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{{For|the dance music events in Ibiza|Manumission (event)}}
{{redirect|Manumit|the boarding school|Manumit School}}
{{distinguish|Manumation}}
{{use dmy dates|date=January 2024}}
{{Slavery}}
[[File:Carta de liberdade, por Antônio Joaquim de Souza Costa ao escravo Geraldo, Arquivo Público do Estado de São Paulo.pdf|thumb|Letter where one can read that the slave Geraldo will be free with the condition of working for another 6 years (Brazil). [[Arquivo Público do Estado de São Paulo|Arquivo Público do Estado de São Paulo|APESP]]]]
'''Manumission''', or '''enfranchisement''', is the act of freeing [[slaves]] by their owners. Different approaches to manumission were developed, each specific to the time and place of a particular society. Historian [[Verene Shepherd]] states that the most widely used term is gratuitous manumission, "the conferment of freedom on the enslaved by enslavers before the end of the slave system".<ref>{{Cite news |last=Shepherd |first=Verene |date=
The motivations for manumission were complex and varied. Firstly, it may present itself as a sentimental and benevolent gesture. One typical scenario was the freeing in the master's [[will (law)|will]] of a devoted servant after long years of service. A trusted [[bailiff]] might be manumitted as a gesture of gratitude. For those working as agricultural labourers or in workshops, there was little likelihood of being so noticed. In general, it was more common for older slaves to be given freedom.
Legislation under the early [[Roman Empire]] put limits on the number of slaves that could be freed in wills (''[[lex Fufia Caninia]]'', 2 BC), which suggests that it had been widely used. Freeing slaves could serve the pragmatic interests of the owner. The prospect of manumission worked as an incentive for slaves to be industrious and compliant. Roman slaves were paid a wage (''[[wiktionary:peculium|peculium]]''), which they could save up to buy themselves freedom. Manumission contracts found, in some abundance at [[Delphi]] (Greece), specify in detail the prerequisites for liberation.
==Ancient Greece==
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''A History of Ancient Greece'' explains that in the context of [[Ancient Greece]], affranchisement came in many forms.<ref name="AHOAG">{{Cite book |last1=Orrieux |first1=Claude |url=https://archive.org/details/historyofancient0000orri |title=A History of Ancient Greece |last2=Pantel |first2=Pauline Schmitt |publisher=Wiley |year=1999 |isbn=978-0-631-20308-7 |page=[https://archive.org/details/historyofancient0000orri/page/187 187] |quote=Affranchise. |access-date=February 12, 2012 |url-access=registration}}</ref> A master choosing to free his slave would most likely do so only "at his death, specifying his desire in his will". In rare cases, slaves who were able to earn enough money in their labour were able to buy their own freedom and were known as ''choris oikointes''. Two 4th-century bankers, [[Pasion]] and Phormion, had been slaves before they bought their freedom. A slave could also be sold fictitiously to a [[sanctuary]] from where a god could enfranchise him. In very rare circumstances, the city could affranchise a slave. A notable example is that [[Athens]] liberated everyone who was present at the [[Battle of Arginusae]] (406 BC).
Even once a slave was freed, he was not generally permitted to become a citizen, but would become a [[metic]]. The master then became the metic's ''prostatès'' (guarantor or guardian).<ref name=AHOAG/><ref name="freedOCD">{{Cite book |last1=Finley |first1=M.I. |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780198661726/page/609 |title=Oxford Classical Dictionary |last2=Treggiari |first2=Susan M. |date=1996 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0198661726 |editor-last=Hornblower |editor-first=Simon |edition=3rd |location=Oxford |page=[https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780198661726/page/609 609] |chapter=Freedmen, Freedwomen |author-link=Moses Finley |editor-last2=Spawforth |editor-first2=Antony}}</ref><ref name="OCDslavery">{{Cite book |last=Bradley |first=Keith R. |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780198661726 |title=Oxford Classical Dictionary |date=1996 |publisher=Oxford University Press |editor-last=Hornblower |editor-first=Simon |edition=3rd |location=Oxford |pages=[https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780198661726/page/1415 1415–1417] |chapter=Slavery |isbn=978-0-19-866172-6 |editor-last2=Spawforth |editor-first2=Antony |url-access=registration}}</ref> The former slave could be bound to some continuing duty to the master<ref name=freedOCD /> and was commonly required to live near the former master (''paramone'').<ref>[http://www.attalus.org/docs/other/inscr_24.html Manumission of Female Slaves at Delphi] at ''attalus.org''.</ref>
==Ancient Rome==
{{See also|Slavery in ancient Rome#Manumission|Ancient Roman Freedmen}}
Under [[Roman law]], a slave had no [[Person (law)|personhood]] and was protected under law mainly as his or her master's property. In [[Ancient Rome]], a slave who had been manumitted was a ''[[libertus]]'' ([[grammatical gender|feminine]] ''liberta'') and a citizen.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Beard & Crawford |title=Rome in the Late Republic |publisher=Duckworth |year=1999 |isbn=978-0715629284 |location=London |pages=41, 48 |orig-year=1985}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Hornblower & Spawforth |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780198661726/page/334 |title=The Oxford Classical Dictionary |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1996 |isbn=978-0198661726 |location=Oxford |pages=[https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780198661726/page/334 334, 609]}}</ref> Manumissions were
[[File:Mariemont manumission relief 02.JPG|thumb|250 px|Relief depicting the manumission of two slaves, with ''[[Pileus (hat)|pileus]]'' hats (1st century BC, [[Musée royal de Mariemont]]).]]
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{{blockquote|The master brought his slave before the ''[[magistratus]]'', and stated the grounds (''[[causa]]'') of the intended manumission. "The lictor of the magistratus laid a rod (''[[festuca]]'') on the head of the slave, accompanied with certain formal words, in which he declared that he was a free man ''ex Jure Quiritium''", that is, "''vindicavit in libertatem''". The master in the meantime held the slave, and after he had pronounced the words "''hunc hominem liberum volo''," he turned him round (momento turbinis exit Marcus Dama, Persius, Sat. V.78) and let him go (''emisit e manu'', or ''misit manu'', Plaut. Capt. II.3.48), whence the general name of the act of manumission. The ''magistratus'' then declared him to be free [...]<ref>Long, George. Entry "[https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/Manumissio.html Manumission]" in William Smith's ''A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities'' (John Murray, London, 1875).</ref>}}
A [[Freedman|freed slave]] customarily took the former owner's family name, which was the ''nomen'' (see [[Roman naming conventions]]) of the master's ''[[gens]]''. The former owner became the [[Patronage in ancient Rome|patron]] (''patronus'') and the freed slave became a client (''cliens'') and retained certain obligations to the former master, who owed certain obligations in return. A freed slave could also acquire multiple patrons.
A freed slave became a citizen. Not all citizens, however, held the same freedoms and privileges. In particular contrast, [[Women in Ancient Rome|women could become citizens]], but female [[Roman citizenship]] did not allow anywhere near the same protections, independence, or rights as men, either in the public or private spheres. In reflection of unwritten, yet strictly enforced contemporary social codes, women were also legally prevented from participating in public and civic society. For example: through the illegality of women voting or holding public office.
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In the [[Upper South]] in the late 18th century, planters had less need for slaves, as they switched from labour-intensive tobacco cultivation to mixed-crop farming. Slave states such as Virginia made it easier for slaveholders to free their slaves. In the two decades after the [[American Revolutionary War]], so many slaveholders accomplished manumissions by deed or in wills that the proportion of free black people to the total number of black people rose from less than 1% to 10% in the Upper South.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Kolchin |first=Peter |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780809015542 |title=American Slavery, 1619–1877 |publisher=Hill and Wang |year=1993 |isbn=978-0-8090-2568-8 |location=New York}}</ref> In Virginia, the proportion of free black people increased from 1% in 1782 to 7% in 1800.<ref>Taylor loc 611</ref> Together with several [[Northern United States#American Civil War|Northern states]] abolishing slavery during that period, the proportion of free black people nationally increased to ~14% of the total black population. New York and New Jersey adopted gradual abolition laws that kept the free children of slaves as indentured servants into their twenties.
After the 1793 invention of the [[cotton gin]], which enabled the development of extensive new areas for cotton cultivation, the number of manumissions decreased because of increased demand for slave labour. In the 19th century, slave revolts such as the [[Haitian Revolution]] of 1791–1804, and especially
== Ottoman Empire ==
[[Slavery in the Ottoman Empire]] gradually became less central to the functions of Ottoman society throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Responding to the influence and pressure of European countries in the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire began taking steps to curtail the [[History of slavery|slave trade]], which had been legally valid under Ottoman law since the beginning of the empire.
[[Ottoman Empire]] policy encouraged manumission of male slaves, but not female slaves.<ref name=autogenerated1>Brunschvig. 'Abd; Encyclopedia of Islam, p. 13.</ref> The most telling evidence for this is found in the gender ratio; among slaves traded in Islamic empire across the centuries, there were roughly two females to every male.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Zilfi |first=Madeline |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oo_AetRkC9UC |title=Women and Slavery in the Late Ottoman Empire: The Design of Difference |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=9780521515832 |edition=reprint |series=Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization |location=New York |publication-date=2010 |page=99 |chapter=Telling the Ottoman slave story |quote=Manumission was encouraged by law and commonly practiced. |access-date=9 February 2021 |year=2010}}</ref>
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* {{Wiktionary-inline}}
* [http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=manumission&searchmode=none Etymology of ''manumission'']
* [https://manumissionproject.omeka.net/ Virginia Manumission Database · Manumission Project]
[[Category:Slavery]]
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