Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • 6 - Practicing Freedom

  • Chloe L. Ireton, University College London
  • Book:
    Slavery and Freedom in Black Thought in the Early Spanish Atlantic
    Published online:
    28 November 2024
    Print publication:
    05 December 2024, pp 228-251

  • Summary

    Liberated and free-born people understood that generating paperwork to record commercial transactions could protect and assure their freedom in the Spanish empire. The chapter explores this know-how through the life of Ana Gómez, a free Black woman who accumulated significant capital over the course of her lifetime and who documented her economic ties as a means of practicing and protecting her freedom. Gómez carefully documented her various economic ties across the Atlantic through paperwork, and astutely measured her trust and social capital with associates when determining whether to record a commercial transaction in writing, or whether to rely on verbal agreements, which she usually only allowed for her credit lines to Black neighbors. The chapter studies how Black women in the late sixteenth-century Caribbean practiced freedom through their economic decisions and protected their freedom through their engagement in legal cultures of paperwork to document their extensive economic, commercial, and social ties.