What did it mean to be free in a world so deeply marked by unfreedom? In this talk, I reframe the history of freedom in the South Atlantic world within the broader aspirations of Africans and their descendants to claim belonging—in families, in communities, and in imperial political communities. I focus on an enslaved woman in Brazil named Marcelina Dias Silvestre who petitioned the Portuguese crown at the turn of the eighteenth century for her manumission. Through an analysis of the arguments she and others made in their royal appeals, I argue that enslaved people articulated moral critiques of enslavement that promoted manumission as a form of justice. In doing so, petitioners like Marcelina Dias Silvestre not only contested the very meanings of slavery itself but also claimed positions as insiders of the imperial political community.

Register for the Zoom link here: https://macmillan.yale.edu/glc/events/2025-11-12/glclunch-freedom-three-coasts-slavery-law-and-belonging-south-atlantic-1