Black Activists in the Fight against Slavery: Transnational Connections, 1865–86

In 1884, Puerto Rican Emeterio Betances wrote a letter to José do Patrocínio, congratulating him on the abolition in Ceará and praising the Brazilian press and Patrocínio himself for having contributed “to this result” and for “continuing the struggle” to free all enslaved people in Brazil. Before that, in 1878, the African-American Reverend Henry Highland Garnet, of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, an important abolitionist society in the United States, congratulated the Cuban Antonio Maceo for having demanded that Spain immediately abolish slavery in Cuba. Based on the correspondence and texts produced by black abolitionists and the documentation generated by the colonial authorities, the aim of this communication is to discuss the transnational political and intellectual networks built by black activists in the struggle for abolition between 1865 and 1886.