Slavery, Freedom, and the Law in the Atlantic World A Brief History with Documents

In the Spanish, Portuguese, French, and English empires in the Americas, individuals and groups turned to courts of law to define and implement various types of status for indigenous Americans, forcibly imported Africans, and colonizing Europeans--and their progeny. Peabody and Grinberg introduce the voices of slaves, slave-holders, jurists, legislators, and others, as they struggle to critique, overturn, justify, or simply describe the social order in which they are embedded.

SUE PEABODY (Ph.D., University of Iowa), is associate professor of history at Washington State University Vancouver. Her influential book There Are No Slaves in France (1996) examines the legal history of French slavery and race in the eighteenth century. Peabody's current research focuses on the legal concept of "Free Soil" in the wider Atlantic world.

KEILA GRINBERG (Ph.D., Universidade Federal Fluminense), is an associate professor of history at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. She is an expert on slavery, civil law, and citizenship in Brazil, subjects on which she has published in the United States, Brazil, and elsewhere.