From 1807 onwards, bilateral slave-trade treaties stipulated how naval squadrons would rescue slaves from slave ships, and how states should arrange the settlement and apprenticeship of these slaves, to transform them into ‘liberated Africans’. Comparing interactions between the state and liberated Africans at sea along the South African and Brazilian coasts, and in the port towns of Cape Town and Salvador, reveals how the legal status of liberated Africans changed over time. Current scholarship has framed liberated Africans in terms of whether they were attributed rights or suffered re-enslavement, and thus focused on their solidarity through claiming rights, ‘ethnic survivals’ or creolization. Instead, this paper argues anti-slave-trade legislation ascribed to liberated Africans a set of unguaranteed entitlements – promises regarding status and treatment without obligating states to uphold that status or treatment. By focusing on the precise aspects of legislation that operated at each point in the process of anti-slave-trade activity – rescuing slaves from slave ships, transportation to a port, processing through a court, and apprenticeship – this paper unearths how the law came into force in the encounter between state officials and liberated Africans, as part of the complex transition from slavery to free labour.

中文翻译：

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反奴隶贸易法，“解放的非洲人”和南大西洋世界的国家，c.1839–1852*

从 1807 年起，双边奴隶贸易条约规定了海军中队如何从奴隶船上营救奴隶，以及各国应如何安排这些奴隶的定居和学徒，以将他们转变为“解放的非洲人”。比较南非和巴西沿海以及开普敦和萨尔瓦多港口城镇的国家与被解放的非洲人在海上的互动，揭示了被解放的非洲人的法律地位是如何随着时间而变化的。当前的学术根据他们是否被赋予权利或遭受重新奴役来界定已解放的非洲人，因此通过主张权利、“种族残余”或克里奥化来关注他们的团结。反而，本文认为，反奴隶贸易立法赋予获得解放的非洲人一系列无保障的权利——关于地位和待遇的承诺，而不要求国家维持这种地位或待遇。通过关注在反奴隶贸易活动过程中的每个环节运作的立法的确切方面——从奴隶船上救出奴隶、运输到港口、通过法庭处理和学徒——这篇论文揭示了法律是如何产生的作为从奴隶制到自由劳动的复杂过渡的一部分，在国家官员和解放的非洲人之间的相遇中生效。