This week we will examine how historians have increasingly examined slave resistance by focusing on crime and justice. Using a gendered lens, we will interrogate how the resistance of enslaved men and women can be recovered through the examination of primary materials produced around criminal trials.

Seminar Questions

1) What do legal sources tell us about enslaved resistance?

2) What did ‘justice’ mean in the legal systems that enslaved people interacted with?

3) What is revealed (and what is silent/silenced) in archival court transcripts?

4) How did the legal system reflect/reinforce the structures and ideologies of slavery?

5) Why was ‘mercy’ frequently seen as a suitable outcome to a capital trial?