Urban Slavery in the Age of Abolition: Volume 28, Part 1

When the full abolition of slavery appeared on the political agenda in the Atlantic world the institutional arrangements that underpinned the peculiar institution changed dramatically. Although many have studied these transformations, their urban dimension has remained underappreciated. The contributions to this volume offer an in-depth look at cities in the British and French Caribbean, the United States, West-Central Africa, Brazil, and South Africa. Rather than treating urban slavery as a more benign counterpoint to the brutal plantation complex, the articles explore how cities were part and parcel of slave societies and demonstrate how methods of control as well as routes to emancipation changed in the century before emancipation. Urban slavery has greatly impacted urban landscapes and its legacy as well as practices of remembrance and memorialization can be found in many former slave societies.