This panel interrogates the ways in which African enslaved and free men and women conceptualized, enacted, and claimed sovereignty, self-governance, and claims to self-rule throughout the early modern Atlantic world. Scholars have rightly charged the field to place political agency at the center of our inquiries, yet vassalage, subjecthood, and citizenship have long been the assumed purview of freed men in the colonial era. Likewise, scholars have indicated that political articulations and governmental visions clearly differed from the Kingdom of Kongo to the stateless regions of Senegambia. This panel further explores how Africans and the Diaspora conceptualized sovereignty, or self-rule, throughout the Atlantic world through a gendered lens. Placing the political goals of enslaved, freed, and free men as well as women at the center of our interrogations, the panelists explore how their resistance and engagement with colonial powers were not merely reactive but constituted active contributions to evolving discourses on authority, governance, and power in the early modern world. By bringing together legal, intellectual, and cultural histories, this panel challenges reductive interpretations of sovereignty as a unilateral imposition by colonial powers or strictly a masculinist domain. Together, the panelists demonstrate how sovereignty was a contested, negotiated, and transregional concept shaped by African and African-descent intellectuals, activists, and political leaders.