The Transition to Free Labour in Puerto Rico: Class, Race and Politics in a Nineteenth-Century Colony

Abstract This article analyses the abolition of slavery and the transition to free labour in late nineteenth-century Puerto Rico, seeking to understand the terms and timing of Puerto Rican abolition and the nature of society in its wake. Especially important in Puerto Rico, it argues, was the intertwined nature of slavery and other forms of forced labour as well as the predominance of foreign merchants and planters in the island's economy, which created multi-class alliances between working-class Puerto Ricans and creole elites. These class dynamics interacted with events in the metropole to influence the terms of labour on the island.