Carried Back: Captivity and Belonging in the Age of Atlantic Emancipations

FAIN: FEL-272882-21

Scott Heerman
University of Miami (Coral Gables, FL 33146-2919)

Research and writing leading to a book on the international dimensions of abolition in the Atlantic World between the 1780s and 1860s.

Carried Back looks at the international dimensions of abolition in the Atlantic world. It traces the kidnapping of freed people across jurisdictions, from Philadelphia to St. Domingo or Barbados to Texas. It argues that when black people crossed in and out of jurisdictions, and in and out of slavery, it prompted a reckoning with what freedom meant. As captives pushed for an end to their bondage abroad, they expanded the freedom struggle onto foreign terrain. Remarkably, captives could at times enlist high ranking officials as allies. When statesmen in Washington D.C. or London responded to freedom suits, they developed conceptions of what it meant to be a free subject of an empire. Carried Back demonstrates that freedom, and the rights it encompassed, came not just from elite politicians, and not only from people who resided within national or imperial borders. Black people who were carried across international boundaries also came to be central actors in the history of abolition.