Many of the slaving vessels that privateers like Aury and Laffite were headed for Cuba, and Texian smugglers like Monroe Edwards ventured almost exclusively to Cuba to purchase enslaved people. You may be wondering, "Why Cuba?"
Portion of an 1849 map showing Cuba and its proximity to the Gulf of Mexico. Credit: Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division.
Cuba was a strategic destination for both privateers and Texian traders not only because of its geographic proximity to Texas, but also because it was a major depot of the international slave trade. The Cuban sugar industry relied on massive sugar plantations that were worked by enslaved people, producing high demand for both the cash crop and laborers. During the 19th century, demand for sugar skyrocketed -- by 1860, Cuba produced nearly one-third of the world’s sugar.1
Cuba, along with Brazil, continued to import enslaved people directly from Africa for much longer than the rest of the trans-Atlantic world. In fact, the African trade was not outlawed in Cuba until 1865, and slavery itself was not abolished until 1886. "The traffic of slaves [is] now solely confined to that part of the world’, a British minister stationed in Madrid complained in 1853.2
According to the SlaveVoyages database, Cuba imported over 700,000 enslaved Africans during the 19th century, with about 500,000 of them arriving in the 1800-1840 time span that is represented in the map below.
This map shows where enslaved African people were forcibly embarked on vessels headed for Cuba in the years 1800-1840. Although these numbers do not literally represent the ethnic demographics of enslaved people who ended up in Galveston as a result of privateering, they give us an idea of the regions of Africa where the enslaved people aboard privateers' prize ships were likely from. Similarly, if we assume that Texian smugglers like Monroe Edwards drew randomly upon the population of newly imported Africans on their visits to Cuba in the 1830s, then the population of Africans in Texas probably approximated these proportions.4
