232
Duvergier de Hauranne
Ernest
Cuba et les Antilles
Serial
Paris
Revue des deux mondes
1866
French
Travel Writings
Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Biblioteca Nacional de España. British Library. University of London Library.
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Cuba Antilles Martinique Caribbean Creole Travel French Journal Slavery US Abolition
The French journalist Ernest Duvergier de Hauranne published his account of a voyage to Cuba and Martinique as a three part serial in the Revue des deux mondes, in 1866. This travel narrative gives a vivid portrayal of everyday life in the Caribbean colonies, their landscapes, plantations, creolised peoples, carnival, and the lives of slaves and indentured labourers. De Hauranne, a supporter of abolition who brought US abolitionist pamphlets into Cuba, hints that attitudes to slavery were beginning to change there, due to "a strong aversion to slavery among the most enlightened men in the country" (160) and a widespread dissatisfaction with Spanish legal and fiscal policy, as well as the news that slavery had been abolished in the United States. He predicts that the US would soon annex Cuba and abolish slavery there. In Martinique, he notes that while abolition had been a "necessary redress of the most repulsive iniquity in the world" (890), it had also contributed to the economic decline of France's colonies.
In Revue des deux mondes, 65 (1866). Part I, 140-75, part II, 619-54 and part III, 852-92.