Freedom's Mirror
Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution

Studies the reverberations of the Haitian Revolution in Cuba, where the violent entrenchment of slavery occurred while slaves in Haiti successfully overthrew the institution.

Ada Ferrer (Author)

9781107697782, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 24 November 2014

392 pages, 12 b/w illus. 4 maps
23 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.53 kg

'… Ada Ferrer explores the tensions that underlay two overlapping revolutions on neighboring Caribbean islands at the turn of the nineteenth century: one, a struggle against slavery that culminated in the foundation of the independent nation of Haiti, the other, a 'sugar revolution' that entrenched enslavement in Cuba … If the Haitian Revolution was intertwined with the rise of Cuban slavery, Ferrer compellingly shows, it also paved the way for ongoing challenges to the new regime, from the vessels of slave liberation outfitted by successive Haitian states to the voices of antislavery conspirators and patriot insurgents over the course of Cuba's nineteenth century.' Andrew Walker, H-Haiti

During the Haitian Revolution of 1791–1804, arguably the most radical revolution of the modern world, slaves and former slaves succeeded in ending slavery and establishing an independent state. Yet on the Spanish island of Cuba barely fifty miles distant, the events in Haiti helped usher in the antithesis of revolutionary emancipation. When Cuban planters and authorities saw the devastation of the neighboring colony, they rushed to fill the void left in the world market for sugar, to buttress the institutions of slavery and colonial rule, and to prevent 'another Haiti' from happening in their own territory. Freedom's Mirror follows the reverberations of the Haitian Revolution in Cuba, where the violent entrenchment of slavery occurred at the very moment that the Haitian Revolution provided a powerful and proximate example of slaves destroying slavery. By creatively linking two stories - the story of the Haitian Revolution and that of the rise of Cuban slave society - that are usually told separately, Ada Ferrer sheds fresh light on both of these crucial moments in Caribbean and Atlantic history.

Introduction: the Haitian Revolution and Cuban slave society
1. 'A colony worth a kingdom': Cuba's sugar revolution in the shadow of Saint-Domingue
2. 'An excess of communication': the capture of news in a slave society
3. An unlikely alliance: Cuba and the black auxiliaries
4. Revolution's disavowal: Cuba and a counterrevolution of slavery
5. 'Masters of all': echoes of Haitian independence in Cuba
6. Atlantic crucible: 1808 between Haiti and Spain
7. A black kingdom of this world: making history, imagining revolution in Havana, 1812
Epilogue: Haiti, Cuba, and history: afterlives of antislavery and revolution.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural history [HBTB], History of the Americas [HBJK], General & world history [HBG]