You are warmly invited to the following seminar jointly hosted by the Institute for the Study of the Americas and the Institute of Commonwealth Studies on Wednesday 30th March:
¡®Free African©\Americans in 18th century Panama City: trade and
identity¡¯
Silvia Espelt Bomb¨ªn, Newcastle University
This is the last seminar of the Caribbean Seminar Series for the spring term: all welcome! Abstract and Bio below.
Date: Weds 30th March
Time: 5pm
Venue: Room 104 (first floor) Senate House, Malet St, London WC1E 7HU. For map go to http://americas.sas.ac.uk/events/events.php?id=9251
Abstract:
During the eighteenth century, Panama City was the site of a series of trade
conflicts between merchants and pedlars. Race and purity of blood (limpieza de sangre)
were two of the main arguments used in order to limit free people of colour's right to trade
in the streets and from shops. Through the analysis of some of these conflicts, this paper
will address the issues of free African©\Americans' individual and collective identity, how they
presented and represented themselves in the public and the legal spheres, as well as how
they were perceived and presented by the Spanish and Creole merchants living and trading
in Panama. In so doing, this paper will re©\assess eighteenth century Panama City's social
relations and the strict race©\based division of the society.
Bio: Dr. Silvia Espelt Bomb¨ªn is a Postdoctoral Teaching Associate at Newcastle University.
She studied History (BA) and Latin American History (MA) at the University of Barcelona, and
has recently graduated with a PhD in History from Newcastle University. She has published
two papers on eighteenth century Panama's social and urban history, and has written the
entries on Panam¨¢ for the Enciclopaedia of Free people of Color in the Americas (edited by
Stewart R. King, forthcoming 2011). She is currently working on an article on free coloured
scribes in colonial Panama, and after plans to revise her PhD thesis for publication.
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