Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
Before the abolitionist movements of the eighteenth century, a Spanish Capuchin missionary in Havana risked imprisonment to author the first antislavery treatise written in the Americas.
Written in 1681 by Spanish missionary Francisco José de Jaca, Resolution on the Freedom of Blacks and Their Descendants offers an unprecedented look into early abolitionist thought. Jaca sharply departs from his contemporaries by demanding the total criminalization of the institution of slavery and mandatory economic restitution for enslaved individuals and their offspring. Strikingly, the text is also the first known document in the Americas to conceptualize a legal understanding of “human rights” (humanos derechos).
This critical edition offers an in-depth introduction to the missionary life of the Capuchin friar, along with a thorough analysis of the moral, theological, and legal debates surrounding transatlantic slavery in the Ibero-Atlantic world. Editors Rebeca Moreno and Carl Good, along with contributor Miguel Anxo Pena González, illuminate the historical, philosophical, and theological contexts of the early modern imperial and colonial realms, providing contemporary readers with valuable insights into the foundations of early antislavery discourse.
By making this treatise accessible to English-speaking researchers, this book restores a long-forgotten text to the histories of global human rights, Atlantic history, and religious reform, demonstrating that the conceptual framework for human dignity and reparations was forged not during the European Enlightenment but within the crucible of seventeenth-century colonial resistance.
“The Resolution is an important document in the history of antislavery. This translation and introductory study make this key document available to researchers and curious readers in English for the first time. A must read!” —Miguel A. Valerio, author of Sovereign Joy
“For the first time, the oldest abolitionist tract, which unequivocally denounces the Atlantic slave trade, is available translated into English. The editors provide erudite contextualization for the translation by highlighting the tradition of Spanish theologians and jurists whose writings led to Jaca’s lifelong activism to dismantle the trade of enslaved Africans to the Americas, as well as his collaboration with African antislavery activists.” —Nicole von Germeten, author of Black Blood Brothers
Francisco José de Jaca (ca. 1645–ca. 1690) was a Capuchin missionary from the Spanish province of Aragón. Alongside Epifanio de Moirans, he is regarded as one of the first abolitionists in the Americas.
Rebeca Moreno is an international education professional and educator at the University of Maryland. Her research and publications focus on seventeenth-century antislavery narratives of the Hispanic Caribbean, exploring themes of legal theory, human rights, and cross-cultural intellectual history.
Carl Good previously served as a Spanish professor at Emory University and Indiana University Bloomington and currently works as an independent academic translator and editor. He has published on colonial and contemporary Hispanic literature, including articles on Cervantes and Sor Juana.
Acknowledgments
Notes on the Translation
Introduction
Resolution on the Freedom of Blacks and Their Descendants, in a State of Paganism and Then as Christians
Notes
Bibliography
Index