Vulnerable Freedom(s). Slavery, Diplomacy, and the Law in the Caribbean Age of Abolition (1807-1868).

From the last decades of the 18th century onwards, new ideas crossed the ocean redefining relations between empires. The Age of Revolution altered the imperial balances with the loss of some colonial territories and the emergence of new poles of influence in the Americas. The expansion of sugar production that triggered a second wave of slavery, combined with changing market relations, reconfigured the global economy. This dissertation deals with the unraveling of slavery’s legal regimes within the British, Spanish, and French empires in the Caribbean. It explores the entanglements between mobility in the region and the use of law by enslaved people in the Age of Abolition.The mobility of people, goods, ideas, and even institutions, norms, and practices in the Atlantic world intensified connections across imperial boundaries. At the same time, slave revolts and British abolitionist aspirations reconfigured the geographies of slavery and freedom in the Caribbean area. Between the 1807 British Slave Trade Act and the beginning of the process of gradual abolition of slavery in Spanish Cuba, this trans-imperial space intertwined social, economic, and political trajectories in ways that imperial or national histories often fail to convey.Drawing primarily on legal sources collected in European colonial archives (Seville, Madrid, London, Aix-en-Provence, Paris) and in the Cuban National Archive (Havana), the dissertation examines the petitions that enslaved people submitted to free themselves from slavery, navigating competing legal regimes. The aim is to examine how the chances of gaining freedom changed as the regulation of the slave trade and slavery increased. By focusing on the trajectories of enslaved people and legal petitions, the dissertation addresses the issue of mobility both as the transition from one legal status to another in different colonial societies and as migration, forced, or voluntary, within the Caribbean, interrogating in original terms the notions and meaning of belonging, sovereignty, and freedom in the Emancipation era.Divided into four chapters, the study traces the ways in which African Caribbeans escaped slavery, re-enslaved and were freed in an environment marked by imperial competitions, abolitionist ideas, enslaved/enslaver conflicts, and the constant precariousness of freedom. Against the backdrop of the revolutionary changes that impacted the region, the first chapter investigates the development of British anti-slave legislation, bilateral treaty diplomacy, and reforms to the slavery system in the interconnected space of the Caribbean. The second chapter examines how imperial policies toward slave fugitives changed over time and how enslaved people used British free soil and imperial antagonism to escape their masters’ control. While the transoceanic trade continued in the shadows, the Caribbean area was crisscrossed with illegal practices of re-enslavement by traders who supported the illegal smuggling of captives to sustain plantation economies. Examining the persistence of intercolonial routes for illegal trafficking beyond the formal cessation of the Atlantic slave trade, chapter three delves into the intricate relationship between smuggling, the semi-official slave trade, and the domestic institution of slavery. Finally, chapter four explores how individuals in bondage gained freedom through evolving inter-imperial relations and the expansion of emancipation decrees. The examination of legal procedures reveals how enslaved people understood and interpreted the various legal frameworks in their favor. As Britain prevented the illegal slave trade and projected imperial power beyond its borders, enslaved people used the composite notion of diplomatic protection to gain freedom through manumission. These freedom-seeking petitioners challenged the very legitimacy of slavery, questioned its maintenance in the courts and contributed to its definitive abandonment in the Caribbean.