Slavery and the Slave Trade in the South American Pacific in the Era of Abolition

Abstract

The abolitionist project, which was foundational to the creation of the Republic of Colombia in 1921, was cut short by the interests of the slaveowning class, particularly those whose economic power was derived from gold mining in the Pacific Coast province of Popayán. In the 1840s, when the country had fragmented and Popayán formed part of New Granada, these elites convinced the government to reopen the slave trade, exporting large numbers of slaves and freedmen to Peru and Panama. This article analyzes the activism of slaveowners from 1822 up through the opening of the slave trade in the Pacific port of Buenaventura. It argues that the struggles to permit or abolish slavery did not lead to linear results and that they played a role in state formation in two dimensions: regional tensions and international alliances. It also intervenes in the debate on the abolition of slavery in the Atlantic world by expanding the frontier of its analysis towards the Pacific, while showing how the new republics of the Andean world formed part of a network of ideas and trade that connected North and South America. In this sense, the history of the abolition of slavery in Colombia, seen in a wider context, speaks to the way in which republican economic and political projects, as well as the history of the forced migrations of Afro-descendants in the region, should be framed transnationally.