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This chapter examines the opposition to Javouhey's radical ideas and her independence within the Catholic church, especially a prolonged conflict with the Bishop of Autun (the Autun affair) regarding authority over the SSJC. Javouhey was one of the few Catholics of her time and the only Catholic nun to support the abolition of slavery in the French empire, which allied her with Protestants and anticlericals. In the SSJC missions in Guadeloupe and Martinique, however, the nuns had to acquiesce to the settlers' views on slavery and race equality. Starting in the 1840s, Javouhey took advantage of the “moralization” campaign to expand educational networks there to free blacks and slaves. The chapter also examines events in SSJC missions after the slave emancipation of 1848 and concludes by discussing Javouhey's role as a woman in the Catholic church.

This chapter examines the role of Spanish Santo Domingo in the early years of the Haitian Revolution, focusing principally on the advent of emancipation in French Saint-Domingue in the summer and fall of 1793. The chapter argues that critical events of this period in Saint-Domingue, such as the disastrous “revolt” of the free-colored businessman-turned-activist Vincent Ogé, the August 1791 slave rebellion, and the piecemeal legal reforms of Léger-Félicité Sonthonax and Étienne Polverel leading to general emancipation, were all significantly influenced by a deep history of interactions with Spanish Santo Domingo. In presenting a political and intellectual history of the coming of emancipation to Hispaniola, this chapter makes a case for the centrality of the political discourses of certain key freed military leaders—preserved in extant governmental and personal correspondence—in enabling the first French Republican slave emancipation.

This chapter focuses on issues related to the attempts to define slavery in the past and present, in order to determine the major basis of defining slavery. The first section takes a look at the slaves' description of their life and the treatment they received from their owners. It studies the idea of voluntary slavery and the efforts to eventually end legal slavery. From here the discussion turns to a case of slave emancipation in the British West Indies during the 1930s.

This chapter illustrates how the analysis of Capitalism and Slavery, one of Eric Williams’ contributions to Caribbean and post-colonial historiography and political economy, is an engagement with its critics. It analyzes the historical and textual methodologies used by Williams, noting the unique ways in which he revealed the past through prose. The chapter specifically reevaluates Williams’ arguments about the abolition of slavery in the British West Indies, as well as the critiques they received, from the perspective of Atlantic slavery and the world economy. By examining the issue from a more comprehensive analytical perspective, it is possible to more effectively recover Williams’ emphasis on the economic causes of slave emancipation and reformulate the terms of the debate within the broader historical processes of the Atlantic and world economies.

This chapter examines the debate over the labor of black children after the Civil War. Most freed people remained in rural areas of the South after emancipation, working parcels of plantation land for a share of the crop or for wages and rations. The labor of freed children for their families was critical to the survival of most households. The greatest point of conflict regarding freed children's labor was the apprenticeship system, a form of labor contract written into state laws since the colonial period. Former slaveholders seized upon apprenticeship just after the Civil War as a way to hold onto the children of their freed slaves, often regardless of whether the parents were living or dead. This practice not only deprived freed people of their children and the labor they could contribute to black households but also limited the mobility of both freed children and their parents and relatives, who wanted to remain near their bound children.

This chapter examines the impact of the mixed commissions in granting freedom to slaves. It explores the help provided by slave trade tribunals to their intended beneficiaries. Like many legal regimes, the international regime for the suppression of the slave trade had many consequences. The regime achieved their goal to help victims of the slave trade preserve the freedom of the millions of Africans. But along the way, many Africans were harmed. Some were crowded onto ships in worse conditions than they might normally have endured, as slavers tried to optimize the value of each voyage while evading capture. Some died of disease as courts took too long to decide cases. The slaves themselves rarely appeared in legal proceedings as claimants of rights. Instead, they were silent bystanders and only occasionally gave testimony. In sum, the mixed commissions delivered imperfect justice at its best.

This chapter concentrates on Gregory Nyssen’s theological arguments against slavery and argues that he urged all masters to emancipate all their slaves. He described slave ownership as evil, and slavery as death, within what I call his ‘theology of freedom’. This, it is argued, connects freedom, virtue, and assimilation to God, against the backdrop of the Platonic Christianized notion of ἀδέσποτον‎ (‘without master’). Gregory’s first theological argument against slavery is based on the ‘theology of the image’, the second on the ‘social analogy’ between humanity and the Trinity. From the equality of the divine Persons Gregory deduces the equality of all human persons. For Gregory, the ultimate end is ethically normative already now—and in the end there will be no slavery, as there was no slavery at the beginning, before sin. Gregory’s Christian theological arguments against slavery as impious are demonstrated to be more than a reiteration of Stoic commonplaces.

The Conclusion summarizes and discusses the main results yielded by the monograph, then reflects on some critical issues and the meaning and implications of the results obtained. Orlando Patterson’s depiction of ancient slavery as ‘social death’ is shown to be already present in Nyssen. Ancient people could hardly consider slavery as a stand-alone institution, and Aristotle dignified slavery ideology in (pseudo-)philosophical clothes. But there were exceptions, especially in Jewish and Christian philosophical asceticism; here, renunciation of slave ownership often paralleled opposition to social injustice. Already in antiquity, some, especially among Christian philosophical ascetics, were aware of social injustice and denounced it. Nyssen, Origen, Evagrius, Chrysostom, and others explicitly mention injustice in connection with the wealth of some seen as the cause of the poverty of others. Asceticism as philosophical life and ‘angelic life’ (angels keep neither slaves nor wealth), and asceticism as potentially subversive, are also discussed among much else.

This chapter examines the transformation of the Dhufar Liberation Front (DLF) to the Popular Front for the Liberation of the Occupied Arab Gulf (PFLOAG). The new political, military and social policies adopted by PFLOAG are examined. The beginnings of PFLOAG's initiation into an international community of revolution lying beyond the boundaries of the Arab world are discussed. Furthermore, portraits of revolutionaries from diverse backgrounds, including early volunteers in solidarity, are provided. It is argued that the 1968 transformation, carried about by highly politicised, young, and relatively well-educated former emigrant Dhufaris, heralded the process of building diverse political social and economic structures. As humble as they were, these were the first modern structures to arrive to Dhufar. They sowed the seeds for an embryonic revolutionary state in that territory and provided a direct anti-colonial challenge to the Anglo-Sultanic presence and its institutions.