Flight to Freedom: How Fugitive Slaves Shaped Imperial Policy in the Early Modern Caribbean

FAIN: FT-248762-16

Linda Marguerite Rupert
University of North Carolina, Greensboro (Greensboro, NC 27412-5068)

A study of the impact of fugitive slaves on colonial relationships in the early modern Caribbean.

I request funding to complete the first two chapters of my monograph, a study of fugitive slaves who found freedom in Spanish America by fleeing from English, French, Dutch, and Danish possessions in the early modern circum-Caribbean. This will be the first book-length study of inter-imperial marronage (slave flight) throughout the Caribbean. The evidence shows that these migrations in some of the most remote parts of the area created ripples and waves that extended far beyond immediate shores, with regional, imperial, and geopolitical repercussions. This project explores the interplay between colonial policy, slave agency, developing legal systems, and geopolitics in eighteenth-century Atlantic empires. In considering the complex dynamic between individual human agency, wider socio-economic processes, and overarching political structures, and their impact on push and pull factors, this study also has potential for comparison with other refugees and asylum seekers past and present.