Author Type

Graduate Student

Date of Award

2017

Document Type

Thesis

Publication Status

Version of Record

Submission Date

October 2026

Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]

Engle, Stephen D.

Abstract

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 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.

Extent

283 p.

Comments

Includes bibliography.|Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2017.|FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection|Includes bibliography.

Identifier

FA00004923

Format

pdf

Download

Share

COinS