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REVIEWS
SECTION 4
RACE AND SLAVERY
| Degrees of Freedom: Louisiana and Cuba After Slavery. By Rebecca J. Scott (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005. xi plus 365 pp. $29.95).
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| For scholars of Latin America, the expectations surrounding Rebecca Scott's long-awaited Degrees of Freedom were so high it would seem almost impossible for the actual book to live up to the anticipation; yet this magnificent work will not only satisfy Latin Americanists but also demand attention from the much larger (and historically insular) scholarly audience of U.S. historians. Degrees of Freedom eloquently explores the political, social, and economic worlds of Cuba and Louisiana after slavery, bringing Scott's nuanced interpretative lens to both societies, while also setting a new standard for comparative and connected history that will force historians of the United States to engage Latin American history (and historiography)—without which so much of U.S. history is incomplete— as well as to reconsider their assumptions about post-emancipation society. As in her celebrated Slave Emancipation in Cuba, Scott places slaves and former slaves at the center of her history, while also attentively pursuing how larger structures abetted or inhibited these actors' pursuit of citizenship. Scott is careful to point out the indeterminacy of particular historical moments (which was, after all, how the historical actors themselves experienced their world), but is also not afraid to ascribe causation to various factors in order to explain the differences of post-emancipation Cuba and Louisiana. Instead of pointing to one cause, Scott tries to consider each society holistically—looking at the law, economic conditions, politics, national and racial ideologies, warfare and especially the distinct post-emancipation labor experience in the two areas that emerges as a surprising and convincing factor shaping not only the working day but also the political possibilities of people of color in each society. |
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