Enslavement between Worlds: Manuel Zapata’s Many Captive Mobilities

ABSTRACT Black Africans who were forcibly transported across the Atlantic Ocean experienced myriad forms of coercion alongside the Middle Passage. This article centres on mobilities of Manuel Francisco Zapata, a Black man of Wolof descent, born and raised a Muslim in Meknes, Morocco. Captured and enslaved by the Spanish, he lived for several years in Seville, and was then trafficked to Cartagena de Indias and Panama City before being tried by the Inquisition for ‘Apostatic, Judaic propositions.’ His life narrative allows a glimpse of the multiplicity of captive mobilities—coerced movement through military labour, capture, imprisonment, the trans-Atlantic voyage, arrest, and exile—that enslaved Africans endured. Captivity on the move was central to the condition of enslavement.