This lecture will analyze the dialectics between slave resistance and regimes of legal and extralegal violence in Matanzas and the Paraíba and Mississippi valleys, the most dynamic plantation economies in the Atlantic World during the nineteenth century. This investigation illuminates the contradictions of modern justice systems and the limitations of the rule of law in the Spanish Empire (Cuba), Brazil, and the American South. Despite the striking similarities between these slave societies, this comparative study also reveals that different political systems and legal and racial regimes contributed to the formation of distinct regimes of racial violence in the Americas.
Organized by the Center for the Study of Slavery & Justice.