Dr Chloe Ireton awarded the William Nelson Prize by The Renaissance Society of America

We are absolutely delighted that UCL History's Dr Chloe Ireton has been awarded The Renaissance Society of America William Nelson Prize, which is an annual award for the best article published in Renaissance Quarterly during the preceding calendar year and that appeals to readers of more than one discipline.

The Renaissance Society of America is the largest international academic society devoted to the study of the era 1300–1700, bringing together thousands of scholars from around the globe. The Renaissance Quarterly is the leading American journal of Renaissance studies that encourages connections between different scholarly approaches to bring together material spanning the period from 1300 to 1700.

Chloe Ireton’s article, “Black Africans' Freedom Litigation Suits to Define Just War and Just Slavery in the Early Spanish Empire” traces how some enslaved Black Guineans litigated for their freedom in Spanish royal courts in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century on the basis that—as Christians—they had been unjustly enslaved in Africa. These freedom litigation suits illuminate how enslaved Black Guineans spearheaded broader transatlantic discourses that sought to place limits on the legality and justifications of slavery. This exploration of enslaved Africans’ impact on the discursive landscapes of the Iberian cities where they resided goes some way to position Black Africans as important actors in the intellectual history of the Atlantic world, in this particular case, within discourses of just war and illegitimate enslavement and the discursive landscapes of the various locales where they lived.

The article can be accessed here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/renaissance-quarterly/article/black-africans-freedom-litigation-suits-to-define-just-war-and-just-slavery-in-the-early-spanish-empire/33FFB4838DC1B7636A68A1891617592D