Overview

The story of the long fight for freedom of African captives rescued from the illegal slave trade only to be forced back into bondage The Bonds of Freedom tells the forgotten story of people seized from slave ships by maritime patrols, ""liberated,"" then forced into bonded labor between 1807 and 1880. Using extensive archival research from Sierra Leone, South Africa, Brazil, Cuba, the United Kingdom, and the United States, historian Jake Subryan Richards uncovers the contrasting ideas and practices of authoritarianism and freedom that empires and liberated Africans developed during the protracted end of the illegal slave trade. Following the Africans' journeys from enslavement to liberation, Richards recounts their capture and embarkation on ships that participated in the vast slave trade to Brazil and Cuba, the maritime seizure of those ships, and the adjudication that assigned freed captives to bonded labor. The captives fought against their bondage as state agents limited their freedom of choice and movement. The liberated Africans' story shows that, far from following a straightforward path to freedom, these men and women navigated anti-slave-trade laws that both subjected them to authoritarian control and provided a domain for them to create their own visions of freedom. Through meticulous research and engaging narrative, Richards sheds light on their legal battles, community-building efforts, and ongoing quest for justice and autonomy in the face of enduring challenges.

Full Product Details

9780300263206

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Reviews

“The Bonds of Freedom sets a new standard in understanding the long history of ‘Afro-diasporic justice,’ demonstrating the ingenious ways that liberated Africans asserted their freedom through formal state law, fugitivity, insurrection, and their own organizational political logics.”—James H. Sweet, University of Wisconsin–Madison “Jake Subryan Richards has written the definitive legal history of ‘liberated Africans.’ Superbly researched and packed with humanity, The Bonds of Freedom makes us rethink the tortured transition from slavery to freedom in the Atlantic world.”—John Harris, author of The Last Slave Ships: New York and the End of the Middle Passage “This masterpiece should be read by all those working on or reading about the abolition of the slave trade as an extraordinary example of a historian’s innovative, rigorous, and detailed craft.”—Francisco Bethencourt, author of Racisms: From the Crusades to the Twentieth Century “Jake Subryan Richards provides an authoritative account on the meanings and limitations of freedom for those rescued from slavery by naval intervention. This engrossing, trans-imperial legal history places survivors of the middle passage at the centre of nineteenth-century debates over what it meant to be free.”—Richard Anderson, University of Strathclyde

Author Information

Jake Subryan Richards is assistant professor of international history at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He lives in the UK.

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