Freedom's Captives

Yesenia Barragan is Assistant Professor of Latin American History at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. She is the author of Selling Our Death Masks: Cash-for-Gold in the Age of Austerity (2014) and Principal Investigator of the bilingual digital database The Free Womb Project.

• Introduction: 'Reborn for freedom'; Part I. The Social Universe of the Colombian Black Pacific: 1. Black freedom and the aquatic lowlands; 2. Slavery and the urban Pacific frontier; Part II. The Time of Gradual Emancipation Rule: 3. The gradual emancipation law of 1821 and abolitionist publics in Colombia; 4. The children of the Free Womb and technologies of gradual emancipation rule; 5. Routes to freedom, gradients of unfreedom: testamentary manumission, self-purchase, and public manumissions; Part III. Final Abolition and the Afterlife of Gradual Emancipation: 6. Final abolition and the problem of black autonomy; Epilogue: 'The precious gift of freedom'.

'Freedom's Captives is a unique and elegantly written study of slavery, freedom, and unfreedom that creatively challenges assumptions to inform our understandings of Early Modern African-descended people in the Americas. The book will establish Barragan as a preeminent scholar on free womb laws and practices as they related to the abolition of slavery.' Kevin Dawson, Associate Professor of History, University of California, Merced