From Slavery to Abolition in Peru: Four Recent Contributions

Agentes de su propia libertad. Los esclavos de Lima y la desintegración de la esclavitud, 1821–1854. By CARLOS AGUIRRE. Lima: Fondo Editorial Universidad Católica, 1993. Pp. 333.

Slavery and Abolition in Early Republican Peru. By PETER BLANCHARD. Delaware: Scholarly Resources, 1992. Pp. xx, 247.

Paying the Price of Freedom: Family and Labor among Lima's Slaves, 1800–1854. By CHRISTINE HÜNEFELDT. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. Pp. xi, 269.

Safari africano y compra‐venta de esclavos para el Perú (1412–1818). By FERNANDO ROMERO. Lima: IEP‐UNSCH, 1994. Pp. 275.     

Windup of Tibetan Feudal Slavery-Writing on the Day of Slavery Abolition

On January 19^th of 2009,a total of 382 representatives of People＇s Congress of Tibet Autonomous Region,in its second session ofthe ninth plenary conference,unanimously voted for the resolution： the day of March 28^th was specially designated as the commemoration day to celebrate the complete emancipation of a million Tibetan serfs/slaves.     

Debating Womanhood,Defining Freedom: The Abolition of Slavery in 1880s Rio de Janeiro

This article demonstrates how both the agency of women of colour and a particular set of ideas about femininity and maternity played an important part in shaping the ending of slavery in the city of Rio de Janeiro. It does so through the prism of untapped municipal documentation, exploring initiatives taken by the city council both to abolish slavery by emancipating mainly women and to shape the city's first generation of fully free working families by founding schools and charitable institutions. In enacting these measures, councillors found themselves debating not only the meanings of freedom, but the meanings of ex‐slave womanhood. Their discussions reflected both the long‐term development of ‘free womb logic’ in Brazilian slavery and emancipation, and tendencies by the 1880s abolitionist movement to make emotive, ‘feminised’ appeals for elite women to sympathise with enslaved mothers. The article explores how women of colour used elite discourses about freedom, maternity and womanhood in order to achieve freedom, but also contested and reshaped them as they sought to bring their own lived meanings to freedom.     

Variation in Venues of Slavery and Freedom: Interpreting the Late Eighteenth-Century Cultural Landscape of St. John, Danish West Indies Using an Archaeological GIS

An archaeological GIS is used to examine the late eighteenth-century cultural landscape of St. John, US Virgin Islands. Land use patterns are reconstructed using a combination of historic maps, tax records, and survey reconnaissance. The study demonstrates significant, heretofore undocumented, transitions taking place that reflect dynamic cultural and economic change within Danish West Indian plantation society that includes a significant trend towards land ownership by free-colored St. Johnians more than a half a century before emancipation. These venues of freedom are discussed in relation to broader patterns of estate consolidation and economic shifts.     

Letter to the Movement: Antiwar Strategies on the Eve of Destruction and Occupation

Author's Intro: This is a two‐part essay on antiwar strategy and tactics. The first part was finished a few hours after George Bush's TV announcement that the US would invade and begin bombing Iraq. The second part was finished in mid‐May 2003, as the US occupation forces formally announced their colonization of Iraq, with cracker Tommy Franks goose‐stepping around Iraq as the latest jewel in the American empire. The question remains for the whole world, especially for those of us living in what is more appropriately named than ever “the belly of the beast”: What are we going to do about the United States?     

Assembling Sovereignty: Canadian Claims to the Athabasca District Prior to Treaty No. 8

ABSTRACT

Recent Canadian legal scholarship has emphasised the centrality of treaties between the colonial state and First Nations in the assertion of Canadian sovereignty over Indigenous lands. Historical interpretations, meanwhile, would suggest that sovereignty, rather than asserted, is assembled over time. Historically, sovereignty is understood to be contingent and layered; it is assembled through a series of ‘detours, improvisations and tinkering.’ This paper looks at the historical circumstances of Canadian sovereignty in the Athabasca district prior to the making of Treaty No. 8 with the First Nations. British sovereignty claims to Rupert's Land and the Northwestern Territories (including the area that came to be known as the Athabasca district), were assembled through the practices and activities of the Hudson's Bay Company. These claims were transferred to Canada in 1869 and Canada hesitantly and quietly took measures to further assemble and express its sovereignty in these lands. Canada surveyed and inventoried the Athabasca district's resources, commenced exploratory work on petroleum resources, provided relief from famine, financially supported schools for Indigenous children, and established and enforced a system of law. By the time Treaty No. 8 was negotiated in 1899, Canada had thus taken a series of steps to assemble and express its sovereignty in the district. Rather than establishing, asserting or legitimating Canadian sovereignty, Treaty No. 8 may be better understood as another measure in the process of assembling it.