EVANS, CHRIS
Dr @ University of South Wales
Bio
I teach History at the University of South Wales. My publications include ‘The plantation hoe: the rise and fall of an Atlantic commodity’, The William and Mary Quarterly (2012) and [with Göran Rydén] ‘”Voyage iron”: an Atlantic slave trade currency, its European origins, and West African impact’, Past & Present (2018).
Geographical location : Pontypridd, Wales
Research Area and Interest : Caribbean slavery, the Atlantic slave trade
Social Media
Panel
Afterlives of Slavery
Presentation
British capital and enslaved miners at El Cobre, Cuba
In the 1830s, British companies established copper mines at El Cobre, Cuba. These major industrial enterprises were overseen by migrant workers from Cornwall, but most of the workforce was made up of freshly enslaved Africans, contrary to Spanish colonial law. The negative publicity that the El Cobre mines started to attract in Britain led to an Act of the Westminster parliament in 1843 that prohibited the ownership of slaves by British subjects anywhere in the world, regardless of the jurisdiction in which the enslaved individuals were to be found. The 1843 Act was easily evaded, however, and mass enslavement at El Cobre under British auspices ended only with the Cuba Libre rebellion in 1868.