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This article focuses on formerly enslaved children at the turn of the twentieth century, exploring their contributions to discourses about childhood, labor, and stigma in Senegal's colonial towns. Drawing on records for over 1,600 so-called 'liberated minors', children who entered state guardianship after official recognition of their liberation from slavery, and on a variety of other sources, the article investigates both broad trends and individual experiences of work, mistreatment, conflict, and — sometimes — defiance. I argue that while many liberated minors seemed to accept their circumstances, others complained, disobeyed, or ran away, thereby challenging lingering stigmas and highlighting ways the state fell short of the anti-slavery and humane ideals touted by some officials. Attentive, insofar as records allow, to the actions and perspectives of liberated minors, the article contributes to the growing literature on the history of children and youth in Africa and to scholarship on post-emancipation societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores and reevaluates the place of Plato in the history of liberty. In the first half, reevaluating the view that he invents a concept of 'positive liberty' in the Republic, I argue for two claims: (1) that he does not do so, insofar as this is not the way that virtuous psychological self-mastery in the Republic is understood, and (2) that the Republic works primarily with the inverse concept of slavery, relying on entrenched Greek ideas about the badness of the status of being a slave and the actions and dispositions associated with it. Turning in the second half to seek Platonic innovation not in the domain of 'positive liberty' but in reflection on liberty as a political value, understood as the liberty of action of citizens within the laws, I argue for two further claims: (3) that as such a political value, liberty is limited and reshaped in both the Republic and the Laws to be compatible with obedience to rule / willingness to be ruled, ideally willing obedience; and (4) that for this limited and reshaped value to be secured, such obedience must be manifested not only in regard to a constitution's laws, but also to the magistrates who hold office within it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article discusses slavery and emancipation in the Caribbean Region during the 18th century. Topics include the declaration by Haitian president, Jean-Pierre Boyer in 1822 that all of Dominican Republic territory will be part of Haiti, ending slavery and consolidating Dominican independence from Spain, a commitment by Dominican popular politics to defend emancipation from both external and domestic threats, and the reestablishment of slavery after general emancipation.

In arguing against Indian slavery, plaintiff’s attorneys in the 1772 Virginia General Court caseRobin v Hardawayfaced a dilemma: how could they condemn enslavement while mollifying public conviction that Indigenous “savagery” made them dangerous to community stability? Their solution, rooted in a nearly two-century discourse of slavery and freedom, was to insist that Indians derived from independent polities (unlike other enslaved communities). As such, they were both inherently free and outside the evolving Anglo-American body politic, and whites could legitimately deprive them of property, happiness, and safety. Subsequent Virginia freedom cases contributed to the discourse employed inRobin, as did early-nineteenth-century US Supreme Court decisions. It came to underpin civilization policies as well as removal, once older understandings of Anglo-American “civility” became untenable to Southern whites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines African American religious organizations and their opposition to slavery in antebellum Louisville, Kentucky, during the 19th century. It analyzes why the city attracted southern-born freemen such as Rev. Henry Adams and African Methodist Episcopal (AME) advocate and school administrator William H. Gibson, Sr. The article argues that such evangelicals, particularly in the African American Baptist and Methodist denominations, brought a message of liberation to Kentucky's African American population. The article also discusses the fight over ecclesiastical control in Louisville during the same time period, and Louisville as a base for organizational and print operations among emancipationists.

An introduction to the issue is presented in which the editor discusses its theme of South America's transition out of slavery, including topics such as the free Brazilian mulatto woman Josefa Pereira da Silva, Venezuela's 1814 guerra de colores (war of colors), and Cuban society post-abolition.

An introduction to the issue is presented in which the editor discusses its theme of South America's transition out of slavery, including topics such as the free Brazilian mulatto woman Josefa Pereira da Silva, Venezuela's 1814 guerra de colores (war of colors), and Cuban society post-abolition.

Despite conventional wisdom that slavery has been eradicated, this analysis of the human trafficking literature reveals that this form of violent coercion and economic exploitation persists. However, there is little agreement upon definitions, estimates and responses to this problem. Differing academic and policy definitions and estimates of slavery are reviewed, in which most emphasis is placed upon sexual trafficking, while other forms such as chattel slavery, debt bondage and contract slavery are often under-recognized. There are a range of policy options for ameliorating this problem, which include social services, community-based interventions, harm reduction strategies and legal and economic responses. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]