Patchwork Freedoms
Law, Slavery, and Race beyond Cuba's Plantations
Part of Afro-Latin America
- Author: Adriana Chira, Emory University, Atlanta
- Date Published: February 2022
- availability: Available
- format: Paperback
- isbn: 9781108730808
Paperback
Other available formats:
Hardback, eBook
Looking for an inspection copy?
This title is not currently available on inspection
-
In nineteenth-century Santiago de Cuba, the island of Cuba's radical cradle, Afro-descendant peasants forged freedom and devised their own formative path to emancipation. Drawing on understudied archives, this pathbreaking work unearths a new history of Black rural geography and popular legalism, and offers a new framework for thinking about nineteenth-century Black freedom. Santiago de Cuba's Afro-descendant peasantries did not rely on liberal-abolitionist ideologies as a primary reference point in their struggle for rights. Instead, they negotiated their freedom and land piecemeal, through colonial legal frameworks that allowed for local custom and manumission. While gradually wearing down the institution of slavery through litigation and self-purchase, they reimagined colonial racial systems before Cuba's intellectuals had their say. Long before residents of Cuba protested for national independence and island-wide emancipation in 1868, it was Santiago's Afro-descendant peasants who, gradually and invisibly, laid the groundwork for emancipation.
Read more- One of the first in-depth studies of the popular and legal culture of Santiago de Cuba in the English language
- Expands and enriches current debates on the history of slavery, emancipation, and the law in Cuba's long nineteenth century
- Contributes to the understanding of politics in Black peasantries in the Age of Emancipation
Awards
- Honorable Mention, Best Book, Nineteenth Century Section, Latin American Studies Association
Reviews & endorsements
'In this meticulously researched and beautifully written book, Chira shows that freedom for African descended peasants in places like Santiago, Cuba was not an abstraction, but rather a protracted process of claims-making negotiated with local legal institutions. Bringing together legal, political, social and economic history, Patchwork Freedoms will prove indispensable to all who want to understand the key role of manumission in slavery and emancipation.' Ariela J. Gross, co-author of Becoming Free, Becoming Black: Race, Freedom and Law in Cuba, Virginia and Louisiana
See more reviews'This fascinating study sets out to change our understanding of bondage and emancipation. It places land ownership at the center of racial dynamics, demonstrates the need to study the local to understand the global, and contributes greatly to our comprehension of why Eastern Cuba became so essential to both Cuban independence and the Cuban revolution.' Tamar Herzog, Monroe Gutman Professor of Latin American Affairs, Harvard University
'Patchwork Freedoms examines the ways in which Santiago's quasi-freed population negotiated the terms of their emancipation and autonomy by shaping locally grounded notions of custom. Chira shows how Santiago's black population articulated a legal vernacular of freedom, self-purchase, and social mobility in the absence of laws on the books, rendering custom a malleable and resilient category. This is a superbly researched book that will define the field of quasi emancipation and the customary laws of slavery for decades to come.' Michelle A. McKinley, University of Oregon School of Law
'This is a powerful history of claims-making and political identity formation among enslaved and free people of African descent in a key region of the Atlantic world. Digging into the soil of eastern Cuba, Chira deftly upturns superficial narratives about the emancipatory nature of liberalism in the nineteenth century. In this book, legal and political freedoms do not just happen: they are won, piecemeal, by people with deep and complex attachments to the land they worked, the island and empire they inhabited, and to one another.' Bianca Premo, author of The Enlightenment on Trial: Ordinary Litigants and Colonialism in the Spanish Empire
'… a refreshing contribution to the historiography of the African Diaspora in Latin America offering both genuinely new data and new interpretations.' Alex Borucki, ReVista: The Harvard Review of Latin America
'With Patchwork Freedoms, Adriana Chira has helped to expand our understanding of race and slavery in the Spanish empire. Her localized study guides the reader through the varied considerations - economic circumstances, imperial rivalries, shifting racial ideologies, and political and legal change - that determined the fate of many peoples of African descent in nineteenth-century Cuba. The book is a critical addition to the burgeoning field of Afro-Latin history.' Robert J. Cottrol, Hispanic American Historical Review
Customer reviews
Not yet reviewed
Be the first to review
Review was not posted due to profanity
×Product details
- Date Published: February 2022
- format: Paperback
- isbn: 9781108730808
- length: 320 pages
- dimensions: 229 x 151 x 20 mm
- weight: 0.508kg
- availability: Available
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. Unenclosed people, unenclosed lands: Santiago de Cuba to 1800
2. Foreign implants: The Saint-Domingue refugees and the limits of plantation development, 1791–1808
3. Keeping people put: Enslaved families, policing, and the re-emergence of coffee planting, 1810s–1830s
4. Manumission's legalities: From need-based prerogatives to merit-based entitlements
5. 'A freedom with further bonds': Free people of African descent, property ownership, and color status
6. 'Para levantar los negros y proclamar la República': The beginnings of the Cuban wars of independence in Santiago de Cuba
Conclusion
Appendices
Bibliography.
Sorry, this resource is locked
Please register or sign in to request access. If you are having problems accessing these resources please email lecturers@cambridge.org
Register Sign in» Proceed
You are now leaving the Cambridge University Press website. Your eBook purchase and download will be completed by our partner www.ebooks.com. Please see the permission section of the www.ebooks.com catalogue page for details of the print & copy limits on our eBooks.
Continue ×Are you sure you want to delete your account?
This cannot be undone.
Thank you for your feedback which will help us improve our service.
If you requested a response, we will make sure to get back to you shortly.
×