Slavery, Freedom, and Abolition in Latin America and the Atlantic World (Diálogos Series)

The last New World countries to abolish slavery were Cuba and Brazil, more than twenty years after slave emancipation in the United States. Why slavery was so resilient and how people in Latin America fought against it are the subjects of this compelling study. Beginning with the roots of African slavery in the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Iberian empires, this work explores central issues, including the transatlantic slave trade, labor, Afro-Latin American cultures, racial identities in colonial slave societies, and the spread of antislavery ideas and social movements. A study of Latin America, this work, with its Atlantic-world framework, will also appeal to students of slavery and abolition in other Atlantic empires and nation-states in the early modern and modern eras. Front Cover 1 Title Page 4 Copyright 5 Contents 8 Illustrations, Maps, and Tables 10 Acknowledgments 12 Introduction 16 1: Slavery and Iberian Colonization 24 Portrait One: Estevanico and the Exploration of the Spanish Borderlands 63 2: Bewtiful Empyre: Challenges to Iberian Dominance and the Transformation of New World Slavery 67 Portrait Two: Jacqueline Lemelle and Chica da Silva: Slavery, Freedom, and Family 102 3: An Era of Emancipation: Slavery and Revolution in the Americas 105 Portrait Three: Simón Bolívar and the Problem of Equality 132 4: The Resurgence and Destruction of Slavery in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Brazil 135 Portrait Four: Abolitionists of the Second Slavery 171 Conclusion: Legacies of Latin American Slavery 175 Notes 180 Glossary 204 Further Reading 206 Index 210 Back Cover 223 Beginning with the roots of African slavery in the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Iberian empires, this work explores central issues, including the transatlantic slave trade, labour, Afro-Latin American cultures, racial identities in colonial slave societies, and the spread of antislavery ideas and social movements. The last New World countries to abolish slavery were Cuba and Brazil, more than twenty years after slave emancipation in the United States. Why slavery was so resilient and how people in Latin American fought against it are the subjects of this compelling study. -- Cover p. 4