Slavery, Freedom, and the Law in the Atlantic World: A Brief History with Documents

In the Spanish, Portuguese, French, and English empires in the Americas, individuals and groups turned to courts of law to define and implement various types of status for indigenous Americans, forcibly imported Africans, and colonizing Europeans--and their progeny. Peabody and Grinberg introduce the voices of slaves, slave-holders, jurists, legislators, and others, as they struggle to critique, overturn, justify, or simply describe the social order in which they are embedded.