Slave & Citizen deals with one of the most intriguing problems presented by the development of the New World: the contrast between the legal and social positions of the Negro in the United States and in Latin America. It is well-known that in Brazil and in the Caribbean area, Negroes do not suffer legal or even major social disabilities on account of color, and that a long history of acceptance and miscegenation has erased the sharp line between white and colored. Professor Tannenbaum, one of our leading authorities on Latin America, asks why there has been such a sharp distinction between the United States and the other parts of the New World into which Negroes were originally brought as slaves. In the legal structure of the United States, the Negro slave became property. There has been little experience with Negro slaves in England, and the ancient and medieval traditions affecting slavery had died out. As property, the slave was without rights to marriage, to children, to the product of his work, or to freedom. In the Iberian peninsula, on the other hand, Negro slaves were common, and the laws affecting them were well developed. Therefore, in the colonies of Spain and Portugal, while the slave was the lowest person in the social order, he was still a human being, with some rights, and some means by which he might achieve freedom. Only the United States made a radical split with the tradition in which all men, even slaves, had certain inalienable rights.

The idea of universal rights is often understood as the product of Europe, but as Laurent Dubois demonstrates, it was profoundly shaped by the struggle over slavery and citizenship in the French Caribbean. Dubois examines this Caribbean revolution by focusing on Guadeloupe, where, in the early 1790s, insurgents on the island fought for equality and freedom and formed alliances with besieged Republicans. In 1794, slavery was abolished throughout the French Empire, ushering in a new colonial order in which all people, regardless of race, were entitled to the same rights. But French administrators on the island combined emancipation with new forms of coercion and racial exclusion, even as newly freed slaves struggled for a fuller freedom. In 1802, the experiment in emancipation was reversed and slavery was brutally reestablished, though rebels in Saint-Domingue avoided the same fate by defeating the French and creating an independent Haiti. The political culture of republicanism, Dubois argues, was transformed through this transcultural and transatlantic struggle for liberty and citizenship. The slaves-turned-citizens of the French Caribbean expanded the political possibilities of the Enlightenment by giving new and radical content to the idea of universal rights.

A biography of the escaped slave who became a renowned writer, orator, abolitionist, and diplomat.

Citizenship is not a spectator sport; it is all about engagement. From Slavery to Citizenship is part of a bigger picture - a development process which will enable us to gain more control over our own lives and to participate in decisions about the future direction of society and the organisations we are involved in. This book is unusual in suggesting that slavery is not a remote historical phenomenon, but a fundamental component of our present. People have been slaves in the past and some people are enslaved today. The subject of slavery is highly charged with emotion. From Slavery to Citizenship seeks to facilitate dialogue and to bridge gaps. This is not easy as people have been speaking different languages and working from diverse sets of assumptions. A first step is to listen and to learn from differences. In this book, a single author's voice brings together contributions from major public figures and respected thinkers. Within a rich tapestry of perspectives, there is no single line of argument, or one overall conclusion. There are contributions from Africa, North and South America, Western and Eastern Europe and Asia, and from discourses in work organisation, occupational health, psychiatry and human rights, as well as education. After reading the book, you are unlikely to conclude that all of the contributors have agreed, but you will find that they give you a starting point from which to reflect and begin discussion, as well as the tools to engage in active citizenship.

The controversial thesis at the center of this study is that, despite the importance of slavery in Athenian society, the most distinctive characteristic of Athenian democracy was the unprecedented prominence it gave to free labor. Wood argues that the emergence of the peasant as citizen, juridically and politically independent, accounts for much that is remarkable in Athenian political institutions and culture. From a survey of historical writings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the focus of which distorted later debates, Wood goes on to take issue with influential arguments, such as those of G.E.M. de Ste Croix, about the importance of slavery in agricultural production. The social, political and cultural influence of the peasant-citizen is explored in a way which questions some of the most cherished conventions of Marxist and non-Marxist historiography.