Edgardo Pérez, USC: “Slavery, irreverence, and sovereignty in the revolutionary Caribbean”

Please join us for the next meeting of the Colloquium on Latin American and Caribbean History as we welcome Edgardo Pérez, who will deliver a talk entitled “Slavery, irreverence, and sovereignty in the revolutionary Caribbean”.

The talk will be held in HSSB 4020 at 5 pm on Wednesday, February 6th, and will be followed by a small reception.

Abstract: Cartagena de Indias, on the north coast of today’s Colombia, declared independence from Spain and extended citizenship to free men of color between 1812 and 1815. Hundreds of Afro-Caribbean sailors flocked to this port town, where they obtained nominal citizenship and jobs as privateers—pirates with a license to attack Spanish shipping out at sea. Because Cartagena leaders saw their privateering policy as an “act of sovereignty,” this talk asks how exactly common sailors—the main protagonists of this story—embodied political sovereignty at sea and on land. Cartagena’s privateers throw into relief the history of sovereignty as practice; these maritime workers used irreverent talk, ambivalent political belonging, and dynamic connections with the Republic of Haiti to build the first Spanish American experiment in maritime republicanism. This untold story may thus reveal the origins of multi-ethnic, plurilingual and border-crossing citizenship.

About the Speaker: Edgardo Pérez Morales is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Southern California.