On Freedom and Slavery

Politics and Law in Two Legal Cases in the Río de La Plata Region

Abstract

This article contains an analysis of two legal disputes between two enslaved women and their respective enslavers, in the context of the Río de la Plata region’s independence. The objective is to investigate the way in which these parties mobilized arguments and theories against and in favor of slavery through the lens of conceptual history. This will be done through the native categories of “ arbitrariness”, “fair price”, “liberal”, “freedom”, “property” and “citizen”. Taking into account the key role of racial discrimination in the ideology of these enslavers, a section is dedicated to presenting an approach on how to work with the concept of racism as an analytical category.