Serializing Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1850s Lima: The Cultural Arena and the Intellectual History of Slavery

This paper centers the famous Peruvian serialization of Uncle Tom’s Cabin that appeared in the nation’s most important newspaper, El Comercio, in early 1853. To my knowledge, this was the first serialization of the story in a Latin American periodical. And, yet, while others have acknowledged it amid wider analyses of antislavery politics in Peru, the text itself has yet to receive its proper, detailed consideration. Basic questions remain about how the story was edited, which themes, characters, and chapters were (and were not) reproduced, and how it may have related to the various translations of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel that were simultaneously circulating in Spain. Beyond these questions, of course, there is the issue of reception, which compels us to also look further into the local cultural and intellectual milieu. That is, while this specific serialization fed and reflected the global phenomenon that was “Tom mania,” the local interest in the story must be understood as part of a broader and ongoing reckoning with slavery through the cultural arena. This paper, then, grapples with questions about circulation and translation as a means to also pose new questions about the political and intellectual history of slavery. In addition, it asks how this focus on literary abolitionism can help us rethink the history of African slavery itself, especially at this critical juncture of the mid-nineteenth-century.