In Search of Liberty: African American Internationalism in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World

Abstract

In Search of Liberty sheds new light on Black freedom struggles during the nineteenth century, locating them within an international context that testifies to the resilience of those African Americans who forged new identities for themselves far beyond the shores of the United States, whether in Africa, the Caribbean, or Europe. The eleven essays in this collection are divided into four geographical sections. The first of these, North America, opens with Franco Paz and Harvey Amani Whitfield's essay on early Black migration to Nova Scotia, viewed through the harrowing case of Elizabeth Watson, an enslaved African American woman whose search for liberty resulted, perversely, in her reenslavement. Mekala Audain tackles another neglected frontier of liberty in her illuminating essay on Black migration from Louisiana to Spanish Texas during the early nineteenth century, while Thomas Mareite explores in telling detail the risk-laden experiences of Black refugees from slavery in early independent Mexico (1821–1836).