Paths of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Interactions, Identities, and ...

of the Atlantic slave trade and slavery; they are still today the objects of continuous transformation and reinventio

The twelve chapters in this book examine some of the different pathways—physical and geographical, intellectual and metaphorical—that arose over the centuries in different parts of the Atlantic in response to the slave trade and slavery. By highlighting both unique and similar aspects, the contributors follow the paths of individuals, groups, and images and examine their relations with the local context and the wider Atlantic context. The book is divided into four parts. Part I: Moving Paths examines slave resistance and migrations in a zone encompassing the British Caribbean, North America, and Sierra Leone from the second half of the eighteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth century. These chapters examine the transatlantic collective and individual dimensions of the fight for freedom. Relying on different kinds of sources—petitions, newspapers, legislative journals, court records, private correspondence—the chapters explain the complex form that the Atlantic slave trade and slavery took in South Carolina and the circum-Caribbean and explore the effects of specific features on the enslaved and freed population. The chapters in this section shed light on how mobility, interactions, and networks have shaped individual and collective conceptions of race, citizenship, and identity.

The first chapter, “New England Merchants and the Circum-Caribbean Slave Trade,” discusses the particular forms of the Atlantic slave trade within the Caribbean basin. Jennifer L. Anderson argues that whereas the vast majority of Africans enmeshed in the transatlantic slave trade passed through large centralized slave markets, a more localized, smaller-scale slave trade often developed informally, as itinerant slave traders strategically moved human property in search of profits. Anderson explains that through their transactions in the circum-Caribbean, New England merchants contributed to a constant low-level dispersion of slaves, often with dramatic consequences for the enslaved victims who moved from different owners, among various islands, and between different slave systems—finding their lives and relationships disrupted.Shedding light on an almost unknown aspect of the circum-Caribbean slave trade,