IN THE SAME SEA: THE LESSER ANTILLES AS A COMMON WORLD OF SLAVERY AND FREEDOM

Project Information

IN THE SAME SEA

Grant agreement ID: 863671

DOI

10.3030/863671

EC signature date 10 February 2020

Start date 1 September 2020

End date 31 August 2026

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 999 970,00

EU contribution

€ 1 999 970,00

Coordinated by

KOBENHAVNS UNIVERSITET
Denmark

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - IN THE SAME SEA (IN THE SAME SEA: THE LESSER ANTILLES AS A COMMON WORLD OF SLAVERY AND FREEDOM)

Reporting period: 2023-09-01 to 2025-02-28

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

IN THE SAME SEA: THE LESSER ANTILLES AS A COMMON WORLD OF SLAVERY AND FREEDOM is a project about the many small islands in the eastern Caribbean. The project aims at mapping the inter-island connections that entangled islanders in a common world of slavery and freedom during the period c. 1650 - 1850. The research conducted by IN THE SAME SEA begins with the recognition that the small islands in the Lesser Antilles were fragile places, often with a population that many-fold exceeded the resources each island could provide. This meant that all islanders – free, freed, and enslaved – had to reach out to their neighbors across the sea to gain vital resources to sustain themselves.

Acknowledging the inter-connected history of the Lesser Antilles, which involved no less than six European empires, namely the Spanish, British, French, Dutch, Danish, and Swedish, will recast our understanding of Caribbean history. It will show that the small islands of the eastern Caribbean cannot be conceived adequately in terms of their relation to distant imperial metropoles. Rather we need to understand the complex and intense influence of various imperial traditions, trade relations, resource extraction practices, and family connections on the history of the region. As such, IN THE SAME SEA also aims to provide a historiography for the present. Looking at the long history of the Lesser Antilles will help us understand why five out of the seventeen territories on UN’s list of non-self-governing territories (i.e. ‘territories whose people have not yet attained a full measure of self-government’) are part of the Lesser Antilles. Research conducted by IN THE SAME SEA shows that the imperial policies were always challenged by islanders who lived in an archipelagic space and needed to exchange resources. By reconstructing this history IN THE SAME SEA establishes historical knowledge that can allow contemporary islanders to understand their historical ties to one another across islands and (former) empires, and the deep-seated problems and challenges confronting societies in the Lesser Antilles today.

The overall objective of IN THE SAME SEA is to demonstrate how the inter-connections between the islands of the Lesser Antilles shaped their history. We do so by writing the history of migration, local marine resources, regional exchange patterns and practices, white families, and enslaved fugitives in the Lesser Antilles.

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

IN THE SAME SEA began on September 1, 2020. During the first year of the project, the PI gathered a strong team of researchers. As a team, we have the historical and linguistic expertise necessary to conduct research in the languages and repositories relevant to the history of the Lesser Antilles.

The first years of the project has been devoted to intense archival research, conducted in groups and individually. We have consulted archives and libraries, such as the British National Archives, the British Library, the Bodleian Library, the Dutch National Archives, the Danish National Archives, the Danish Royal Library, and the Bibliothèque national de France. In addition, we have benefitted tremendously from the many digital resources available concerning Caribbean history. As we engage in archival research, we benefit from our close collaboration and share findings through a database constructed for that purpose.

In addition to our individual research themes, we work as a team on the construction of a database registering enslaved fugitives advertised in the newspapers of the Lesser Antilles. Halfway through the project, we have systematically researched 45 Lesser Antillean newspapers and have identified app. 4000 enslaved people who escaped from their owners during the period c. 1755 - 1863. The database promises to generate new knowledge about how enslaved people escaped their bondage and about whom among the enslaved had the opportunity to do so.

During these first years we have also reached out to historically interested inhabitants of the Lesser Antilles and to other scholars of Caribbean and Atlantic history. As a team we have presented our work at the Wilberforce Institute at Hull and at the annual conference for the Association of Caribbean Studies. In smaller groups we have presented, for instance, at the annual conference of American Society for Legal History. Our most important contribution was the conference “Inter-Island Connections in the Lesser Antilles: Family, Friends, and Institutions across the Sea,” taking place on the island of St. Thomas. This conference was the result of collaboration between IN THE SAME SEA, the Caribbean Genealogy Library, and the University of the Virgin Islands. For three days, between 100 – 120 family historians, public historians, and academic historians presented and discussed their stories about resources, migration, and settlement in the Lesser Antilles.

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)

During the first half of the project, the team of IN THE SAME SEA has, as noted, constructed a database that traces the fugitive practices of enslaved people in the Lesser Antilles within and across imperial borders (i.e. not merely looking at fugitives in for instance a French or British imperial context). This database will advance the field of research beyond the state of the art. The database allows us, for the first time, to test the validity of explanations and interpretations that are framed in relation to single imperial contexts, such as for instance the British or the French empires. The database will therefore allow us to highlight the relative importance of several parameters shaping fugitive practices, among them environment, geography, market dynamics, and naturally also imperial polities and politics.

Currently, the key findings from the database are: 1) the relatively high ratio of group escapes found among so-called maritime maroons, which significantly alter our understanding of this form of marronage. It does so because it shows that not only single men, but also women, children and the elderly participated in such flight practices; 2) the database points to a higher ratio of women escapee on land than hitherto identified in the historiography. Like the first finding, this new knowledge requires us to question a historiography that has been primarily concerned with explaining why women did not run away (by for instance pointing to motherhood and family obligations). Instead, we must now ask, why women escaped and how they did it.

In the upcoming years, IN THE SAME SEA researchers will endeavor to turn their archival research into interpretations of the inter-island world of the Lesser Antilles. In addition to the articles already authored by members of the IN THE SAME SEA research project, the expected results of the research will be the publication of the finished database regarding fugitives in the Lesser Antilles, two articles authored by Dr. Heather Freund and two by Dr. Felicia Fricke concerning the inter-island dynamics of the Lesser Antilles, two PhD dissertations, one on marine resources by PhD student Rasmus Christensen and one on white slave owing by PhD student Gabriëlle La Croix. During these years the PI, Dr. Gunvor Simonsen will conclude a book about the history of enslaved fugitives in the Lesser Antilles.