ANTI-SLAVERY AND THE ‘AFRICANIZATION’ OF CUBA; NO COPY IN AUCTION RECORDS. Large 8vo. [22 x 14.5 cm]. 70 pp, (2). Disbound. Pages strongly foxed throughout; a few signatures a little loose and dog-eared. Rare sole edition of this treatise composed during the author’s exile in Paris, calling for the cessation of the slave-trade in his native Cuba in the mid-19th century. Born in Bayamo, eastern Cuba, Saco (1797-1879) was attracted to the economic success of the United States which he toured from 1824-1832. In 1832 he returned to Havana, but was expelled in 1834 for his anti-slavery principles. The present work – one of his most direct attacks on current slave-holders – was published during his exile in Paris, and seems to survive poorly compared to many of his other works. Lewis (Main Currents in Caribbean Thought) gives a nuanced commentary on Saco’s anti-slavery but hardly anti-racist positions. “His intellectual energy went mainly into his lifelong campaign for the cessation of the slave trade and a large-scale, planned white immigration into the island, with the end of terminating the ‘Africanization’ of the society. To these twin ideas, linked to each other, he added the recommendation that all African persons found guilty of any crime, or even only of vagrancy, should be deported overseas to Spain to Fernando Po, while others not found so guilty should be encouraged to leave by schemes of voluntary emigration… The furthest that Saco will go in the matter of emancipation is cautiously to approve the mode of emancipation embodied in the gradualist Columbian law of 1821. All in all, his position is clear: Cuban nationality is that created solely by the 400,000 Cubans who belong to the white race.” (Lewis, pp. 151-152). In the hopes of attracting more white settlers to ensure agricultural and political security for the island, Saco puts forth several sound arguments for improving general living conditions. He points to the dread of yellow fever as the strongest impediment to immigration, which he says can be eliminated by a strong public-health program; the outdated and unjust agricultural labor system (latifundia) also requires a radical reform. “Saco, to put it succinctly, was an educated intelligence who could not draw the full, logical conclusions of his liberalism because of his obsessive fears about the racially heterogeneous character of Cuban society.” (Lewis, p. 152). At the very end of his life Saco began to publish his unfinished magnum opus, Historia de la esclavitud de la raza africana en el Nuevo mundo y en especial en los paises américo-hispanos (Barcelona, 1879), for which he is best known. RareBookHub shows no copies in auction records. * Sabin 74775; and cf Lewis, Main Currents in Caribbean Thought (2004).