Paying the Price of Freedom

This study documents in detail the striving and ingenuity, the hard-won triumphs and bitter defeats of slaves who sought liberation in nineteenth-century urban Peru. Drawing on judicial, ecclesiastical, and notarial records - including the testimony of the slaves themselves - it uncovers the various strategies slaves invented to gain their freedom. The author pays particular attention to marriage relations and family life. Slaves used their family solidarity as a strategy, while slave owners used the conflicts within families to prevent manumission. The text focuses on gender relations between slaveowners and slaves, as well as between slaves.