Black Communities Have Had to Pay for the Failures of Emancipation

Kris Manjapra speaks to Ellie Cawthorne about his new book, which explores how emancipations of enslaved people have left troubled legacies that still endure today

- By Ellie Cawthorne

Ellie Cawthorne: You argue in Black Ghost of Empire that the history of emancipation from slavery is not a story of endings, but unending. What do you mean by that?

Kris Manjapra: We tend to think of the ending of slavery as a once-and-done” moment. But in fact, there was a long period, spanning around 100 years, during which there were various different moments of emancipation. And when you look closely at all those events, as my book does, you can identify a throughline. You see that rather than the end of slavery disrupting the racial caste system, the ways in which emancipations played out in reality actually conspired to perpetuate it. Emancipation processes provided failed pathways to justice for people who had been enslaved, in a way that was often intentional.

You look at different emancipations across the globe and categorise them into types. Could you outline those?

It may come as a surprise to learn that the very first emancipations were actually in the American North - around Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York. 1780 in Philadelphia was a germination moment in which a particular template for emancipation emerged: the “gradual emancipation” model. This was a process whereby enslaved adults would continue to live in slavery for the rest of their lives. Children born into slavery could look forward to freedom, but that freedom would only be given after a long period of enslavement - potentially 18 to 25 years. That was the basic model for gradual emancipations across the American North.