Antislavery Republics: The Politics of Abolition in the Spanish Atlantic

Why and how did slavery end when it did in Spanish America? Slavery expanded in leaps and bounds in Brazil, Cuba, and the United States during the same decades that the new republics of mainland Spanish America professed a commitment to the abolition of slavery and instituted gradual antislavery laws. In large part this was a result of the free and enslaved Africans’ involvement in the independence wars in places such as Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. This conference will focus on the history of slavery and anti-slavery in the nineteenth century Spanish Atlantic world and probe such hemispheric contrasts and divergences by moving beyond a national or imperial focus that has characterized abolitionist studies. Instead, it will trace the connections of mainland Spanish America with Brazil, Africa, Haiti, Britain, the Spanish Caribbean, and the United States during the nineteenth century.