Mediterranean Slavery, New WorldTransformations: Galley Slaves in theSpanish Caribbean, 1578–1635David Wheat

Beginning in the 1570s, the Spanish Crown dispatched approximately 20 to 25

Mediterranean galleys to the Caribbean in order to protect the empire’s maritime lifelines.

In addition to convict rowers of widely varied origins, the galleys employed relatively small

numbers of skilled oarsmen drawn from the Islamic Mediterranean, particularly North

Africa and the Ottoman empire. While Spain’s Caribbean galley squadrons existed for

only 60 years, their reliance on ‘Turkish’ and ‘Moorish’ galley slaves provides evidence

of an overlooked, intermediate stage in the evolution of slavery within the early

modern Iberian Atlantic world.

In 1634, Spanish troops located and attacked the venerable palenque of ‘el Limon’, in

the province of Cartagena de Indias, present-day Colombia. The well-known commu-

nity of runaway slaves had never posed a serious threat until the year before, when

maroons from El Limon conducted a series of violent raids, assaulting rural farms

and a small Indian pueblo. The retaliatory expedition of 1634 led to the capture of

over 70 Africans and Afro-Creoles, with more than 40 men and women returned to

their owners, and 20 sold away into exile. Hoping to intimidate Cartagena’s enslaved

population, the city’s governor ordered the public execution of 10 maroons known to

have committed acts of violence against Spanish subjects and their properties. Of the

10 men scheduled to be executed, all but one were either West Central Africans or

Afro-Creoles. The remaining maroon was Francisco de la Fuente, a 30-year-old

morisco from Beniopa, a town near Gandıa in eastern Spain. According to various

witnesses, a shotgun-wielding de la Fuente had actively participated in the murders

of Amerindians, rural black slaves, and Spanish overseers in Cartagena’s hinterland.

Questioned at length by authorities in Cartagena, de la Fuente stated that he knew

he would be executed (ya save que ha de morir), but harboured no ill will towards

his capturers. In a jail cell, he learned that he would be dragged through the city’s

Slavery and AbolitionVol. 31, No. 3, September 2010, pp. 327–344

David Wheat is Assistant Professor, Department of History, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824,

USA. Email: dwheat@msu.edu

ISSN 0144-039X print/1743-9523 online/10/030327–18DOI: 10.1080/0144039X.2010.504541 # 2010 Taylor & Francis

streets behind a mule and then, in a public plaza, hung by the neck until dead. His

body would be quartered and placed at various points around the city; his head

would be displayed in an iron cage alongside those of his fellow maroons. Unlike

his cellmate Juan de la Mar negro criollo, de la Fuente made no attempt to appeal

when notified of his death sentence. He was hung and dismembered in Cartagena

on 19 June 1634.1

How can we explain this Spanish morisco’s presence in a major maroon settlement

outside Cartagena in the 1630s? The ‘Turks’ and ‘Moors’ who intermittently appear in

sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish Caribbean sources present a similar

problem.2 While their presence has been noted by several historians, little is known

of the circumstances that brought them to the Caribbean.3 Thus far, our knowledge

of Mediterranean influences in the formation of Spanish Caribbean society is largely

limited to the introduction of sugar cane.4 This essay addresses the direct transfer of

a different Mediterranean institution – galley slavery – from Iberia to the Caribbean.

From 1578 until the early 1630s, galley squadrons based in Cartagena, Santo Domingo,

and Havana relied on the labour of several hundred Mediterranean Muslims (and a

handful of moriscos). Viewed as skilled and experienced oarsmen, these ‘Moors’ and

‘Turks’ rowed alongside enslaved sub-Saharan Africans, and convicts drawn from

various corners of the Iberian empires. Much like sugar cultivation, the galleys

provide an opportunity to examine the genesis of Caribbean slavery in light of Med-

iterranean antecedents. Yet whereas sugar cultivation in the early colonial Caribbean

may evoke unbroken continuities with late colonial plantation slavery, or static

racial attitudes spanning centuries, Spain’s Caribbean galleys provide an alternative

model depicting a transformation in Iberian slavery. The presence of North African,

Ottoman, and morisco galley slaves in the Caribbean attests that for a brief period

of perhaps 60 years, as in early modern Iberia, difference and enslaveability were

measured not only in terms of skin colour, but also in terms of religious identity, pol-

itical loyalty, and foreign status.

In response to a royal cedula issued in Madrid in 1569 requesting information on

the utility of galleys in the Caribbean, authorities in various circum-Caribbean ports

unanimously petitioned for the dispatch of galleys from Spain to combat the

growing presence of French and English corsairs.5 Though their proposed plans for

organising the galleys differed, the Caribbean’s main galley squadron (referred to in

contemporary sources as ‘the galleys of Tierra Firme’) was soon established in Carta-

gena, beginning with the arrival of two galleys in 1578. Temporarily disbanded in 1613,

Cartagena’s galleys were revived in 1621, and continued to operate in some fashion for

another decade.6 Additional galley squadrons were based in Santo Domingo from 1583

to approximately 1592, and in Havana from 1586 to approximately 1596. The dates at

which Santo Domingo and Havana’s galleys ceased to operate remain somewhat

imprecise; when these squadrons were disbanded, the remaining vessels, oars, and

artillery, and in some cases surviving galley slaves and convict oarsmen, were sent

to reinforce Cartagena’s galley squadron in piecemeal fashion.7 Each squadron was

ideally composed of two galleys, though three or even four galleys may have been

based in Cartagena from time to time. More often than not, rotting wood, mutiny,

328 David Wheat

fire, and natural disasters reduced squadrons to a single galley. At present, a total of 18

galleys, including two built in Cartagena, are known to have been used in the Spanish

Caribbean during the quarter century from 1578 to 1603.8 Considering the arrival

and/or construction of additional galleys in Cartagena during the years 1603–1613

and 1621–1631, one might reasonably estimate that Spain’s Caribbean galley squa-

drons consisted of a combined total of 20 to 25 galleys during the entire period

under study.

As in other regions of the Spanish empire during the late sixteenth and early seven-

teenth centuries, galleys’ ability to move quickly for short distances in shallow waters,

independent of wind, meant that they were effective for a variety of purposes in the

Caribbean.9 Just as Spanish galleys escorted Seville-bound Indies fleets during the

final stage of their trajectory, galleys escorted Indies fleets and other merchant

vessels in the Caribbean, particularly those carrying valuable commodities such as

silver or pearls. When galleons sailed from Cartagena to Nombre de Dios or Portobelo

to retrieve the annual situado (i.e. Peruvian silver), they were accompanied by galleys;

on at least one occasion, Cartagena’s galleys carried out this important task alone.10

Galleys also transported passengers and correspondence, explored unknown coast-

lines, attacked maroons and autonomous Amerindian groups, deterred contraband

trade, pursued corsairs, and prevented them from interacting with rural slaves.11

During the late sixteenth century, Spanish galley crews consisted of officers and

mariners (gente de cabo and gente de mar), soldiers (gente de guerra), and oarsmen

(gente de remo), with the latter comprising the largest group on any given galley.12

Oarsmen were further divided into three subcategories, with convicts ( forzados)

usually outnumbering all other rowers on Spanish galleys. Though most galley

forzados were sent from Spain, their ranks were augmented by convicts from the

Spanish Americas and other Iberian colonies. Those sentenced to row on Caribbean

galleys included men of widely diverse origins, ranging from Iberian gypsies and

mulatos to Amerindians to French and English caught interloping in the region.13

Most forzados served limited sentences, typically ranging from 2 to 10 years.14 In

1601, Cartagena’s governor noted that after completing their sentences, 12 or 14

‘foreigners of different nations who came as forcados on the galleys’ had recently

been ‘given liberty, and have married, and have become citizens [vezinos] of this

city’.15 Occasionally, former convict oarsmen chose to remain on the galleys after

the completion of their sentences, drawing pay as volunteer oarsmen or buenas

boyas (an adaptation of the Italian term buona voglia). The two categories actually

overlapped in more ways than one, since some convicts were forced to continue

rowing as buenas boyas after their sentences had expired.16 This practice helps to

explain the large number of buenas boyas on Cartagena’s galleys in 1583, as seen in

Table 1. Many of the 70 ‘volunteer’ oarsmen may have been former convicts. If forzados

and buenas boyas are combined, then both groups comprised approximately 80 per

cent of all oarsmen both on Cartagena’s galleys in 1583, and on Havana’s galleys a

decade later.

Much like their counterparts on Spain’s galley squadrons, galley slaves generally

comprised only about one fifth of the oarsmen on Caribbean galleys.17 In accordance

Slavery and Abolition 329

with the ‘al scaloccio’ rowing system introduced in the Mediterranean in the mid-six-

teenth century, galleys could be rowed effectively with a small number of skilled

oarsmen, each directing other men who rowed the same oar. Differing from the

earlier system known as alla sensile in which each oarsman rowed their own individual

oar, the new al scaloccio system required a smaller number of specialists and could

more easily incorporate inexperienced oarsmen.18 In the Caribbean, this specialised

labour was carried out by Mediterranean Muslims. In the early 1580s, for example,

Cartagena’s galley commander requested more enslaved oarsmen from Spain, prefer-

ably ‘Moors and Turks’, who ‘prove to be the best’.19 Most of the additional muscle

necessary to operate the galleys would be supplied by virtually anyone who could be

coerced into serving aboard them.

Unlike the arrival of galleys in the Caribbean, the arrival of Mediterranean galley

slaves themselves is difficult to track; at present we can only speculate that Spain’s

Caribbean galleys employed a total of somewhere from 250 to 500 galley slaves

during the period under study.20 However, as property of the Spanish Crown, galley

slaves’ treatment was highly regulated, and generated a great deal of documentation.21

A roster of oarsmen onboard the first galleys sent to the Caribbean in 1578 lists more

than 50 galley slaves by name and place of origin, and another 20 enslaved oarsmen

sent from Seville to Cartagena along with two new galleys were likewise described

in detail in 1583.22 Caribbean galley slaves’ existence is not completely unknown to

modern historians, but previous analysis of them centres almost exclusively on

those who fled the galleys of Santo Domingo and Cartagena when Francis Drake cap-

tured those cities in early 1586.23 Less attention has been given to the six new galleys

sent to the Caribbean shortly after Drake’s departure, with Cartagena, Santo Domingo,

and Havana each receiving two galleys and presumbly a number of enslaved

oarsmen.24 Cartagena’s galleys employed 51 galley slaves in 1591 and 36 ‘Moorish

and mulato slaves’ in 1603.25 Havana officials listed nearly 50 ‘Moorish and Turkish’

galley slaves by name and place of origin in 1593, and again in 1596.26 No comparably

detailed roster has been located for Caribbean galleys in the seventeenth century, but

there is evidence that two galleys arrived in Cartagena in 1622 accompanied by 100

forzados and 100 galley slaves.27

As Table 2 indicates, Spanish Caribbean galleys relied heavily on the labour of

enslaved North Africans. Most had probably been captured in amphibious raids

Table 1 Caribbean Galley Crew Composition during the Late Sixteenth Century (withRow Percentages)

Caribbean galleys (inpairs, combined)

Officers andmariners Soldiers

BuenasBoyas Forzados Slaves

Totalcrew

Santiago & Ocasion 49 45 70 174 55 393(Cartagena, 1583) 12.5% 11.4% 17.8% 44.3% 14.0% 100.0%

Sn Agustın & Brava 45 46 13 192 49 345(Havana, 1593) 13.0% 13.3% 3.8% 55.7% 14.2% 100.0%

Sources: AGI-Patronato 270, n.1, r.13, doc.3; AGI-Patronato 270, n.3, r.10.

330 David Wheat

conducted by Spanish naval forces, or in outright naval combat. Between 1613 and

1624, for example, Spain acquired 980 slaves from just 28 vessels captured in the Med-

iterranean.28 Initially forced to serve on Iberian galleys, some of these enslaved

oarsmen were subsequently transferred to the Caribbean. Those who appear in

Table 2 Geographical Origins ascribed to 73 ‘Moorish’ and ‘Turkish’ Galley Slaves inCartagena (1578–1583) and Havana (1593–1596)

Present countryor region

City or region as listed ingalley rosters1 Present-day nomenclature2

Number ofpeople

Anadolia Anatolia 12Brussa Bursa 2

Turkey (20) Costantinopla/Estanbol Constantinople/Istanbul 2Romeli/Urumele Rumelia 2Aglipoli Gallipoli 1Chisme Cesme 1Fez Fez 6Marruecos Marakech 4Mezquinez/Miquinaz Meknes 3

Morocco(19) Alcasar Alcazarquivir (Ksar-el-Kebir) 1Cela Sela, Sala, Chellah 1Melilla Melilla (Sp) 1Xafe Safi 1Xexuan Chefchaouen 1Velez de la Gomera Penon de Velez de la Gomera (Sp) 1Argel Algiers 7Bona Bone (Annaba) 2Costantina Constantine 2

Algeria (18) Mostagani/Mostagen Mostaganem 2Xixar/Xijar Cherchell, Sharshal 2El Col El Collo, Collo 1Meliana Miliana 1Teles/Telez Tenes 1

Greece (7) Negroponte Euboea 3Rodas Rodos (Rhodes) 3Cumbra Koumpara (Ios) 1

Tunisia (3) Becar/Visarte Bizerte 1Los Gelves Djerba 1Tunez Tunis 1

Black Sea (3) Mar Negro Black Sea 2Carandenguiz Karadeniz (Black Sea) 1

Egypt (1) Escandaria Al Iskandariyah (Alexandria) 1Italy (1) Biscari Acate (Sicily) 1Libya (1) Tripol Tripoli 1

Sources: AGI-Contadurıa 1381; AGI-Patronato 270, n.1, r.13, doc.3; AGI-Patronato 270, n.3, r.10; AGI-SD 99, r.20,

n.197b; AMN-VP serie 2, tomo 10-B, doc.1.1An additional 10 individuals are ascribed geographical origins which I have not yet been able to identify. These

locations include ‘Arax’, ‘Ben Arax’, ‘Casdaga’/‘Caldaga’, ‘Drahaman’, ‘Metagara’, ‘Metexeli’, ‘Metixar’/‘Metijar’,

and ‘Celen’/‘Selen’.2In this table, ‘(Sp)’ refers to cities affiliated with present-day Spain. The region ‘Rumelia’ in present-day Turkey

could also refer to areas in present-day Greece and/or Macedonia. Also, while ‘Escandaria’ (Al Iskandariyah) is

listed here as Alexandria, Egypt, another important city of the same name is located slightly south of Baghdad in

present-day Iraq.

Slavery and Abolition 331

Table 2 were far removed from their stated homes in areas corresponding to present-

day Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and Sicily. These men bore names written

in Spanish as Alfala, Ali, Alillo, Almancor, Amar, Amarejo, Bujama, Cassimo, Genus,

Hamete, Hamu, Hasan, Mami, Osman, Rahamon, Ucayn, Xarifillo, and Zalen. When

asked to identify themselves, many enslaved North African oarsmen gave their fathers’

names as well.29 While the Ottoman empire controlled a number of North African

cities during the period under study, men associated with the region are identified

in Spanish Caribbean sources as ‘Moors’.30 Of the 18 individuals listed in Table 2

who originated in the region of present-day Algeria (including 7 men from Algiers),

5 were specifically described as ‘Moors’, but none as ‘Turks’. Two enslaved oarsmen

from Fez, and one from Algiers, were each listed as ‘black’; another from Marrakech

was described as mulato.31

In addition to enslaved North Africans, Spanish Caribbean galleys employed signifi-

cant numbers of oarsmen drawn from various regions of the Ottoman empire. Like

many North Africans, these men were most probably captured from Ottoman

vessels in the course of Mediterranean naval warfare, and forced into galley slavery.

Prior to their capture by Spanish forces, some had been soldiers or free oarsmen;

Ottoman galleys also employed convicts, and oarsmen from inland regions of the

empire drafted into service without pay.32 While those who found themselves labour-

ing on Caribbean galleys are described in Spanish sources as ‘Turks’, this term mislead-

ingly ascribes a degree of ethnic homogeneity to residents of an expansive,

cosmopolitan empire and its various borders.33 As seen in Table 2, geographical

origins ascribed to enslaved galley oarsmen from Ottoman lands often refer to

broad regions such as ‘Anatolia’ or ‘Rumelia’, rather than to specific towns or cities

in present-day Turkey or Greece. At least three oarsmen claimed the ‘the Black Sea’

or ‘Caradeniz’ as their homeland, and another man, probably from the eastern Adria-

tic, is identifed as ‘Peri Bosno’. Other enslaved ‘Turkish’ oarsmen’s names are recorded

in Spanish as Ali, Bali, Brahen, Dargud or Dargute, Garrucha, Hacan, Mahamete,

Mostafa, Muca, Rexefe, and Yusufe. Like their North African colleagues, many also

provided their fathers’ names.34 A number of ‘Turks’ who fled the galleys during

Drake’s devastating tour of the Spanish Caribbean in 1586 were given passage to

England, and at least 20 were delivered to Istanbul the following year.35 Perhaps

some of the enslaved oarsmen who laboured on Cartagena’s galleys in 1578 and

1583 were among them.

One list of galley slaves composed in Seville in 1583, just before the galleys departed

for Cartagena, provides detailed physical descriptions of 20 galley slaves; 11 were of

North African origins, including 8 specifically designated as ‘Moors’. Another 6

from Anatolia, Bursa, Romelia, Rhodes, and the Black Sea were each described as

‘Turks’. Among the North Africans, the youngest man was 24 years old; 4 others

ranged in age from 30 to 45. The rest were 50 years old or more, with 2 men said

to be 58, and another listed only as ‘old’ (viejo). Of the ‘Turkish’ oarsmen, one did

not know his age, and the remaining five were all between 25 and 46 years old.

Several carried wounds or scars testifying to previous experiences of combat, illness,

or violence inflicted on them in captivity. Bujama from Constantine, son of Ali, was

332 David Wheat

wounded on his right arm; a Sicilian-born Muslim named Hamete bore burn scars on

his right wrist. Others were missing hands or thumbs, and one 50-year-old oarsman

from Djerba had the upper parts of his ears cut off. An Ottoman oarsman from

Bursa identified as Abrahen, son of Gotun, also had both ears mutilated, a punishment

commonly meted out for attempted revolt.36

Iberians associated with the Islamic Mediterranean world also rowed on Spain’s Car-

ibbean galleys, though in smaller numbers than their North African and Ottoman con-

temporaries. Along with enemy galley captains known as arraeces (i.e. raıs) captured in

naval combat, Iberian ‘renegades’ – former Christians who had converted to Islam –

were considered too dangerous to be ransomed, freed, sold, or exchanged for Christian

captives; instead, they were to remain royal galley slaves for life.37 Iberian Christians

placed a similar stigma on Iberians of Muslim ancestry known as moriscos, many of

whom who had been forcibly converted. Even moriscos not captured at sea were

seen as potential oarsmen for Spain’s galleys in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth

centuries, and at least eighty who resisted explusion during the 1610s were forced into

galley slavery.38 While various royal decrees prohibited moriscos’ passage to the Amer-

icas (even as slaves), there were some exceptions to this rule.39 Spain’s Caribbean

galleys represented one such exception. An enslaved oarsman identifed as ‘Martin

de Avalos de Vilar, son of Lorenco de Avalos, morisco’ served aboard the galley San-

tiago, one of the first galleys to arrive in the Spanish Caribbean, in 1578. One of the

galley slaves who accompanied him was ‘Mami Calabres, renegade from Safi’. Interest-

ingly, despite his stated origins in Safi, formerly a Portuguese outpost in Morocco,

Calabres was described as ‘Turkish’.40 During the 1590s, two moriscos named

Lorenco Lanis and Alonso Gallego also served on Havana’s galleys, along with a

man identified as ‘Mami, alias Antono Portugues, renegade’.41

On Spain’s Caribbean galleys, North African and Ottoman oarsmen also worked

shoulder to shoulder with Afro-Iberian and sub-Saharan African galley slaves.

Approximately 15 Afro-Iberians are listed among other enslaved oarsmen aboard Car-

tagena’s first galleys, shortly before their departure from Seville in 1578. Eight or nine

were natives of Seville and nearby areas such as Alanıs, Cantillana, and Castilleja de la

Cuesta, and two others were from Cordoba and Sanlucar de Barrameda. Most of these

Afro-Andalusians were described as mulatos. Additional ‘black’ galley slaves included

two men from Lisbon, one from Sao Tome, and a man named Francisco Duarte orig-

inally from ‘Monicongo’ (Kongo).42 Spanish Caribbean officials frequently wrote to

the Crown requesting authorisation to purchase or borrow enslaved sub-Saharan Afri-

cans for use on the galleys, but these efforts seldom bore fruit.43 By 1583, Cartagena’s

galley squadron had been reinforced by only 11 sub-Saharan African and Afro-Creole

galley slaves. Evidently acquired in Cartagena, nearly all were natives of the Upper

Guinea Coast, and several had formerly been maroons in Panama.44 An unspecified

number of black slaves served as oarsmen temporarily when Cartagena’s galleys

patrolled the coasts of Santa Marta and Rio de la Hacha in October and November

of 1603.45 Meanwhile, Cartagena officials also modified the traditional system of

employing buenas boyas by allowing the city’s residents to rent out black slaves as

oarsmen in exchange for a daily wage.46

Slavery and Abolition 333

The involuntary and oppressive nature of galley slavery during the early modern era is

difficult to overemphasise, given the levels of violence deemed necessary in order to

maintain control over galley slaves’ actions. They were probably kept in chains

onboard the galleys, and possibly imprisoned while on land; one of Cartagena’s

bishops complained in 1591 that his nephew had been arbitrarily ‘thrown into the

dungeon with the galley oarsmen’.47 Spanish Caribbean officials were especially keen

to prevent and punish instances of sexual intercourse between men on the galleys.

Like other early modern Europeans, Iberians generally associated Muslims and galley

slaves with sodomy (known as el pecado nefando, or ‘the abominable sin’).48 In 1583,

the commandor of Cartagena’s galleys was instructed to ‘punish any crimes or excesses

[the oarsmen] may commit, at sea or on land, especially those of the abominable sin,

blasphemy, refusals, disobedience and resistance’.49 In Havana, a North African galley

slave and a Spanish forzado were caught in the act of ‘the abominable sin’ in 1588,

but somehow managed to escape punishment.50 Others were less fortunate. Over the

following decade in Cartagena, sentences were pronounced against nearly 30 galley

slaves, convicts, galley soldiers, and sailors accused of various crimes including theft,

sodomy, forgery, blasphemy, murder, assault, and attempted escape. Five men

accused of committing ‘el pecado nefando’ were tortured and burned to death, with

the exception of one man identified as ‘Juan Bautista of Tetuan’ who had already died

at the oar. Those who lived long enough to be burned at the stake included one

‘Moor’ and one mulato. In both cases, their partners were ‘passed over the flames’.51

In the Spanish Caribbean, as in the Mediterranean, enslaved oarsmen occasionally

mutinied alongside forzados and galley soldiers, and others attempted to escape the

galleys when the opportunity arose. In 1580 during Holy Week, oarsmen on both of

Cartagena’s galleys revolted en masse, but to little avail.52 Another galley revolt in

Santo Domingo in 1583 was essentially a mutiny; Spanish and Portuguese convicts,

with the aid of galley soldiers, murdered the captain and briefly turned to piracy.

Galley slaves’ participation in the revolt, however, was apparently minimal. Two

‘Moors’ actually aided Spanish officials in their efforts to regain control of the

galley.53 A third revolt took place in Cartagena in 1591. While out on patrol, careless

galley officials at some point left most of the oarsmen unchained, with only two sol-

diers, one officer, and one sailor on board. The four hapless individuals were soon

tossed overboard, along with ‘fifty-nine forcados and moros’ who elected not to partici-

pate in the revolt. The remaining oarsmen managed to escape, at least temporarily.54

During the same year, nine men described as ‘Moors’ escaped from Havana’s galleys in

a somewhat different manner. When away from Havana, galley commander Cristobal

Pantoja sometimes left convicts and galley slaves ashore to catch fish and turtles, and

on one such occasion, nine ‘Moorish’ oarsmen attempted to flee. Two were killed while

resisting recapture, and to the others, ‘justice was done for the crime they had

committed’.55

Beyond their involuntary service at the oars, galley slaves and forzados in the Spanish

Caribbean performed a wide range of tasks comparable to the off-season and ‘extra-

curricular’ labours of their Mediterranean contemporaries.56 During the late sixteenth

and early seventeenth centuries, galley oarsmen in Caribbean seaports could be found

334 David Wheat

working as domestic servants, fisherman, guards, cobblers, carpenters, caulkers, and

salvage crews.57 Extant sources consistently depict galley slaves employed in the con-

struction of public works, namely defensive fortifications, labouring alongside sub-

Saharan African royal slaves and convicts specifically assigned to these projects. One

report from Havana noted that ‘the people from the galleys Brava and Serena

worked on Havana’s forts’ in 1592; four years later, one galley official wrote that

some of Havana’s galley slaves ‘remain serving your majesty [. . .] in this city’s

forts’.58 Similar reports provide evidence of Cartagena’s galley oarsmen helping to con-

struct a new cathedral after the original one collapsed in 1600, and working on forti-

fication projects in both Cartagena and Panama.59 Likewise in 1623, Cartagena’s

governor informed the Crown that ‘some Moors from the galley’ had been sent to

labour on the city’s fortifications.60 That year, the city’s royal officials noted with

greater precision that ‘sixteen moros’ had earned a daily wage of one real each for

their work on the fortifications, with eight labouring on the city wall itself, and

eight ‘on the canoe that brings the stone’.61

In addition to their diverse occupations ashore, galley slaves’ and forzados’ varied

interactions with local seaport populations provide further evidence that they

enjoyed some degree of physical mobility and independence while on land, despite

severe limitations usually placed on their freedom of movement at sea. In 1583, a

gambling dispute and violent altercation took place in Gethsemanı, a poor but impor-

tant neighbourhood just outside Cartagena’s city centre. Galley slave Cristobal de

Baena, one of the witnesses called to testify during the subsequent investigation,

had been nearby ‘in the house of the freed black Agustın’ at the time. When he

‘heard a noise like knives in the street’, he simply ‘went out to see what it was’.62

Three years later, one Cartagena official lamented the apparently fluid social relations

that some galley slaves established with non-elite women in the city, ominously

depicted as ‘unrighteous intercourse between the Moors of these galleys and slave

women and Christian Indians, and even other women of other sorts’.63 In 1588, gov-

ernor Pedro de Lodena wrote that Cartagena’s galley soldiers frequently deserted for

lack of pay and rations, leaving the galleys guarded by only ‘Moors and sailors’.64

Several months later, he reiterated that with so few soldiers left to man the galleys,

‘on most nights, the Moors keep watch’.65 Lodena observed again in 1590 that Carta-

gena’s galley commander permitted forzados to ‘go about free on the land’. Though

ostensibly employed in the service of the Crown, the convict oarsmen took on a

variety of other jobs, and allegedly committed acts of thievery and murder ‘by

night and by day’. Even worse, according to Lodena, ‘the Moors’ were allowed to

roam about with such freedom of movement that their knowledge of the area

could prove dangerous, should they decide to cooperate with an enemy in the

event of an attack on the city.66 Yet Muslim galley slaves were not always perceived

as such a threat. In 1591, the administrator in charge of Cartagena’s galleys wrote

that of the city’s 51 enslaved oarsmen, ‘five of them, being old and sick, go about

on shore begging for alms’.67

For some enslaved Muslim oarsmen, conversion to Christianity – or in some cases,

reconversion – represented one possible means of integration into Spanish Caribbean

Slavery and Abolition 335

society, and at the very least, afforded them the protection of the Church. According to

Cartagena’s governor, by 1580, only two years after the arrival of the city’s first galleys,

‘many of the Moors who came in the galleys have turned Christian, and have been bap-

tised, having lost all hope of being able to return to their native land’.68 During Lent of

the same year, when an unspecified number of Cartagena’s galley slaves went to church

to take communion, one of them tried to remain in the church. Galley commander

Pedro Vique had him removed by force – promptly resulting in Vique’s excommuni-

cation by Cartagena’s bishop in the middle of Holy Week. Unlike the failed galley revolt

attempted the same week, the strategy of pursuing sanctuary in Cartagena’s church

worked. Vique quickly returned the galley slave, and his excommunication was

lifted.69 As Vique notes elsewhere, by the following year most of Cartagena’s earliest

galley slaves ‘have become Christians’.70 A roster of oarsmen on Cartagena’s galleys

in 1583 lists no less than eight galley slaves described as ‘New Christians’.71 One of

these men was Cristobal de Baena, who pointedly identified himself as a ‘Christian

galley slave’ in his testimony given later that year.72 A similar process may have

taken place in Havana; four adults baptised in the city’s cathedral during the 1590s

were described as ‘newly converted’, including one man from ‘Berberıa’.73

One such ‘New Christian’ galley slave emphasised his new religious identity, and

loyalty to the Spanish monarch, in an apparently successful effort to procure his

freedom in 1592. As recorded by a notary in Cartagena, the man who called himself

‘Miguel New Christian’ stated that ‘for over 30 years, I am a slave of the King our

Lord’. After more than 16 years of service on Spain’s galleys, Miguel was among the

first group of enslaved oarsmen sent to the Caribbean in 1578. Some 15 years later,

he was still a slave on Cartagena’s galleys, having passed up an opportunity to

escape when Drake captured the city in 1586. In his own words, ‘When the English

Lutherans, enemies of our holy Catholic faith, came to this city, they caught me

and took me with them for more than 15 days’. After two weeks with Drake’s forces

he managed to flee, not only to return to the service of the King, but also because,

‘by the mercy of God, I am a Christian’. Miguel had converted to Christianity in

Rio de la Hacha the year before Drake’s raid. He claimed to be ‘over the age of 78’

at the time of his petition in 1592, which would mean he had converted at the age

of 70. Citing his advanced age and his many years of service, Miguel requested his

liberty, offering to provide 200 pesos towards the purchase of a younger galley slave

to take his place. Accompanied by the testimonies of a galley officer and two soldiers,

each of whom confirmed his story, Miguel’s appeal was forwarded to Spain. Six

months later, his petition was granted on the condition that he could provide 200

pesos, as promised.74

Alonso de Molina (alias ‘Ali’ or ‘Toledo’) provides another detailed example of a

Spanish Caribbean galley slave who experienced some degree of independence and

mobility, mainly associated with his desire to be ‘reintegrated into the Catholic

faith’. As he stated voluntarily before Cartagena’s Office of the Inquisition in 1628,

de Molina was born in Spain to morisco parents in approximately 1598, and raised

as a Catholic. Like many other moriscos, they were forced to emigrate in 1609, and

moved to Berberıa when de Molina was only 10 or 11 years old. For the next decade

336 David Wheat

he lived in North Africa, and in the city of Tunis, following his mother’s counsel, he

converted to Islam. De Molina further admitted that he eventually turned to piracy,

but was himself captured at sea by a Spanish vessel, soon becoming a galley slave on

Spain’s main squadron based in Puerto de Santa Marıa. While his date of arrival in

the Caribbean is unknown, he may have numbered among the one hundred galley

slaves transported to Cartagena in 1622. According to de Molina’s testimony, he recon-

verted to Catholicism in Cartagena in early 1628, 16 years after his conversion to Islam,

and three months prior to appearing before Inquisition officials. Cartagena’s Inquisi-

tors accepted his reconversion as legitimate, but ordered him to seek religious instruc-

tion in the city’s Jesuit college every day, if possible, over the following six months.75

Prior to his execution in Cartagena in 1634, the Spanish morisco-turned-maroon

Francisco de la Fuente testified that he, too, had first arrived in Cartagena as a royal

slave on the galleys. His account provides further evidence that galley slaves were com-

monly allowed to move about freely in Cartagena without supervision, yet it also

reveals that they were conspicuously branded in a way that would seriously undermine

any effort to escape. In 1632 de la Fuente was a galley slave in Cartagena, in love with

an enslaved black woman named Mariana. But one day when he found her talking

with an Afro-Creole slave, de la Fuente impetuously killed the other man in a fit of

rage and jealousy. In order to avoid the punishment that he knew awaited him, de

la Fuente fled the city, living as a fugitive in Cartagena’s rural hinterland near

several estancias (farms) for about 14 months. When a slave who worked on one of

the estancias warned him that local landowners intended to apprehend him, de la

Fuente responded that he had nowhere else to go: the brand on his face clearly

marked him as a royal slave. According to de la Fuente’s testimony, the estancia

slave told him that he knew of a safe place, and soon afterwards introduced him to

several maroons from the palenque of El Limon.76

∗∗∗

While the testimonies of Francisco de la Fuente, Alonso de Molina, and Miguel the

‘New Christian’ are compelling in their own right, their presence in the Spanish Car-

ibbean, along with dozens and perhaps hundreds of other ‘Moorish’, ‘Turkish’, and

morisco galley slaves, is most significant as evidence of a ‘missing link’ in the evolution

of slavery within the early modern Iberian Atlantic world. As late as the 1630s, even in

Cartagena de Indias, the Spanish Americas’ major transatlantic slave trade hub, race

was not yet the unique, overriding factor in determining who could be enslaved.

Despite their relatively small numbers, the existence of as many as several hundred

enslaved Mediterranean oarsmen employed on perhaps 25 galleys indicates that the

model of colonial Caribbean history traditionally viewed as normative – racialised

slavery on nineteenth-century sugar plantations – is limited in its ability to describe

slavery or slave labour in the same region prior to 1650. During the late sixteenth

and early seventeenth centuries, even as the forced migration of thousands of sub-

Saharan Africans began to fundamentally shape the contours of Spanish Caribbean

society, Iberian colonisation of the Caribbean continued to build on Mediterranean

Slavery and Abolition 337

traditions, including multiple forms of slavery and servitude, in ways that remain to be

explored.

Acknowledgements

Research for this paper was made possible by a Fulbright-IIE fellowship to Spain in

2005–2006, and the Conference on Latin American History’s Lydia Cabrera Award

in 2006. The author is grateful to the staffs of the Archivo General de Indias

(Seville), and the Archivo del Museo Naval (Madrid). Many thanks also to Asmaa

Bouhrass, Giancarlo Casale, Kristen Block, Yacine Daddi-Addoun, and Karoline

Cook for encouragement and helpful suggestions, and to Teofilo Ruiz and Philip

Morgan for insightful comments on earlier versions of this essay.

Notes

[1] Archivo General de Indias [¼ AGI], Patronato 234, ramo 7, ‘Papeles tocantes a la Alteracion delos Negros Zimarrones, y Castigos que en ellos hizo el Governador de Cartagena causados en elAno de 1634’, bloque 2, ff.167r–194v (840r–867v), 459r–461v (1132r–1134v), 464r–466r(1137r–1139r). The other nine men executed were Sebastian Angola a.k.a. ‘Cachorro’, PedroAngola, Juan Angola, Lazaro Angola, Domingo Anchico, Sebastian Anchico, LorensoCriollo, Juan Criollo, and Juan de la Mar negro criollo. For further discussion of this richlydetailed, 990-page legajo, see McKnight, ‘Elder, Slave, and Soldier’.

[2] In early modern Iberia, the terms morisco and cristiano nuevo (‘new Christian’) were used toidentify converts from Islam or Judaism, and people of Muslim or Jewish ancestry. Ratherthan markers ascribing religious heritage alone, terms such as moro and turco also designatedgeographical origins and political loyalties, with North Africans identified as ‘Moors’, and Otto-mans as ‘Turks’. In this essay, the term ‘sub-Saharan Africans’ will be used to distinguish UpperGuineans, Lower Guineans, and West Central Africans from North Africans (though someNorth Africans were also ‘black’). The term ‘Afro-Creole’ (in Spanish sources, negro criollo)here refers to people of African descent born in the Americas; ‘Afro-Iberian’ refers to peopleof African descent born in Spain or Portugal.

[3] Quinn, ‘Turks, Moors, Blacks, and Others’; Landers, Black Society, 16; Matar, Turks, Moors, andEnglishmen, 100; de la Fuente, Havana and the Atlantic, 102, 106.

[4] See, for example, Deerr, History of Sugar, I: 73–157; Pike, Enterprise and Adventure, 128–44;Moreno Fraginals, ‘La introduccion’; Rodrıguez Morel, ‘Sugar Economy’; de la Fuente,‘Sugar and Slavery’. For broader discussion of Iberian trajectories from the Mediterranean tothe Atlantic, see Verlinden, Beginnings of Modern Colonization; Fernandez-Armesto, BeforeColumbus; Abulafia, Discovery of Mankind.

[5] AGI-Santo Domingo (hereafter SD) 193, ‘Parezer del governador de Venecuela en lo tocante alas galeras que an de rresidir en las Yndias’, Coro, 29 October 1572; AGI-Santa Fe (hereafter SF)37, r.4, n.14a, Carta de Francisco Bahamonde de Lugo a S.M., Cartagena, 29 May 1573; AGI-SF37, r.5, n.20, Carta de Pedro Fernandez de Bustos a S.M., Cartagena, 21 November 1577; AGI-SD 99, r.14, n.59 and 65, Cartas de Francisco Carreno a S.M., Havana, 26 August 1577, 13 April1578; AGI-Panama 40, n.12, Carta de Gonzalo Nunez de la Cerda, Panama, 18 February 1573;AGI-Panama 30, n.17, Carta del cabildo secular de Panama, 26 April 1577.

[6] In Seville et l’Atlantique, 1054, Chaunu writes that Cartagena’s galleys ceased to exist in1624, but other sources indicate that Cartagena maintained at least one galley up until atleast 1631. Though the galley was no longer seaworthy, galley officers continued to draw paythrough the mid-1630s. Meanwhile, with royal approval, galley slaves and forzados were

338 David Wheat

temporarily put to work on the city’s fortifications. The last galley was finally and definitively‘reformed’ in 1633–1634, but the former galley slaves who survived evidently remained in theCaribbean. Several – including ‘Amar moro de nacion’ ‘Abrahan moro’, and ‘Abraen moro’ –were sold to private owners in 1633. See AGI-Panama 238, L.15, ff.99v–101r, ‘Informe sobretrafico por el Rıo Chagres’, Madrid, 31 March 1633; AGI-Contadurıa 1396, Caja de Cartagena,‘Cuentas de galeras desde 19 August 1621 hasta mayo de 1634’; and AGI-Contadurıa 1399, Cajade Cartagena, Cuentas de Real Hacienda (1633–1636), section 2, pliegos 39–40, 50–9.

[7] For the transfer of a galley from Santo Domingo to Cartagena, see, for example, AGI-Indifer-ente 541, L.1 P_Rico, ff.98v–100r, Real Cedula a Lope de Vega Portocarrero, San Lorenzo, 22September 1590; and also, ff.108r–109r, Real Cedula a los oficiales de la Casa de la Contrata-cion, Madrid, 28 January 1591.

[8] Known Cartagena galleys include the Santiago (arriving in 1578), Ocasion (1578), Patrona deEspana (1583), Santo Angel (1583), San Agustın (1585–1586), Marquesa (1585–1586), SantaAna (1591), Santa Marıa (1596), Santa Catalina (1603), and Santa Margarita (1603). Galleysbased in Santo Domingo include the Santiago (1583), Leona (1583), Luna (1585–1586),and Ventura (1585–1586). Havana galleys include the Porfiriada (1585–1586), Brava(1585–1586), Serena (1592), and San Agustın (1593–1595).

[9] For broad discussion of Spain’s galley squadrons, see Olesa Munido, La organizacion; Guilmar-tin, Gunpowder & Galleys; and Goodman, Spanish Naval Power, 11–13, 55–61. On Spain’s Car-ibbean galleys, see Wright, Further English Voyages, xxviii– liii, lxv–lxxxiv; Chaunu, Seville etl’Atlantique, 1035–54; Olesa Munido, La organizacion, I: 515; Boulind, ‘Shipwreck andMutiny’; Andrews, Spanish Caribbean, 101–5, 145, 150–4, 164, 204–5; Borrego Pla, Cartagenade Indias; and Hoffman, Spanish Crown, 109–10, 179–96, 221–2. For a brief history of Carta-gena’s galleys up to 1620, see AGI-Patronato 270, n.1, r.28, doc.10, Madrid, 19 abril 1620.

[10] AGI-SF 37, r.5, n.36, 47, and 58, Cartas de Pedro Fernandez de Busto, Cartagena, 25 June 1580,15 November 1582, and 21 June 1584; AGI-SF 62, n.69c, ‘Ynstruccion que se dio a Pedro Cor-onado Maldonado’ [Cartagena, 1594], f.1r; AGI-Panama 237, L.13, f.17v, ‘Envıo a Portobelo dela galera de Cartagena’, Madrid, 12 June 1598; AGI-Panama 229, L.1, f.136r, ‘Ayuda para las for-tificaciones de Portobelo’, Madrid, 12 June 1598; AGI-SF 38, r.1, n.15, Pedro de Acuna y ofi-ciales de las galeras a S.M., Cartagena, 18 January 1599; AGI-Panama 15, r.7, n.75, Carta delpresidente Francisco Valverde de Mercado, Panama, 6 August 1606; Wright, Further EnglishVoyages, xxxi–ii, lxxvi– lxxxiii, 263; Hoffman, Spanish Crown, 193.

[11] AGI-SF 37, r.5, n.26, Carta de Pedro Fernandez de Bustos, Cartagena, 27 January 1579; AGI-Patronato 270, n.1, r.13, doc.1, ‘Memorial de don Pedro Vichy Manrrique’, [c.1581], f.32r;AGI-SF 228, n.24, Fray Juan de Ladrada a S.M., Cartagena, 28 June 1599, ff.1r–v; AGI-SF228, n.120, ‘Informe del obispo de Cartagena’, Cartagena, 25 September 1650, ff.3r–v;Wright, Further English Voyages, lxviii– lxix, lxxxiii– lxxxiv; Chaunu, Seville et l’Atlantique,1037; Andrews, Spanish Caribbean, 145, 164; Hoffman, Spanish Crown, 188–93.

[12] The soldiers listed in Table 1 only include those associated specifically with the galleys. In Car-tagena, their numbers may have been augmented by another 25 soldiers on the boat whichaccompanied the galleys. In 1589, some of Cartagena’s residents were also recruited as galleysoldiers. Soldiers from Cartagena’s garrison may have also been employed on the galleys, asthey were on patrol boats during the 1610s. See AGI-SF 37, r.6, n.86, Carta de Pedro deLodena, Cartagena, 30 January 1589; AGI-SF 63, n.18 and 25, Cartas del cabildo secular de Car-tagena, 20 July 1617 and 23 July 1620.

[13] AGI-Patronato 270, n.1, r.13, doc.3, Expediente de Pedro Vique y Juan Bautista Carrillo sobre‘Como estan las galeras de tierra firme’, Cartagena, 25 May 1583; AGI-Patronato 270, n.3, r.10,‘Relacion de la gente de mar y guerra forcados y esclavos’, Havana, 27 October 1593. Most of theforzados on Cartagena’s galleys ‘Santiago’ and ‘Ocasion’ in 1583 were Spanish, but othersincluded seven from France; three Portuguese; and four men from Genoa, Milan, or Sicily.Several forzados were from the Canary Islands or Spanish Americas (Puerto Rico, Santo

Slavery and Abolition 339

Domingo, Cali, Lima, Quito). Nine men from Spain are listed as gitanos (Roma people). Othersincluded an Amerindian from Venezuela, six mulatos, and two negros. Buenas boyas on thesegalleys – presumably former convict oarsmen – included two more gitanos; another Portu-guese man, a ‘mulato from Seville’, and an Upper Guinean man identified as ‘Anton Bran,native of Bran’. Similarly, most of the 192 forzados on Havana’s galleys ‘San Agustın’ and‘Brava’ in 1593 originated in what is today peninsular Spain, but they rowed alongside twomen from the Canary Islands, eleven men from Mexico, sixteen Frenchmen, five Englishmen,two Portuguese, an Irishman, and one ‘Teuton’ (tudesco). Five of Havana’s galley forzados aredescribed as gitanos; eight as mulatos, two as mestizos, and two as yndios. An additionalconvict oarsmen appears as ‘Francisco de Palermo esclavo de particulares’, i.e. an enslavedman owned by a private individual rather than by the Crown, and who would return toslavery after serving out his sentence on the galleys.

[14] For sentences of various lengths given to forzados, see AGI-SD 99, r.20, n.197b, ‘Relacion de lagente de Remo forcados y esclavos y buenas boyas de la galera Capitana’, 28 February 1596; andAGI-SF 38, r.1, n.27, ff.8r–10v, ‘Testimonio de las condenaciones de penas corporales’, Carta-gena, 2 March 1598. While the majority of convict oarsmen served limited sentences, some wereforcados perpetuos. Those with life sentences may have experienced treatment very similar tothat of galley slaves (or even worse, since unlike galley slaves, they were not considered propertyof the Crown).

[15] AGI-SF 38, r.2, n.33, Jeronimo de Zuazo a S.M., Cartagena, 29 December 1601, ff.2r–3v.[16] See AGI-SF 38, r.2, n.45b, ‘Certificacion del Veedor y contador de las galeras’, Cartagena,

8 February 1603, f.1v. For more information on forzados and buenas boyas, see OlesaMunido, La organizacion, II: 757–60, 760–76; Pike, Penal Servitude, 3–26; Goodman,Spanish Naval Power, 217–20, 289–90.

[17] See Table 1. For details on the crew compositions of galley squadrons based in Spain during thesame period, see Archivo del Museo Naval [¼ AMN], Coleccion Sanz de Barutell, MS 389,ff.220r–v, ‘Relacion de la gente de cavo y remo y soldados de Ynfanterıa’, Lisbon, 1 August1585; and AMN-Coleccion Vargas Ponce (hereafter VP), serie 1, tomo XX, doc. 77 / f.177,‘Relacion de la gente de Cavo y Remo que Ay en las galeras de Spana’, Puerto de SantaMarıa, 26 March 1611. See also Guilmartin, Gunpowder & Galleys, 317–18.

[18] Guilmartin, Gunpowder & Galleys, 116, 125, 128–32; Imber, Ottoman Empire, 289.[19] AGI-Patronato 270, n.1, r.13, doc.1, ff.2r, 37r; and doc.6, Carta de Pedro Vique a S.M., Cartagena,

12 June 1585, f.1r. See also Bamford, Fighting Ships, 143; Fontenay, ‘L’esclave galerien’, 125–7.[20] If 25 galleys defended the Spanish Caribbean between 1578 and 1635, with an average of

perhaps 26 enslaved oarsmen employed on each, the total number of galley slaves couldhave been as high as 650. The overall number must have been considerably lower, however,since new galleys were surely crewed by the same oarsmen who had served on previousgalleys if possible. Also, when the Santo Domingo and Havana squadrons were disbanded,some remaining oarsmen were probably sent to reinforce Cartagena’s galleys.

[21] For regulations on galley slaves’ treatment, see Olesa Munido, La organizacion, II: 755, 776–81.[22] AGI-Contadurıa 1381, Caja de Cartagena, Cuentas de las galeras, ‘Alarde de la gente de rremo

que ay en la galera Santiago’ and ‘Alarde de la gente de rremo que tiene la galera Occazion’, 1578;AMN-VP, serie 2, Tomo 10-B, doc. 1, ‘Testimonio de que Inigo de Lezama hizo entrega de lasgaleras Patrona de Espana y Santo Angel’, Sevilla, 4 July 1583, ff.3v, 5v, 9r–v, 12v–13r. See alsoAGI-Patronato 270, n.1, r.13, doc.3, ff.9v–10r, 12v–13r.

[23] Wright, Further English Voyages, xl–xli, liii, lxiv, 7, 26, 31, 35, 42, 51, 54, 58, 77–9, 93, 95,110–11, 122, 127, 134–5, 141–2, 156–9, 170, 173, 189, 206, 212; Andrews, Spanish Caribbean,150; Quinn, ‘Turks, Moors, Blacks, and Others’; Matar, Turks, Moors, and Englishmen, 100,217n75.

[24] AMN-VP, serie 2, tomo 6, doc. 17, ‘Noticias sobre galeras que pasaron a America’, 1585–6; andalso tomo 9, doc. 6., fol. 45, ‘Notizia de haver pasado a Yndias Galeras de Spana’, 1585–6.

340 David Wheat

[25] AGI-SF 37, r.6, n.101a:, ‘Relacion de los forcados y esclabos’, Cartagena, 26 August 1591; AGI-SF38, r.2, n.45b, ‘Certificacion del Veedor y contador de las galeras’, Cartagena, 8 February 1603.

[26] AGI-Patronato 270, n.3, r.10; AGI-SD 99, r.20, n.197b, ff.3v–4v. See also AGI-Patronato 270,n.3, r.11, ‘Relacion de la gente de cavo’, 17 August 1594; Wright, Historia documentada, II:241–4; Garcıa del Pino, Documentos, 63–7; Landers, Black Society, 16.

[27] Chaunu, Seville et l’Atlantique, 1051.[28] Goodman, Spanish Naval Power, 216. For more information on galley slavery and related forms

of captivity and servitude in the late medieval and early modern Mediterranean, see Verlinden,L’esclavage; Bamford, Fighting Ships; Friedman, Spanish Captives; Evans, ‘Slave Coast ofEurope’; Bono, Corsari nel Mediterraneo; Fontenay, ‘L’esclave galerien’; Stella, Histoires and‘Les galeres’; Davis, Christian Slaves; David and Fodor; Ransom Slavery.

[29] Enslaved North African oarsmen identified their fathers by names including Aalafa, Abrahen,Adux, Alefe, Ali, Azam, Barq, Fala, Dayfala, Hajassi, Hamete, Huzabin, Huzayn, Macaut, Mis-eyote, Mahamete, Mahamud, Masavi, Salem, Sassi, Sbarca, Ysman, Zalema, and Zalen.

[30] See Abun-Nasr, History of the Maghrib, 144–205; Greene, ‘Ottomans in the Mediterranean’.[31] See Hunwick, ‘Black Slaves’.[32] Casale, ‘Ethnic Composition’, 127–36; Guilmartin, Gunpowder & Galleys, 130–2; Imber,

Ottoman Empire, 303–15; Faroqhi, Ottoman Empire, 127–8.[33] Casale, ‘Ethnic Composition’; Stella, Histoires, 70. See also Bamford, Fighting Ships, 143–5.[34] Enslaved Ottoman oarsmen identified their fathers by names including Ali, Amad, Amica,

Cucule, Gotun, Hamete, Mahamete, Minat, Morato, Mostafa, Uzain, and Yocuf.[35] Quinn, ‘Turks, Moors, Blacks, and Others’.[36] AMN-VP, serie 2, tomo 10-B, doc. 1, ‘Testimonio’, ff.3v, 5v, 9r–v, 12v–13r. On the mutilation

of galley slaves’ ears as a punishment for revolt, see AGI-SF 37, r.5, n.33, Carta de Pedro Fer-nandez de Busto, Cartagena, 15 April 1580.

[37] Bennassar, Les chretiens d’Allah; Olesa Munido, La organizacion, II: 780–1; Pike, Penal Servi-tude, 9; Guilmartin, Gunpowder & Galleys, 132.

[38] Perry, Handless Maiden, 86, 145, 169–70; Goodman, Spanish Naval Power, 216.[39] Cook, ‘Navigating Identities’; Schwartz, All Can Be Saved, 128.[40] AGI-Contadurıa 1381, ‘Alarde de la gente de rremo que tiene la galera Santiago’.[41] AGI-Patronato 270, n.3, r.10; AGI-SD 99, r.20, n.197b, ff.3v–4r.[42] AGI-Contadurıa 1381, Cuentas de las galeras; AMN-VP, serie 2, tomo 10-B, doc. 1, ‘Testimo-

nio’, ff.3v, 5v, 9r–v, 12v–13r.[43] See, for example, AGI-SF 37, r.5, n.23, Carta de Pedro Fernandez de Bustos, 15 March 1578;

AGI-SF 37, r.5, n.57, Carta de Pedro Fernandez de Busto, 9 June 1584; AGI-SF 37, r.6,n.100b, ‘Las cossas que ay necesidad se procuren en Espana para las galeras’, 15 January1591, f.1r; AGI-SF 38, r.2, n.64, Jeronimo de Zuazo a S.M., Cartagena, 6 August 1604.

[44] AGI-Patronato 270, n.1, r.13, doc.3, ff.9v–10r, 12v–13r.[45] AGI-SF 38, r.2, n.61, Jeronimo de Zuazo a S.M., Cartagena, 22 January 1604, f.1r.[46] AGI-Contadurıa 1381, ‘Alarde de la gente de rremo que ay en la galera Santiago’ (1578); AGI-

Contadurıa 1386, Cuentas de galeras (1604–1607), pliegos 127–31; AGI-Contadurıa 1389,Cuentas de reformas de galeras (1613–1614), pliegos 224–6; AGI-Patronato 270, n.1, r.28,docs 3 and 10 (Madrid, 9 and 19 April 1620).

[47] AGI-SF 228, n.20, Fray Antonio de Herbias a S.M., Cartagena, 11 May 1591.[48] Matar, Turks, Moors, and Englishmen, 109–28; Stella, Histoires, 87; Bamford, Fighting Ships,

188; Fontenay, ‘L’esclave galerien’, 138.[49] Zavala, ‘Galeras’, 122n11.[50] AGI-Patronato 270, n.3, r.9, f.5r.[51] AGI-SF 38, r.1, n.27, ff.8r–10v.[52] AGI-SF 37, r.5, n.33.[53] Boulind, ‘Shipwreck and Mutiny’, 310, 328n74; Wright, Further English Voyages, xxviii–xxix.

Slavery and Abolition 341

[54] AGI-SF 37, r.6, n.101, Pedro de Lodena y los oficiales de las galeras a S.M., Cartagena, 29 August1591; AGI-SF 37, r.6, n.104 and 105, Cartas de Pedro de Lodena, Cartagena, 1 November 1591and 28 July 1592. See also AGI-SF 232, r.1, n.15, ‘El dean de la yglesia de Cartagena al Rey’, Car-tagena, 20 July 1591; AGI-SF 232, r.1, n.17, Dean y Cabildo de la yglesia de Cartagena a S.M.,Cartagena, 18 February 1592; AGI-SF 91, n.38, Sancho de Guitar y Arze a S.M. y Consejo deIndias, Cartagena, 30 October 1591.

[55] AGI-Escribanıa 962, Sentencias, ‘Cristobal de Pantoja, cabo de las galeras de Habana, porexcesos’, 22 May 1599.

[56] Faroqhi, Ottoman Empire, 131–4; Guilmartin, Gunpower & Galleys, 122–3.[57] See AGI-SF 37, r.6, n.98, Carta de Pedro de Lodena, Cartagena, 16 November 1590; AGI-Con-

tadurıa 1383, Cuentas de las galeras (1587–1590); AGI-Escribanıa 962, ‘Cristobal de Pantoja’;AGI-Contadurıa 1386, Cuentas de galeras (1604–1607), pliegos 132–44; Chaunu, Seville etl’Atlantique, 1045–6.

[58] AMN-VP, serie 2, tomo 6, doc. 17; AGI-SD 99, r.20, n.197b, ‘Relacion de la gente de Remo’, f.1r.[59] AGI-Panama 237, L.13, f.17v, ‘Envıo a Portobelo de la galera de Cartagena’, Madrid, 12 June

1598; AGI-Panama 229, L.1, f.136r, ‘Ayuda para las fortificaciones de Portobelo’, Madrid, 12June 1598; AGI-SF 232, r.2, n.43d, ‘Quentas que dio el senor thessorero de la obra de layglesia’, Cartagena, 30 August 1612, f.3r; Chaunu, Seville et l’Atlantique, 1047–8.

[60] AGI-SF 38, r.6, n.180, Garcıa Giron a S.M., Cartagena, 24 March 1623.[61] AGI-Contadurıa 1397, Caja de Cartagena, Cuentas de la Real Hacienda, 1623–1633, n.1, pliego

68; see also pliego 73.[62] AGI-SF 62, n.28, ‘Memorial y testimonio de autos de la ciudad y provincia de Cartagena sobre

los abusos y delitos que contra aquellos vecinos cometen los soldados de las galeras y flotas’,Cartagena, 11 May 1583, ff.36v–37r.

[63] Wright, Further English Voyages, 197.[64] AGI-SF 37, r.6, n.76, f.4v.[65] AGI-SF 37, r.6, n.79, Carta de Pedro de Lodena, Cartagena, 13 July 1588, f.2r.[66] AGI-SF 37, r.6, n.98, f.3r.[67] AGI-SF 37, r.6, n.101a, ‘Relacion’, f.14r.[68] AGI-SF 37, r.5, n.33, Carta de Pedro Fernandez de Busto, Cartagena, 15 April 1580, f.3r.[69] AGI-SF 37, r.5, n.36, ff.3r–v.[70] AGI-Patronato 270, n.1, r.13, doc.1, ‘Memorial’, f.37r.[71] AGI-Patronato 270, n.1, r.13, doc. 3, ff.9v–10r, 12v–13r.[72] AGI-SF 62, n.28, ‘Memorial y testimonio’, f.36v.[73] Sagrada Catedral de La Habana, Libro de Barajas: Bautismos (1590–1600), ff.26v, 35r, 146v.

Accessible online at Ecclesiastical Sources for Slave Societies, http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/esss.pl (last accessed 1 December 2009).

[74] AGI-SF 91, n.43a, Peticion de ‘Miguel Christiano nuevo, esclavo que sirve en las galeras de Car-tagena’, Cartagena, 31 January 1592. Petition granted 3 August 1592. For a similar case, see AGI-Contadurıa 1389, pliego 9: in 1613, Cartagena officials recorded the receipt of 50 silver pesos forthe ‘resgate’ (redemption) of the galley slave ‘Ajor moro [. . .] who having become Christian callshimself Diego, and to whom liberty was given for being old and sick, useless for service’.

[75] Splendiani et al., Cinquenta anos de inquisicion, tomo II: 287–8.[76] AGI-Patronato 234, r.7, ‘Papeles’, bloque 2. See n1.

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