Introduction

Summary

The introduction lays out the complex matrices of bondage, freedom, terror, and possibility that defined the period and place under investigation in this book: the gradual abolition of slavery (1821-1852) in the frontier, gold-rich lowland province of Chocó in the Colombian Black Pacific. Barragan calls the thirty-one years from the law’s enactment in 1821 to the final abolition of slavery in 1852 the time of “gradual emancipation rule” in the northern Andes in order to see this period as a distinct moment in the history of liberal racial governance rather than an inconsequential and benign prelude to the final abolition of slavery. While ostensibly designed to gradually destroy slavery, Barragan argues that speculating slaveholders in Colombia paradoxically came to have an even greater stake in slavery through gradual emancipation rule. After a historical and historiographical exploration of slavery and gradual emancipation rule in Colombia, Atlantic World, and Chocó, the introduction concludes with two sections on sources and methodology and chapter outlines.