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3 - Keeping People Put

Enslaved Families, Policing, and the Reemergence of Coffee Planting, 1810s–1830s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2022

Adriana Chira
Affiliation:
Emory University, Atlanta
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Summary

Between 1808 and 1830, as new coffee plantations developed in Santiago, private actors and local state authorities realized that they did not have the means to coercively control the unprecedented number of enslaved people working in the jurisdiction. Instead, they prudently turned to cooptation. They encouraged the formation of dense familial networks between enslaved people working on coffee estates and between enslaved and free people of color, as well as the distribution of local militia responsibilities to the free Afro-descendant peasant class, who in El Cobre were even given government roles. Although Santiago’s enslaved and free people of African descent would draw inspiration from liberalism and seek to exploit the local elites’ fears of it, they were far more successful at eliciting prerogatives through long-established colonial frameworks: prudential policies that allowed for some redistribution of rights and resources against birth status hierarchies.

Type
Chapter
Information
Patchwork Freedoms
Law, Slavery, and Race beyond Cuba's Plantations
, pp. 105 - 141
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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  • Keeping People Put
  • Adriana Chira, Emory University, Atlanta
  • Book: Patchwork Freedoms
  • Online publication: 10 February 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108583596.005
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To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Keeping People Put
  • Adriana Chira, Emory University, Atlanta
  • Book: Patchwork Freedoms
  • Online publication: 10 February 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108583596.005
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Keeping People Put
  • Adriana Chira, Emory University, Atlanta
  • Book: Patchwork Freedoms
  • Online publication: 10 February 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108583596.005
Available formats
×