Alexander von Humboldt y la comparación de las esclavitudes en las Américas

Abstract

This article has two main aims. Both are motivated by the Humboldtian diary about Cuba in 1804, unknown until today (found by Ulrike Leitner in the Biblioteka Jagiellonska Kraków). First, the article will present the in fact discontinuous but coherent development of the Humboldtian image of slavery in Spanish America (which is culminating to some extent in the diary and builds in nuce what later will become the “Essay on the Island of Cuba”). Second, the article presents the sensation in history of science, that Humboldt starts to apply systematically main elements of scientific method of comparison on social, historical and socioeconomic themes of slavery, when he heard of the proclamation of the new state of “Haity” in Veracruz or Havana in 1804. These two findings (and the diary itself) are changing profoundly our knowledge about Humboldt’s political relationship with two larger groups of the population of Spanish America (the parts of the Creole elite who were planning to found “a white republic”, following the French model and the very large group, or caste, of the “pardos”) on the “Eve of the Independence Movement”.

Keywords

• Alexander von Humboldt
• Michael Zeuske
• Slavery
• 1804
• Cuba Diary