Slavery and Freedom in Black Thought in the Early Spanish Atlantic

An intellectual history exploring how free and enslaved Black people in the early Atlantic conceptualized and contested slavery and freedom.

Chloe L. Ireton (Author)

9781009533492, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 5 December 2024

340 pages
22.9 x 15.1 x 2.1 cm, 0.52 kg

'Chloe Ireton's remarkable work employs a true color palette to define previously sketched drawings that are now enhanced in a completely new way... this is a truly remarkable work, a book that is essential for many reasons: for its integrative vision of the Atlantic world, for the diverse methodology it employs, for the case studies it presents, for the intelligent way in which the problems it solves are presented, and for its profoundly human character.' José Belmonte Postigo, PerspectivasAfro

Weaving together thousands of archival fragments, this study explores a shared Black Atlantic world where the meanings of slavery and freedom were fiercely contested and claimed. It recreates the worlds of extraordinary individuals and communities in the long sixteenth century, whilst mapping the development of early modern Black thought about slavery and freedom. From a free Black mother's embarkation license to cross the Atlantic Ocean, to an enslaved Sevillian woman's epistles to her freed husband in New Spain, to an enslaved man's negotiations with prospective buyers on the auction block in Mexico City, to a Black man's petition to reclaim his liberty after his illegitimate enslavement, Chloe L. Ireton explores how Africans and their descendants reckoned with laws and theological discourses that legitimized the enslavement of Black people and the varied meanings of freedom across legal jurisdictions. Their intellectual labor reimagined the epistemic worlds of slavery and freedom in the early modern Atlantic.

Introduction
1. Proving Freedom: Documenting Alhorría
2. Imagining Freedom: Black Atlantic Communities in Sevilla
3. Purchasing Freedom: Economics of Liberty in New Spain
4. Defining Freedom: Infrastructures of Black Political knowledge between Sevilla & Mexico City
5. Reclaiming Freedom: The Illegitimacy of Slavery in Black Thought
6. Practicing Freedom: Documenting Capital
Coda: Felipa de la Cruz's World & Letters.

Subject Areas: History of the Americas [HBJK]