Introduction; 1. 'A Negro and by consequence an alien': local regulations and the making of race, 1500s–1700s; 2. The 'inconvenience” of black freedom: manumission, 1500s–1700s; 3. 'The natural right of all mankind': claiming freedom in the age of revolution, 1760s–1830; 4. 'Rules … for their expulsion': foreclosing freedom, 1830s–1860; 5. 'Not of the same blood': policing racial boundaries, 1830s–1860; Conclusion: 'Home-born citizens: the significance of free people of color.
Shows that the law of freedom, not slavery, determined the way that race developed over time in three slave societies.
Alejandro de la Fuente is the Robert Woods Bliss Professor of Latin American History and Economics, Professor of African and African American Studies, and the Director of the Afro-Latin American Research Institute at Harvard University, Massachusetts. He is the author of Diago: The Pasts of this Afro-Cuban Present (2018), Havana and the Atlantic in the Sixteenth Century (2008), and A Nation for All: Race, Inequality, and Politics in Twentieth-Century Cuba (2001). Ariela J. Gross is the John B. and Alice R. Sharp Professor of Law and History and the Co-Director of the Center for Law, History, and Culture at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. She is the author of What Blood Won't Tell: A History of Race on Trial in America (2008) and Double Character: Slavery and Mastery in the Antebellum Southern Courtroom (2000).
'At a moment when 'Send Them Back' has reemerged as a nativist
rallying cry, Becoming Free, Becoming Black is a brilliantly lucid
guide to the deep history of how race and ethnic origin came to be
potent ciphers for civic belonging. … De la Fuente and Gross show
that brutality lay not merely in the imposition of slavery, but in
the creation of racial regimes ranking black bodies even once freed
from bondage. If enslavement is construed as an external
political constraint, the project of freedom becomes focused on
unshackling bodies from those confines. But if white means free and
black means slave, then political status is embodied, innate and
inescapable. … To this day, the legacy of free-but-not-full-citizen
delimits quietly powerful hierarchies in our varying capacities to
travel, vote, mix socially, run a business, hold public office, and
intermarry. This indispensable book shows how knowing the past
might aid us to intelligently reform our future.' Patricia J.
Williams, Columnist, The Nation Magazine
'In this incisive and spell-binding study, Alejandro de la Fuente
and Ariela Gross meticulously investigate the archives of the
'legal regimes of slavery and race' in the culturally disparate
locations of Cuba, Louisiana, and Virginia, thus exposing the
differences and similarities between Spanish, French, and English
approaches to manumission and interracial relationships. In
addition, the authors brilliantly focus on the bottom up efforts of
the enslaved to gain freedom, thus exposing how these
'unpredictable twists and turns' established the meaning of
blackness in law. Not only an important legal
analysis, Becoming Free, Becoming Black tells many
fascinating stories of heroic efforts to attain freedom through
legal regimes.' Henry Louis Gates, Jr, Alphonse Fletcher University
Professor, Harvard University
'Becoming Free, Becoming Black is a brilliant study of the making
of race in the New World. Deeply researched, insightful, and
smoothly written, this book is a major contribution to the
scholarly literature on slavery and the way it shaped, and was
shaped by, attitudes about people of African descent.' Annette
Gordon-Reed, Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History,
Harvard University, and author of The Hemingses of Monticello: An
American Family
'In Cuba of 1860, many persons of color who
purchased their freedom lived alongside slaves; while In
Louisiana and Virginia free people of color had almost disappeared,
and to be black was to be enslaved. The difference was in the
law and custom regulating freedom - law made by many hands,
including those of slaves themselves. This book, based on
meticulous archival research and brilliantly reasoned and written,
is comparative legal history at its finest.' Robert W. Gordon,
Stanford University
'To what can we attribute the distinct racial ideologies that
emerged in different slaveholding societies in the Americas? In
this rich and innovative comparative study, Ariela Gross and
Alejandro de la Fuente emphasize the role of the emergence of
communities of free persons of African descent, and their evolution
over time. Although elites in all three societies sought to attach
sharp social distinctions to color, the authors find that 'the
association between blackness and enslavement, whiteness and
freedom, remained less strict and precise in Cuba than in Virginia
and Louisiana.' As slavery itself was abolished, these prior
differences laid the groundwork for divergent experiences of access
to the rights of citizenship. This is a provocative and important
book.' Rebecca J. Scott, Charles Gibson Distinguished University
Professor of History and Professor of Law, University of
Michigan
'Becoming Free, Becoming Black provides crucial insights into the
ways that conceptions of race and power varied across the Americas
in the era when slavery was at its most widespread. It is a
valuable window on the ways that the system maintained itself, and
on the resistance that, although often unsuccessful, showed the
persistence of the will to resist under even the most horrendous
conditions.' John Foster, Souciant Magazine
'… this book contributes greatly to a comparative understanding of
the African diaspora and the complexities of both colonial
experiences and post-emancipation societies.' G. de Laforcade,
Choice
'Becoming Free, Becoming Black is a beautifully written manuscript
based on both archival research and extensive bibliographic
discussion.' Keila Grinberg, Hispanic American Historical
Review
'De la Fuente and Gross have provided a useful handbook for
historians of all three regions who seek to understand the law's
effect on regimes of racial exploitation – and the worlds that
people of color constructed through and under it.' Robert Colby,
Journal of Southern History
'… set to become a classic study of law in the Americas in the age
of enslavement and emancipation… This comparative history sets out
to change our understanding of the law by successfully taking on a
formidable task - to account for the role of the law in the
trajectory of racial ideologies across the two Americas.' Adriana
Chira, ReVista
'… Becoming Free, Becoming Black is a major work of
historiographical synthesis and a rigorous work of original
historical investigation.' Sue Peabody, Journal of
Interdisciplinary History
'Becoming Free, Becoming Black certainly stands as required reading
for scholars of history of law and the social history of slavery in
the Americas. The solid research in primary sources, combined with
an original argument, among other qualities, make the book a
reference of excellence on the historiographical debate on racism
and law - both past and present.' Bruno Lima, Rechtsgeschichte -
Legal History
'Becoming Free, Becoming Black is not only the best synthesis of
the complex developments of juridical structures in the slave
societies of the Atlantic world. It is a generous study which,
chapter after chapter, opens up questions that will be debated for
a long time to come.' Jean Hébrard, New West Indian Guide
Ask a Question About this Product More... |