Reviews of Books

In 1769, General Alejandro O'Reilly took possession of Louisiana for Spain and began dismantling French creole government and putting Spanish law in its place. Among the most important changes imposed by O'Reilly and subsequent Spanish governors were those affecting the regulation of slavery. Such alterations, introduced by a regime as Catholic as the one it displaced, reflected different traditions regarding slavery in the Old and New Worlds, just as did the Anglo-American practices to which Louisiana became subject after its incorporation into the United States after 1803. As a territory governed by three distinct powers, Louisiana is thus an ideal setting in which to examine how national cultures, especially law and religion, shaped the character of slavery in one area of the New World. In the well-known formulation of Frank Tannenbaum (Slave and Citizen: The Negro in the Americas [New York, 1946]), Spanish Catholicism and legal tradition eased the conditions of enslavement; at the other extreme, church and state did nothing to stop the dehumanization of slaves in the English colonies. In Spaniards, Planters, and Slaves: The Spanish Regulation of Slavery in Louisiana, 1763–1803, Gilbert C. Din takes "a modified position" on the Tannenbaum Thesis. Although Catholic officials in Spanish Louisiana "did little to improve conditions for slaves" except for those "under their direct control" (pp. xiii-xiv), he argues that Spanish lay administrators did try to ameliorate the treatment of slaves.	1
The first two chapters set the stage for Spanish rule. Din describes the establishment of slavery in French Louisiana, analyzes French law, and highlights the "runaway habit" (p. 18) of the slaves. The remaining ten chapters cover the four decades of the Spanish regime, each focusing on the regulations that successive Spanish governors enacted (or tried to enact) regarding the treatment and punishment of slaves, the slave trade, and the problem of maroons and insurrections. The central motif is the conflicts that arose between Spanish governors, intent on applying laws issued by the Spanish crown, and local planters determined to have their own way. These French creoles were divided among themselves: large slaveowners, located mostly in and around New Orleans, had been politically dominant during the French era (and still ran the Cabildo), at odds with their smaller brethren scattered throughout the colony, remote from the political capital. Slaves emerge as a fourth party, bystanders and objects of conflicts among the other three.	2
Din's most important contribution is to demonstrate the ways in which Spanish regulation of slavery differed from that of the French, especially in increasing the avenues to freedom open to slaves. Under Spanish rule, owners could freely manumit their slaves—an act that had required approval from French local officials. Slaves could even purchase their own freedom, against their owners' wishes, through the practice of coartción, at a price determined by an independent appraiser. Spanish law also prohibited Indian slavery; a handful of slaves seized on that provision, winning their freedom in court by showing descent from Indian women. Such practices brought Louisiana into line with slave law throughout the Spanish colonies. But, as many historians have pointed out, high-minded slave laws did not always translate into mild treatment. Louisiana proves that case.	. . .