West African Warfare in Bahia and Cuba: Soldier Slaves in the Atlantic World, 1807-1844

Abstract

This book seeks to explain how a series of historical events that occurred in a specific geographical area of West Africa from the mid-1790s onwards had an impact upon life in cities and plantations in western Cuba and Bahia. Why did these two geographical areas serve as the theatre for the rise of the Nagôs, the Lucumís, and other West African men and women? The answer, the book argues, relates to the fact that plantation economies supported by unusually large numbers of African-born slaves from the same—or close—geographical and ethnic heritage transformed the rural and urban landscape in both of them. To understand why these two areas followed such similar social patterns of insurgency it is essential to look across the Atlantic. It is not enough to repeat the significance of the African background of Bahian and Cuban slaves or to mention the fact that there was a connection. Establishing the links and making the connections between people and events, with a special emphasis on their warfare experiences, in a coherent manner and through a period of time that spans for over three decades is the primordial task of this study.