1st Edition

Hearing Enslaved Voices African and Indian Slave Testimony in British and French America, 1700–1848

Edited By Sophie White, Trevor Burnard Copyright 2021
264 Pages 8 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

264 Pages 8 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

264 Pages 8 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

This book focuses on alternative types of slave narratives, especially courtroom testimony, and interrogates how such narratives were produced, the societies (both those that were majority slave societies and those in which slaves were a distinct minority of the population) in which testimony was permitted, and the meanings that can be attached to such narratives. The chapters in this book... Read more

Introduction: Slave Narratives in British and French America, 1700–1848

Trevor Burnard and Sophie White

Section One: Voices in the Archives

1. "Said Without Being Asked": Slavery, Testimony and Autobiography

Sophie White

2. Fictions in the Archives: Jupiter alias Gamelle or the Tales of an Enslaved Peddler in the French New Orleans’ Court

Cécile Vidal

3. Slave Judiciary Testimonies in the French Caribbean: What to Do with Them

Dominique Rogers

Section Two: Native Americans

4. A "Spanish American Squaw" in New England: Indian Ann’s Journey from Slavery to Freedom

Linford D. Fisher

5. In the Borderlands of Race and Freedom (and Genre): Embedded Indian and African Slave Testimony in Eighteenth-Century New England

Margaret Ellen Newell

6. "She Said Her Answers Contained the Truth": Listening to and with Enslaved Witnesses in Eighteenth-Century New France

Brett Rushforth

Section Three: African Americans

7. Ideologies of the Age of Revolution and Emancipation in Enslaved African Narrative

Aaron Spencer Fogleman

8. Slave Voice and the Legal Archive: The Case of the Freedom Suits Before the Paris Admiralty Court

Miranda Spieler

9. "I Know I Have to Work": The Moral Economy of Labor Among Enslaved Women in Berbice, 1819–1834

Trevor Burnard

10. "An Anomalous Population": Re-captive Narratives in Antigua and the British Colonial Archive, 1807–1828

Anita Rupprecht

Conclusion: Slave Testimonies: The Long View

Emily Clark

Biography

Sophie White is Professor of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

Trevor Burnard is Wilberforce Professor of Slavery and Emancipation at the University of Hull.