Beyond Slavery
Explorations of Race, Labor, and Citizenship in Postemancipation Societies
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2838398 |
|---|---|
| Authors | O Nigel Bolland (Colgate University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2001 |
| Volume | 81 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 425-426 |
| Publication date | 2001-05-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | REVIEW |
| Review of | Beyond Slavery: Explorations of Race, Labor, and Citizenship in Postemancipation Societies, Frederick Cooper, 2000 |
| Venue | Hispanic American Historical Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0018-2168 • E-ISSN: 1527-1900 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/00182168-81-2-425 |
| OpenAlex | W2114814531 |
| Language | EN |
Beyond Slavery addresses the intersection of social, economic, and political issues concerning the concepts of race and citizenship, and how these are affected by the demand for and organization of labor after slavery. The three scholars, who each contributed a chapter and collaborated on the introduction and conclusion, are experts in slavery and emancipation in the United States, Jamaica, Cuba, and Africa. The central chapters are Holt's on British emancipation policy in Jamaica, 1838-1866, Scott's on race and labor in Louisiana and Cuba, 1862-1912, and Cooper's on imperialism and labor in Africa from the 1890s to 1946. This book does not summarize their research, but it is based on evidence they and many others have accumulated. It could have been better, however, if they had referred more to the historiography, in which the same and similar issues arise. For example, there are voluminous writings on postemancipation societies in the Anglophone Caribbean but, apart from Holt's book on Jamaica, only three studies are briefly mentioned in one note (p. 161, n. 30). Nevertheless, this book should stimulate more comparative exploration of the questions they identify.A key question is "what free labor meant" (p. 3), how it was contested, and how it varied in different places. In every society where slavery was abolished new systems of labor control were developed, often involving legal contracts, the sponsorship of immigration to increase the labor supply, and the control of land in order to keep laborers dependent on the landowners. Cooper's depiction of British policy in northern Nigeria, "a policy of abolishing the 'legal status of slavery' . . . while hoping that control of land, patronage, and taxation would maintain the stability of a hierarchical society" (p. 118), was true everywhere that emancipation was managed from above. The end of slavery was coupled with new systems of domination in order to minimize social change. Other questions concern the social construction of race and how racist ideologies varied in relation to more or less rigid social structures. The meaning of race and the pattern of race relations, for example, were contested in the United States after Reconstruction and in Cuba after the U.S. occupation. Scott shows that this affected the character of struggles over work and political rights in Louisiana and Cuba, helping to determine whether the fault lines of collective action were defined chiefly by race or class. Race was also a major ingredient in the construction of citizenship, which is a category of exclusion as well as inclusion. Of course, the possibility of citizenship for former slaves differed in societies that were still colonies, like Jamaica, and those that were independent, like the United States. Claims to citizenship also differed in societies where slaves or former slaves had played a major part in the struggle for independence, like Cuba, or in which freedom was believed to have come largely "from above," like Jamaica.These broad comparative questions are linked by the authors to even broader concerns, namely the connections between, on the one hand, the ideas and practices of race, free labor, and citizenship, and on the other "the evolution of a capitalist system and of liberal ideology" (p. 19), and the persistence of imperialism. For example, the capitalist system and liberal ideology of the state, into which the enslaved were freed, are centered on the individual. This assumes a particular notion of freedom that has its origins in Europe, the freedom to do as one pleases, either within the limits of others' desires or even if it may restrict another's freedom. However, former slaves and colonized people may, instead, have held the more communal idea that people can become fulfilled only through their associations with other people to whom they belong, but in ways that are antithetical to the bondage of slavery and colonialism. Consequently, the meaning of freedom and the vision of what a free society should be were widely contested in postemancipation societies, and should be investigated rather than taken for granted today.Cooper, Holt, and Scott, by exploring the history of competing ideas and practices of freedom, race, and citizenship through the comparative method, define an agenda that is both scholarly and socially important. Their shift of focus "from what ended with slave emancipation to what began" (p. 5) will reward not only historians but also everyone who wants to understand the ways political culture and social life are shaped after slavery. A bibliography would have been helpful, but this book, which is compact and well written, is a valuable contribution to the growing literature examining postemancipation societies and it deserves a wide readership
Emancipation · Historiography · Caribbean history, culture, and politics
Hunting Game
Cécile Fatiman and Petra Carabalí, Late Eighteenth-Century Haiti and Mid-Nineteenth-Century Cuba
Judith and Hannah
Emma Lane Coger, Nineteenth-Century Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri (US)
Juana María Álvarez, Eighteenth-Century New Granada (Colombia)
Margarita de Sossa, Sixteenth-Century Puebla de los Ángeles, New Spain (Mexico)
María Hipólita Lozano, Eighteenth-Century Lima (Peru)
Laura E. Davis Titus, Nineteenth-Century Norfolk, Virginia (US)
Sarah Chauqum, Eighteenth-Century Rhode Island and Connecticut (US)
Gabriela, Nineteenth-Century Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil)
María Remedios del Valle, Nineteenth-Century Argentina
As If She Were Free
Reytory Angola, Seventeenth-Century Manhattan (US)
Minerva, Nineteenth-Century Téjas and Louisiana (US), and Mexico
Paula de Eguiluz, Seventeenth-Century Puerto Rico, Cuba, and New Granada (Colombia)
Maria Firmina dos Reis, Nineteenth-Century Maranhão (Brazil)
Carrie Williams Clifford, Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Ohio (US)
Anna Maria Lopes de Brito, Eighteenth-Century Minas Gerais (Brazil)
Denunciation and liberty
What the Haitian Revolution Might Tell Us about Development, Security, and the Politics of Race
Transplanted Slavery, Contested Freedom, and Vernacularization of Rights in the Reform Era Ottoman Empire
Map
The Strange Career of the Convict Clause
Emancipations and Reversals
Abolition, Law, and the Osu Marriage Novel
Demystifying “Islamic Slavery”
Citizenship from the Margins
Happiness and Work
Rethinking the fall of the planter class
L'esclavage et la logique constitutionnelle des empires
Emancipation and captivity in the British Empire
From Slaves to Citizens? Tannenbaum and the Debates on Slavery, Emancipation, and Race Relations in Latin America
The Politics of Ambiguity
The Diaspora of Africans Liberated From Slave Ships in the Nineteenth Century
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |