From Slaves to Citizens: Slave Law and Claims-Making in Colonial Cuba

最近的学术研究确定了一系列社会和经济条件，这些条件导致了美国和南非的种族隔离和法律定义的种族秩序。然而，类似的情况和需要并没有在拥有大量非洲人后裔人口的拉丁美洲国家产生类似的体制和社会安排。为什么要这样？这是本研究项目试图回答的核心问题。根据最近的历史编纂大西洋奴隶制和使用古巴作为一个测试案例，本研究旨在确定一些条件，防止在西班牙美洲的隔离创建。研究者认为，奴隶制发展的法律的、制度的以及最终的文化背景对于理解解放后的种族关系确实至关重要。这些背景为后来的政治可能性建立了意识形态和文化界限。这项研究试图确定在长期殖民时期为奴隶建立的殖民立法和制度的主张的机会。传统的伊比利亚法律，主要以13世纪的法典Las Siete Partidas为代表，赋予奴隶有限的法律的人格，如奴隶的几项“权利”：即使违背主人的意愿也可以结婚，在受到虐待和虐待时寻求司法保护，以及获得解放。这些提出要求的机会本可以有助于创造一种包容的政治文化，实际上有助于非洲人及其后裔融入殖民社会。反过来，包容和融合的政治文化将促进跨种族动员形式的出现，例如在古巴和西班牙美洲其他地方争取独立的民族主义联盟。为了验证这些假设，首席研究员将使用档案资源，包括地方法规，法院判决，加农炮法，牧师信件和教会文件。

Recent scholarship has identified a set of social and economic conditions that led to the creation of segregation and of a legally-defined racial order in the United States and South Africa. Yet similar circumstances and needs did not result in comparable institutional and social arrangements in Latin American countries with a substantial population of African descent. Why? That is the central question that this research project seeks to answer. Building upon recent historiography on Atlantic slavery and using Cuba as a test case, this study seeks to identify some of the conditions that prevented the creation of segregation in Spanish America. The researcher suggests that the legal, institutional, and ultimately cultural settings in which slave regimes developed are indeed crucial to understand post-emancipation race relations. These settings established the ideological and cultural boundaries of what would later be politically possible. This research attempts to identify the opportunities for claims making that colonial legislation and institutions created for slaves during the long colonial period. Traditional Iberian law, represented mainly by the 13th-century code Las Siete Partidas, conferred a limited legal personality to slaves, as illustrated by several slave "rights": to marry even against the will of the master, to seek judicial protection in case of abuse and mistreatment, and to access manumission. These opportunities for claims making could have contributed to the creation of a political culture of inclusion and indeed to what has been described as the integration of the Africans and their descendants into colonial society. In turn, a political culture of inclusion and integration would facilitate the emergence of cross-racial forms of mobilization such as the nationalist coalitions that fought for independence in Cuba and elsewhere in Spanish America. To test these hypotheses, the principal investigator will use archival resources that contain local regulations, court decisions, cannon laws, pastoral letters and church documents.