Black Townsmen: Urban Slavery and Freedom in the Eighteenth-Century Americas (The Americas in the Early Modern Atlantic World)
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan | ISBN: 1403975760 | edition 2008 | PDF | 296 pages | 1,4 mb
This book is an innovative comparative study of persons of African origin and descent in two urban environments of the early modern Atlantic world. The author follows these men and women as they struggle with slavery, negotiations of manumission, and efforts to adapt to a life in freedom, ultimately illustrating how their choices and actions placed them at the foreground of the development ofAtlantic urban slavery and emancipation. In 1755, the “faithful vassals of his majesty, the Crioulo, Preto and Pardo men and women” of the towns of Minas Gerais, in Brazil, presented a petition to the Portuguese king requesting the nomination of a public official who would serve as their legal representative in local courts.