SciELO - Scientific Electronic Library Online

 
 número79Los campesinos "fabriqueños" de Los Ángeles, Sonora, y su lucha por el agua en un contexto de aridez, 1938-1955 índice de autoresíndice de materiabúsqueda de artículos
Home Pagelista alfabética de revistas  

Servicios Personalizados

Revista

Articulo

Indicadores

Links relacionados

  • No hay artículos similaresSimilares en SciELO

Compartir


Secuencia

versión On-line ISSN 2395-8464versión impresa ISSN 0186-0348

Resumen

GURZA LAVALLE, Gerardo. Subversion or Cultural Hegemony? Leniency for Slaves Condemned to Death in Virginia, 1800-1860. Secuencia [online]. 2011, n.79, pp.11-38. ISSN 2395-8464.

Penal policy towards slaves in Virginia underwent a process of reforms during the decades leading up to the Civil War. Although the code for slaves was excessively severe, in practice, the authorities made it less harsh by constantly commuting death sentences to deportation. Capital punishment became a punishment for only the most serious crimes alone while most of the slaves condemned to death were actually deported. Most of the historians concerned with the American South has interpreted this leniency as part of efforts by the slave-owning class to increase the legitimacy of their social system as well as their cultural hegemony over southern society as a whole. From this perspective, slave owners were prepared to promote this type of reforms to reduce the ctiticisms and moral questioning of the principal institution in their society. Beyond external attacks from Northern and European abolitionists, the reforms sought to reduce the space for criticism and internal dissidence and ensure domestic consensus on the preservation of slavery. This article questions the assumptions of "hegemonic interpretation" and through a detailed analysis of various cases of slave crime, suggests that reformist attitudes contained anti-slave ideas and attitudes as well as a certain potential to subvert the southern social order.

Palabras llave : Slavery; crime; penal policy; reforms; hegemony; subversion.

        · resumen en Español     · texto en Español     · Español ( pdf )

 

Creative Commons License Todo el contenido de esta revista, excepto dónde está identificado, está bajo una Licencia Creative Commons