Title Conceiving freedom : women of color, gender, and the abolition of slavery in Havana and Rio de Janeiro / Camillia Cowling

Published Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2013] ©2013

Click on the following:
EBSCO eBooks

Copies

Description 1 online resource (xiii, 326 pages) Series EBL-Schweitzer Contents Part I. Gender, Law, and Urban Slavery -- Sites of Enslavement, Spaces of Freedom : Slavery and Abolition in the Atlantic Cities of Havana and Rio de Janeiro -- The Law Is Final, Excellent Sir : Slave Law, Gender, and Gradual Emancipation -- Part II. Seeking Freedom -- As a Slave Woman and as a Mother : Law, Jurisprudence, and Rhetoric in Stories from Women's Claims-Making -- Exaggerated and Sentimental? : Engendering Abolitionism in the Atlantic World -- I Wish to Be in This City : Women and the Quest for Urban Freedom -- Part III. Conceiving Freedom -- Enlightened Mothers of Families or Competent Domestic Servants? : Elites Imagine the Meanings of Freedom -- She Was Now a Free Woman : Ex-Slave Women and the Meanings of Urban Freedom -- My Mother Was Free-Womb, She Wasn't a Slave : Conceiving Freedom -- Conclusion -- Epilogue: Conceiving Citizenship Summary "In Conceiving Freedom, Camillia Cowling shows how gender shaped urban routes to freedom for the enslaved during the process of gradual emancipation in Cuba and Brazil, which occurred only after the rest of Latin America had abolished slavery and even after the American Civil War. Focusing on late nineteenth-century Havana and Rio de Janeiro, Cowling argues that enslaved women played a dominant role in carving out freedom for themselves and their children through the courts. Cowling examines how women, typically illiterate but with access to scribes, instigated myriad successful petitions for emancipation, often using "free-womb" laws that declared that the children of enslaved women were legally free. She reveals how enslaved women's struggles connected to abolitionist movements in each city and the broader Atlantic World, mobilizing new notions about enslaved and free womanhood. She shows how women conceived freedom and then taught the "free-womb" generation to understand and shape the meaning of that freedom. Even after emancipation, freed women would continue to use these claims-making tools as they struggled to establish new spaces for themselves and their families in post emancipation society"-- Provided by publisher Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes English Online resource (HeinOnline, viewed September 12, 2016) Subject Enslaved women -- Cuba -- Havana -- History -- 19th century Enslaved women -- Brazil -- Rio de Janeiro -- History -- 19th century Enslaved women -- Legal status, laws, etc. -- Cuba -- Havana -- History -- 19th century Enslaved women -- Legal status, laws, etc. -- Brazil -- Rio de Janeiro -- History -- 19th century Antislavery movements -- Cuba -- Havana -- History -- 19th century Antislavery movements -- Brazil -- Rio de Janeiro -- History -- 19th century HISTORY -- Latin America -- General. SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Women's Studies. SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Slavery. POLITICAL SCIENCE -- Public Policy -- Cultural Policy. SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Anthropology -- Cultural. SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Popular Culture. Antislavery movements Race relations Enslaved women SUBJECT Havana (Cuba) -- Race relations -- History -- 19th century Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) -- Race relations -- History -- 19th century Subject Brazil -- Rio de Janeiro Cuba -- Havana Genre/Form History Form Electronic book ISBN 9781469611808 1469611805 1469610892 9781469610894

  Permalink