Escaped and Captured Slave Datasets from Newspapers in Jamaica, 1718-1795

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Penn collection
The Magazine of Early American Datasets (MEAD)
Discipline
Subject
Slavery
slave resistance
escaped slaves
African American Studies
African History
African Studies
American Studies
Caribbean Languages and Societies
Digital Humanities
Ethnic Studies
European History
History
Labor History
Latin American Studies
Quantitative, Qualitative, Comparative, and Historical Methodologies
Race and Ethnicity
Social History
Social Statistics
Women's History
Women's Studies
Region
Jamaica
Funder
Grant number
Date issued
2021-07-01
Distributor
Scholarly Commons, University of Pennsylvania Libraries
Related resources
No scholar has yet published any articles or books using this dataset. Every scholar is welcome to use it for their own research. Douglass B. Chambers has published numerous articles and books, some of which draw on his analysis of the advertisements. See, for example, Chambers, D. B. (2011). Repercussions of the Atlantic Slave Trade: The Interior of the Bight of Biafra and the African Diaspora. International Journal of African Historical Studies, 44(3), 468-470. Available at: https://aquila.usm.edu/fac_pubs/350
https://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?filename=0&article=1044&context=mead&type=additional
https://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?filename=1&article=1044&context=mead&type=additional
Contributor
Abstract

We created two datasets about fugitives and captives in eighteenth-century Jamaica, one of the most violent systems of racial bondage in the Atlantic World. To produce the first dataset as an Excel file, we organized and recorded information contained in hundreds of newspaper advertisements offering rewards for the return of escaped slaves in Jamaica between 1718 and 1795. While there are some gaps in the records because of missing newspapers, there are still a considerable number of advertisements included. One feature of the ads is that many identify the African ethnicity of runaway and captured slaves. The second dataset also consists of information from newspaper notices about escapees who had been captured and confined to Workhouses between 1790 and 1795. We relied on the advertisements edited and transcribed by Professor Douglas B. Chambers (and others in his project) and made them available online https://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00021144/00001. More information about the project and the ads is available at https://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00021144/00001/citation Anthony Wood, currently a PhD in history at the University of Michigan, did most of the hard work of coding. Professor Billy G. Smith checked the results to eliminate mistakes.

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