Free Soil in the Atlantic World examines the principle that slaves who crossed particular territorial frontiers- from European medieval cities to the Atlantic nation states of the nineteenth century- achieved their freedom. Based upon legislation and judicial cases, each essay considers the legal origins of Free Soil and the context in which it was invoked: medieval England, Toulouse and medieval France, early modern France and the Mediterranean, the Netherlands, eighteenth-century Portugal, nineteenth-century Angola, nineteenth-century Spain and Cuba, and the Brazilian-Paraguay borderlands. On the one hand, Free Soil policies were deployed by weaker polities to attract worker-settlers; however, by the eighteenth century, Free Soil was increasingly invoked by European imperial centres to distinguish colonial regimes based in slavery from the privileges and liberties associated with the metropole.

This book was originally published as a special issue of "Slavery and Abolition."

The Boundaries of Freedom brings together, for the first time in English, writings on the social and cultural history of Brazilian slavery, emphasizing the centrality of slavery, abolition, and Black subjectivity in the forging of modern Brazil. Nearly five million enslaved Africans were forced to Brazil's shores over four and a half centuries, making slavery integral to every aspect of its colonial and national history, stretching beyond temporal and geographical boundaries. This book introduces English-language readers to a paradigm-shifting renaissance in Brazilian scholarship that has taken place in the past several decades, upending longstanding assumptions on slavery's relation to law, property, sexuality and family; reconceiving understandings of slave economies; and engaging with issues of agency, autonomy, and freedom. These vibrant debates are explored in fifteen essays that place the Brazilian experience in dialogue with the afterlives of slavery worldwide. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

The Boundaries of Freedom brings together, for the first time in English, key scholars writing on the social and cultural history of Brazilian slavery, emphasizing the centrality of slavery, abolition, and Black subjectivity in the forging of modern Brazil, the largest and most enduring slave society in the Americas. Nearly five million enslaved Africans were forced to Brazil's shores over four and a half centuries, making slavery integral to every aspect of its colonial and national history, stretching beyond temporal and geographical boundaries. This book introduces English-language readers to a paradigm-shifting renaissance in Brazilian scholarship that has taken place in the past several decades, upending longstanding assumptions on slavery's relation to law, property, sexuality and family; reconceiving understandings of slave economies; and engaging with issues of agency, autonomy, and freedom. These vibrant debates are explored in fifteen essays that place the Brazilian experience in dialogue with the afterlives of slavery worldwide.

Now in English for the first time, Keila Grinberg's compelling study of the nineteenth-century jurist Antonio Pereira Reboucas (1798-1880) traces the life of an Afro-Brazilian intellectual who rose from a humble background to play a key as well as conflicted role as Brazilians struggled to define citizenship and understand racial politics. One of the most prominent specialists in civil law of his time, Reboucas explained why blacks fought stridently for their own inclusion in society but also complicitly embraced an ethic of silence on race more broadly. Grinberg argues that while this silence was crucial for defining spaces of social mobility and respectability regardless of race, it was also stifling, and played an important role in quelling political mobilization based on racial identity. Reboucas's commitment to liberal ideals also exemplifies the contradiction he embodied: though he rejected movements that were grounded in racial political mobilization, he was consistently treated as potentially dangerous for the single fact that he was of African origin. Grinberg's analysis of Reboucas and his times demonstrates how his life and career-encompassing such themes as racial politics and identities, slavery and racism, and imperfect citizenship-are central for our understanding of Atlantic slave and post-abolition societies.

Now in English for the first time, Keila Grinberg's compelling study of the nineteenth-century jurist Antonio Pereira Reboucas (1798-1880) traces the life of an Afro-Brazilian intellectual who rose from a humble background to play a key as well as conflicted role as Brazilians struggled to define citizenship and understand racial politics. One of the most prominent specialists in civil law of his time, Reboucas explained why blacks fought stridently for their own inclusion in society but also complicitly embraced an ethic of silence on race more broadly. Grinberg argues that while this silence was crucial for defining spaces of social mobility and respectability regardless of race, it was also stifling, and played an important role in quelling political mobilization based on racial identity. Reboucas's commitment to liberal ideals also exemplifies the contradiction he embodied: though he rejected movements that were grounded in racial political mobilization, he was consistently treated as potentially dangerous for the single fact that he was of African origin. Grinberg's analysis of Reboucas and his times demonstrates how his life and career-encompassing such themes as racial politics and identities, slavery and racism, and imperfect citizenship-are central for our understanding of Atlantic slave and post-abolition societies.