From Colonial Cuba to Madrid - Litigating Collective Freedom Native Rights in Spanish Empire,

From Colonial Cuba to Madrid examines the largest and most complex freedom suit litigated in the highest court of the Spanish empire at the end of the eighteenth century. Filed by hundreds of re-enslaved Afro descendant people who had lived in quasi-freedom in eastern Cuba for more than a century, this action drew on local customary practices and broader cultural, political, and legal discourses rooted in the Spanish Atlantic world to put forward novel claims to collective freedom and native based rights at a time when questions of slavery, freedom, and citizenship were igniting in many parts of the Atlantic world. Intersecting law, society studies, and the history of slavery, María Elena Díaz offers a carefully researched study of one of the few communities of Afro descendants that managed to secure freedom and political and legal recognition from the Spanish crown during the colonial period.

List of contents

Introduction; 1. Imperial reform, privatization, and enslavement; 2. An unorthodox pueblo and its apoderados; 3. Making the case for collective freedom; 4. Native bonds, native rights; 5. The council's ruling and the politics of litigation; 6. A 'pernicious' communication; 7. Violence, marronage, and litigation; 8. The final outcome of the case; 9. The nineteenth-century afterlife of the freedom edict of 1800; Conclusion; References; Index.

About the author

María Elena Díaz is Associate Professor of Latin American History at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of The Virgin, the King, and the Royal Slaves of El Cobre, 1670–1780 (2002), which was selected as an ACLS Humanities ebook.

Product details

• Authors: Maria Elena (University of California Diaz, María Elena Díaz
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 01.11.2024
• EAN: 9781009494199
• ISBN: 978-1-0-0949419-9
• No. of pages: 360
• Series: Afro-Latin America
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Regional and national histories; Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous; Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900, Spain, Cuba, Social & cultural history, HISTORY / Latin America / General, c 1800 to c 1900, Caribbean islands, Colonialism & imperialism, Legal History, Social and cultural history, Colonialism and imperialism, African History, History of the Americas, c 1780 to c 1789, Slavery & abolition of slavery, c 1810 to c 1819, C 1700 To C 1800, Slavery and abolition of slavery, c 1800 to c 1809, c 1790 to c 1799, Relating to people of the African diasporas / heritage