Refugees and Revolution in the Atlantic World, 1770s-1820s

Project Information

AtlanticExiles

Grant agreement ID: 849189

DOI

10.3030/849189

EC signature date 13 January 2020

Start date 1 October 2020

End date 30 September 2026

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 495 778,00

EU contribution

€ 1 495 778,00

Coordinated by

EBERHARD KARLS UNIVERSITAET TUEBINGEN
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - AtlanticExiles (Refugees and Revolution in the Atlantic World, 1770s-1820s)

Reporting period: 2023-03-01 to 2024-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

During the period spanning from 1770 to 1830, the Atlantic world experienced significant transformations as a result of revolutionary upheavals, struggles for national liberation and against slavery, and military confrontations between empires. Placing itself at the intersection of Atlantic and refugee history, Atlantic Exiles proposes a fresh approach to the Age of Revolutions by reinterpreting it through the lens of the political refugee movements it engendered. Overcoming conventional scholarly perspectives which tend to focus on revolutionary actors and their actions, Atlantic Exiles seeks to demonstrate that the refugees who emerged from these revolutions were not peripheral figures in these developments. On the contrary, their movements, activities, and frequently conflict-ridden interactions with the polities hosting them played a central role in the restructuring of the Atlantic world. It explores this research premise through four distinct lines of investigation [see illustration of project structure attached]:

1. Citizenship, subjecthood, and changing concepts of belonging: The revolutionary era saw fundamental changes in the principles and practices governing the relationship between states and their residents; new concepts of national citizenship and emerging alien legislation fundamentally redefined the statuses of insiders and outsiders alike. The project interrogates the crucial role refugees played in these changes, as they navigated, and shaped, the shifting boundaries of citizenship/subjecthood and alienness.
2. Politics of humanitarianism: The revolutionary era also saw a transformation in the approach to assisting those in need. Modern practices and policies of "humanitarianism" emerged, with secular and state-based philanthropy gradually supplanting religious-based charity. The project therefore explores changing notions of refugee relief and places them within broader political and imperial contests over the rise of “humanitarianism.”
3. Shifting boundaries of freedom and slavery: The contestation of slavery was a significant aspect of Atlantic revolutionary struggles, with the Haitian revolution in Saint-Domingue being a prominent example. Refugees bore diverse racial and legal statuses, featuring white men and women, free black or mixed-race individuals, and enslaved people. At the intersection of race, class, and gender, the project examines how these refugee groups moved within, and impacted on, the complex and volatile legal landscape of slavery and emancipation.
4. Exile politics across borders: Exile became an important arena for national and international politics during this period. The project explores how this transnational space of exile grew out of correspondence networks, sociability, and cohabitation, and how exiles formed alliances with foreign actors and other refugee and non-refugee communities, engaged in military endeavors, and maintained diaspora ties across borders during a period of heightened geopolitical uncertainty.

By interweaving these four lines of inquiry, one key contribution of the Atlantic Exiles project lies in its emphasis on the Caribbean as a major region of origin, transit, and destination for refugees during the Age of Revolutions. The experiences of refugees in the Caribbean resonate with present-day refugee movements in the region (especially from Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela and Central America), providing valuable historical perspective and challenging contemporary mental maps of North-South migration. The project thus adds historical depth and complexity to our understanding of the Caribbean's historical and ongoing significance in global refugee migrations. More broadly, through critical reflections on key social science categories such as "refugee" and "citizenship," the project contributes to a deeper understanding of the social, political, and legal implications of refugee migration across the Atlantic world during this transformative period while unveiling some its long-lasting historical legacies (e.g. the rise of modern immigration control and infrastructures of border surveillance; increasing institutional divides between ‘national’ or ‘alien’ subjects).

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The initial two years of the project have been devoted to thoroughly investigating and analyzing the existing body of historical literature. Additionally, significant effort has been put into identifying and visiting pertinent archival sites, including online collections, with a particular emphasis on collaborative efforts. The project employs a multi-location approach, emphasizing Kingston, Havana, and Philadelphia as key hubs for refugee migration while a broader research project conducted by the PI explores counter-revolutionary politics of exile across these and other locales.

Expanding beyond its original core team, the project has facilitated the formation of a network of affiliated scholars, particularly early career researchers, who are engaged in exploring new historical perspectives on exile and refugee migration as a defining feature of the revolutionary era – the major objective of the project. Early empirical research results for the sub-projects and affiliated projects have been presented at international and national conferences and invited talks in Germany, the UK, the US, France, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, Brazil, South Africa, Poland and Switzerland. The project has already yielded research output, with several articles published in leading peer-reviewed journals such as Past & Present, French Historical Studies and Atlantic Studies. The conference "Who is a Refugee? Concepts of Exile, Refuge, and Asylum, c.1750–1850", organized by Atlantic Exiles in June-July 2022, has served as catalyst for ongoing publication projects that include the series “Exiled: Identities and Identification”, published by the online open-access peer-reviewed journal Age of Revolutions in May-June 2023, and a forthcoming special issue with the peer-reviewed journal Itinerario.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The Atlantic Exiles group's novel archival findings seek to foster historiographical innovations by expanding the scope of refugee history beyond the twentieth century. Typically, the study of refugees focuses on contemporary periods, overlooking groups affected by revolution and warfare in earlier times. In turn, the Atlantic Exiles group's examination of this specific period (Age of Revolutions) and geographic context (Caribbean and American continent, with their far-reaching connections across the Atlantic Ocean) broadens the genealogy and geography of refugee migration in historical research, going beyond the current state of knowledge. The group's research aims at reevaluating the history of Atlantic revolutions (US, French, and Haitian Revolutions, and Spanish American wars for independence) by highlighting exiles as central actors rather than marginal figures. Emphasizing transnational exile politics, in-depth archival research in these different locations shows the necessity to transcend the simplistic categorization of "revolutionary" versus "counter-revolutionary" actors. It unveils the fluidity of political affiliations and reveals diverse futures past, challenging the notion of an inevitable transition from empires to nations in the Americas. In addition, the project analyzes diverse humanitarian practices and policies for individuals identified as "refugees", highlighting how financial aid, material support, and categories of race, class, religion, age and gender intersected, with significant similarities across various imperial contexts. Beyond its chronological and geographical scope, the project pushes the boundaries of our understanding of key concepts that scholars and non-scholars use when they talk about migration and mobility, past and present.

The project is expected to yield several significant outcomes, primarily through the creation of a series of publications (articles and book chapters, journal issues and collective volumes, and monographs) that are currently being prepared within individual sub-projects (SPs). The monograph and other research output resulting from SP1 will focus on examining the interactions between Jamaican colonial authorities and society with refugees from the independent United States, revolutionary Saint-Domingue, and mainland Spanish America. It will situate these interactions into broader negotiations surrounding imperial subjecthood and belonging, while exploring questions of humanitarianism and deservingness against the backdrop of debates on and experimentations in imperial “improvement”. The monograph and further research output derived from SP2 will provide a comprehensive analysis of the exile experiences of French- and Spanish-speaking refugees from Hispaniola and the broader Caribbean who sought refuge in Havana and its surrounding areas from approximately 1791 to 1821. It will demonstrate how multilayered and contested asylum and assistance policies influenced the governance of exile in this rapidly expanding imperial submetropolis and emerging transnational hub of refugee migration. In the case of the SP3-derived monograph and related output, the focus will be on investigating the mobility of exiles to Philadelphia and their impact on the formation of the early US-American republic. It will highlight how the movement of people escaping revolution, warfare, and slavery across national borders contributed to both the establishment of boundaries and their evolving meanings within a transimperial context during the Age of Revolutions. SP4 will result in a monograph and further publications on the emergence and transformation of exile as a transnational space of political action. Based on a series of case studies stretching from the 1780s through the 1820s, and geographically spanning from North to South America and the Caribbean, it will show how exile gave rise to multifaceted collaborations between a number of refugee and non-refugee communities, and how these exile activities intersected with other dimensions of the political, economic and migration history of the era: the history of land speculation, westward expansion and settler colonialism, inter-imperial rivalry, mercenarism, etc. By teasing out the blurry lines between revolutionary and “counter-revolutionary” activities of these exiles, the sub-project will also contribute to complicating the concept of “counter-revolution.” In addition, based on rich archival findings, the PI will also work on a series of publications centering on the far-reaching impact of alien laws within the transformations of belonging and political membership to states during this period.

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