from other owners. Thus, the bill was ineffective, and slavery remained a feature in El Cobre due to the continuous demand for ore from Swansea. 107
It was ironic that Swansea was one of the few locations in Wales that
embraced abolition, as no other Welsh town did more to sustain slave labour in the 1800s. 108 The end of Swansea’s involvement did not occur until the late 1860s when the copper mines in Cuba declined. 109 The fiscal changes in Britain
and Cuba in the 1840s subsequently caused a decline in copper ore exports after
a peak in 1845. The introduction of a copper ore import duty in Britain and a 5
per cent export duty implemented in Cuba proved detrimental to the profits of the Cobre and Santiago companies. 110 A surge in overseas competition from Chile and Australia was compounded by a decline in the quality of El Cobre’s ores, which meant that Cuba’s share in the British market dwindled. 111 By 1860
the Santiago Company had folded, and the downward trend in copper prices that
accompanied the new ore fields in North America resulted in the collapse of the Cobre Company by the late 1860s. 112 Even so, it was the events in the Sierra
Maestra that ended Swansea’s involvement in slavery, as the Cuba Libre
movement occupied El Cobre in the late 1860s and declared itself against slavery, which meant that using slaves to mine was no longer viable. 113 The last shipment
of African slaves were brought to Cuba in 1866, thus it was the crisis in Cuba that
ultimately ended Swansea’s involvement in the slave trade and not the extensive campaigning by activists. 114
107 Ibid., p. 124. 108 Ibid.
109 Evans, Slave Wales, p. 91. 110 Evans, ‘El Cobre’, p. 127. 111 Ibid. 112 Ibid., pp. 128-9. 113 Ibid., p. 129. 114 Evans, Slave Wales, pp. 91-2.
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