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Most studies of Puerto Rico’s relations with the United States have focused on the sugar industry, recounting a tale of victimization and imperial abuse driven by the interests of U.S. sugar companies. But inPuerto Ricans in the Empire, Teresita A. Levy looks at a different agricultural sector, tobacco growing, and tells a story in which Puerto Ricans challenged U.S. officials and fought successfully for legislation that benefited the island. Levy describes how small-scale, politically involved, independent landowners grew most of the tobacco in Puerto Rico. She shows how, to gain access to political power, tobacco farmers joined local agricultural leagues and the leading farmers’ association, the Asociación de Agricultores Puertorriqueños (AAP). Through their affiliation with the AAP, they successfully lobbied U.S. administrators in San Juan and Washington, participated in government-sponsored agricultural programs, solicited agricultural credit from governmental sources, and sought scientific education in a variety of public programs, all to boost their share of the tobacco-leaf market in the United States. By their own efforts, Levy argues, Puerto Ricans demanded and won inclusion in the empire, in terms that were defined not only by the colonial power, but also by the colonized. The relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States was undoubtedly colonial in nature, but, as Puerto Ricans in the Empire shows, it was not unilateral. It was a dynamic, elastic, and ever-changing interaction, where Puerto Ricans actively participated in the economic and political processes of a negotiated empire.
Challenges dominant interpretations of colonialism's impact on the economy and social structuring of a US-owned Caribbean colony.
Scholarship on slavery in the Caribbean frequently emphasizes sugar and tobacco production, but this unique work illustrates the importance of the region’s hato economy—a combination of livestock ranching, foodstuff cultivation, and timber harvesting—on the living patterns among slave communities. David Stark makes use of extensive Catholic parish records to provide a comprehensive examination of slavery in Puerto Rico and across the Spanish Caribbean. He reconstructs slave families to examine incidences of marriage, as well as birth and death rates. The result are never-before-analyzed details on how many enslaved Africans came to Puerto Rico, where they came from, and how their populations grew through natural increase. Stark convincingly argues that when animal husbandry drove much of the island’s economy, slavery was less harsh than in better-known plantation regimes geared toward crop cultivation. Slaves in the hato economy experienced more favorable conditions for family formation, relatively relaxed work regimes, higher fertility rates, and lower mortality rates.
This is a comprehensive and detailed account of the economichistory of Puerto Rico from the period of Spanish colonial dominationto the present. Interweaving findings of the "new" Puerto Ricanhistoriography with those of earlier historical studies, and usingthe most recent theoretical concepts to interpret them, James Dietzexamines the complex manner in which productive and class relationswithin Puerto Rico have interacted with changes in its placein the world economy.Besides including aggregate data on Puerto Rico's economy, theauthor offers valuable information on workers' living conditionsand women workers, plus new interpretations of development sinceOperation Bootstrap. His evaluation of the island's export-orientedeconomy has implications for many other developing countries.