David M. Stark's Slave Families and the Hato Economy in Puerto Rico is a welcome addition to a growing literature examining the families of enslaved persons in the Caribbean beyond the sugar plantation. This work focuses on the hatos, or open-range ranches of Puerto Rico, and in doing so, deepens our understanding of the institution of slavery and its many variations. Based largely upon an exhaustive analysis of ecclesiastical records dating from 1660–1815, Stark is able to reconstitute the family lives of Puerto Rico's enslaved persons, family lives that generations of scholars have debated regarding their nature, and even their existence.

The hato economy was radically different from the Caribbean sugar economy that would come to dominance in the Caribbean, first in the English islands, later on Saint-Domingue, and only much later in the Spanish islands. It arose in the mid-to-late seventeenth century as the dominant economic model in rural areas, supplanting earlier small-scale sugar production. It was diverse, and its ranches raised livestock, foodstuffs, and sometimes harvested dyewoods and timber. To be sure, the hatos found many customers among their sugar-producing neighbors (oftentimes as part of a contraband trade), but to assume that slavery on an hato and slavery on a sugar plantation were not two distinct experiences would be a mistake, as Stark deftly argues. Labor on hatos tended to be far less arduous than that practiced by enslaved persons in other parts of the Caribbean, and, as Stark writes, enslaved laborers on hatos were healthier and had more time of their own to improve their lives in a myriad of ways, from engaging in the market economy to forming families of their own. They did so even in the face of the rigors of slavery, even if the slavery they endured was not sugar slavery.

Focusing on Arecibo, Puerto Rico, and an examination of more than 39,000 baptismal records, Stark demonstrates that newly-imported African slaves tended to be absorbed by the urban labor market where capital was more likely to be available than on rural ranches (pp. 79–81). In consequence, sex ratios among enslaved persons on the hatos became more balanced by the mid-to-late seventeenth century. The combination of a relatively balanced sex ratio and the work regimens of the hatos meant that slaves there were somewhat uniquely poised to create a family life of their own, and there is no better indication of that than that enslaved persons living and working within the hato economy sustained their population through natural increase.

In his examination of marriage, Stark focuses on a number of factors that influenced an enslaved person's ability and decision to marry. He notes that in the eighteenth century, church and royal officials promoted marriage as a way to limit illegitimacy among slaves and free people throughout Latin America. Likewise, it appears reasonable to assume that owners who could not afford to purchase newly-imported enslaved persons might promote marriage and family life in order to maintain or even grow their labor force. Stark examines 12,408 marriages, of which 949 were marriages involving at least one enslaved partner (p. 101). Interestingly, he finds that rate of marriage between those of mixed status (both slave/free and racially) decreased as the hato economy with its inherent flexibility gave way to a labor-intensive sugar-producing economy beginning in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. His examination of marriage is based on extensive quantitative analysis, but, as he notes, marriage is an institution apart from slavery. Marriage's operation in the case of enslaved persons is very much informed by slavery, but remains subject to human desires and emotions, and allows enslaved persons the opportunity to assert their autonomy.

Family life, particularly with respect to children, was another way for enslaved persons to create a world of their own, apart from the dominion of their owner. Within Puerto Rico's hato economy, the work cycle was more conducive to family life than may be seen elsewhere in slave societies. Stark notes a high degree of legitimate births among enslaved persons, ranging up to 50 percent from 1749–1764 (p. 138). Thereafter, the legitimacy rate slowly declined, a decline ascribed to the rise of sugar, even as legitimate births remained stable among the free population. Still, the majority of enslaved children were born outside marriage. This should not, however, suggest that those children lacked a family life; many unmarried couples enjoyed long-term, stable unions.

Examination of the hato economy demonstrates the danger of subsuming all Caribbean slavery under the umbrella of sugar, while providing new insights into slavery's operation in areas on the periphery of empire, even while at the center of the Caribbean, and in doing so, begs new questions. Stark writes at length of the transformation of the Puerto Rican economy, from sugar to ranching and back to sugar again, and does so with skill. Yet, this last transformation transpired in the context of one of the most momentous events in Caribbean history—the revolt of the slaves in Saint Domingue. Although Puerto Rico's turn to sugar occurred several decades subsequent to that event, it remains to be seen how that change affected the family lives of enslaved persons in the hato economy. Did owners promote it to contain the contagion of revolution? Finally, much of Stark's analysis centers on comparisons between enslaved people and free people. Stark notes that enslaved persons commonly married free people of color because there was both a large population of free people of color and there were tangible benefits associated with family formation with a free person. Yet, free people of color are often subsumed into the category of free (along with whites) in his analysis.

This work will be of service both to scholars of the Caribbean and of slavery. Based on detailed and careful quantitative analysis, it will advance our understanding of the nature and operation of an institution with much yet to reveal. Students especially will find it useful for understanding the major changes occurring in the Caribbean basin in the period under examination.