Emancipation generally means to free a person from a previous restraint or legal disability. More broadly, it is also used for efforts to procure
economic and social rights,
political rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life o ...
or
equality
Equality may refer to:
Society
* Political equality, in which all members of a society are of equal standing
** Consociationalism, in which an ethnically, religiously, or linguistically divided state functions by cooperation of each group's elit ...
, often for a specifically
disenfranchised
Disfranchisement, also called disenfranchisement, or voter disqualification is the restriction of suffrage (the right to vote) of a person or group of people, or a practice that has the effect of preventing a person exercising the right to vote. D ...
group, or more generally, in discussion of many matters.
Among others,
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
discussed political emancipation in his 1844 essay "
On the Jewish Question
"On the Jewish Question" is a response by Karl Marx to then-current debates over the Jewish question. Marx wrote the piece in 1843, and it was first published in Paris in 1844 under the German title "Zur Judenfrage" in the ''Deutsch–Französi ...
", although often in addition to (or in contrast with) the term ''human emancipation''. Marx's views of political emancipation in this work were summarized by one writer as entailing "equal status of individual citizens in relation to the state,
equality before the law, regardless of religion, property, or other 'private' characteristics of individual people."
"Political emancipation" as a
phrase
In syntax and grammar, a phrase is a group of words or singular word acting as a grammatical unit. For instance, the English expression "the very happy squirrel" is a noun phrase which contains the adjective phrase "very happy". Phrases can consi ...
is less common in modern usage, especially outside academic, foreign or activist contexts. However, similar concepts may be referred to by other terms. For instance, in the United States the
Civil Rights Movement
The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...
culminated in the
Civil Rights Act of 1964, the
Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the
Fair Housing Act of 1968, which can collectively be seen as further realization of events such as the
Emancipation Proclamation and abolition of slavery a century earlier. In the current and former
British West Indies
The British West Indies (BWI) were colonized British territories in the West Indies: Anguilla, the Cayman Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, Montserrat, the British Virgin Islands, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Dominica, Grena ...
islands the holiday
Emancipation Day is celebrated to mark the end of the
Atlantic slave trade.
Etymology
The term ''emancipation'' derives from
ēmancĭpo/
ēmancĭpatio (the act of liberating a child from parental authority) which in turn stems from ''
ē manu
Manu may refer to:
Geography
* Manú Province, a province of Peru, in the Madre de Dios Region
**Manú National Park, Peru
** Manú River, in southeastern Peru
* Manu River (Tripura), which originates in India and flows into Bangladesh
*Manu Tem ...
capere'' ('capture from someone else's hand').
See also
*
Abolitionism
*
Catholic emancipation
Catholic emancipation or Catholic relief was a process in the kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland, and later the combined United Kingdom in the late 18th century and early 19th century, that involved reducing and removing many of the restricti ...
*
Dunmore's Proclamation
Dunmore's Proclamation is a historical document signed on November 7, 1775, by John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore, royal governor of the British Colony of Virginia. The proclamation declared martial law and promised freedom for slaves of American ...
*
Ecclesiastical emancipation
The canon law of the Roman Catholic Church recognizes various meanings of the term ''emancipation''.
As release from ecclesiastical obedience
One was the release of a pupil of a cathedral school, a '' domicellaris'', from subjection to the autho ...
*
Emancipation of minors
Emancipation of minors is a legal mechanism by which a minor before attaining the age of majority is freed from control by their parents or guardians, and the parents or guardians are freed from responsibility for their child. Minors are norm ...
*
Emancipation Proclamation
*
Emancipation reform of 1861 in Russia
*
Emancipist
An emancipist was a convict sentenced and transported under the convict system to Australia, who had been given a conditional or absolute pardon. The term was also used to refer to those convicts whose sentences had expired, and might sometimes ...
*
Emancipation Day
*
Jewish emancipation
Jewish emancipation was the process in various nations in Europe of eliminating Jewish disabilities, e.g. Jewish quotas, to which European Jews were then subject, and the recognition of Jews as entitled to equality and citizenship rights. It in ...
*
Liberation (disambiguation)
Liberation or liberate may refer to:
Film and television
* ''Liberation'' (film series), a 1970–1971 series about the Great Patriotic War
* "Liberation" (''The Flash''), a TV episode
* "Liberation" (''K-9''), an episode
Gaming
* '' Liberati ...
*
Manumission
Manumission, or enfranchisement, is the act of freeing enslaved people by their enslavers. Different approaches to manumission were developed, each specific to the time and place of a particular society. Historian Verene Shepherd states that t ...
*
Political freedom
*
Revolution (disambiguation)
A revolution is a drastic political change that usually occurs relatively quickly. For revolutions which affect society, culture, and technology more than political systems, see social revolution.
Revolution may also refer to:
Aviation
*Warner ...
*
Self-determination
*
Tanzimat
*
Women's suffrage
Women's suffrage is the right of women to vote in elections. Beginning in the start of the 18th century, some people sought to change voting laws to allow women to vote. Liberal political parties would go on to grant women the right to vot ...
*
Youth rights
The youth rights movement (also known as youth liberation) seeks to grant the rights to young people that are traditionally reserved for adults, due to having reached a specific age or sufficient maturity. This is closely akin to the notion o ...
References
Further reading
*Wolfdietrich Schmied-Kowarzi
''Karl Marx as a Philosopher of Human Emancipation'' translated by Dylan C. Stewart
External links
*
{{Western culture