Browsing by Subject "Emancipation"
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Item Open Access Anticipating Freedom: Slave Rebellion, Amelioration, and Emancipation in Barbados, 1816-1838(2022) Williams, KristinaAnticipating Freedom explores the numerous ways enslaved and freedpeople shaped the politics and policies of gradual emancipation in the British Empire, using Barbados as a case study. It binds antislavery debates, legislative reforms, and slave resistance into one conceptual frame to reveal the processes that informed the British Parliament’s decision to pass the Emancipation Act of 1833, thereby conditionally freeing thousands of enslaved men, women, and children across the British Caribbean. As a major sugar-producing colony for the British Empire, Barbados offers a unique context for studying emancipation in the Atlantic World. At first glance, the prospect of freedom seemed impossible due to the planters' utter dependence on slave labor. Still, emancipation in Barbados was achieved through the unyielding determination of enslaved people to resist their captivity and the antislavery legislation initiated by abolitionists in the British Parliament. Hence the project is arranged both chronologically and thematically. It begins with Bussa’s Rebellion of 1816 — the only large-scale slave insurrection in the history of Barbados — and its impact on British Parliamentary reforms designed to lessen some of the coercive aspects of slavery during the 1820s. Then, I examine the rise of slave resistance in the months leading up to Emancipation Day and their effect on the Emancipation Act of 1833. My dissertation concludes with a discussion on the implementation of conditional freedom known as ‘Apprenticeship’ in 1834 and the factors that led to its premature demise in 1838. Anticipating Freedom argues that the covert and explicit means through which men and women of African descent resisted enslavement influenced the British Parliament’s decision to implement an intermediate period between slavery and absolute freedom in Barbados. This revelation is significant because it broadens our understanding of what factors were taken into consideration during the antislavery debates between the abolitionists, planters, Members of Parliament, and Barbados legislators. Moreover, by prioritizing the wants, needs, and desires of enslaved and freedpeople in Barbados, we step away from romantic notions often associated with emancipation to focus on the quotidian realities of a society no longer ruled by slave labor.
Item Open Access Freedom on the Horizon: Transmarine Marronage and the Abolition of Slavery in Dominica, Martinique, and St. Lucia, 1824-1848(2024) Glover, TayzhaunGreat Britain's 1833 abolition of slavery created an opportunity for enslaved men and women living on Caribbean islands that were within reach, and view, of one another, to secure liberty through relatively short journeys across the sea. “Freedom on the Horizon” explores the cross-imperial movement of French fugitive men and women in Martinique in the wake of the British abolition of slavery and seeks to reconstruct their conceptions of refuge and freedom. Focusing on Dominica, Martinique, and St. Lucia, this dissertation illuminates the complex geopolitical landscape of the Lesser Antilles during a period of staggered abolition processes and examines the consequences that the escapes of Martinique’s fugitives across the sea had on slavery, emancipation, and then apprenticeship in the British and French colonies.“Freedom on the Horizon” argues that marronage by sea was a critical part of processes of emancipation in Dominica, Martinique, and St. Lucia. The mobility of enslaved men and women’s escape practices, in Martinique merged the worlds of intra- and inter-island flight as groups of fugitives combined navigational expertise and geopolitical knowledge to organize their escapes to Dominica to the north and St. Lucia to the south. Successful escapes depended on these fugitives’ ability to escape the surveillance of French and British colonial authorities, and therefore on a deep knowledge and strategic use of waterways and coastal towns. The first half of this dissertation closely examines the rural coastal landscapes of Martinique which served as the primary locations of group escapes. Enslaved men and women of Martinique, often with the aid of free and enslaved men employed in maritime labor, transformed rural shorelines into sites of departure as they boarded canoes and other small sea craft to transport themselves and their families to freedom as refugees of the French empire. Having reconstructed the social geography and routes of escape that Martinique’s fugitives used to pursue freedom in Dominica and St. Lucia, this dissertation explores their experience of liberty in these two colonies under British rule. The presence of Martinique’s fugitives in Dominica and St. Lucia in the midst of complex emancipation processes created a set of legal challenges and bureaucratic conundrums that are well documented in the British archives. In search of refuge, these fugitives made various requests to British authorities, seeking to navigate the possibilities of a changing legal and political environment towards freedom. While some fugitives voluntarily returned to Martinique, others remained in Dominica and St. Lucia, where they experienced the apprenticeship system set up there during the 1830s and influenced the cross-sea escapes of British apprenticed laborers who were also in search of economic opportunities elsewhere in the region. Ultimately, I argue, the actions of Martinique’s fugitives helped to shape the political and legal landscapes around slavery and emancipation in both the British and the French colonies.
Item Open Access The Rule of the Lash and the Rule of Law: Amelioration, Enslaved People's Politics and the Courts in Jamaica, 1780-1834(2021) Becker, Michael JohnThis dissertation examines amelioration – the effort to create a more “humane” or reformed version of slavery – as it intertwined with enslaved people’s everyday conflicts and the legal system of the Jamaican colonial state. In the context of a rising anti-slavery movement in metropolitan Britain, some pro-slavery advocates adopted colonial legal reform as a strategy to present slavery as redeemable and colonial governments as capable of restraining slaveholders’ worst impulses. While these reformers were often cynical in their aims, enslaved people took these proclaimed legal rights seriously and strategically mobilized their rhetoric to secure a semblance of justice and redress within – and without – the legal system. Whether through fighting in court for the return of their stolen possessions, or seeking justice for a friend brutally murdered by an overseer, enslaved people were savvy and calculated legal actors who stretched the modest reforms conceded by the state. Each dissertation chapter develops a thematic approach to a key area of the law of slavery– enslaved people’s flight, property ownership, maltreatment by enslavers, and criminal procedure – and examines enslaved peoples’ attempts to strategically mobilize reformist legal principles to secure rights and justice within the legal system. In the process, the centrality of the legal system to the maintenance of the broader edifice of white supremacy and plantocracy is also considered.