[CUBA - Exploitation sucrière]. - Lot 87

[CUBA - Exploitation sucrière]. Account books and correspondence. 1837-1878. 3 handwritten notebooks in-8, half-basane and bradel, & 3 handwritten notebooks large in-4 black cloth, label on upper cover; in Spanish and French. Personal account books of the Pons de Faure family, listing debts and assets relating to several agricultural estates owned in the Guantanamo region of Cuba. The accounts concern the two main lands or concessions operated by the family since 1837, La Confiance and Santa Fe. Over the years, cotton, tobacco and coffee plantations gave way to sugarcane, which became the owner's main activity, along with, to a lesser extent, rum making and trading. These booklets are more like pensums than official accounting documents, and are more concerned with staff allocation and farm organization. The following are recorded in detail: special accounts (lottery, tobacco purchases, annuities and bonds, postage, real estate management in metropolitan France, and various business dealings with France and Spain, etc.), nominal and accounting statements, and accounts with the French government.), nominative and accounting statements of the farmers; the purchase of supplies for the upkeep of the lessors, workers and slaves, their sickness, food and beverage expenses, particularly for rum; the capitation of "negroes" and some tax levies on the sugar farm; the transportation of goods, the purchase of horses, the upkeep of the steam engines in the sugar mills; accounting relationships with the estate's successive brokers (Vaillant-Estevan, Ducourau & Cie, Mallet frères, Faure frères de Bordeaux; and the American firms Mason & Cie, Brooks & Cie, Moses Taylor & Cie), with summary statements of accounts by year (credit notes on merchandise deliveries, bank transfers, etc.). Numerous references to slave exploitation, control of slaves and emancipated slaves, their displacement or rental on other farms, and information on surnames. ATTACHED for the years 1874-1878: - a large notebook with copies of correspondence concerning the operation of the estates, the sugar trade, the state of the properties, with several references to the slaves employed, etc. - Mr. Faure's ledger", in which the black slaves on the estate are listed (age and first name), as well as various events on the estate, accounts with the farmers, etc.