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From Slaves to Citizens? Tannenbaum and the Debates on Slavery, Emancipation, and Race Relations in Latin America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 March 2010

Alejandro de la Fuente
Alejandro de la Fuente
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh
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Abstract

Why is Slave and Citizen, Frank Tannenbaum's influential comparative book on slavery and race relations, still referenced by modern scholars? How is it that a book that is frequently described as flawed continues to inform contemporary scholarship on race and slavery? This article seeks to answer these questions by reconstructing some of the scholarly debates sparked by Slave and Citizen. Specifically, the article discusses how some of the central premises of Tannenbaum's approach continue to inform the work of current scholars. Three of these premises are discussed in some detail: first, that “Anglo” and “Latin” America constituted two separate entities; second, that race relations in each area were fundamentally different; and third, that differences in modern race relations could only be explained by their divergent “slave systems.”

Type
Classics Revisited: Frank Tannenbaum Reconsidered
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 77 , Issue 1 , Spring 2010 , pp. 154 - 173
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 2010

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References

Notes

1. Tannenbaum, Frank, Slave and Citizen (Boston, 1992), 4, 107, 112Google Scholar.

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7. Ibid., 97, 105.

8. Ibid., 95, 112.

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31. Degler, Neither Black nor White, 92.

32. I analyze this debate elsewhere, “Slave Law and Claims-Making: The Tannenbaum Debate Revisited,” Law and History Review 22 (2004): 339–369, and offer here only a brief summary.

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58. Ferrer, Insurgent Cuba, 199–200; de la Fuente, A Nation for All, 56–60; Pérez, Cuba Between Empires, 303–314.

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