Norms and Empires Lecture Series: Between Citizenship and Foreignness. Free People of Color during the Age of Atlantic Revolutions

Norms and Empires Lecture Series

  • Date: Oct 8, 2019
  • Time: 05:00 PM - 07:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
  • Speaker: Prof. Dr. Federica Morelli (University of Turin)
  • Organisation: Thomas Duve, Manuel Bastias Saavedra (MPIeR)
  • Location: MPIeR
  • Room: Lecture hall of the MPI
Norms and Empires Lecture Series: Between Citizenship and Foreignness. Free People of Color during the Age of Atlantic Revolutions

During the Age of Revolutions the concept of citizenship acquires new meanings as well as a revived strength. Yet, the legal status of free people of color in the slave societies of the Atlantic world remained rather ambiguous. Through the analysis of court cases and other juridical sources of the Spanish Atlantic in the first two decades of the nineteenth century, the paper will highlight the ambiguity of their legal condition: while people of Africa descent were normally excluded from citizenship, in certain cases they could attain the status of citizens. Although the paper focuses on Spanish America, comparisons will be made with other Atlantic contexts in order to evaluate on which criteria legal rules and judgements distinguished those who were members of the political community from those who were not, and how these provisions contributed to the strengthening of racial categories.

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