Claiming Citizenship: Free People of Color in the Spanish Atlantic During the Age of Revolution

This book grapples with the important contemporary question of the boundaries of citizenship and access to naturalization and does so by analysing a body of relevant juridical sources, dating from the end of the eighteenth century to the first half of the nineteenth concerning the free people of color in late colonial and early independent Spanish America. Their precarious status makes this group a privileged subject to examine the negotiation and formation of racial identity as well as the definition of citizenship requirements in colonial and post-colonial contexts. Based on archival material collected in Spain (Seville and Madrid) and Latin America (Mexico City, Bogotá, Quito, Lima and Buenos Aires), this book demonstrates that access to citizenship for free people of color both in the late colonial and early independent period is not established by state authorities, but results from complex dynamics between the state and the local society.