Countless people throughout history have been forced to travel due to circumstances beyond their control, as captives, unfree labourers, or displaced persons such as refugees. This seminar looks at a particularly brutal form of forced travel, the Atlantic crossings of millions of enslaved Africans and unfree people of African descent. It considers how we can write a history of involuntary mobility that is sensitive to the suffering and resistance of the enslaved based on a historical record that served the systemic violence and dehumanisation perpetrated against them. It also focuses on first-person accounts of formerly enslaved authors and the ways they participate in and shape public debates regarding slavery, abolition, religion, and race.

Core Readings (pick two)

Stephanie Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), Ch. 5: 'The Living Dead aboard the Slave Ship at Sea', pp. 122-152. LinkLink opens in a new window.

Kwasi Konadu, 'Naming and Framing a Crime Against Humanity: African Voices from the Transatlantic Slave System, ca. 1500-1900', in: Trevor R. Getz (ed.), African Voices of the Global Past: 1500 to the Present (Boulder, CO: Westfield Press, 2014), pp. 1-37. LinkLink opens in a new window.

Elizabeth A. Bohls, Slavery and the Politics of Place: Representing the Colonial Caribbean, 1770–1833 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), Ch. 6: 'A Long Way from Home: Slavery, Travel, and Imperial Geography in The History of Mary Prince', pp. 165-184. LinkLink opens in a new window.

Primary sources

Edwards, Paul, and David Dabydeen (eds.), Black Writers in Britain 1760-1890: An Anthology (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991). LinkLink opens in a new window. [Select one narrative]

Early Caribbean Digital Archive: Early Caribbean Slave NarrativesLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window. [Select one narrative]

Further Reading

Aljoe, Nicole N., Creole Testimonies: Slave Narratives from the British West Indies, 1709-1838 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). LinkLink opens in a new window.

Bellagamba, Alice, Sandra E. Greene, and Martin A. Klein (eds.), African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade (2 Vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013-2016). Vol 1Link opens in a new window and Vol 2Link opens in a new window.

Bolster, W. Jeffrey, Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), esp. Ch. 1: 'The Emergence of Black Sailors in Plantation America'. LinkLink opens in a new window.

Boulukos, George E., 'Olaudah Equiano and the Eighteenth-Century Debate on Africa', Eighteenth-Century Studies 40.2 (2007), pp. 241-255. LinkLink opens in a new window.

Burroughs, Robert, 'Eyes on the Prize: Journeys in Slave Ships Taken as Prizes by the Royal Navy', Slavery & Abolition 31.1 (2010), pp. 99-115. LinkLink opens in a new window.

Carey, Brycchan, Markman Ellis, and Sara Salih (eds.), Discourses of Slavery and Abolition: Britain and its Colonies, 1760–1838 (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). LinkLink opens in a new window.

Carretta, Vincent (ed.), Unchained Voices: an Anthology of Black Authors in the English-speaking World of the Eighteenth Century (Lexington: University of Kentucky, 2004). LinkLink opens in a new window and LibraryLink opens in a new window. [Primary source texts]

Carretta, Vincent, 'Questioning the Identity of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African', in: Felicity A. Nussbaum, The Global Eighteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), pp. 226-237. LibraryLink opens in a new window.

Cowling, Camillia, 'Teresa Mina’s Journeys: “Slave-moving”, Mobility, and Gender in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Cuba', Atlantic Studies 18.1 (2021), pp. 7-30. LinkLink opens in a new window.

Fisk, Bethan, 'Black Knowledge on the Move: African Diasporic Healing in Caribbean and Pacific New Granada', Atlantic Studies 18.2 (2021), pp. 244-270. LinkLink opens in a new window.

Gomez, Michael A., Reversing Sail: A History of the African Diaspora (2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019). LinkLink opens in a new window.

Hanley, Ryan, Beyond Slavery and Abolition: Black British Writing, c.1770–1830 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). LinkLink opens in a new window.

Kelley, Sean M., The Voyage of the Slave Ship Hare: A Journey into Captivity from Sierra Leone to South Carolina (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2016). LinkLink opens in a new window.

Murphy, Geraldine, 'Olaudah Equiano, Accidental Tourist', Eighteenth-Century Studies 27.4 (1994), pp. 551-568. LinkLink opens in a new window.

Mustakeem, Sowande M., Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2016). LinkLink opens in a new window.

Pettinger, Alisdair (ed.), Always Elsewhere: Travels of the Black Atlantic (London: Cassell, 1998). LibraryLink opens in a new window. [Primary source excerpts]

Rediker, Markus, The Slave Ship: A Human History (New York and London: Penguin, 2007). LibraryLink opens in a new window.

Shannon, Timothy J., Atlantic Lives: A Comparative Approach to Early America (2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2019), Ch. 5: 'West Africa and the Atlantic Slave Trade'. [includes primary source excerpts] LinkLink opens in a new window.

Thomas, Sue, Telling West Indian Lives: Life Narrative and the Reform of Plantation Slavery Cultures 1804–1834 (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2014). LinkLink opens in a new window.

Sharafi, Mitra, 'The Slave Ship Manuscripts of Captain Joseph B. Cook: A Narrative Reconstruction of the Brig Nancy's Voyage of 1793', Slavery and Abolition 24.1 (2003), pp. 71-100. LinkLink opens in a new window.

Whatley Smith, Virginia, 'African American Travel Literature', in: Alfred Bendixen and Judith Hamera (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to American Travel Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 197-213. LinkLink opens in a new window.

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