Tag: Slavery

Mastering the Law: Slavery and Freedom in the Legal Ecology of the Spanish Empire (Review)

In 1629, Catalina Angola and Domingo Angola, two African-born captives enslaved near what is today the northern Colombian city of Cartagena, learned that Catalina’s enslaver was moving her to the city. Fearing their separation, the couple petitioned their parish priest for marriage, hoping the Catholic Church’s respect for the sacrament of matrimony would help them resist the move. Catlina’s enslaver, however, quickly uncovered the stratagem and did everything he could to prevent their union. While unable to intervene legally, he beat Catalina violently and shipped her downriver to separate the two. By the end of the next year, however, it was the enslaver who found himself excommunicated, publicly shamed, and forced to pay hefty fees and fines for his actions. In a society generally viewed as hostile to enslaved Africans, why did Catalina and Domingo win, and what does this tell us about slavery as an institution in the early colonial period?… Read More Mastering the Law: Slavery and Freedom in the Legal Ecology of the Spanish Empire (Review)

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The Inner Life of Empires: Emma Rothschild

Emma Rothschild’s Inner Life of Empires presents a “large microhistory” of the Johnstone family, eleven children, their parents, and two of their slaves, who lived and moved within influential social and intellectual circles during the eighteenth century Scottish Enlightenment (269). This prosopography traces the children’s lives across the British Empire as well as their friendships… Read More The Inner Life of Empires: Emma Rothschild

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Mastery, Tyranny, & Desire: Trevor Burnard

Death in the sun-drenched fields or torture in the shade of the house? Resistance or collaboration? How did enslaved Africans cope with the trauma of life on Anglo-Jamaican sugar plantations in the eighteenth century? These are some of the very disturbing questions Trevor Burnard tackles in chapter six of Mastery, Tyranny, & Desire, where he… Read More Mastery, Tyranny, & Desire: Trevor Burnard

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Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America: Asunción Lavrin

Asunción Lavrin’s edited volume, Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America, presents a series of perspectives on what Lavrin calls the “conquest of the mind,” the means through which the Spanish state and Catholic Church sought to maintain control over colonial society. The authors challenge received understandings of the region’s early history by showing the… Read More Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America: Asunción Lavrin

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Slave over Master in Colonial Colombia and Ecuador: David Chandler

David Chandler’s “Slave Over Master in Colonial Colombia and Ecuador” (1982) looks at the development of the institution of slavery and the legal rights of enslaved Africans in the colonial Andes. Chandler argues that slavery as it was practiced in relatively peripheral parts of the Spanish Americas, like Colombia and Ecuador, was different than in… Read More Slave over Master in Colonial Colombia and Ecuador: David Chandler

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Repartos y Rebeliones: Jürgen Golte

Jürgen Golte’s Repartos y Rebeliones, published in German in 1977 and translated into Spanish by Carlos Degregori in 1980, analyzes the implementation, evolution, and resistance to the repartimiento de efectos, put in place by Spain’s Bourbon reformers in the eighteenth century.[1] Golte sought to revise earlier studies that overlooked the role of the repartos, a… Read More Repartos y Rebeliones: Jürgen Golte

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