Gisli Palsson. The Man Who Stole Himself: The Slave Odyssey of Hans Jonathan.

Abstract

Over the last decade, historians of race and slavery in the Atlantic World have used the prism of the enslaved individual to consider how slavery, colonialism, and human rights shaped the modern world. Adopting a microhistorical approach, scholars working in the Iberian, French, English, and Danish contexts demonstrate the myriad ways that individuals experienced systems of bondage and inequality; their accounts also expose the broader constructs of the systems themselves. In The Man Who Stole Himself: The Slave Odyssey of Hans Jonathan, Gisli Palsson joins this scholarship with his sensitive account of the life of Hans Jonathan. Born into slavery in 1784 in the Danish West Indies, Jonathan left life as a free tradesman and farmer in Iceland in the nineteenth century. More than simply a captivating biography, Palsson’s book explores the many worlds that Jonathan navigated, from the brutal plantation complex of St. Croix to the service quarters of an upper-class home in Copenhagen; from the dangerous decks of a Danish naval vessel during war to the crowded courtrooms of the Danish legal system; and finally to the quiet walls of the Djupivogur general store in southeastern Iceland. Palsson situates Jonathan’s life and the experiences of his descendants against the broad backdrop of race and slavery in the northern Atlantic World. Without drawing definitive conclusions, Palsson invites his readers to reflect on how slavery, and the concomitant specter of racism, continues to influence how we understand the past and interpret the present (230).