Manumission: Difference between revisions

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→‎top: While this is likely true enough, the lede is a summary of the article, yet there are no details on slavery in Arabia. Citing folklore also seems sketchy to say the least.
m Add wiki-link to manumission tax (Vicesima libertatis)
 
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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=February 24, February 2008 |title=Freedom in the era of slavery: The case of the Barclay brothers in Jamaica |work=old.jamaica-gleaner.com |publisher=Jamaica Gleaner Online |url=http://old.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20080224/news/news3.html |access-date=15 January 2018}}</ref>
 
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.
 
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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{{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 taxedsubject to a [[Vicesima libertatis|state tax]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Harrsch |first=Mary |date=2016-03-16 |title=Roman Slavery and the Rate of Manumission |url=https://ancientimes.blogspot.com/2016/03/roman-slavery-and-rate-of-manumission.html |access-date=2020-12-04 |website=Roman Times}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Zelnick-Abramovitz |first=Rachel |url=https://brill.com/view/title/24276 |title=Taxing Freedom in Thessalian Manumission Inscriptions |date=2013-09-05 |publisher=Brill |isbn=978-90-04-25662-0 |language=en}}</ref>
 
[[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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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, the 1831 rebellion, led by [[Nat Turner]], increased slaveholders' fears, and. mostMost Southern states passed laws making manumission nearly impossible until the passage of the 1865 [[Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution]], which abolished slavery [[penal labour in the United States|"except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted,"]] after the [[American Civil War]]. In [[Antebellum South Carolina|South Carolina]], to free a slave required permission of the [[South Carolina Legislature|state legislature]]; Florida law prohibited manumission altogether.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Dresser |first=Amos |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NLihDvDkO2UC |title=The narrative of Amos Dresser : with Stone's letters from Natchez, an obituary notice of the writer, and two letters from Tallahassee, relating to the treatment of slaves |publisher=[[American Anti-Slavery Society]] |year=1836 |location=New-York |page=41 |chapter=Slavery in Florida |author-link=Amos Dresser}}</ref>
 
Of the [[Founding Fathers of the United States]], as defined by the historian [[Richard B. Morris]], the Southerners were the major slaveholders, but Northerners also held slaves, generally in smaller numbers, as domestic servants. [[John Adams]] owned none. [[George Washington]] freed his own slaves in his will (his wife independently held numerous [[dower]] slaves). [[Thomas Jefferson]] freed five slaves in his will, and the remaining 130 were sold to settle his estate debts. [[James Madison]] did not free his slaves, and some were sold to pay off estate debts, but his widow and her son retained most to work [[Montpelier (Orange, Virginia)|Montpelier]] plantation. [[Alexander Hamilton]]'s slave ownership is unclear, but it is most likely that he was of the abolitionist ideal, as he served as an officer of the [[New York Manumission Society]]. [[John Jay]] founded the society and freed his domestic slaves in 1798; the same year, as [[Governor of New York]], he signed the ''[[Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery]]''. [[John Dickinson (Pennsylvania and Delaware)|John Dickinson]] freed his slaves between 1776 and 1786, the only Founding Father to do so during that time.
 
== 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]]