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"A splendid and important contribution to a growing body of literature on nineteenth-century slavery and abolition."—Frederick P. Bowser, Stanford University
"I know of no other work on Latin American slavery during the decades before emancipation that captures the slaves' relentless pursuit of freedom as poignantly as does this one."—Francisco A. Scarano, University of Wisconsin, Madison
About the author
Christine Hünefeldt is Professor of History, University of California, San Diego.
Summary
Christine Hünefeldt documents in impressive, moving detail the striving and ingenuity, the hard-won triumphs and bitter defeats of slaves who sought liberation in nineteenth-century urban Peru. Drawing on judicial, ecclesiastical, and notarial records—including the testimony of the slaves themselves—she uncovers the various strategies slaves invented to gain their freedom.
Hünefeldt pays particular attention to marriage relations and family life. Slaves used their family solidarity as a strategy, while slaveowners used the conflicts within families to prevent manumission. The author's focus on gender relations between slaveowners and slaves, as well as between slaves, is particularly original. Her eye for ethnographic detail and her perceptive reading of the documentary evidence make this book a rich and important contribution to the study of slavery in Latin America.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1994.
