Current Search: African Americans in literature (x) » Canada--Race relations--History--19th century. (x)
-
-
Title
-
From Slaves to Subjects: Forging Freedom in the Canadian Legal System.
-
Creator
-
Halty, Nina, Engle, Stephen D., Florida Atlantic University, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of History
-
Abstract/Description
-
This thesis clarifies recent debates on the problems of territorialized freedom in the Atlantic world by examining several extradition cases involving runaway slaves in Canada, where southern slaveholders attempted to retrieve their lost property by relabeling fugitive slaves as fugitive criminals. In order to combat these efforts and receive the full protections of British subjecthood, self-emancipated people realized that they needed to prove themselves worthy of this status. To achieve...
Show moreThis thesis clarifies recent debates on the problems of territorialized freedom in the Atlantic world by examining several extradition cases involving runaway slaves in Canada, where southern slaveholders attempted to retrieve their lost property by relabeling fugitive slaves as fugitive criminals. In order to combat these efforts and receive the full protections of British subjecthood, self-emancipated people realized that they needed to prove themselves worthy of this status. To achieve this, black refugees formulated their own language of subjecthood predicated upon economic productivity, social respectability, and political loyalty. By actively working to incorporate themselves into the British Empire, Afro-Canadians redefined subjecthood from a status largely seen as a passively received birthright to a deliberate choice. Therefore, this thesis demonstrates that ways in which formerly enslaved people laid out their own terms for imperial inclusion and defined the contours of black social and legal belonging in a partially free Atlantic world.
Show less
-
Date Issued
-
2017
-
PURL
-
http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00004923
-
Subject Headings
-
Canada--Race relations--History--19th century., African Americans--Canada--History--19th century., Freedmen--Canada--History--19th century., Fugitive slaves--Legal status, laws, etc.--Canada., Free African Americans--Canada--History--19th century., Postcolonialism--Southern States., Plantation life in literature., Imperialism in literature., Literature and society--Southern States--History--20th century., Place (Philosophy) in literature.
-
Format
-
Document (PDF)
