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.