Slavery And Manumission

Exhaustively researched, Fede's study picks apart, categorizes, and contextualizes hundreds of cases and statutes addressing the efforts and abilities of slaves to obtain their freedom and of masters to manumit those they held in bondage.

The contributors investigate the cultural consequences of manumission as well as the changing economic conditions that limited the practice by the eighteenth century to understand better the social implications of this multifaceted aspect of the system of slavery.

This volume is concerned with the histories of freed slaves in a variety of slave societies in the ancient and modern world, ranging from ancient Rome to the southern States of the US, the Caribbean, and Brazil to Africa in the aftermath of emancipation in the twentieth century.

A stereotypical image of manumission is that of a benign plantation owner freeing his slaves on his deathbed. But as Stephen Whitman demonstrates, the truth was far more complex, especially in border states where manumission was much more common. Whitman analyzes the economic and social history of Baltimore to show how the vigorous growth of the city required the exploitation of rural slaves. To prevent them from escaping and to spur higher production, owners entered into arrangements with their slaves, promising eventual freedom in return for many years' hard work. The Price of Freedom reveals how blacks played a critical role in freeing themselves from slavery. Yet it was an imperfect victory. Once Baltimore's economic growth began to slow, freed blacks were virtually excluded from craft apprenticeships, and European immigrants supplanted them as a trained labor force.

"I am a free-born woman, and not a slave of anyone," Manuy bint Khalfan, Speaking to a British Agency in Sharjah on 24th October 1938. Manuy bint Khalfan was a female slave who was sold and mortgaged several times before she finally escaped from her master.

Based on a thorough investigation of the literary and epigraphic sources, this comprehensive study presents Greek manumission as a form of social relations, rooted in concepts of freedom and dependence and reflected by the terminology and the conditions of manumission.

An international comparative study of a mode of emancipation that worked to reinforce the institution of slavery Manumission—the act of freeing a slave while the institution of slavery continues—has received relatively little scholarly attention as compared to other aspects of slavery and emancipation. To address this gap, editors Rosemary Brana-Shute and Randy J. Sparks present a volume of essays that comprise the first-ever comparative study of manumission as it affected slave systems on both sides of the Atlantic. In this landmark volume, an international group of scholars consider the history and implications of manumission from the medieval period to the late nineteenth century as the phenomenon manifested itself in the Old World and the New. The contributors demonstrate that although the means of manumission varied greatly across the Atlantic world, in every instance the act served to reinforce the sovereign power structures inherent in the institution of slavery. In some societies only a master had the authority to manumit slaves, while in others the state might grant freedom or it might be purchased. Regardless of the source of manumission, the result was viewed by its society as a benevolent act intended to bind the freed slave to his or her former master through gratitude if no longer through direct ownership. The possibility of manumission worked to inspire faithful servitude among slaves while simultaneously solidifying the legitimacy of their ownership. The essayists compare the legacy of manumission in medieval Europe; the Jewish communities of Levant, Europe, and the New World; the Dutch, French, and British colonies; and the antebellum United States, while exploring wider patterns that extended beyond a single location or era. They also document the fates of manumitted slaves, some of whom were accepted into freed segments of their societies; while others were expected to vacate their former communities entirely. The contributors investigate the cultural consequences of manumission as well as the changing economic conditions that limited the practice by the eighteenth century to understand better the social implications of this multifaceted aspect of the system of slavery.