In the Atlantic world, the “Age of Revolutions” heralded a new era of freedom: across the Americas, the inhabitants of colonies broke ties with their metropolis, abandoned the divine right of monarchies as an organizing principle for the sovereignty of the people, challenged social hierarchies based on birth and race, and even promised an immediate or gradual end to slavery. Yet, despite the emancipatory rhetoric of these revolutions, forms of labor coercion remained in place and were even boosted as the increased demand for sugar, cotton, guano, and coffee, among other commodities, led to an intensification of slavery and indebted labor.

For decades, economic and social historians, later followed by historians of capitalism, have been bringing attention to the fundamental role of unfree work in the Americas’ most dynamic economies. However, other dimensions of labor coercion remain relatively less explored. In this panel, we shift the lens from the direct use of labor coercion in the production of commodities to its role in the production of state authority. As new states emerged from colonial empires, expanded its reach over borderland areas, or redefined its relationship with the metropolis, how did governments reimagine bondage? As the very foundations of political authority were being remade, how did changing understandings of race impact the regulation of work? How did authorities at different levels envision the present and future of labor coercion? How did new states make use of forced laborers to lay claim to new land and exercise their sovereignty? Conversely, how did unfree workers themselves conceive of their role in the formation of new polities?

The panel will prompt a discussion on the extensive systems of labor coercion that made the exercise of sovereignty possible across the Americas. In order to foster a comparative discussion of simultaneous phenomena across political boundaries, the session is purposefully broad in its geographical scope and limited in its chronological framework. Scholars have been selected to represent the political heterogeneity of the Americas after the Age of Revolutions, with case studies reflecting the different political regimes that coexisted in the hemisphere: republics (United States, Paraguay), constitutional monarchies (Brazil), and European colonies (Puerto Rico). Bringing together research on spaces with diverse imperial histories and languages will allow panelists to contrast the uses of unfree work—including slavery, tributary labor, convict labor, military labor, and forced apprenticeships, among others—in state formation across the New World. Themes connecting this panel’s research include the distinct forms of racialization of labor that developed in borderland spaces, the role of military work in the articulation of economic and political spaces, the competition for labor between private and state actors, and the distinct conditions experienced by workers employed by state agencies. Presenters and attendees will consider the potential dialogues between the often-divorced fields of political and labor history, and identify avenues for future research in the Americas and beyond.