Cuba

1824 · rif. 6529 — Bristol R.I.; Matanzas Cuba 1824. Good plus. Nine letters totaling 17pp. plus docketing. Some loss where previously sealed not affecting text. Otherwise old folds light wear at edges and some toning and dampstaining. Nine manuscript letters addressed to Edward Spalding a shipping agent in Havana and Matanzas with connections to trade out of Bristol and New England during the 1820s. The letters highlight the significant commercial networks between Cuba New England Europe and South America. The correspondence concerns shipments of sugar coffee molasses tobacco cotton and indigo and also reflects on the effects of European political tensions on Atlantic commerce. Several letters are from members of the notable DeWolf family who were major players in trade from Rhode Island to the Caribbean and also quite involved in the transatlantic slave trade that was a large part of the 19th-century Cuban economy. Spalding himself was active in the Cuban slave trade and in its many other facets until at least the end of the 1820s. A good group of correspondence with much firsthand information on trade between Cuba and the United States in the early 19th century. unknown books