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10

Race, Nation, and the

Meaning of Freedom,

1821–1888

FOCUS QUESTIONS

• How did movements to abolish slavery variously affect the development of na-
  tional identities in Brazil, Peru, Cuba, and Gran Colombia?


• What were the causes of the crisis of Brazilian slavery after mid-century?


• Why did the creole elite in Peru oppose the movement of national liberation led by
  San Martín and Bolívar?


• How did confl icts over race and slavery within the rebel community affect the
  nineteenth-century evolution of Cuban nationalism?


• How did the struggle over emancipation affect the rivalry between liberals and
  conservatives in Venezuela and Colombia?

ITH THE ACHIEVEMENT OF INDEPENDENCE,
the new nations then under construc-
tion immediately faced questions that
their successful struggle for home rule had not
answered. Who would rule at home, how, and
through what institutions of the state? Who was
considered a citizen, and what did it mean to be
free? How would the state limit individual freedom
and regulate relations among diverse social classes,
racial and ethnic groups, and foreign interests? In
the process of resolving these questions and build-
ing the postcolonial institutions that expressed the
national interest, the colonial legacy of slavery
andrace played an infl uential role. Enslaved Af-
ricans and their descendants in the Americas ac-
tively participated in this postcolonial struggle to
fashion unifi ed nation-states out of societies that
were historically divided by region, class, race, eth-
nicity, and gender. A popular desire for freedom
from the slaveholder easily translated into calls for
freedom from patriarchy, foreign control, and aris-

tocratic rule. This struggle, along with elite con-

fl icts between liberals and conservatives, shaped

the meaning of citizenship and the contours of

new nationalities emerging in Brazil, Cuba, Peru,

and Gran Colombia. Although their motives often

varied greatly, black slaves, free people of color,

peasants, urban workers, merchants, radical intel-

lectuals, and others joined together to demand the

abolition of slavery, but they faced the equally de-

termined resistance of slaveholders. In this confl ict,

race informed the negotiations that structured in-

stitutional relations between citizen and state, de-

fi ning these new nations in the nineteenth century

and beyond.

Initially, historians like Frank Tannenbaum

argued that, contrary to the experience of eman-

cipation in the United States, creole independence

leaders like Simón Bolívar enthusiastically sup-

ported abolitionism, which consequently “was

achieved in every case without violence, without

bloodshed, and without civil war.” Since then,

W