The abolition of Latin American slavery has long been recognized as a complex and contentious process stretching over several decades. Historians who study that process face the challenge of incorporating into their stories multiple actors: state officials, lawyers, journalists, activists, and, not least, enslaved people actively seeking freedom. That approach has generated a rich historiography, ranging from early work by Emília Viotti da Costa, Robert Conrad, Rebecca Scott, and others up through recent books by scholars such as Jeffrey Needell, Angela Alonso, and Yesenia Barragan. Based on deep and meticulous research and clearly and effectively written, Magdalena Candioti's Una historia de la emancipación negra is a worthy addition to that literature.
Candioti begins her story with the profoundly destabilizing impacts of national independence on the institution of slavery. Revolutionary rhetoric that compared Spanish rule to enslavement and that promised to strike off the chains of colonial rule inevitably raised the...
