Dr Damian Pargas – Beacons of Freedom: Runaway Slaves in North America, 1775-1860 (Studium Generale)
15 mei 2017Van 15:30 - 17:00uur
The geography of slavery and freedom in North America was completely transformed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The northern US, Canada and Mexico all formally abolished slavery during this period. And even within the slaveholding South, a wave of individual manumissions in the revolutionary era greatly bolstered the existence of free black communities, especially in urban areas. These developments gave rise to waves of freedom-based migration, as droves of runaway slaves crossed into geographic spaces and places that for them constituted sites of legal freedom (where slavery was abolished according to “free soil” principles) or illegal freedom (urban areas within slaveholding territories, where runaways illegally attempted to blend in with free black populations). This talk will discuss how the changing geography of slavery and freedom was used by enslaved people to escape bondage.
The speaker
Dr Damian Pargas, University Lecturer, Institute for History, Leiden University
Free entrance.
Open to all.
No advance registration required.
