{"id":63744,"date":"2022-05-09T02:53:11","date_gmt":"2022-05-09T02:53:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=63744"},"modified":"2022-05-09T02:53:12","modified_gmt":"2022-05-09T02:53:12","slug":"blurring-the-lines-of-race-freedom-mulattoes-mixed-bloods-in-english-colonial-america-by-a-b-wilkinson-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=63744","title":{"rendered":"Blurring the Lines of Race & Freedom: Mulattoes & Mixed Bloods in English Colonial America\u00a0by A.B. Wilkinson (review)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Blurring the Lines of Race & Freedom: Mulattoes & Mixed Bloods in English Colonial America by A.B. Wilkinson (review)<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Journal of Social History<\/a>
\nVolume 55, Number 3, Spring 2022<\/a>
\npages 801-803<\/p>\n

Max Speare<\/strong><\/a>
\nSaddleback College, Mission Viejo, California<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Blurring the Lines of Race & Freedom: Mulattoes & Mixed Bloods in English<\/a> Colonial America<\/em>. By A.B. Wilkinson<\/a>. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2020. x plus 336 pp. $26.99).<\/strong><\/p>\n

In Blurring the Lines of Race & Freedom<\/em><\/a>, A.B. Wilkinson adds to a growing field of scholarship questioning the genesis of ideas and production of race and social differences in the trans-Atlantic world<\/a>. Wilkinson\u2019s detailed examination looks at the ways mixed-heritage people\u2014or individuals with at least two ancestors from predominantly African, European, and Indigenous backgrounds\u2014shaped legal and cultural understandings of interracial mixture in British North America<\/a>. He focuses on the meeting of communities around the Tidewater Chesapeake<\/a>, the Carolina Lowcountry<\/a>, and the English sugar and coffee plantations in the Caribbean. Despite legislators in these regions governing monoracial categories of colonial subjects as \u201cwhite,\u201d \u201cIndian,\u201d or \u201cNegro,\u201d Wilkinson convincingly argues that people from these blended ancestries and their families complicated racially bound labor systems of enslavement and indentured servitude<\/a>. In so doing, they slowed down elites\u2019 establishment of a solid racial hierarchy from the seventeenth century until the eve of the American Revolution<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Wilkinson\u2019s sources range across multiple genres that reveal Anglo-Americans\u2019 increasing hostility towards people of blended ancestries and interracial relationships. His interrogation of hundreds of fugitive slave and servant advertisements shows some of mixed-heritage people\u2019s strategies for performing freedom and racial passing. Wilkinson uses many court cases showing that mixed-heritage people could successfully challenge the conditions of their labor arrangements through freedom petitions, particularly when Anglo-Americans\u2019 racial thought was in its infancy and when colonial authorities held more lenient notions of hypodescent<\/a>, a concept that served as a forerunner for the United States\u2019s<\/a> one-drop rule<\/a> and miscegenation<\/a> laws. Whether someone achieved manumission<\/a> or lessened indentured service contracts was often based on perceptions about an individual\u2019s proximity to European heritage, and most likely passed on through their mother\u2019s lineage…<\/p>\n

Read or purchase the review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In “Blurring the Lines of Race & Freedom,” A.B. Wilkinson adds to a growing field of scholarship questioning the genesis of ideas and production of race and social differences in the trans-Atlantic world. Wilkinson\u2019s detailed examination looks at the ways mixed-heritage people\u2014or individuals with at least two ancestors from predominantly African, European, and Indigenous backgrounds\u2014shaped legal and cultural understandings of interracial mixture in British North America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5,459,8,6940,20],"tags":[33468,2092,33469],"class_list":["post-63744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-book-reviews","category-history","category-media-archive","category-slavery","category-usa","tag-a-b-wilkinson-2","tag-journal-of-social-history","tag-max-speare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63744"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63745,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63744\/revisions\/63745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}