Black Townsmen: Urban Slavery and Freedom in the Eighteenth-Century Americas (The Americas in the Early Modern Atlantic World)

This book is an innovative comparative study of persons of African origin and descent in two urban environments of the early modern Atlantic world. The author follows these men and women as they struggle with slavery, negotiations of manumission, and efforts to adapt to a life in freedom, ultimately illustrating how their choices and actions placed them at the foreground of the development of Atlantic urban slavery and emancipation. "An innovative study that compares the experiences of persons of African origin and descent in the towns of Baltimore and Sabara, Black Townsmen reconsiders their relationship to eighteenth-century urban environments in the Americas. Following Africans and their descendants through their struggle with slavery, manumission, and life in freedom, Mariana L.R. Dantas explains how these men and women's efforts and choices helped to define the trajectory of these two towns. The picture that emerges is one in which slaves and their free descendants are in the foreground of Atlantic urban slavery and freedom."--Jacket Mariana L.r. Dantas. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [253]-272) And Index.