Transported Identities: Global Trafficking and Late-Imperial Subjectivity in Cuban Narratives on African Penal Colonies

Abstract

AbstractThis article studies the reformulation of Black Legend, Middle Passage andconvivenciadiscourses in nineteenth-century narratives published by Cubans sent to Spain's de facto penal colony on Fernando Po. Contextualised with archival sources, this reading highlights how deportees condemned Spain's perpetuation of the slave trade while struggling to negotiate their own positioning within the racially-stratified practices of late-imperial space. Those negotiations often exacerbated traditional divisions between different communities within the Spanish colonial system. In some instances, however, the deportees’ encounters with citizens and colonised subjects from distant territories may have bolstered and expanded intra-imperial identification and solidarity.