Skip to main content
Article
Slave Revolt Across Borders
Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage (2013)
  • Dr. Jeffrey Kerr-Ritchie, Howard University
Abstract
This article examines examples of slave revolt, legal abolition, and post-emancipation developments in the nineteenth-century Americas. This study’s specific concern is with the transmission and nature of slave revolt and abolition in one area, which inspired slave self-emancipation in other places and related ramifications. The author pursues connections between slaves seeking freedom and colonial states as well as the first black republic’s responses to these expectations. This study explains the intersection between slaves’ original desire for freedom and the impact of external factors. Slave revolt is broadly defined as both collective rebellion and smaller acts of self-emancipation. Borders are delineated as national boundaries on land and at sea as well as between states in federal territories. The article has three aims: (1) to expand the spatial and temporal dimensions of the “common-wind” approach to slave revolt studies beyond Haiti as well as the Age of Revolution; (2) to reveal connections between the Caribbean, Central America, North America, and South America that are usually overlooked because of national and regional historiographies independent of each other; and (3) to contribute to the conceptualization of emancipation in African diaspora scholarship through movement, homelands, and racial solidarity.
Keywords
  • slave revolt,
  • transnational,
  • americas,
  • nineteenth century,
  • diaspora
Disciplines
Publication Date
November 12, 2013
DOI
10.1179/2161944113Z.0000000006
Citation Information
Jeffrey Kerr-Ritchie. "Slave Revolt Across Borders" Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage Vol. 2 Iss. 1 (2013) p. 65 - 92
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/jkerr-ritchie/4/