Descripción del proyecto
Un estudio sobre el «blanqueamiento» irlandés en Cuba
Impulsados por el racismo, los partidarios de la ideología del «blanqueamiento» creen que si una población «superior» se mezcla con la población negra «inferior», esto haría avanzar cultural y genéticamente a la población «inferior». Se trata de una política de emparejamiento interracial controvertida que intenta «mejorar» ciertas razas y se aplicó en el siglo XIX en algunas partes de América Latina tras la abolición de la esclavitud. El proyecto CID, financiado con fondos europeos, examinará Cuba en concreto para estudiar el efecto de la migración irlandesa sobre la supuesta estrategia de «blanqueamiento». Investigará procesos interraciales relacionados extraídos de los registros de la Junta de Población Blanca y otros archivos cubanos.
Objetivo
This project will study gender, race, and culture in the Hispanic Caribbean from the perspective of Irish migration to Cuba in the nineteenth century. The approach is multi-disciplinary (MD) crossing history, social sciences, and digital humanities (DH). It will produce the first monograph-length study on Irish settlement in Cuba, entitled ‘Cuban-Irish Diasporas: Gender, Race and Ethnic Whitening Strategies’, accompanied by an open-access digital archive. The Fellow, with a joint migration and DH background, will carry out a cutting-edge research project on Irish migration and ‘white colonisation’ in a time of slavery in Cuba at the School of Canadian Irish Studies, Concordia University (CU) under the supervision of Professor Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin. In the return phase, the Fellow will be supervised by Professor Daniel Carey, Director of the Moore Institute, NUI Galway.
The project examines inter-related processes of Irish migration in the Atlantic World and white colonisation strategies in the expanding slave society of nineteenth-century Cuba. To explore this unfamiliar and compelling history of Irish immigrants in Cuba c. 1818-1850, the project will study the records of the Council for White Population and other previously un-researched sources in the Cuban archives. By capturing the complexities of the Irish experience the study will throw new light on the politics of gender and race in trans-cultural relationships with Cuba’s majority African diaspora and European immigrants. Based on an archival study, records of kinship, labour relations, and property will be examined to establish how Irish women and men participated in this putative whitening strategy in a region of frontier slavery in a Spanish colony. This historic approach to whiteness, class and gender has broader relevance to current global migration and integration issues and will contribute to deepening our understanding of colonial legacies of gender and race in contemporary European discourse.
Ámbito científico
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Régimen de financiación
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinador
H91 Galway
Irlanda