Interview with Rebecca J. Scott: On Latin America

Did you always want to be a historian?  When did you make the decision and why?

Like many members of my generation, I followed a winding path toward a professional career.  I wrote a master’s thesis in 17th century English women’s history, worked as a proofreader for a local newspaper, taught secondary school, and even did a brief stint as a cutter in a fish-packing plant before enrolling in a doctoral program.  I had been involved in the anti-war movement as an undergraduate, and I think it was the 1973 coup d’état in Chile that pushed me toward the full-time study of Latin America.  During my first year as a doctoral student I got an hourly research job working for Ira Berlin and Herbert Gutman, alongside my course work in Latin American history with Stanley Stein.  All three of them were charismatic and committed scholars, and major historians of slave societies. In retrospect, it is no wonder that I was quickly persuaded that the study of slavery and emancipation was both urgent and fascinating.

What are you hoping the reader will get out of your book?

The central focus of Degrees of Freedom is the question: What determines the nature of freedom and the boundaries of citizenship in a society where slavery has recently been abolished?  But rather than addressing this question exclusively with the tools of social science, I have tried to carry the analysis forward by tracing the lives of individuals and families on both sides of the Gulf of Mexico as they sought rights and resources.  I hope that by the end of the book, the reader will understand something of the dynamics of legal and social change – while accepting the fact that I cannot give a clear and simple answer to the “Why?” question.

Did you already know a lot about slavery and abolition before writing this book?

My first book was titled Slave Emancipation in Cuba.  Beginning around 1984, my colleagues Thomas C. Holt and Frederick Cooper and I taught a seminar and ran a research group at the University of Michigan that eventually yielded a big co-edited volume called Societies after Slavery (University of Pittsburgh Press) and a smaller co-authored one called Beyond Slavery (University of North Carolina Press).  So during the time that I was writing Degrees of Freedom the collaborative study of slavery and emancipation was the focus of my teaching as well as my research.  My colleague Martha Jones and I now co-direct a project called “The Law in Slavery and Freedom,” which has given us a new perspective on the ways in which law can frame the possibilities for former slaves’ political participation and public rights.

What kind of research did you do?  Did you visit Cuba?

In 1977 the Carter administration lifted the ban on travel to Cuba, and several U.S.-based historians, including Louis A. Pérez, Jr., Franklin Knight, and myself, began working in archives on the island.  Later my Cuban research expanded to include collaborative fieldwork in the countryside around the city of Cienfuegos, building on documents available in the regional archives.  Between 1997 and 2001, Michael Zeuske, Orlando García and I published some of this collaborative work in Cuba itself.  It has been very gratifying to work with several generations of Cuban historians, and equally gratifying to present essays like “Reclaiming Gregoria’s Mule” (Past and Present 2001) to audiences of people from the region who themselves remember some of the individuals in such local dramas.

Did you enjoy writing this book?  What inspired you to write it? What made you choose the histories of two such (at least on the surface) unrelated places as Louisiana and Cuba?

I began with the hope that a comparative approach to the history of emancipation – in this case, looking at two sugar plantation societies  –  could generate new questions and insights.  Once I got into the project, I realized that these were in fact interconnected societies.  Throughout the 1880s and 1890s people crossed the Gulf from Havana to New Orleans, or traveled from Louisiana to Santiago, Cuba, in pursuit of alliances and resources that could help them gain respect and achieve their goals at home.  Uncovering these itineraries turned the book into a form of connected as well as comparative history.

Did you encounter any major obstacles or setbacks in the course of writing?

The very difficult relations between the United States and Cuba pose a continual obstacle to research.  Every trip requires extensive planning, permissions, and patience.  Normal international scholarly exchange is made even more difficult by the frequent denial by the U.S. State Department of visas to scholars from Cuba. Fortunately I live close to Canada, to which Cuban scholars can travel.  For our most recent conference, the Law in Slavery and Freedom project held sessions on both sides of the Detroit River – some in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and some in Windsor, Ontario – with video-uplink and shuttle buses to help keep the conversations going between those who could enter the United States and those who could not.

What was your reaction when you found out you’d won the Frederick Douglass Book Prize?

Well, every author’s fondest hope is that a book will find its potential readers.  Hearing a prize announcement is a bit like hearing an unexpected trumpet fanfare.  I can hope that people will be curious to read the book to see for themselves what the fuss might be about.