This new interpretation of the Brazilian anti-slavery narrative, placing Brazil within the global network of nineteenth-century abolitionist activism, uncovers the broad history of Brazilian anti-slavery activists and the trajectory of their work. The Last Abolition is a major contribution to scholarship on the ending of slavery in Brazil.

Seamlessly entwining archival research and sociological debates, The Last Abolition is a lively and engaging historical narrative that uncovers the broad history of Brazilian anti-slavery activists and the trajectory of their work, from earnest beginnings to eventual abolition. In detailing their principles, alliances and conflicts, Angela Alonso offers a new interpretation of the Brazilian anti-slavery network which, combined, forged a national movement to challenge the entrenched pro-slavery status quo. While placing Brazil within the abolitionist political mobilization of the nineteenth century, the book explores the relationships between Brazilian and foreign abolitionists, demonstrating how ideas and strategies transcended borders. Available for the first time in an English language edition, with a new introduction, this award-winning volume is a major contribution to the scholarship on abolition and abolitionists.

"Seamlessly entwining archival research and sociological debates, The Last Abolition is a lively and engaging historical narrative that uncovers the broad history of Brazilian antislavery activists and the trajectory of their work, from earnest beginnings to eventual abolition. In detailing their principles, alliances and conflicts, Angela Alonso offers a new interpretation of the Brazilian anti-slavery network which, combined, forged a national movement to challenge the entrenched pro-slavery status quo. While placing Brazil within the abolitionist political mobilization of the nineteenth century, the book explores the relationships between Brazilian and foreign abolitionists, demonstrating how ideas and strategies transcended borders. Available for the first time in an English-language edition, with a new introduction, this award-winning volume is a major contribution to the scholarship on abolition and abolitionists"--

“Traces the history of abolition from the 1600s to the 1860s . . . a valuable addition to our understanding of the role of race and racism in America.”—Florida Courier Received historical wisdom casts abolitionists as bourgeois, mostly white reformers burdened by racial paternalism and economic conservatism. Manisha Sinha overturns this image, broadening her scope beyond the antebellum period usually associated with abolitionism and recasting it as a radical social movement in which men and women, black and white, free and enslaved found common ground in causes ranging from feminism and utopian socialism to anti-imperialism and efforts to defend the rights of labor. Drawing on extensive archival research, including newly discovered letters and pamphlets, Sinha documents the influence of the Haitian Revolution and the centrality of slave resistance in shaping the ideology and tactics of abolition. This book is a comprehensive history of the abolition movement in a transnational context. It illustrates how the abolitionist vision ultimately linked the slave’s cause to the struggle to redefine American democracy and human rights across the globe. “A full history of the men and women who truly made us free.”—Ira Berlin, The New York Times Book Review “A stunning new history of abolitionism . . . [Sinha] plugs abolitionism back into the history of anticapitalist protest.”—The Atlantic “Will deservedly take its place alongside the equally magisterial works of Ira Berlin on slavery and Eric Foner on the Reconstruction Era.”—The Wall Street Journal “A powerfully unfamiliar look at the struggle to end slavery in the United States . . . as multifaceted as the movement it chronicles.”—The Boston Globe

By focusing on male leaders of the abolitionist movement, historians have often overlooked the great grassroots army of women who also fought to eliminate slavery. Here, Julie Roy Jeffrey explores the involvement of ordinary women--black and white--in the most significant reform movement prior to the Civil War. She offers a complex and compelling portrait of antebellum women's activism, tracing its changing contours over time. For more than three decades, women raised money, carried petitions, created propaganda, sponsored lecture series, circulated newspapers, supported third-party movements, became public lecturers, and assisted fugitive slaves. Indeed, Jeffrey says, theirs was the day-to-day work that helped to keep abolitionism alive. Drawing from letters, diaries, and institutional records, she uses the words of ordinary women to illuminate the meaning of abolitionism in their lives, the rewards and challenges that their commitment provided, and the anguished personal and public steps that abolitionism sometimes demanded they take. Whatever their position on women's rights, argues Jeffrey, their abolitionist activism was a radical step--one that challenged the political and social status quo as well as conventional gender norms.

For centuries, slaveholding was a commonplace in Brazil among both whites and people of color. Abolition was only achieved in 1888, in an unprecedented, turbulent political process. How was the Abolitionist movement (1879-1888) able to bring an end to a form of labor that was traditionally perceived as both indispensable and entirely legitimate? How were the slaveholders who dominated Brazil's constitutional monarchy compelled to agree to it? To answer these questions, we must understand the elite political world that abolitionism challenged and changed—and how the Abolitionist movement evolved in turn. The Sacred Cause analyzes the relations between the movement, its Afro-Brazilian following, and the evolving response of the parliamentary regime in Rio de Janeiro. Jeffrey Needell highlights the significance of racial identity and solidarity to the Abolitionist movement, showing how Afro-Brazilian leadership, organization, and popular mobilization were critical to the movement's identity, nature, and impact.

The Abolition of Prison provides a reflection from a longtime prison abolitionist, psychoanalyst, and former prisoner on the history, theory, and practice of anti-prison activism in France and globally over the last fifty years. This book powerfully makes the case for the end of prisons, punishment, and guilt and, instead, suggests we work towards social change, care, collectivity. The book weaves together Lesage de La Haye’s own experiences—in prison, as a psychiatrist, and as a social theorist—with the simple argument that, if we take the reasons for prison and punishment at their word, we must evaluate the system as a complete failure. So then why continue to support it and funnel money into it?