Freedoms betwixt and between: Work, revelry and race in the urban post -emancipation Atlantic World. Salvador da Bahia and Havana, 1880--1930

This dissertation examines the "spaces" of work, revelry and race- between 1880 and 1930- in Salvador da Bahia and Havana in order to illuminate the meanings of freedom and community in the post-emancipation Atlantic World.;The post-emancipation period in Brazil and Cuba is conceptualized as "betwixt and between" the final abolition of slavery and the rise of mass urban societies in Latin America; the shift from a predominantly African-born population to a predominantly Brazilian and Cuban-born population of African heritage; from a slave owning ruling class to a capitalist entrepreneurial class; from oligarchic and colonial rule to Republicanism. Large-scale social transformation is analyzed through the actions and struggles of working people in the spaces and gaps within normative ideological and social orders---namely, streetcars, popular festivals, tenement houses, and the life long activism and scholarship of an exceptional individual. Through simultaneous and overlapping struggles over wages, debt, the use of one's time, expressive culture, prices, popular festivals, street markets, religious and political gatherings in private homes, mass protests and violence, formal political representation and historical research- working class and poor men and women, mostly of African descent, used the cultural tools and power available to them to lay claim on, and defend, their visions of freedom and community after slavery.;New languages and concepts about culture, race and nation emerged from these grassroots struggles over work, expressive culture and politics in post-emancipation Salvador da Bahia and Havana. However, not with straightforward or without unintended consequences, and often the outcomes of these struggles were not exactly the same in Brazil and Cuba. Indeed, the meanings of- or uses to which- "African" and "modern" culture, ritual or imaginary could be put varied, and the struggles over them could reinforce as well as challenge entrenched powers.;The juxtaposition of Salvador and Havana challenges studies of Salvador and Havana specifically, and the Atlantic World more broadly, based on reified constructions of "African culture" and "working class politics." This dissertation contributes to the scholarship on the politics and praxis of the "Black Atlantic-" and the historical relationship between Africa and the modern.