Race and Citizenship: The Abolition of Slavery in the Spanish Cortes Debates

The paper will examine the Spanish Cortes debates on the abolition of slavery between 1810 and 1813 and during the second liberal triennium (1820-23). Summoned in 1810 during the war against the French in the peninsula, the Cortes created indeed a parliamentary monarchy and abolished many institutions inherited from the Ancient Regime. Yet, as in other constitutions of the revolutionary Atlantic, slavery was not extinguished by the Cadiz Constitution of 1812. Notwithstanding, both during the constitutional sessions of 1810-13 and those of 1820-23 Spanish and American delegates debated over the possibility of eliminating slavery. The objective of the paper is twofold: on one hand, it will analyze the effects of these debates in the Spanish American colonies; on the other, it will link the debate on the abolition of slavery to that on the free people of color’s status. The end of slavery posed indeed a very serious problem in this regard. While bonded status established a clear limit to citizenship, the process of abolition led to the question of what was to be done with the new subjects: whether to promote them to the rank of citizen or exclude them entirely from citizenship rights. Even though the Cortes did not abolish slavery, the choice ambiguously fell on the second option.