Caribbean with less slavery

[Ricardolindo]

Is there a way to prevent such large scale African slavery in the Caribbean? The Spanish colonies in the Caribbean, Cuba, Santo Domingo and Puerto Rico, all had fewer slaves than the British, French and Dutch colonies did, because there was a lot of European settlement and slave importation was restricted. On the other hand, I don't think it's plausible for Spain to keep the entire Caribbean as they never settled outside of Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico and Jamaica and their mismanagement meant that Jamaica and the western third of Hispaniola were eventually lost to England and France, respectively.
@Gary Oswald

 

[Ricardolindo]

So, does anyone else have any thoughts on this?

 

[JesterBL]

So, does anyone else have any thoughts on this?

Two things likely differentiate the Spanish Caribbean from the British/Dutch/French Caribbean:

1) The date of earliest settlement- by the time you could reliably establish plantation agriculture (which was not immediately after discovery) you already had colonies of freebooters who had their focus elsewhere and, relatedly....

2) the colonial power viewed their Caribbean possessions less as investments from which to extract maximum value or products for the metropole and more as strategic points of control to allow the extraction of wealth from the mainland of North America (the Valley of Mexico) and South America (the highlands of Peru)

I don't know how you really change either of these things. The only thing which immediately comes to mind (and is related to a potential third factor, the relative paucity of Spanish presence and projection in West Africa) is a different or no Treaty of Tordesillas and more immediate competition in the Caribbean and, therefore, less likelihood of the Spanish alone murdering and enslaving their way to own two whole continents.

 

[Japhy]

Yeah a Spain that has a reason to focus more on the carribean is inevitably going to be a Spain that commits more atrocities there. The assumption that there would be less slavery by the power that committed genocide though slavery of the native peoples of the carribean is a rather disturbing leap.

 

[JesterBL]

Yeah a Spain that has a reason to focus more on the carribean is inevitably going to be a Spain that commits more atrocities there. The assumption that there would be less slavery by the power that committed genocide though slavery of the native peoples of the carribean is a rather disturbing leap.

I think one of the things which has most changed my reading of history is discarding the notion that chattel slavery was some kind of suboptimal solution or that it was somehow more primitive compared to other economic systems. In fact, it was probably one of if not the optimal way to extract wealth from the tropical and subtropical regions of the Americas.

The Spanish used chattel slavery less not because of any goodness of their heart or anything unique to their own empire, but precisely because of their own socio-technological backwardness and their own underinvestment of the filthy lucre of their earlier conquests. The Dutch and the French and the British used it all the more in their own empire because, not in spite of, their wealth and sophistication.

I guess a different way of trying to tackle the problem presented by the OP would be to start from the other end- the British abolished the slave trade in 1807 and slavery itself in 1833 (although the way it was structured it excluded the Indian subcontinent and enslaved persons were not fully freed till 1840). Is there a way to move forward either of these dates? The monstrous cost of manumission as implemented tells me no, personally- it was one of the largest government expenditures in world history to my understanding and it all flowed to owners of enslaved persons- and it is hard for me to imagine an earlier effort structured any other way.

 

[Simon]

Is there a way to move forward either of these dates?

IIRC @Gary Oswald has posted previously that slavery could have been legislated against in 1788 if certain things had gone the other way.