Finalist for the Paul E. Lovejoy Book Prize

Details the abolition of the slave trade in the Atlantic World to the 1860s

Throughout the nineteenth century, very few people in Spain campaigned to stop the slave trade and did even less to abolish slavery. Even when some supported abolition, the reasons that moved them were not always humanitarian, liberal, or egalitarian. How abolitionist ideas were received, shaped, and transformed during this period has been ripe for study. Jesús Sanjurjo’s In the Blood of Our Brothers: Abolitionism and the End of the Slave Trade in Spain’s Atlantic Empire, 1800–1870 provides a comprehensive theory of the history, the politics, and the economics of the persistence and growth of the slave trade in the Spanish empire even as other countries moved toward abolition.

Sanjurjo privileges the central role that British activists and diplomats played in advancing the abolitionist cause in Spain. In so doing, he brings to attention the complex and uneven development of abolitionist and antiabolitionist discourses in Spain’s public life, from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the end of the transatlantic trade. His delineation of the ideological and political tension between Spanish liberalism and imperialism is crucial to formulating a fuller explanation of the reasons for the failure of anti–slave trade initiatives from 1811 to the 1860s. Slave trade was tied to the notion of inviolable property rights, and slavery persisted and peaked following three successful liberal revolutions in Spain.

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“A crucial addition to the history of abolitionism in the Age of Revolution. By bringing Spanish abolitionist debates back, and by placing them within their international context, Sanjurjo offers an insightful study that expands our knowledge of the nineteenth-century imperial conflicts surrounding the end of the slave trade and slavery in the Atlantic world.”
—Manuel Barcia, author of The Yellow Demon of Fever: Fighting Disease in the Nineteenth-Century Transatlantic Slave Trade and West African Warfare in Bahia and Cuba: Soldier Slaves in the Atlantic World, 1807–1844

Sanjurjo “weaves the words of the protagonists with his analysis into a compelling narrative that connects the sudden and seemingly unstoppable growth of the Atlantic slave trade into the Spanish Empire in the first half of the nineteenth century and its sudden and dramatic end in the 1860s.”
—Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History
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“In the Blood of Our Brothers is an eloquently argued analysis of abolitionism in nineteenth-century Spain. Grounded in a skillful close reading of rich archival materials, Sanjurjo sheds new light on Spanish liberalism. His careful unraveling of the, sometimes, contradictory ideologies of liberalism and abolition enriches our understanding of both.”
—Lisa Surwillo, author of Monsters by Trade: Slave Traffickers in Modern Spanish Literature and Culture
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“Sanjurjo has written a fascinating account of the production, circulation, and reception of abolitionist ideas in Spain and its Atlantic dominions. Using a rich set of untapped primary sources, he elegantly outlines the way in which anti-slavery discourses emerged among seemingly disparate groups of actors: liberal parliamentarians, apologists for absolutism, progressive activists, spokesmen for commercial interests, religious figures, and advocates of racial separation. The book provides a vital new addition to the study of abolitionism in the Atlantic World by documenting the Spanish experience as a complement to the better-known British, French and United States movements and reveals it to be fundamentally transnational, self-aware, and interest-driven.”
—Karen Racine, author of Francisco de Miranda: A Transatlantic Life in the Age of Revolution

“This original, well-researched and certain to be field-shaping book traces abolitionist discourse (and anti-slavery ideology, more generally) in the Spanish empire of the first half and middle decades of the nineteenth century. Sanjurjo’s is the first study, building on the work of Josep M. Fradera and the late Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, to study the intersection of liberal ideas and ideas about slavery in a systematic manner, encompassing a wide range of political-economic-religious writers and political actors. This book is distinguished by its clarity of thought and exposition, unusual (and productive) use of archival and published sources, and success in making Spanish intellectual currents accessible and comprehensible to an Anglophone audience. In short, Sanjurjo’s book is a tremendous addition to the historiography.”
—Gabriel Paquette, author of The European Seaborne Empires: From the Thirty Years' War to the Age of Revolutions

 

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