The preamble to the first comprehensive English slave code—passed in Barbados in 1661—justified the creation of this set of laws by arguing that in all of the “Lawes of England” there was “noe tract to guide us where to walke, nor any rule sett us, how to governe such Slaves.”1 This would suggest, as some colonial American historians have surmised, that slavery constituted a radical departure from English legal traditions. Lee B. Wilson’s Bonds of Empire offers a counterpoint. By looking at a more comprehensive set of legal practices undergirding slavery in the British Atlantic, Wilson is able to stress the continuity of English legal systems in the development of colonial slave law. She argues that colonial slave law was not “a legal aberration” (3) or “beyond the pale of English imperial legal history” (5); rather, it “was a natural extension” of the English “legal system” (10). Bonds of Empire is nominally about slave law in South Carolina, but it is really much broader and more ambitious because Wilson extends her analysis to the Caribbean colonies—particularly Jamaica—and to the maritime world. Her book follows a loose chronological trajectory from the late seventeenth century through the end of the eighteenth century. The chapters trace that arc while remaining thematically organized around the concepts embedded in private law sources such as the conditional bonds used to transfer enslaved property, the records of the Vice-Admiralty Courts, and the records of the Board of Police, which governed Charleston during the American Revolution. Wilson relies on her legal training to shed light on how these records, which most scholars have overlooked, illuminate practices related to slavery. By focusing on such sources, Wilson offers a deeper appreciation of the ways in which English law buttressed the colonists’ “commercial need to treat slaves as things” (261). Bonds of Empire clearly demonstrates that the prescriptive slave codes that have drawn so much attention from slavery historians were only a narrow subset of a far more expansive body of slave law. “Bloody and punitive,” the slave codes addressed the slaves as potential criminal actors in need of social control, and they focused on “stripping enslaved people of the rights” (10) of freeborn English people. The “viscerally shocking” nature of these
1661年在巴巴多斯(Barbados)通过的第一部全面的英国奴隶法典的序言为这一套法律的制定辩护说，在所有的“英格兰法律”中，“没有一条路指引我们走到哪里，也没有一条规则规定我们如何管理这些奴隶”。正如一些殖民时期的美国历史学家所推测的那样，这意味着奴隶制彻底背离了英国的法律传统。李·b·威尔逊(Lee B. Wilson)的《帝国债券》(Bonds of Empire)提供了一个对应的观点。通过对英属大西洋地区支持奴隶制的一整套更全面的法律实践的考察，威尔逊能够强调英国法律体系在殖民地奴隶法发展中的连续性。她认为，殖民奴隶法不是“法律上的偏差”(3)或“超出了英国帝国法律史的范围”(5);相反，它是英国“法律体系”的“自然延伸”(10)。《帝国的枷锁》名义上讲的是南卡罗来纳的奴隶法，但实际上它的范围更广，也更有野心，因为威尔逊将她的分析扩展到了加勒比殖民地——尤其是牙买加——以及海洋世界。她的书从17世纪晚期到18世纪末期，按时间顺序大致展开。这些章节追溯了这条弧，同时围绕私法来源中嵌入的概念进行主题组织，例如用于转让奴隶财产的有条件债券，副海军部法院的记录，以及美国独立战争期间管理查尔斯顿的警察委员会的记录。威尔逊依靠她的法律训练来阐明这些被大多数学者忽视的记录是如何阐明与奴隶制有关的做法的。通过对这些来源的关注，威尔逊对英国法律如何支持殖民者“将奴隶视为物品的商业需要”(261)提供了更深入的认识。《帝国的束缚》清楚地表明，引起奴隶制历史学家如此多关注的规范性奴隶法典，只是奴隶法的一个狭窄的子集。《奴隶法典》“血腥而严厉”，将奴隶视为需要社会控制的潜在罪犯，重点是“剥夺被奴役的人”与出生自由的英国人的权利。这些“发自内心的震惊”的本质
{"title":"Bonds of Empire: The English Origins of Slave Law in South Carolina and British Plantation America, 1660–1783 by Lee B. Wilson (review)","authors":"Justin Roberts","doi":"10.1353/wmq.2022.0029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wmq.2022.0029","url":null,"abstract":"The preamble to the first comprehensive English slave code—passed in Barbados in 1661—justified the creation of this set of laws by arguing that in all of the “Lawes of England” there was “noe tract to guide us where to walke, nor any rule sett us, how to governe such Slaves.”1 This would suggest, as some colonial American historians have surmised, that slavery constituted a radical departure from English legal traditions. Lee B. Wilson’s Bonds of Empire offers a counterpoint. By looking at a more comprehensive set of legal practices undergirding slavery in the British Atlantic, Wilson is able to stress the continuity of English legal systems in the development of colonial slave law. She argues that colonial slave law was not “a legal aberration” (3) or “beyond the pale of English imperial legal history” (5); rather, it “was a natural extension” of the English “legal system” (10). Bonds of Empire is nominally about slave law in South Carolina, but it is really much broader and more ambitious because Wilson extends her analysis to the Caribbean colonies—particularly Jamaica—and to the maritime world. Her book follows a loose chronological trajectory from the late seventeenth century through the end of the eighteenth century. The chapters trace that arc while remaining thematically organized around the concepts embedded in private law sources such as the conditional bonds used to transfer enslaved property, the records of the Vice-Admiralty Courts, and the records of the Board of Police, which governed Charleston during the American Revolution. Wilson relies on her legal training to shed light on how these records, which most scholars have overlooked, illuminate practices related to slavery. By focusing on such sources, Wilson offers a deeper appreciation of the ways in which English law buttressed the colonists’ “commercial need to treat slaves as things” (261). Bonds of Empire clearly demonstrates that the prescriptive slave codes that have drawn so much attention from slavery historians were only a narrow subset of a far more expansive body of slave law. “Bloody and punitive,” the slave codes addressed the slaves as potential criminal actors in need of social control, and they focused on “stripping enslaved people of the rights” (10) of freeborn English people. The “viscerally shocking” nature of these","PeriodicalId":51566,"journal":{"name":"WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41266642","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Aviva Ben-Ur’s Jewish Autonomy in a Slave Society: Suriname in the Atlantic World, 1651–1825 is a robust historical study of Suriname’s Jews during the colonial period. Her work, novel in its depth and methodology, adds to a growing body of scholarship on Caribbean Jews.1 Ben-Ur traces the settlement of Jews in Suriname, the establishment of the famed Jodensavanne (Jewish Savannah), and the political and social changes that the community experienced over nearly two centuries. What sets Ben-Ur’s monograph apart is her commitment to situating Jews as part of the story of the Americas. Furthermore, her focus on the community of Eurafrican Jews—who were “a distinct and separate class” (261), unlike in any other American colony—is innovative and compelling in itself and also powerfully deepens her narrative of Jewish rootedness and creolization. Suriname is an unusually rich site of inquiry in Jewish history for several reasons. Jews there were distinctive in their record keeping as “the only ethnic group outside of the nominally Dutch Reformed Protestant government who created serial records that stretch across the entire period of slavery and beyond” (16–17). Additionally, Jews constituted “one-third, and in the first half of the nineteenth century up to one-half to two-thirds, of the white population” (17), a density of Jewish population that was unusual in Europe and unique in the Americas. Finally, the Jews of colonial Suriname “were exceptional among their Atlantic coreligionists in that they admitted a significant number of Eurafricans (and, to a lesser extent, Africans) into their community and regarded them as bona fide Jews” (17).
Aviva Ben Ur的《奴隶社会中的犹太人自治：大西洋世界中的苏里南，1651-1825》是对殖民时期苏里南犹太人的有力历史研究。她的作品在深度和方法上都很新颖，为越来越多的关于加勒比犹太人的研究增添了新的内容。1本·乌尔追溯了犹太人在苏里南的定居、著名的犹太萨凡纳的建立，以及该社区近两个世纪来经历的政治和社会变革。本·乌尔专著的与众不同之处在于，她致力于将犹太人作为美洲故事的一部分。此外，她对欧非裔犹太人社区的关注——他们是“一个独特而独立的阶级”（261），与其他任何美国殖民地不同——本身就具有创新性和吸引力，也有力地加深了她对犹太人根深蒂固和克里奥尔化的叙述。苏里南在犹太历史上是一个异常丰富的调查地点，原因有几个。那里的犹太人在记录保存方面与众不同，他们是“名义上的荷兰改革派新教政府之外唯一一个创造了贯穿整个奴隶制时期及以后的系列记录的民族”（16-17）。此外，犹太人占“白人人口的三分之一，在19世纪上半叶高达二分之一至三分之二”（17），这种犹太人口密度在欧洲是不寻常的，在美洲也是独一无二的。最后，殖民地苏里南的犹太人“在他们的大西洋核心宗教主义者中是杰出的，因为他们接纳了大量的欧洲非洲人（以及在较小程度上的非洲人）进入他们的社区，并将他们视为真正的犹太人”（17）。
{"title":"Jewish Autonomy in a Slave Society: Suriname in the Atlantic World, 1651–1825 by Aviva Ben-Ur (review)","authors":"Hilit Surowitz-Israel","doi":"10.1353/wmq.2022.0033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wmq.2022.0033","url":null,"abstract":"Aviva Ben-Ur’s Jewish Autonomy in a Slave Society: Suriname in the Atlantic World, 1651–1825 is a robust historical study of Suriname’s Jews during the colonial period. Her work, novel in its depth and methodology, adds to a growing body of scholarship on Caribbean Jews.1 Ben-Ur traces the settlement of Jews in Suriname, the establishment of the famed Jodensavanne (Jewish Savannah), and the political and social changes that the community experienced over nearly two centuries. What sets Ben-Ur’s monograph apart is her commitment to situating Jews as part of the story of the Americas. Furthermore, her focus on the community of Eurafrican Jews—who were “a distinct and separate class” (261), unlike in any other American colony—is innovative and compelling in itself and also powerfully deepens her narrative of Jewish rootedness and creolization. Suriname is an unusually rich site of inquiry in Jewish history for several reasons. Jews there were distinctive in their record keeping as “the only ethnic group outside of the nominally Dutch Reformed Protestant government who created serial records that stretch across the entire period of slavery and beyond” (16–17). Additionally, Jews constituted “one-third, and in the first half of the nineteenth century up to one-half to two-thirds, of the white population” (17), a density of Jewish population that was unusual in Europe and unique in the Americas. Finally, the Jews of colonial Suriname “were exceptional among their Atlantic coreligionists in that they admitted a significant number of Eurafricans (and, to a lesser extent, Africans) into their community and regarded them as bona fide Jews” (17).","PeriodicalId":51566,"journal":{"name":"WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49356533","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Underwriters of the United States: How Insurance Shaped the American Founding by Hannah Farber (review)","authors":"Jessica M. Lepler","doi":"10.1353/wmq.2022.0036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wmq.2022.0036","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51566,"journal":{"name":"WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48393296","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Andrew J. Walker, Ana María Silva Campo, J. Manners, J. Hébrard, R. Scott
Abstract:In 1809 more than three thousand people were claimed as slaves upon arrival in Louisiana, in violation of the 1807 U.S. law against the international trade in persons to be held or sold as slaves. Having lived as free persons in Saint Domingue since the revolutionary emancipations of the 1790s, these people had been swept into a large exodus of war refugees in 1803, as the Napoleonic expeditionary assault ravaged the colony. When France and Spain went to war in 1808, the Spanish government in Cuba expelled the "French" refugees. More than ten thousand soon made their way toward Louisiana. Before their departure, one hundred prosperous white refugees penned a petition to President James Madison, seeking to bring into the United States those whom they coyly described as their "domestics." In June 1809 the U.S. Congress passed, and the president signed, a law granting the requested "remission of penalties" for those from Saint Domingue via Cuba who had violated the 1807 law. The Louisiana legislature, in turn, authorized putative owners to buy and sell those they now claimed as slaves. The dynamics of these acts of peremptory enslavement reframe our understanding of Caribbean connections in the early U.S. Republic, and of the 1807 law.
{"title":"Impunity for Acts of Peremptory Enslavement: James Madison, the U.S. Congress, and the Saint Domingue Refugees","authors":"Andrew J. Walker, Ana María Silva Campo, J. Manners, J. Hébrard, R. Scott","doi":"10.1353/wmq.2022.0032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wmq.2022.0032","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In 1809 more than three thousand people were claimed as slaves upon arrival in Louisiana, in violation of the 1807 U.S. law against the international trade in persons to be held or sold as slaves. Having lived as free persons in Saint Domingue since the revolutionary emancipations of the 1790s, these people had been swept into a large exodus of war refugees in 1803, as the Napoleonic expeditionary assault ravaged the colony. When France and Spain went to war in 1808, the Spanish government in Cuba expelled the \"French\" refugees. More than ten thousand soon made their way toward Louisiana. Before their departure, one hundred prosperous white refugees penned a petition to President James Madison, seeking to bring into the United States those whom they coyly described as their \"domestics.\" In June 1809 the U.S. Congress passed, and the president signed, a law granting the requested \"remission of penalties\" for those from Saint Domingue via Cuba who had violated the 1807 law. The Louisiana legislature, in turn, authorized putative owners to buy and sell those they now claimed as slaves. The dynamics of these acts of peremptory enslavement reframe our understanding of Caribbean connections in the early U.S. Republic, and of the 1807 law.","PeriodicalId":51566,"journal":{"name":"WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43660794","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In January 1774, the Boston News-Letter published paired notices by a husband, “Loyalty,” and his wife, “American Liberty” (206). Loyalty criticized his wife’s “licentious” (206) conduct and disavowed responsibility for her debts; Liberty countered that Loyalty had breached the terms of their marriage contract. These advertisements framed contemporary political debates by imitating a recurring component of midcentury newspapers: the desertion or elopement notices through which spouses publicized and defended informal separations.1 At first glance, Liberty’s and Loyalty’s announcements lend support to historical narratives that revolutionary ideologies destabilized notions of patriarchal authority. Yet as Kirsten Sword contends in Wives Not Slaves, deeper analysis confounds this interpretation. As she observes, the notices, which appeared in a loyalist rather than a patriot newspaper, ultimately underscored the power of marital bonds by suggesting that the couple should resolve their differences privately. Furthermore, colonial readers understood the News-Letter’s parody only because it continued long-standing discourses about the nature of patriarchal authority. In Sword’s telling, these conversations spanned the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries, encompassing both sides of the Atlantic, and linked men’s authority over all dependents, including wives, servants, and slaves. Within this framework, the revolutionary era appears not as a turning point but rather as one of many moments in which household heads and lawmakers subtly reinvented patriarchy’s forms. Sword’s reappraisal of Liberty’s and Loyalty’s notices represents the sort of fine-grained, contextualized analysis at which she most excels. She assembles close readings of court records, legal treatises, and notices in newspapers in order to evaluate conceptions of patriarchal authority in seventeenthand eighteenth-century British North America. Though the book originated in the observation that colonial newspapers often included spouses’ desertion notices alongside advertisements for runaway servants and slaves, Sword’s primary contributions concern the history of the institution of marriage. Above all, Sword argues that the colonial and revolutionary eras were characterized by “continuities in practices of local justice” (286) that upheld husbandly power and limited wives’ recourse. The revolutionary era’s new discourses of
{"title":"Wives Not Slaves: Patriarchy and Modernity in the Age of Revolutions by Kirsten Sword (review)","authors":"Sara T. Damiano","doi":"10.1353/wmq.2022.0028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wmq.2022.0028","url":null,"abstract":"In January 1774, the Boston News-Letter published paired notices by a husband, “Loyalty,” and his wife, “American Liberty” (206). Loyalty criticized his wife’s “licentious” (206) conduct and disavowed responsibility for her debts; Liberty countered that Loyalty had breached the terms of their marriage contract. These advertisements framed contemporary political debates by imitating a recurring component of midcentury newspapers: the desertion or elopement notices through which spouses publicized and defended informal separations.1 At first glance, Liberty’s and Loyalty’s announcements lend support to historical narratives that revolutionary ideologies destabilized notions of patriarchal authority. Yet as Kirsten Sword contends in Wives Not Slaves, deeper analysis confounds this interpretation. As she observes, the notices, which appeared in a loyalist rather than a patriot newspaper, ultimately underscored the power of marital bonds by suggesting that the couple should resolve their differences privately. Furthermore, colonial readers understood the News-Letter’s parody only because it continued long-standing discourses about the nature of patriarchal authority. In Sword’s telling, these conversations spanned the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries, encompassing both sides of the Atlantic, and linked men’s authority over all dependents, including wives, servants, and slaves. Within this framework, the revolutionary era appears not as a turning point but rather as one of many moments in which household heads and lawmakers subtly reinvented patriarchy’s forms. Sword’s reappraisal of Liberty’s and Loyalty’s notices represents the sort of fine-grained, contextualized analysis at which she most excels. She assembles close readings of court records, legal treatises, and notices in newspapers in order to evaluate conceptions of patriarchal authority in seventeenthand eighteenth-century British North America. Though the book originated in the observation that colonial newspapers often included spouses’ desertion notices alongside advertisements for runaway servants and slaves, Sword’s primary contributions concern the history of the institution of marriage. Above all, Sword argues that the colonial and revolutionary eras were characterized by “continuities in practices of local justice” (286) that upheld husbandly power and limited wives’ recourse. The revolutionary era’s new discourses of","PeriodicalId":51566,"journal":{"name":"WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48437197","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This American classic is the only full-length book written and published by Thomas Jefferson during his lifetime. Written in 1781, Notes on the State of Virginia was begun by Jefferson as a commentary on the resources and institutions of his home state, but the work's lasting value lies in its delineation of Jefferson's major philosophical, political, scientific, and ethical beliefs. Along with his accounts of such factual matters as North American flora and fauna, Jefferson expounds his views on slavery, education, religious freedom, representative government, and the separation of church and state. The book is the best single statement of Jefferson's principles and the best reflection of his wide-ranging tastes and talents. This edition, meticulously edited by William Peden, was originally published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1955. |The first edition of this compendium of place names in North Carolina appeared to wide acclaim in 1968 and has remained an essential reference for anyone with a serious interest in the Tar Heel State, from historians to journalists, from creative writers to urban planners, from backpackers to armchair travelers. This revised and expanded edition adds approximately 1,200 new entries, bringing to nearly 21,000 the number of North Carolina cities, towns, crossroads, waterways, mountains, and other places identified here.
{"title":"Notes on the State of Virginia","authors":"T. Jefferson","doi":"10.5962/BHL.TITLE.33567","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5962/BHL.TITLE.33567","url":null,"abstract":"This American classic is the only full-length book written and published by Thomas Jefferson during his lifetime. Written in 1781, Notes on the State of Virginia was begun by Jefferson as a commentary on the resources and institutions of his home state, but the work's lasting value lies in its delineation of Jefferson's major philosophical, political, scientific, and ethical beliefs. Along with his accounts of such factual matters as North American flora and fauna, Jefferson expounds his views on slavery, education, religious freedom, representative government, and the separation of church and state. The book is the best single statement of Jefferson's principles and the best reflection of his wide-ranging tastes and talents. This edition, meticulously edited by William Peden, was originally published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1955. |The first edition of this compendium of place names in North Carolina appeared to wide acclaim in 1968 and has remained an essential reference for anyone with a serious interest in the Tar Heel State, from historians to journalists, from creative writers to urban planners, from backpackers to armchair travelers. This revised and expanded edition adds approximately 1,200 new entries, bringing to nearly 21,000 the number of North Carolina cities, towns, crossroads, waterways, mountains, and other places identified here.","PeriodicalId":51566,"journal":{"name":"WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-04-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83012925","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This article examines the story of Elisha Webb, an African-descended woman who was born free (ca. 1716) on Virginia's Eastern Shore. In 1737, she was illegally sold into slavery and trafficked to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Webb's efforts to regain her free status, which she successfully obtained in 1742, illustrate the politics of African American legal claims to freedom in early North America. Although individuals such as Webb accomplished vital work in gaining their liberty, too often we have understood their claims to freedom as politically inchoate. By blending microhistory, legal history, and biography, the article reconceptualizes prerevolutionary freedom suits as part of the long trajectory of Black antislavery politics. Cases such as Webb's reframe prerevolutionary freedom suits as arising from a vernacular tradition that provided one point of origin for abolition. Webb's freedom suit makes visible three key areas of this vernacular tradition—the collective, portable, and instrumental legal knowledge in Black communities; the role of networks within Black communities and across Black and white neighborhoods; and the distinctive position of Black women in antislavery work.
{"title":"The Trafficking of Elisha Webb: Black Freedom Claims in British North America","authors":"Terri L. Snyder","doi":"10.1353/wmq.2022.0024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wmq.2022.0024","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article examines the story of Elisha Webb, an African-descended woman who was born free (ca. 1716) on Virginia's Eastern Shore. In 1737, she was illegally sold into slavery and trafficked to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Webb's efforts to regain her free status, which she successfully obtained in 1742, illustrate the politics of African American legal claims to freedom in early North America. Although individuals such as Webb accomplished vital work in gaining their liberty, too often we have understood their claims to freedom as politically inchoate. By blending microhistory, legal history, and biography, the article reconceptualizes prerevolutionary freedom suits as part of the long trajectory of Black antislavery politics. Cases such as Webb's reframe prerevolutionary freedom suits as arising from a vernacular tradition that provided one point of origin for abolition. Webb's freedom suit makes visible three key areas of this vernacular tradition—the collective, portable, and instrumental legal knowledge in Black communities; the role of networks within Black communities and across Black and white neighborhoods; and the distinctive position of Black women in antislavery work.","PeriodicalId":51566,"journal":{"name":"WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45002535","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:Late in the War for Independence, Continental soldiers from New England and mid-Atlantic regiments traveled through unfamiliar southern states. As they campaigned in Virginia and the Carolinas, these outsiders commented on enslavers and enslaved people in their letters and journals—and later in their memoirs. Existing scholarship has incorrectly connected these wartime observations by outsiders with the rising antislavery sentiments of the revolutionary era. Though some northern soldiers did note regional differences in slavery with surprise and disapproval, these reactions were not static. What they chose to record was powerfully shaped by the state of the war; their relationships with inhabitants, white and Black; and the expectations for the texts in which they penned these observations. These soldiers' writings about slavery changed as their relationships with southern inhabitants evolved. They embraced their white countrymen and either erased Black Virginians who sought freedom with the British or raged against Black men whom the British armed in South Carolina. Rather than cleanly connecting with the first wave of gradual emancipations, Continental soldiers' writings highlight how co-opting outsiders, agnostic or naive about intensive exploitation of enslaved people, proved a component of white Americans' nationalist project in the revolution.
{"title":"\"Is This the Land of Liberty?\": Continental Soldiers and Slavery in the Revolutionary South","authors":"J. Ruddiman","doi":"10.1353/wmq.2022.0023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wmq.2022.0023","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Late in the War for Independence, Continental soldiers from New England and mid-Atlantic regiments traveled through unfamiliar southern states. As they campaigned in Virginia and the Carolinas, these outsiders commented on enslavers and enslaved people in their letters and journals—and later in their memoirs. Existing scholarship has incorrectly connected these wartime observations by outsiders with the rising antislavery sentiments of the revolutionary era. Though some northern soldiers did note regional differences in slavery with surprise and disapproval, these reactions were not static. What they chose to record was powerfully shaped by the state of the war; their relationships with inhabitants, white and Black; and the expectations for the texts in which they penned these observations. These soldiers' writings about slavery changed as their relationships with southern inhabitants evolved. They embraced their white countrymen and either erased Black Virginians who sought freedom with the British or raged against Black men whom the British armed in South Carolina. Rather than cleanly connecting with the first wave of gradual emancipations, Continental soldiers' writings highlight how co-opting outsiders, agnostic or naive about intensive exploitation of enslaved people, proved a component of white Americans' nationalist project in the revolution.","PeriodicalId":51566,"journal":{"name":"WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47407875","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Maroon Nation: A History of Revolutionary Haiti by Johnhenry Gonzalez (review)","authors":"Westenley Alcenat","doi":"10.1353/wmq.2022.0015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wmq.2022.0015","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51566,"journal":{"name":"WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44037641","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Indentured Servitude: Unfree Labour and Citizenship in the British Colonies by Anna Suranyi (review)","authors":"Nicole K. Dressler","doi":"10.1353/wmq.2022.0020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wmq.2022.0020","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51566,"journal":{"name":"WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43802129","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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