Document Type
Article
Author ORCID Identifier
James E. Sanders https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9523-2044
Journal/Book Title/Conference
The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era
Volume
22
Issue
1
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Publication Date
1-6-2023
First Page
41
Last Page
62
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Abstract
As historians have begun to conceptualize the U.S. Civil War as a global event, so too must they consider Reconstruction as a political process that transcended national boundaries. The United States and Colombia both abolished slavery during civil wars; ex-slaves in both societies struggled for full citizenship and landholding, partially succeeding for a time; in both societies, a harsh reaction ripped full citizenship from the freedpeople and denied their claims to the land. These events, usually studied only as part of a national story in either the United States or Colombia, can also be understood, and perhaps be better understood, as a history of hemispheric and transnational processes—of race, of republican politics, of contests over equality, of capitalism. This essay examines the words and actions of historical actors, especially U.S. African Americans and afrocolombianos, to note the impressive commonalities of discourse (which was almost exactly the same in many cases) and political repertoires. This article focuses first on the agency of African Americans in both societies to create post-emancipation social movements for citizenship and land and then on the, largely successful, reactions against these movements.
Recommended Citation
James E. Sanders (2023) “Hemispheric Reconstructions: Post-Emancipation Social Movements and Capitalist Reaction in Colombia and the United States,” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 22, 41–62. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537781422000433
