Itineraries of Freedom Revolutionary Travels and Slave Emancipation in Columbia and the Greater Caribbean. 1789-1830.

Abstract

This dissertation explores some of the social and political processes of revolution, slave emancipation, and citizenship that took place during the period of upheaval leading up to the establishment of the Republic of Colombia. The Republic rested on the wartime efforts of thousands of slaves and former slaves. However, the new country was conceived as a gradual emancipationist polity. Many Colombian leaders expressed ideas that were critical of the Atlantic slave system, but this antislavery ideology led them only to limited antislavery initiatives, and not to the abolition of slavery. This work analyzes the transnational, dynamic, and often chaotic character of this process. Through the study of flight from slavery, military service, litigation, political exile, clandestine conspiracy missions, and privateering voyages, this work uses intersecting biographical histories and case studies to demonstrate the relevance of ordinary struggles in the emergence of the new anti-Spanish, emancipationist polity against a backdrop of tight interactions across the different provincial, imperial, and national spaces of Tierra Firme and the Greater Caribbean. Gradual emancipation legislation and action emerged not only from those who welcomed slaves as soldiers or drafted the laws of the Republic. Leaders like Juan del Corral and Félix José de Restrepo interacted both directly and indirectly with slaves and former slaves, whose previous quests for freedom, property, and standing, as well as their role during the Wars of Independence, pushed men like Corral and Restrepo -- themselves masters of slaves-- closer to antislavery opinions. “Itineraries of Freedom” draws upon manuscript and printed sources from archives and libraries in Ecuador, Colombia, Cuba, Jamaica, Spain, and the United States. By pulling together scattered documentary evidence, this work builds a history of revolutionary travelers whose crisscrossed public and secret itineraries were at the center of the emergence of the Republic of Colombia but have remained outside of the familiar national narrative.