:00:53.290 --> 00:01:01.550 align:center line:-1 Dr. George Reid Andrews: As I'm sure you can imagine it was not a clean break at all. And it also took place in different ways in different countries. 9 00:01:06.380 --> 00:01:20.030 align:center line:-1 You know the big beginning of it all really is the Haitian Revolution. And that's a one-of-a-kind event. It's one of a very few national revolutions 10 00:01:20.040 --> 00:01:28.970 align:center line:-1 that really changes world history. It's like the Russian revolution, it's like the Chinese revolution, it's like the French revolution, 11 00:01:28.980 --> 00:01:41.890 align:center line:-1 and that was a protracted civil war, really, among various groups in Haitian society or Saint Domingue society it was called back then that took 13 years to play out. 12 00:01:41.900 --> 00:01:48.170 align:center line:-1 Very violent, hundreds of thousands of people died, hundreds of thousands of refugees having to flee the island, 13 00:01:48.180 --> 00:01:59.490 align:center line:-1 and that... that civil war that... which turns into a war for national liberation, does end in total emancipation, the total abolition of slavery in 1804. 14 00:01:59.500 --> 00:02:06.630 align:center line:-1 First country to do that. And it also sends huge shock waves all through the Americas. 15 00:02:06.640 --> 00:02:15.110 align:center line:-1 Slave owners everywhere are very worried that something like Haiti might possibly happen in their own countries. 16 00:02:15.120 --> 00:02:22.560 align:center line:-1 And in fact, in many countries... we're talking now first decade of the 1800s, US is independent, US has not abolished slavery at that time, 17 00:02:22.570 --> 00:02:28.150 align:center line:-1 slave-owning societies all through the hemisphere really kind of locked themselves down. 18 00:02:28.160 --> 00:02:37.150 align:center line:-1 They greatly increased police patrols over the slave population, greatly increase surveillance of the African enslaved population 19 00:02:37.160 --> 00:02:49.670 align:center line:-1 precisely in order to prevent something from Haiti like happening. But what then happens is that France invades Spain in 1808, 20 00:02:49.680 --> 00:02:59.050 align:center line:-1 Napoleon invades Spain in 1808, overthrows the Spanish monarchy, the Portuguese monarchy, which owns Brazil, flees to Brazil 21 00:02:59.060 --> 00:03:07.160 align:center line:-1 and sets up its base in Brazil, this is all in 1807-1808. And at that point, all the societies of Latin America… 22 00:03:07.170 --> 00:03:16.670 align:center line:-1 oh and Napoleon imposes a new monarch on Spain, his brother, in fact, Joseph Bonaparte, and all the Spanish colonies have to decide, 23 00:03:16.680 --> 00:03:29.170 align:center line:-1 are we going to continue to pledge allegiance to this new fraudulent monarch, or do something different like possibly along the lines of the United States or, god forbid, Haiti. 24 00:03:29.180 --> 00:03:36.900 align:center line:-1 Anyway that decision plays out in different ways in different countries, but it ends up provoking a whole series of civil wars that gradually turn 25 00:03:36.910 --> 00:03:44.460 align:center line:-1 into wars for national independence in most of the Spanish-American countries which, at the same time, 26 00:03:44.470 --> 00:03:51.350 align:center line:-1 are very worried that those civil wars might go the direction of Haiti. And at the same time, these are societies that are very heavily free 27 00:03:51.360 --> 00:04:00.630 align:center line:-1 Black and enslaved and they can't possibly… the people who are fighting for national independence can't win those 28 00:04:00.640 --> 00:04:11.750 align:center line:-1 wars without having support from the slave and free Black populations. And what happens is about a 10-year process of negotiation between 29 00:04:11.760 --> 00:04:18.320 align:center line:-1 the leaders of national independence and the slave and free Black populations over what those new societies are going to look like. 30 00:04:18.330 --> 00:04:30.180 align:center line:-1 In numerous countries, Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, Venezuela, etc, agree to enact programs of gradual emancipation. 31 00:04:30.190 --> 00:04:37.550 align:center line:-1 And the way those programs work is that slave mothers, when they have children, the children will be born legally free 32 00:04:37.560 --> 00:04:46.230 align:center line:-1 but they have to continue to work for the mother's master until they reach the age of maturity, which is somewhere between 18 and 21. 33 00:04:46.240 --> 00:04:59.040 align:center line:-1 So they are... they are technically free but in real life continue to be bound to the person who owns their mother. And Keith, this gets terribly complicated. 34 00:04:59.050 --> 00:05:04.680 align:center line:-1 I'm trying to think about how to make it simple, but anyway. So that's one way in which people are becoming free. 35 00:05:04.690 --> 00:05:13.170 align:center line:-1 But it's very gradual and it's going to take 20 to 30 years to play out because consider...young slave women who maybe are 12 years old 36 00:05:13.180 --> 00:05:21.010 align:center line:-1 at the time that that law is enacted... they'll have children 10 years later and those children will serve for another 20 years. 37 00:05:21.020 --> 00:05:29.870 align:center line:-1 So we can be talking about waiting for 30 to 40 to even 50 years for this law to finally play out. However, meanwhile there had been another 38 00:05:29.880 --> 00:05:38.160 align:center line:-1 way for people to become free and that had been by enrolling, by enlisting both in the Spanish armies that are fighting to hold onto those colonies, 39 00:05:38.170 --> 00:05:48.860 align:center line:-1 and in the independence armies. Those folks become free immediately, plus their political weight is such that they can push these laws of gradual emancipation. 40 00:05:48.870 --> 00:05:57.910 align:center line:-1 And then adding to that is that even after independence takes place, which in most of Spanish America is in the 1820s, most of these countries 41 00:05:57.920 --> 00:06:06.800 align:center line:-1 are becoming independent first half of the 1820s. Civil wars then continue in these countries over what kind of governments they're going to have 42 00:06:06.810 --> 00:06:16.300 align:center line:-1 and which faction of the elites are going to run national governments, and so on. Slave and free Black troops remain essential to fighting those civil wars. 43 00:06:16.310 --> 00:06:30.250 align:center line:-1 To try to cut to the finish, it is the Black participation in those civil wars that finally leads to final emancipation in the 1840s, 1850s, and 1860s 44 00:06:30.260 --> 00:06:40.170 align:center line:-1 in the Spanish-American countries on the mainland, because... oh my god.... there's also the colonies of Spain and of... of Cuba and Puerto Rico 45 00:06:40.180 --> 00:06:47.200 align:center line:-1 which opt not to go for independence at that time. They don't launch their independence wars until the second half of the century 46 00:06:47.210 --> 00:06:55.600 align:center line:-1 where a very similar process plays out... loss of gradual emancipation, continued Black participation in independence wars and ultimately 47 00:06:55.610 --> 00:07:04.710 align:center line:-1 final emancipation, yeah, in Cuba in 1886. Okay, so that's a big long story. That's... those are the Spanish-American countries. 48 00:07:04.720 --> 00:07:12.150 align:center line:-1 Then there's the case of Brazil where there is… there is a very small war for national independence 49 00:07:12.160 --> 00:07:20.520 align:center line:-1 but it doesn't last long because, frankly, Brazil is a much bigger country than Portugal and the Portuguese basically agree to give up control over Brazil. 50 00:07:20.530 --> 00:07:31.230 align:center line:-1 Brazil becomes independent largely peacefully in 18… oh I better get this right in... oh my god terrible... 1822, I want to say. 51 00:07:31.240 --> 00:07:39.280 align:center line:-1 Take that out. But because there had been no war, there had been no process of Black enlistment in armies, therefore, 52 00:07:39.290 --> 00:07:47.090 align:center line:-1 no need to enact gradual emancipation, and no route for Black men out of slavery through military service. 53 00:07:47.100 --> 00:07:55.760 align:center line:-1 However what did happen was that the slave population of Brazil is particularly large. 54 00:07:55.770 --> 00:08:03.930 align:center line:-1 Brazil is far and away the biggest recipient of enslaved Africans anywhere in the world, anywhere in the Americas and anywhere in the world. 55 00:08:06.360 --> 00:08:16.410 align:center line:-1 When Brazil becomes free, the new rulers of Brazil are very concerned… again, we're talking this is just 30 years after Haiti, 56 00:08:16.420 --> 00:08:22.520 align:center line:-1 they remained very concerned about the possibility of Haitian style slave uprisings in Brazil. 57 00:08:22.530 --> 00:08:33.440 align:center line:-1 The free Black population is also quite large and in order to buy the loyalty of the free Black population the national government 58 00:08:33.450 --> 00:08:41.590 align:center line:-1 agrees in the first constitution, to strike down all the old colonial laws that had restricted Black opportunity, Black upward mobility, 59 00:08:41.600 --> 00:08:49.330 align:center line:-1 that had set free Black people as a group apart from Whites. And the hope is that that will lead the free Black population to side 60 00:08:49.340 --> 00:08:57.520 align:center line:-1 with the national government whenever the slave population arises. And that calculation turns out to be correct. There is a big wave of slave rebellion 61 00:08:57.530 --> 00:09:08.400 align:center line:-1 in Brazil in the 1810s, 1820s, and 1830s, every one of which is put down. And in fact during those years, more Africans arrive in Brazil than ever before. 62 00:09:08.410 --> 00:09:16.430 align:center line:-1 Brazil is really doubling down on slavery at that time after independence. Which then leads to the question, well, okay, 63 00:09:16.440 --> 00:09:23.000 align:center line:-1 then how do you abolish slavery if the country is really total… and by the country I mean the slave owning class is… 64 00:09:23.010 --> 00:09:29.460 align:center line:-1 is totally committed to the continuation of slavery. And the way that happens is that first, Great Britain, 65 00:09:29.470 --> 00:09:36.270 align:center line:-1 during the first half of the 1800s, has made the decision to end its own slave trade and it wants every other country in the world to 66 00:09:36.280 --> 00:09:44.980 align:center line:-1 end its slave trade as well, and it puts enormous pressure on Brazil to stop importing Africans, which Brazil largely ignores until the British 67 00:09:44.990 --> 00:09:54.270 align:center line:-1 get very serious about it in the late 1840s and they start blockading Brazilian ports and seizing slave vessels which are coming in. 68 00:09:54.280 --> 00:10:04.850 align:center line:-1 It could have been the occasion for war between Great Britain and Brazil. Brazil blinks during that confrontation, and agrees to finally end the slave trade. 69 00:10:04.860 --> 00:10:14.700 align:center line:-1 No more Africans coming in. While the coffee and sugar economies continue to expand, you need more and more slaves but you're not getting them. 70 00:10:14.710 --> 00:10:24.220 align:center line:-1 And at the same time there is a small abolitionist movement that has formed in Brazil in the second half of the 1800s which is starting 71 00:10:24.230 --> 00:10:34.750 align:center line:-1 to argue for the abolition of slavery. Abolition in the United States in 1865, gives that movement a certain amount of impetus and, of course, 72 00:10:34.760 --> 00:10:40.980 align:center line:-1 Brazil also is arguing or... not Brazil, Great Britain… also is arguing for the abolition of slavery. 73 00:10:40.990 --> 00:10:50.780 align:center line:-1 So there's a certain amount of pressure on Brazil to bring slavery to an end. I'm really sorry to make this so complicated it shouldn't… 74 00:10:50.790 --> 00:10:55.760 align:center line:-1 Dr. George Reid Andrews: Oh, okay. But I was gonna get to the Paraguayan War. This is what happens when you work on a topic, 75 00:10:55.770 --> 00:11:06.570 align:center line:-1 you get to know too much about it, and it's very...I'm used to giving these 45-minute lectures about this stuff and it's very hard to boil it down, anyway. 76 00:11:06.580 --> 00:11:18.950 align:center line:-1 You know, to try to boil it down, let me just say that Brazil passes its own gradual emancipation law in 1871 under which children 77 00:11:18.960 --> 00:11:26.990 align:center line:-1 born to a slave mother... but think about that…1871. Again, let's say you have very young... actually you could have a 78 00:11:27.000 --> 00:11:38.830 align:center line:-1 slave girl born in 1870 having children in 1890, who then have to serve their master until 1910. 79 00:11:38.840 --> 00:11:48.630 align:center line:-1 Slavery in Brazil could easily have gone into the 1900s. What finally ends the whole system is that in the 1880s, 80 00:11:48.640 --> 00:11:55.530 align:center line:-1 that abolitionist movement gets more and more radical and it says, look, we can see this is never going to happen through parliamentary 81 00:11:55.540 --> 00:12:00.220 align:center line:-1 processes or it's gonna... it's gonna happen so far in the future that it's just unacceptable. 82 00:12:00.230 --> 00:12:12.640 align:center line:-1 You can't be a western country in the late 1800s and still have slavery. And those abolitionists start fanning out through the countryside to alert 83 00:12:12.650 --> 00:12:23.870 align:center line:-1 plantation slaves that if they flee to Brazilian cities the abolitionists will provide protection and cover for them and prevent slave hunters from coming to get them. 84 00:12:23.880 --> 00:12:31.640 align:center line:-1 And slaves have been fleeing from Brazilian plantations for centuries and setting up little encampments of escaped slaves all around the country. 85 00:12:31.650 --> 00:12:36.440 align:center line:-1 There have been hundreds of them, maybe thousands of them, some of which still exist today. 86 00:12:36.450 --> 00:12:41.750 align:center line:-1 So Brazilian slaves had a long history of running away to escape from plantation slavery. 87 00:12:41.760 --> 00:12:46.520 align:center line:-1 But now they have organized groups in cities who are actively supporting them. 88 00:12:46.530 --> 00:12:55.760 align:center line:-1 In the 1880s, they start to flee en mass from, especially from coffee plantations in the Southeast where the abolitionist movement is strongest. 89 00:12:55.770 --> 00:13:05.810 align:center line:-1 And in the face of that mass flight of slaves, finally parliament agrees in 1888 to final abolition, and that's the end of slavery in Brazil, 90 00:13:05.820 --> 00:13:10.760 align:center line:-1 the biggest American slave system, the longest lasting, and the last one to be abolished. 91 00:13:12.880 --> 00:13:14.990 align:center line:-1 Keith: Why don't I ask that question... because if you want to sum it up very quickly... 92 00:13:15.000 --> 00:13:22.700 align:center line:-1 Dr. George Reid Andrews: I want to sum it up by saying the United States required war to abolish slavery, the Civil War. 93 00:13:22.710 --> 00:13:29.230 align:center line:-1 Every Spanish-American nation also required war, first the independence wars and then the civil wars. 94 00:13:29.240 --> 00:13:37.910 align:center line:-1 Brazil was the only one to do it without warfare... that's one major reason why it took so long... lasted a long time, 95 00:13:37.920 --> 00:13:44.470 align:center line:-1 and was the final process to finally come to conclusion. But not only did it take war, it was also a very grudging process. 96 00:13:44.480 --> 00:13:50.950 align:center line:-1 It was slow and difficult along the way, you start with gradual emancipation and then you end with final emancipation, 97 00:13:50.960 --> 00:13:58.140 align:center line:-1 but it takes decades to get to final emancipation, so a long, protracted, really complicated process. 98 00:13:58.150 --> 00:14:03.810 align:center line:-1 Keith: This idea of gradual emancipation is really... is intriguing. I want to talk a little bit more about it. 99 00:14:03.820 --> 00:14:11.300 align:center line:-1 But I also want to talk about the Haitian Revolution because it seems like that was... that was, like, where it happened. 100 00:14:11.310 --> 00:14:23.200 align:center line:-1 Can you... can you talk a little bit about how, like, did, like… the spark that started that revolution... was it... was it... was it… 101 00:14:23.210 --> 00:14:28.860 align:center line:-1 was it slave owners that were like, you know, my god, we've been treating people like this... why have we been doing this? 102 00:14:28.870 --> 00:14:36.200 align:center line:-1 Was it enslaved... the enslaved population that had just had enough? What was the spark that started everything? 103 00:14:36.210 --> 00:14:41.700 align:center line:-1 Dr. George Reid Andrews: That is a great question. The spark that started the Haitian Revolution was actually the French Revolution. 104 00:14:41.710 --> 00:14:46.050 align:center line:-1 Because of course, Saint-Domingue, Haiti... Haiti was the name that it took on when it became independent 105 00:14:46.060 --> 00:14:54.140 align:center line:-1 as a French colony, it was called Saint Domingue. Saint Domingue was a French colony. It was the richest French colony, it was the most productive, 106 00:14:54.150 --> 00:15:08.970 align:center line:-1 it generated huge wealth for France. When the French Revolution begins in 1787, it is in some ways a civil war within France. 107 00:15:08.980 --> 00:15:14.280 align:center line:-1 Competing groups fighting over what the new French system is going to look like. 108 00:15:14.290 --> 00:15:18.610 align:center line:-1 Is it going to continue to be a monarchy? Is it going to be a republic? How's it going to work? 109 00:15:18.620 --> 00:15:26.830 align:center line:-1 Those same factions form in the colony of Saint Domingue, first among the White population and the White population 110 00:15:26.840 --> 00:15:35.260 align:center line:-1 has a very small, well-to-do group, and then a somewhat larger kind of middle class and even working-class group, and the… 111 00:15:35.270 --> 00:15:44.320 align:center line:-1 the White population starts to go to war with itself over the question of what its new relationship with France is going to be, and how 112 00:15:44.330 --> 00:15:51.620 align:center line:-1 it will fit into whatever decisions are made in France. Then the fairly large free Black population joins in as well, 113 00:15:51.630 --> 00:16:01.080 align:center line:-1 especially when the French Revolution goes in the direction of liberty, equality, fraternity, all men are brothers, everybody's equal. 114 00:16:01.090 --> 00:16:06.130 align:center line:-1 And the free Black population says, yeah absolutely we totally agree with that. 115 00:16:06.140 --> 00:16:11.200 align:center line:-1 This brings them into direct conflict with the White population which doesn't agree with that. 116 00:16:11.210 --> 00:16:21.910 align:center line:-1 The White and free Black populations go to war in late 1780s, early 1790s, and in 1791, as the... as the free population 117 00:16:21.920 --> 00:16:31.720 align:center line:-1 is starting to battle it out among itself, the slave population rises up because the controls over them have been lifted to a certain degree. 118 00:16:31.730 --> 00:16:41.520 align:center line:-1 So the turmoil and conflict that's introduced into the colony by events in France, opens the possibility for the slave population to rise up, 119 00:16:41.530 --> 00:16:49.580 align:center line:-1 and the slave population is 90% of the population of Saint Domingue. They're the overwhelming majority. 120 00:16:49.590 --> 00:16:56.930 align:center line:-1 They are, of course, tightly controlled but during this civil war within the free population those controls loosen. 121 00:16:56.940 --> 00:17:06.130 align:center line:-1 The slaves rise up. This sets off the 13 year process that ultimately results in independence and the abolition of slavery. 122 00:17:06.140 --> 00:17:17.640 align:center line:-1 But the spark is the kind of loosening of controls as the free population goes to war with itself over what it's going to look like in the future. 123 00:17:17.650 --> 00:17:26.300 align:center line:-1 And those independence wars in Spanish America over the question of what's our relationship to Spain, now that a usurper is on the throne, 124 00:17:26.310 --> 00:17:33.760 align:center line:-1 those independence wars kind of open the gates for the same possibility in Spanish America. 125 00:17:33.770 --> 00:17:41.190 align:center line:-1 And the absence of an independence war in Brazil prevents that possibility from arising in Brazil, which enables 126 00:17:41.200 --> 00:17:48.150 align:center line:-1 slavery to continue there until the very late 1800s. And if I... you asked what was the spark? 127 00:17:48.160 --> 00:17:56.420 align:center line:-1 If I could also note that the spark for the French Revolution is the American Revolution, because France had to go into debt 128 00:17:56.430 --> 00:18:05.340 align:center line:-1 so heavily to pay for its participation in the American Revolution, that the king then has to summon the estates general to approve 129 00:18:05.350 --> 00:18:14.460 align:center line:-1 new taxes to try to deal with that debt incurred as a result of French military expeditions in the new world, in... in the United States. 130 00:18:14.470 --> 00:18:19.340 align:center line:-1 And so American Revolution sparks French Revolution which sparks Haitian Revolution. 131 00:18:21.420 --> 00:18:23.480 align:center line:-1 History is all connected. 132 00:18:24.180 --> 00:18:32.450 align:center line:-1 Dr. George Reid Andrews: ...if we talk, and you asked about the concept of… not just the concept, the practice of gradual emancipation. 133 00:18:32.460 --> 00:18:39.740 align:center line:-1 Gradual emancipation is not what those folks called it. They called it the Law of the Free Womb. 134 00:18:39.750 --> 00:18:51.370 align:center line:-1 The Free well W-O-M-B, because, while the mother