Review of Hoonhout and Mareite "Freedom at the Fringes?" (2019)
Article Review: Spanish Empire; Borderlands; Antislavery; Empire; 18th century; 19th century; Slavery History.
Bram Hoonhout & Thomas Mareite, “Freedom at the fringes? Slave flight and empire-building in the early modern Spanish borderlands of Essequibo – Venezuela and Louisiana – Texas,” Slavery and Abolition 40, No. 1 (2019), 61-86.
The study of imperial borderlands, or the regions between empires, have proven to be a fertile ground for understanding the power and struggles of empires of the the 18th and 19th centuries. Rather than the solid borders that maps have often illustrated, imperial domains faded the further that one traveled from the imperial centers. Hoonhout and Mareite examine Spanish Imperial borderlands in Venezuela and Texas and what role antislavery played in these spaces. From their research they determine that the central imperial government had less influence on the policies surrounding granting freedom to escaped slaves than the local leadership of the Spanish Empire. Showing that it was the colonies who first developed the idea of granting freedom to escaped slaves from Protestant empires as a means of weakening imperial rivals, the authors illustrate that Catholic beliefs played a substantial role in the state’s embrace of free soil politics. However, practices of freedom granting never were stable, the practice shifting according to the imperial politics and the strength of neighboring imperial borders. No where is this more true than in the Louisiana-Texas borderlands. Louisiana, a newly acquired US territory, became a flash point as slave masters worked to close off the porous border and force Spanish officials to abandon free soil policies. The success of these planters through diplomatic and vigilante means illustrate how imperial weakness could destabilize antislavery policies and borderland politics.
This essay provides an interesting concept and excellent examples to explore the meaning of slavery, antislavery, and borderlands. However, questions such as the long process of imperial borderlands and the influence of Native American empires will need to be explored in greater depth than the authors were able to do at this time. Furthermore, the role of Catholicism in connecting the enslaved to freedom is a fascinating point of departure. Did unifying the formerly enslaved as part of the Catholic church open avenues of greater community, or did the formerly enslaved remain relegated to the peripheries of the Spanish imperial life. What role did Catholic religious leaders play in the policies of free soil borderlands and how does this connect to the stirrings of broader Catholic antislavery?
While these questions do not have immediate answers, what is clear is that antislavery in the Spanish Empire is an open field with much unbroken ground to examine. More research will certainly complicate the current historical narrative.
Robert Swanson