Freedom's Captives
Slavery and Gradual Emancipation on the Colombian Black Pacific

Freedom's Captives offers a compelling, narrative-driven history of the gradual abolition of slavery in the majority-black Colombian Pacific.

Yesenia Barragan (Author)

9781108941051, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 1 September 2022

344 pages
22.8 x 15 x 2.2 cm, 0.55 kg

'… this book excels at placing the Chocó at the center of discussions on abolition in the Atlantic world while positioning Barragan as an innovative voice in the study of Colombian history today.' Angela Pérez-Villa, H-Net: Humanities and Social Science Reviews Online

Freedom's Captives is a compelling exploration of the gradual abolition of slavery in the majority-black Pacific coast of Colombia, the largest area in the Americas inhabited primarily by people of African descent. From the autonomous rainforests and gold mines of the Colombian Black Pacific, Yesenia Barragan rethinks the nineteenth-century project of emancipation by arguing that the liberal freedom generated through gradual emancipation constituted a modern mode of racial governance that birthed new forms of social domination, while temporarily instituting de facto slavery. Although gradual emancipation was ostensibly designed to destroy slavery, she argues that slaveholders in Colombia came to have an even greater stake in it. Using narrative and storytelling to map the worlds of Free Womb children, enslaved women miners, free black boatmen, and white abolitionists in the Andean highlands, Freedom's Captives insightfully reveals how the Atlantic World processes of gradual emancipation and post-slavery rule unfolded in Colombia.

Introduction: 'Reborn for freedom'
Part I. The Social Universe of the Colombian Black Pacific: 1. Black freedom and the aquatic lowlands
2. Slavery and the urban Pacific frontier
Part II. The Time of Gradual Emancipation Rule: 3. The gradual emancipation law of 1821 and abolitionist publics in Colombia
4. The children of the Free Womb and technologies of gradual emancipation rule
5. Routes to freedom, gradients of unfreedom: testamentary manumission, self-purchase, and public manumissions
Part III. Final Abolition and the Afterlife of Gradual Emancipation: 6. Final abolition and the problem of black autonomy
Epilogue: 'The precious gift of freedom'.

Subject Areas: Slavery & abolition of slavery [HBTS], Australasian & Pacific history [HBJM], History of the Americas [HBJK]