Preliminary Programme

Wed 24 March
    11.00 - 12.15
    12.30 - 13.45
    14.30 - 15.45
    16.00 - 17.15

Thu 25 March
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    12.30 - 13.45
    14.30 - 15.45
    16.00 - 17.15

Fri 26 March
    11.00 - 12.15
    12.30 - 13.45
    14.30 - 15.45
    16.00 - 17.15

Sat 27 March
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    12.30 - 13.45
    14.30 - 15.45
    16.00 - 17.00

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Thursday 25 March 2021 14.30 - 15.45
E-7 ETH07 Transnational Antislavery Connections in North America and the Caribbean, 1776-1865
E
Network: Ethnicity and Migration Chair: Damian Pargas
Organizer: Thomas Mareite Discussant: Maartje Janse
Claire Bourhis-Mariotti : Holly’s Vindication of the Capacity of the Negro Race: African Americans, Haiti and the “Regeneration” of the Black Race
While in the 1840s and early 1850s the United States was accomplishing its ‘Manifest Destiny’ on the North American continent – finally building Jefferson’s ‘Empire of Liberty’, expanding its territory and influence toward the Pacific, thus opening new lands for American people to settle – one part of its people ... (Show more)
While in the 1840s and early 1850s the United States was accomplishing its ‘Manifest Destiny’ on the North American continent – finally building Jefferson’s ‘Empire of Liberty’, expanding its territory and influence toward the Pacific, thus opening new lands for American people to settle – one part of its people seemed not to be included in this scheme. Indeed, for free and emancipated African Americans the antebellum period was essentially characterized by a restriction of their rights, and continuing debates regarding colonization or emigration beyond the borders of the United States.
Although some prominent and vocal African American leaders, such as Frederick Douglass, were then firmly opposed to emigration and openly denounced the American Colonization Society and its scheme to colonize free and emancipated Blacks in Africa, others did advocate relocation to other and closer places. After the Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Act were enacted, and even more so after the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott Decision in 1857, increasing numbers of African Americans were prepared to consider emigration as a “solution” to escape oppression. In the middle of the 1850s, a period when black emigrationists gathered in so-called “emigration conventions”, the African-American Reverend James Theodore Holly started promoting the virtues of emigrating to Haiti more specifically. The idea was not new, as such a scheme had been elaborated in the early 1820s, under Boyer’s presidency, without much success.
But convinced that Haiti was the one place where the Black race could “regenerate” and fulfill its own destiny, Holly encouraged his peers into moving to the small Caribbean republic. To a certain extent, Holly’s choice was probably due to the country’s main characteristic: its being a black republic. Focusing on the book he published in 1857, Vindication of the Capacity of the Negro Race for self-government, and civilized progress, as demonstrated by historical events of the Haytian revolution: and the subsequent acts of that people since their national independence, this paper will show that Holly had both a nationalist and a diasporic plan for his race – in other words, his was an early black internationalist plan. Indeed, we will see that for Holly and a number of black activists, the question of emigrating was then clearly associated with the quest for a “black nationality,” and Haiti was seen as a “promised land” for the black diaspora. (Show less)

Oran Kennedy : “To Aid in the Extinction of Slavery”: Canada’s Antislavery Movement and the Formation of Transnational Abolitionist Connections in North America
Scholarship on abolitionism in North America is overwhelmingly oriented around the United States. Since the 1960s, historians have greatly expanded our knowledge of antislavery movements and actors in New England, the Mid-Atlantic states, and the former Northwest Territory. Additionally, much has been written on antislavery links between the United States ... (Show more)
Scholarship on abolitionism in North America is overwhelmingly oriented around the United States. Since the 1960s, historians have greatly expanded our knowledge of antislavery movements and actors in New England, the Mid-Atlantic states, and the former Northwest Territory. Additionally, much has been written on antislavery links between the United States and Great Britain. However, comparatively few studies have examined antislavery activism in nineteenth-century Canada, or the formation of freedom networks between the United States and Canada. Building upon recent works, this paper will examine the contribution of Canadian abolitionism to the formation of transnational antislavery connections in North America.

Over the nineteenth century, tens of thousands of African American migrants and refugees immigrated to Upper Canada (roughly present-day southwestern Ontario). Under the lion’s paw, African American refugees, African Canadians, and white abolitionists campaigned for the immediate emancipation of enslaved people in the United States and promoted black immigration to the Canadian provinces. Male and female activists founded anti-slavery newspapers, established antislavery societies, aided African American freedom seekers, held public protests and festivals, opened schools and mutual aid societies, campaigned for civil and political equality. Moreover, Canadian abolitionists established personal and organizational ties with their counterparts in the United States, particularly in the Detroit and Niagara River borderlands.

Yet Canadian abolitionism was a diverse movement, comprised of actors with varying (and occasionally conflicting) ideological beliefs. At times, sharp divisions between Canadian and American abolitionists risked upending cross-border cooperation. Debates over black emigration, fundraising campaigns, and separate institutions threatened to rupture transnational relations. Furthermore, while most Canadian antislavery activists advocated emancipation by purely peaceful means, a small number supported armed rebellion and conspired with revolutionaries in the United States to overthrow black enslavement by force.

By looking beyond national borders, this paper will shed light on the range of antislavery connections between the United States and Canada. Although fractured at times, the transnational movement was ultimately integral to the cause of emancipation in North America. (Show less)

Thomas Mareite : Mexico and Transnational Antislavery Connections in 19th-century North America
This paper explores the transnational connections forged between Mexico’s antislavery politics and discourses and the cause of black emancipation in the United States, from the Mexican war for national independence (1810-1821) to the US Civil War (1861). While interpretations of Mexico’s abolition of slavery and antislavery commitment during the nineteenth ... (Show more)
This paper explores the transnational connections forged between Mexico’s antislavery politics and discourses and the cause of black emancipation in the United States, from the Mexican war for national independence (1810-1821) to the US Civil War (1861). While interpretations of Mexico’s abolition of slavery and antislavery commitment during the nineteenth century have mostly been bounded within national limits, this paper seeks by contrast to provide some insights on the continental dimension of antislavery politics and discourses in Mexico and, correspondingly, the process by which abolitionists in the northern states turned Mexico’s antislavery position into a resource for African American emancipation during the antebellum period. By looking at antislavery speeches, pamphlets and press articles both in Mexico and the US, this paper therefore stresses the North American significance of Mexico’s official antislavery engagement and how abolitionists in the northern states drew inspiration from Mexico’s antislavery politics and discourses, forged antislavery solidarity as well as material and intellectual connections across borders which they used in their own domestic struggle against the so-called “peculiar institution”. (Show less)



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