Runaway Slaves in Britain

Running away in the Anglo-American Atlantic World left material traces in the archives. Among the most easily accessible are newspaper advertisements. Placed by British and American masters and mistresses, they detailed the physical and cultural traits of an absconded slave or servant, with the aim of soliciting public help in their recapture. These fleeting historical glimpses into flights from bondage have resonated powerfully in the U.S. and Britain since the civil rights movements. Scholars have used them to think about the relationship of colonialism to the development of modern state surveillance techniques. Efforts to resurrect and remember these individual acts of resistance have also illuminated historical challenges to the institution of slavery and the formation of early modern categories of freedom. The nature of these material traces tantalizes, in part because the advertisements are full of personal detail and yet very rarely can scholars find additional material to develop these...

Civil servant · Colonialism · Institution · Media studies · Newspaper · Political science · Politics · Race (biology) · Resistance (ecology) · Servant · Sociology · State (computer science) · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Engineering · Gender Studies · History · Law