2025/01/01 by Kacy Dowd Tillman · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Caribbean history, culture, and politics #Colonialism, slavery, and trade #Race, History, and American Society
paper · doi:10.1353/eam.2025.a951317
openalex publication_date 2025/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
Abstract: This article analyzes Black loyalism during the American Revolution as the Book of Negroes represents it. The Book is partly a ledger of names and partly a series of petitions written in 1783. People in this book's ledger were considered free and left New York to start a new life outside of America. I argue that this book should be read as mediated micronarratives and considered collectively as Black auto/biographies embedded within white-authored documents. I also argue that these micronarratives counter the dehumanization of the Book , which often uses the language of numeracy to objectify Black loyalists and threatens to undermine the I-statements of the petitions. When read this way, we can see the Book as an artifact of life writing; as a record of the codification (or attempted codification) of Black loyalty and loyalism; and as an example of white surveillance technology of Black lives. Implicit in these claims is that this Book is one of the earliest and largest collections of circumatlantic Black loyalist authorship, if we know how to read it.