The Slave Ship ‘Maria da Gloria’ and the Bare Life of Blackness in the Age of Emancipation

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article investigates the legal case to emancipate 423 enslaved Africans from the Maria da Gloria, a slaver which was adjudicated in Rio de Janeiro and Sierra Leone in 1833-1834. The arbitration of the Maria da Gloria on both sides of the Atlantic and its triple middle passages constitute one of the most remarkable episodes of the British campaign to end human trafficking in the nineteenth century. It resulted in the restoration of the vessel with its human cargo in 1834 and the death of at least 114 captives under the gaze of authorities who wielded the power of the law – the anti-slavery treaties and domestic law – to emancipate its enslaved men, women, and children from the traffic. Calling for critical inquiry into the mortuary archives of restored vessels, the article argues that registers of liberated Africans, containment policies, and disposal strategies to govern the re-captives after emancipation constitute artifacts of black lives as bare life. It theorises the necropolitics of statelessness and racialised citizenship through a case specific discussion of one means of liberation for enslaved Africans in the Atlantic World.