HomeIllegal enslavement and reenslavement in the Atlantic World

Illegal enslavement and reenslavement in the Atlantic World

Mise illégale en esclavage et remise en esclavage dans le monde atlantique

Esclavización ilegal y reesclavización en el mundo atlántico

Escravização ilegal e reescravização no mundo atlântico

« Esclavages et Post-Esclavages / Slaveries and Post-Slaveries » Journal

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Published on Tuesday, February 03, 2026

Abstract

This issue of the journal Esclavages et Post-Esclavages will explore various aspects of illegal enslavement and re-enslavement in the Atlantic world from the 15th century to the present day and will welcome contributions in English, French, Portuguese or Spanish.

Announcement

Scientific editors

  • Beatriz Mamigonian, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina
  • Mariana Dias Paes, The American University of Paris

Theme of this Issue

Slavery was a legal institution in various jurisdictions of the Atlantic world until the turn of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, even during periods when the legality of the institution of slavery was widely acknowledged, certain practices of enslavement were considered illegal. These varied greatly and depended on religious, political, and economic conditions. In the Christian world, the enslavement of those considered infidels or heathen was accepted, and wars against them were justified. The legality of the enslavement of Native Americans was subject to debate since the first decades of European occupation of the Americas, and remained contested until the nineteenth century. The enslavement of Africans did not go without questioning, either. More recently, historians have raised the question whether slavery was actually a legal institution in the African regions where men and women were forcibly embarked for the Americas. Kidnappings and treachery were employed in African jurisdictions and in regions subjected to colonial rule, with the direct participation or complicity of colonial officials and European traffickers, to feed the transatlantic trade.

In the nineteenth century, with initiatives to abolish the transatlantic slave trade, rising abolitionism, and the emergence of gradual emancipation policies, slave traffickers and slave owners sought to guarantee their access to enslaved property through renewed mechanisms of illegal enslavement and contraband. Free persons of color were at risk of enslavement, while freed persons were occasionally reenslaved. In the context of rising independent nation-states and the transformations in record keeping, slave owners often took advantage of bureaucratic procedures to legalize slave property illegally acquired, despite growing public scrutiny.

While it is acknowledged that colonial empires were built on the exploitation of enslaved workers, a new focus is needed on the extent of illegality within these systems. The massive contraband to Cuba and Brazil in the nineteenth century, and consequent illegal enslavement of over a million African men, women, and children, with the support of local governments, generated wealth that irrigated the banking system, reinforced the power of landowning elites, and naturalized criminal acts against workers that have consequences in the present.

This special issue will explore various aspects of illegal enslavement and reenslavement in the Atlantic world, from the fifteenth century to the present, and welcomes contributions in English, French, Portuguese or Spanish.

Themes

Contributions may focus on the following themes, among others:

  • The legality of enslavement and slavery in African societies.
  • The debates over Native American enslavement.
  • The impact of race in illegal enslavement practices.
  • Gender and illegal enslavement.
  • Children and illegal enslavement.
  • Conditional manumission and reenslavement.
  • The transatlantic slave trade and contraband.
  • Circumstances of illegal enslavement, or reenslavement, and the profile
    of the victims and perpetrators.
  • Resistance to illegal enslavement.
  • Institutional responses to illegal enslavement.
  • Forms of legalizing illegal enslavement.
  • The legacies of illegal enslavement and demands for reparations.

Submission Procedures

Proposal of articles (between 500 and 800 words) must be sent by June 1, 2026, to ciresc.redaction@cnrs.fr.

Decisions on manuscripts will be announced on July 1, 2026.

Accepted papers (45,000 characters maximum, spaces included, bibliography included) must be submitted in French, English, Spanish, or Portuguese before November 1, 2026. They must be accompanied by an abstract or résumé of no more than 3,600 signs. The complete list of recommendations to authors is available here.

Final versions must be ready by July 1, 2027.

Deadlines

  • Deadline for the submission of the summaries: June 1, 2026
  • Deadline for the submission of the articles: November 1, 2026
  • Deadline for final version of the articles: July 1, 2027
  • Issue Publication: November 2027

Selected References

Ball Erica, Seijas Tatiana & Terri Snyder (eds.), 2020. As If She Were Free. A Collective Biography of Women and Emancipation in the Americas, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Barragan Yesenia, 2021. Freedom’s Captives. Slavery and Gradual Emancipation on the Colombian Black Pacific, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Blumenthal Debra, 2009. Enemies and Familiars. Slavery and Mastery in Fifteenth-Century Valencia, Ithaca, Cornell University Press.

Candido Mariana, 2011. “African Freedom Suits and Portuguese Vassal Status: Legal Mechanisms for Fighting Enslavement in Benguela, Angola, 1800-1830,” Slavery and Abolition, no. 32/3, pp. 447–459.

Candioti Magdalena, 2021. Una historia de la emancipacion negra. Esclavitud y abolicion en la Argentina, Buenos Aires, Siglo Veintiuno Editores.

Chalhoub Sidney, 2011. “The Precariousness of Freedom in a Slave Society (Brazil in the Nineteenth Century),” International Review of Social History, no. 56/3, pp. 405439.

Chambouleyron Rafael, 2016. “Freedom and Indian Slavery in the Portuguese Amazon (1640-1755),” in John Donoghue & Evelyn P. Jennings (eds.), Building the Atlantic Empires. Unfree Labor and Imperial States in the Political Economy of Capitalism, ca. 1500-1914, Leiden, Brill, pp. 54–71.

Curto José, 2008. “Struggling Against Enslavement: The Case of José Manuel in Benguela, 1816-20,” Canadian Journal of African Studies, no. 39/1, pp. 96122.

Dias Paes Mariana, 2020. “Shared Atlantic Legal Culture: The Case of a Freedom Suit in Benguela,” Atlantic Studies: Global Currents, no. 17/3, pp. 419440.

Dias Paes Mariana, 2021. Esclavos y tierras entre posesión y títulos. La construcción social del derecho de propiedad en Brasil (siglo XIX), Frankfurt, Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory, “Global Perspectives on Legal History” serie.

Grinberg Keila, 2016. “The Two Enslavements of Rufina: Slavery and International Relations on the Southern Border of Nineteenth-Century Brazil,” Hispanic American Historical Review, no. 96/2, pp. 259290.

DOI : 10.1215/00182168-3484173

Ireton Chloe, 2025. Slavery and Freedom in Black Thought in the Early Spanish Atlantic, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Kopytoff Igor & Suzanne Miers (eds.), 1977. Slavery in Africa. Historical and Anthropological Perspectives, Madison, The University of Wisconsin Press.

Lara Silvia H., 2010. O espírito das leis: tradições legais sobre a escravidão e a liberdade no Brasil escravista,” Africana Studia, Porto, no. 14, pp. 7392.

McDaniel Caleb, 2019. Sweet Taste of Liberty. A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America, New York, Oxford University Press.

Mamigonian Beatriz G. & Keila Grinberg, 2017. “Le crime de réduction à l’esclavage d’une personne libre (Brésil, xixe siècle),” Brésil(s), no. 11. Available online: https://journals.openedition.org/bresils/2138#quotation [last accessed, December 2025].

DOI: 10.4000/bresils.2138

Mamigonian Beatriz G. & Antonia M. N. Pedroza (eds.), 2023. Escravização ilegal no Brasil, São Leopoldo, Casa Leiria.

DOI : 10.29327/5398682

Lawrance Benjamin & Richard Roberts (eds.), 2012. Trafficking in Slavery’s Wake. Law and the Experience of Women and Children in Africa, Athens, Ohio University Press.

Nafafé José Lingna 2023. Lourenço da Silva Mendonça and the Black Atlantic Abolitionist Movement in the Seventeenth Century, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Peabody Sue & Keila Grinberg (eds.), 2015. Free Soil in the Atlantic World, London, Routledge.

DOI : 10.4324/9781315743301

Rossi Benedetta, 2017. “Périodiser la fin de l’esclavage : le droit colonial, la Société des Nations et la résistance des esclaves dans le Sahel nigérien, 1920-1930,” Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, no. 4, pp. 9831021.

Scott Rebecca, 2011. “Paper Thin: Freedom and Re-enslavement in the Diaspora of the Haitian Revolution. Law and History Review,” no. 29/4, pp. 10611087.

DOI : 10.1017/S0738248011000538

Scott Rebecca J. & Jean Hébrard, 2012. Freedom Papers. An Atlantic Odyssey in the Age of Emancipation, Cambridge, Harvard University Press.

DOI : 10.4159/harvard.9780674065161/html


Date(s)

  • Monday, June 01, 2026

Keywords

  • mise illégale en esclavage, remise en esclavage, monde atlantique, esclavage, post-esclavage, histoire économique, histoire sociale, histoire culturelle

Contact(s)

  • Loïc Nataf
    courriel : ciresc [dot] redaction [at] cnrs [dot] fr

Information source

  • Loïc Nataf
    courriel : ciresc [dot] redaction [at] cnrs [dot] fr

License

CC-BY-4.0 This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons - Attribution 4.0 International - CC BY 4.0 .

To cite this announcement

Beatriz Mamigonian, Mariana Dias Paes, « Illegal enslavement and reenslavement in the Atlantic World », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Tuesday, February 03, 2026, https://doi.org/10.58079/15m1h

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