scholarly journals Slave but not citizen: free people of color and blood purity in Colonial Spanish American legislation

2017 ◽  
pp. 75-99
Author(s):  
Aline Helg
Keyword(s):  
People Of Color ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Free People Of Color ◽  
Free People

Slave No More

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aline Helg
Keyword(s):  
Military Service ◽  
Western Hemisphere ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Free People Of Color ◽  
British Caribbean ◽  
Original Analysis ◽  
Legal Document ◽  
Free People

Commanding a vast historiography of slavery and emancipation, Aline Helg reveals as never before how significant numbers of enslaved Africans across the entire Western Hemisphere managed to free themselves hundreds of years before the formation of white-run abolitionist movements. Her sweeping view of resistance and struggle covers more than three centuries, from early colonization to the American and Haitian revolutions, Spanish American independence, and abolition in the British Caribbean. Helg not only underscores the agency of those who managed to become "free people of color" before abolitionism took hold but also assesses in detail the specific strategies they created and utilized. While recognizing the powerful forces supporting slavery, Helg articulates four primary liberation strategies: flight and marronage; manumission by legal document; military service, for men, in exchange for promised emancipation; and revolt-along with a willingness to exploit any weakness in the domination system. Helg looks at such actions at both individual and community levels and in the context of national and international political movements. Bringing together the broad currents of liberal abolitionism with an original analysis of forms of manumission and marronage, Slave No More deepens our understanding of how enslaved men, women, and even children contributed to the slow demise of slavery.

Racial Segregation under Slavery

Social Forces ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Ruef
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Racial Segregation ◽  
The United States ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Free People Of Color ◽  
Economic Competition ◽  
Black Populations ◽  
Residential Distribution ◽  
Architectural Survey ◽  
Free People

Abstract Social demographers and historians have devoted extensive research to patterns of racial segregation that emerged under Jim Crow and during the post-Civil Rights era but have paid less attention to the role of slavery in shaping the residential distribution of Black populations in the United States. One guiding assumption has been that slavery rendered racial segregation to be both unnecessary and impractical. In this study, I argue that apart from the master–slave relationship, slavery relentlessly produced racial segregation during the antebellum period through the residential isolation of slaves and free people of color. To explain this pattern, I draw on racial threat theory to test hypotheses regarding interracial economic competition and fear of slave mobilization using data from the 1850 Census, as well as an architectural survey of antebellum sites. Findings suggest that the residential segregation of free people of color increased with their local prevalence, whereas the segregation of slaves increased with the prevalence of the slave population. These patterns continue to hold after controlling for interracial competition over land or jobs and past slave rebellions or conspiracies.

Beyond Sugar

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane I. Seiter
Keyword(s):  
People Of Color ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Free People Of Color ◽  
Lime Kilns ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
Develop Land ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Landscape Survey ◽  
Free People

Much has been written about the “sugar revolution” sweeping the islands of the Caribbean in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Recent work by archaeologists, however, has challenged this overarching narrative. On the island of St. Lucia, a program of landscape survey joined with a close analysis of maps and census records has revealed a very different pattern of landscape development. Underneath the remains of vast sugar estates with their monumental surviving architecture—the curing and boiling houses, lime kilns, windmills and water wheels—lies evidence of an earlier phase of small-scale plantations growing a surprising diversity of crops. Building on a legacy of subsistence agriculture inherited from the Amerindians, European settlers on St. Lucia carved out a patchwork of small holdings cultivating cotton, cocoa, coffee, tobacco, ginger, cassava, indigo, and bananas. The comparative absence of large sugar plantations allowed people without much capital to purchase and develop land, creating new opportunities for free people of color to amass wealth and gain political power. The emergence of this class of free black landowners had a profound impact on St. Lucian society, which in turn greatly affected the larger political struggles that rocked the Caribbean in the late eighteenth century.

Claiborne

2018 ◽  
pp. 78-96
Author(s):  
Jason Berry
Keyword(s):  
New Orleans ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Color Line ◽  
Free People Of Color ◽  
Slave Revolt ◽  
The Status ◽  
The One ◽  
Free People ◽  
White Elite ◽  
The U.S

In the 1790s, as planters sold off land for faubourgs, or neighborhoods, New Orleans branched out. One such neighborhood was founded by Claude Tremé. Antonio de Sedella clashed with the vicar Rev. Patrick Walsh and his replacement Rev. John Olivier. Sedella became the elected pastor of St. Louis Cathedral, leading the one institution where people voluntarily gathered across the color line. Governor William C.C. Claiborne, a lawyer-turned-politician, governed a divided city. Conflicts arose between the French and American cultures, the black militia and white elite, and between Claiborne himself and his opponents. Faced with an influx of Haitian refugees, including whites, free people of color, and slaves, Claiborne faced the challenge of providing for the refugees deemed free while establishing the status of those the refugees considered as slaves. Many refugees who were legally free in Haiti became slaves in New Orleans. A slave revolt, with an estimated 500 rebels, broke out in 1811. Claiborne sent the local militia to put down the insurrection. Close to 100 of the rebels were killed. Advocates for statehood argued that Louisiana should join the U.S., and by admitting Louisiana in 1812, the U.S. cemented itself to a slave economy.

Contrabandists or Cargo?

2018 ◽  
pp. 239-270
Author(s):  
Jesse Cromwell
Keyword(s):  
Black Market ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Free People Of Color ◽  
Wage Earning ◽  
Free People ◽  
Foreign Merchants

Chapter 7 analyzes Afro-Caribbeans as participants in illicit commerce, but it also discusses smuggling’s impact on slavery in the coastal circum-Caribbean. People of color were involved in smuggling not only as contraband cargo to Venezuela but also often as active workers in the illegal marketplace. This chapter asks how smugglers amalgamated the slavery apparatus of Venezuela and its surrounding foreign colonies into the black market. Furthermore, how did Africans being trafficked illegally and smuggling conducted by the enslaved alter notions of property, criminality, and subjecthood? Venezuelan planters frequently sent their slaves to trade with unlicensed foreign merchants. These traders, in turn, sometimes employed enslaved people as sailors or porters on smuggling ventures. For enslaved and free people of color alike, contraband trade carried the prospects of wage earning and greater autonomy in labor, but also the risks of captivity and enslavement in Spanish dominions. The embargo of foreign contraband vessels produced thorny questions regarding the freedom or bondage of the slaves aboard. Competing legal jurisdictions, temporary manumissions, and opportunities for marronage only compounded these uncertainties.

New Struggles and Old Ideas, 1813–1833

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Livesay
Keyword(s):  
Mixed Race ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
White Population ◽  
Mixed Ancestry ◽  
Social Marginalization ◽  
Free People Of Color ◽  
Legal Position ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Free People

This chapter explores the immediate years leading up to the emancipation of Britain’s enslaved population in 1833 and that period’s effect on mixed-race migrants. It contends that Britain was an increasingly hostile place for Jamaican migrants of color, as family and class position no longer sufficiently modified racialized oppression. This is seen in both family correspondences as well as in the experiences of political radicals such as Robert Wedderburn, whose mixed ancestry and social marginalization informed his activist ideologies in London. In Jamaica, however, mixed-race migrants who had returned to the Caribbean made advancements. Not only did the assembly improve the legal position of free people of color, but it promoted British-trained individuals of color in anticipation of the emancipation of enslaved Jamaicans. In particular, emancipation appeared to spell the doom of a permanent, growing white population. A British-educated class of color was now seen as the proper replacement for a declining white cohort.

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