Bálint Honos (1999) is a PhD candidate at the Institute for History at Leiden University and the Roosevelt Institute for American Studies (RIAS) in Middelburg. He is researching community organization and Black citizenship in antebellum California (1812-1861).

More information about Bálint Honos

Fields of interest

• North American slavery and emancipation
• History of the West in the United States
• Conceptual History
• Citizenship History
   

Research

Bálint Honos is studying African American communities in early 19th-century California. His dissertation aims to shed light on the often-overlooked historical narrative of slavery in the Far West of the United States. Bálint’s dissertation will illustrate the impact of migration from the slaveholding South and the freer North on the development of a unique culture in urban areas and mining towns in the West. This environment facilitated intra- and cross-cultural civic dialogues among minorities as well as white frontiersmen. Although the California Constitution (1849) prohibited slavery, Black Americans were deprived of full citizenship, voting rights, and the ability to testify in court. In certain instances, moreover, forms of unfree labor persisted. Bálint asserts that marginalized Black communities responded to the politics of exclusion by participating in civic activities. Such activities, e.g., communal discussions, reflected and encouraged involvement in, rather than abandoning, the American civic community. As such, owing to their multicultural makeup relative to the era, the struggles of Far West communities foreshadow the fight for civil rights in the 20th-century, in which Black Americans also strived to be accepted as full citizens.