The Common Wind

Julius Scott's The Common Wind, published at last, is quite simply a masterful work.Originally written as a Duke doctoral dissertation in 1986, it has been circulated among scholars of comparative slavery, the Atlantic World, the Age of Revolution, and the African Diaspora for over three decades, animating the scholarship and electrifying the imaginations of students and scholars alike.Even in its unpublished form, it powerfully shaped the ways in which historians have understood black circuits of mobility in the early Atlantic, cross-class networks of communication, and the impact of the Haitian Revolution.More to the point, Scott provided historians with a language to articulate the political imaginaries of the black Atlantic, the forms of survival embedded in black movement, and the practices of autonomy and sovereignty created by enslaved and free people of color.One of Scott's signature contributions is his concept of "the masterless class," the runaway slaves, free Blacks, lower-class Whites, deserters, sailors, smugglers, pirates, and others who eluded the grasp of slaveholders and colonial authorities, and often took refuge in port cities and on sailing vessels.The mobility and resistance of these laboring classes alarmed and confounded elites on both sides of the Atlantic.Scott was among the early scholars to systematically track this masterless class, as they pried open the crevices of plantation regimes, placed themselves beyond its reach, and exposed the fragility of colonial governments intent on managing their defiance.The maritime world of the early Caribbean provided particular refuge for slaves and free people of color, and those who boarded sailing vessels or worked among the port communities often found moments of freedom, prospects for mobility, and a fugitive seafaring culture that produced much anxiety for local authorities.Mobilizing a far-flung archive, Scott brings to light the sailors, runaways, buccaneers and others who brought critical news to American shores about the abolition debates in Britain, Bourbon reforms in Spain, and popular revolution in France.But Scott's greatest contribution is undoubtedly his tracing of the seismic reverberations of the Haitian Revolution.From Jamaica to Venezuela, the Revolution stimulated and galvanized enslaved and free people of color in unprecedented ways.Throughout the region, colonies and states attempted to police the arrival of news and people from revolutionary Saint-Domingue, and to secure their ports against the subversive ideas that traveled with them.Port cities took every precaution, inspecting ships, confiscating written materials, and monitoring the movements of black and brown foreigners.Yet in spite of these efforts, news of the Haitian Revolution seeped out into urban centers

Ancient history · Archaeology · Atlantic World · Colonialism · Diaspora · Empire · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Sociology · Sovereignty · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Cuban History and Society · Gender Studies · History · Law