“They are taking the land from us”: The Defeat of Radical Reconstruction in Rural Cuba, 1898-1912
Samantha Payne, PhD Candidate in History, Harvard University
Graduate Student Commentator: Marcelo Ferraro, PhD Candidate in History, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil
Faculty Commentator: Marial Iglesias Utset,
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Please contact jbarnard@wcfia.harvard.edu for the precirculated paper.
ABSTRACT:
My dissertation project explores the Atlantic history of Reconstruction between 1861 and 1912. I argue that following emancipation, planters and capitalists in the United States, Cuba, and Brazil collaborated to implement racially discriminatory legislation. This wave of state building was designed to counter a black freedom movement that threatened the survival of plantation capitalism in the Atlantic World. My dissertation uses a transnational methodology to challenge two longstanding assumptions in comparative history: first, that a racist legal system emerged in the U.S. after emancipation, but not in Latin America; and second, that these distinct political regimes developed in isolation from one another, within two American “systems.” This literature has overlooked the ways that international collaboration shaped the politics of reconstruction in both the U.S. and Latin America. By tracing out the Atlantic counterrevolution that followed emancipation, my dissertation will explain how race-based legal discrimination emerged across the hemisphere.
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This graduate-faculty research seminar is designed to bring together interested faculty and students on a continuing basis to cover topics on global history. It is part of History 2950A/B, History of Global Capitalism, and includes both reading sessions designed for graduate students and research sessions open to the interested public during which students and faculty participants will present current research. Faculty participants will be drawn from a number of schools, and, most especially, from the group of fellows in global history who are spending the academic year 2019-2020 at the Weatherhead Initiative on Global History. Discussions will be moderated by Professors Sven Beckert and Sophus Reinert.
LOCATION:via Zoom STATUS:CONFIRMED DTSTART:20200323T200000Z DTEND:20200323T220000Z END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR