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.
