Positioning enslaved persons in 19th century Barbados fugitive slave advertisements

Abstract

Abstract: The Trans-Atlantic slave trade was a system of mass forced migrations that occurred through the 15th-19th centuries. While the myriad slavery-based economies across the Atlantic were united by this shared history of displacement, the modes of reinforcing enslavement differed considerably across enslavement contexts. This study explores the potential effects of slave trade abolition in the British Empire in 1807 on social perceptions and portrayals of enslaved persons in Barbados, particularly the enslaved who chose to resist their status through self-emancipation.

This study applied exploratory content analysis to a sample of Barbados fugitive slave advertisements spanning 1807-1812 to identify themes that illuminate the social positioning of runaway enslaved persons. The study sample comprised 343 advertisements, collected from the Barbados Mercury, and Bridgetown Gazette newspaper. Transcriptions of each advertisement were imported into MAXQDA software for analysis. The coding and theme identification process was partly deductive but was further expanded based on patterns that emerged from the data. Three main themes of social positioning for enslaved persons were identified. The first theme, Race and Color Fungibility, shows that racial and skin color ascriptors were often interchangeable and connoted ways of being for enslaved persons, where Blackness was closely tied to “Barbadian-ness,” while ‘Negro’ was a broader term referencing enslaved status. The second theme, An Act, refers to runaway persons recognizing identifiable characteristics that could risk their re-capture and strategically concealing them through controlled performances. The third theme, Seeking the Familiar, relates to runaways’ tight networks of relatives and acquaintances, who were most commonly located within the same town or in a bordering parish. These preliminary results offer a foundation by which to further elucidate the racialization processes that informed the social lives and strategies of resistance of runaway persons in Barbados.

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•Levi, Amalia. “Digitization of The Barbados Mercury Gazette.” Web blog
post. Endangered archives blog. British Library, 03 Aug. 2018.
Web. 26 Nov. 2020.
•Madrigal, L. (2006). Human biology of Afro-Caribbean populations (Vol.
45). Cambridge University Press.
•Mills, C. W. (2014). The racial contract. Cornell University Press.
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Positioning enslaved persons in 19th century
Barbados fugitive slave advertisements
Introduction Materials and Methods
Results
Andreana Cunningham
Department of Anthropology, University of Florida
CD
B
A
Figure 1. The social connections of one runaway enslaved woman, Catharina, with her image
approximated from historical painting by Agostino Brunias; (A) Father, Othello, is a millwright, and
(B) brother, William Green, are both at Boarded-hall plantation in St. George; (C) Brother, John
Leary, is a carpenter at Retreat Plantation in Christ Church; (D) Spouse, Roger, at Frances
Lacey’s property.
The Trans-Atlantic slave trade occurred through the 15th-19th
centuries, displacing over 12 million Africans (Walvin 2014). While
myriad slavery-based economies were united by this shared history
of displacement, modes of reinforcing enslavement differed
considerably across enslavement contexts, therein impacting
modes of governance and racialization (Yelvington 2004; Madrigal
2006). This preliminary study analyzed the social positioning of
enslaved persons following the abolition of the slave trade in
the British Empire in 1807, specifically the enslaved in
Barbados who chose to resist their status through escape.
•Sample: 343 advertisement transcriptions collected from
the Barbados Mercury, and Bridgetown Gazette newspaper,
spanning 1807-1812
•Content analysis in MAXQDA
•Deductive and inductive coding approach
•A priori codebook developed, informed by theoretical
frameworks of racialization (e.g, Mills 2014; Wade 2017)
•Codebook tested on subset of sample, then applied to full
dataset
•Codes derived from data incorporated into codebook
•Theme identification
Code Frequency Percentage Percentage (valid)
Racial designator
204
68.00
68.92
Harboring
199
66.33
67.23
Features
190
63.33
64.19
Man
161
53.67
54.39
Build
125
41.67
42.23
Woman
122
40.67
41.22
Time away
103
34.33
34.80
Skin color
101
33.67
34.12
Assimilation
88
29.33
29.73
Skills
63
21.00
21.28
Birthplace
56
18.67
18.92
Language comment
37
12.33
12.50
Employment
34
11.33
11.49
Benevolence
32
10.67
10.81
Deception
32
10.67
10.81
DOCUMENTS with code(s)
296
98.67
100.00
DOCUMENTS without code(s)
4
1.33
-
ANALYZED DOCUMENTS
300
100.00
-
Table 1. Highest frequency codes in the sample.
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Identified Themes
Race and Color
Fungibility
• ‘Blackness’ tied to
Barbadian-ness
• ‘Negro’ connoted
way of being for
enslaved status
• ‘Mulatto’ did not
connote mode of
being; similar in
structure to ‘White’
persons
An Act
•Controlled Acts:
Strategic
performances to
conceal enslaved
status
•Uncontrolled Acts:
Immutable
characteristics that
could aid/hinder
escape
Seeking the
Familiar
•Tight networks of
relatives and
acquaintances (see
Fig. 1)
•Network members
mostly in same or
bordering parish
Discussion/Conclusions
•Staying hidden a careful balance of recognizing features beyond
their control (e.g., language, ability to “pass”) and adapting them
to controlled performances (e.g., dressing as sailor, acting as
hairdresser)
• ‘Blackness’ not highly associated with birthplace or unfamiliarity
with island
• ‘Negro’ referent for enslaved persons’ cultural experience (e.g.,
Negro freckles, Negro houses)
•Social connections of runaways spread across plantations, but
tight geographically
•Most prevalent codes identified (Table 1)
•Key Word in Context (KWIC) analyses, code
frequencies, and code relation browsers
•Wade, P. (2017). Degrees of mixture, degrees of
freedom: Genomics, multiculturalism, and race in Latin
America. Duke University Press.
•Walvin, J. (2014). Atlas of slavery. Routledge.
•Yelvington, K. A. (2004). African Diaspora in the
Americas. Encyclopedia of Diasporas: Immigrant
and Refugee Cultures Around the World, 24-35.
•“Free Woman of Color, Barbados, late 1770s", Slavery Images: A Visual
Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African
Diaspora, accessed April 4, 2021.
•Jefferys, T. & Mayo, W. (1775) Barbadoes. [London] [Map] Retrieved
from the Library of Congress.
•Template from frahna karim 2014 © https://www.behance.net/karimfrahna.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the National Science Foundation for supporting this
research project under the Graduate Research Fellowship, Grant No. DGE-
1315138 and DGE-1842473. I would also like to thank the Digital Library of the
Caribbean and Amalia Levi for providing open access to the historic newspaper
database.
References