a talk by

Linda M. Rupert

Dean’s Professor, University of North Carolina, Greensboro

Fellow, National Humanities Center

Monday, April 22, 4:15-5:30
Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS), Bolívar House 582 Alvarado Row Stanford, Seminar Room

Cosponsored by the Department of History and the Center for Latin American Studies

Between 1680 and 1789 the Spanish Crown issued almost two dozen royal decrees offering freedom to runaway slaves who arrived in marginal parts of Spanish America from Dutch, British, and French colonies. How did this corpus of decrees help to define imperial jurisdiction and to legitimate tenuous state sovereignty? What does it tell us about the role of seemingly marginalized colonial denizens in shaping the contours of empire? What does it reveal about the tensions between different levels of authority along the imperial chain of command? This presentation charts the development of an incipient Spanish policy over the century, considering its impact on both inter-and intra-imperial power relations.