Sources

This study derives its quantitative data for Havana from the notarial protocol records stored in the Archivo Nacional de Cuba in Havana. These are the most reliable sources for the construction of an accurate and systematic slave price series, since notaries recorded actual sales of slaves in the market place. The notarial protocol collection stored in the Archivo Nacional emerged as the result of an 1873 law establishing the Archivo de Protocolos de La Habana. These records are catalogued by individual notaries (escribanías) or by more generalized offices (oficios) which employed numerous notaries. Often a collection of protocol records retained the name of the notary establishing an office, even after that particular escribano died.

The Havana data used in this book were extracted from two notarial oficios for which yearly volumes were available. The principal collection was composed of the Galletti protocols, whose records are complete for the years between 1753 and 1900 and consist of 268 volumes. Each year's tomes in the Galletti archive contain numerous transactions involving slaves. However, in the decade of 1870s, as abolition approached, the number of slave sales decreased markedly. To increase our sample size in this decade we supplemented the Galletti records with those of the Fornari collection, which is complete from 1638 through 1892 and consists of 404 volumes.

There was no mechanism for determining the social and economic characteristics of the clientele of the notaries whose records we perused. Havana notaries did not have offices in specific geographical districts whose class structures could be determined.