“send him in safe custody to the Goal of Montreal” (sic): Enslaved Fugitives, Jails, and Workhouses in late Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century Nova Scotia and Jamaica
When: Thursday, June 20th, 2024: 12:00pm – 2:00pm CEST
Where: Building P, Room P12, Universität Trier (University of Trier), Germany
What: Public Lecture: “send him in safe custody to the Goal of Montreal” (sic): Enslaved Fugitives, Jails, and Workhouses in late Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century Nova Scotia and Jamaica
Cost: Free
Special Instructions: Register at: s2nifuhr@uni-trier.de
Organizer: Dr. Nele Sawallisch, Center for American Studies, University of Trier, Germany
Contact: s2nifuhr@uni-trier.de
Found throughout the Transatlantic World, fugitive slave advertisements demonstrate the ubiquity of African resistance to slavery. Produced by white enslavers seeking to recapture runaways, standardized icons of enslaved males and females became a staple of such print advertisements. However, the more complex textual descriptions were also fundamentally visual and arguably comprise an archive of unauthorized “portraits” that have sadly come to stand as “the most detailed descriptions of the bodies of enslaved African Americans available.” (Graham White and Shane White, 1995, p. 49). Besides noting things like names, speech, accents, language, and skills, fugitive notices frequently recounted the dress (hairstyles, adornment, clothing etc.), branding, scarification, mannerisms, physical habits, and even the gestures and expressions of runaways. Recalling fugitive slave advertisements as a form of visual culture, this paper positions them as one part of the colonial infrastructure and network (including enslavers, printers, and jailers) that sustained the racialized distinction between free and unfree populations. This paper shall also highlight the ways in which the advertisements inadvertently disclosed the ingenuity, persistence, bravery, and intelligence of the enslaved and the brutality and callousness of the enslavers; an unintended consequence which in time would be taken up by abolitionists and used against the slave owning classes.
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