Humanities & Social Sciences
Description
This book challenges the idealised narrative of Canada as an antislavery haven for self-liberated people to explore Canada's complicated relationship with slavery. Examining advertisements, abolitionist texts and narratives about slavery in Canadian newspapers and the texts that were printed alongside them, it shows how Canadian readers and enslavers developed an image of themselves as belonging to an antislavery community even while recognising their own complicity in slavery. The book explores narratives that depict the lives of Black settlers in Canada and how slave narratives circulated in Canada. Canada's relationship with slavery is far more complicated than seeing it as either an antislavery haven or a slaveholding space. Canada was connected to Britain, France, the Caribbean and the United States and this was central to how Canadians and Canadian readers fashioned their self-image in relation to slavery.
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Reviews
This book challenges the dominant narrative that Canada was a benevolent antislavery haven for self-liberated people from the United States and explores how this image developed given that slavery was practiced in Canada. Eleanor Bird examines the framing context of fugitive slave advertisements and abolitionist debates in newspapers. She considers how Black settlers depicted their lives in Canada after crossing the Canada-US border and how slave narratives circulated and were read in Canada. Canada was connected to Britain, France, the Caribbean and United States in its early print culture of slavery and this was central to how Canadians and Canadian readers fashioned their self-image in relation to slavery. Early Canadian newspapers reveals that Canadian enslavers and readers may not have recognised their own complicity in slavery even as they knew that slavery was practiced in Canada. In getting beyond the reductive and idealised image of Canada-as-haven, this book makes a significant contribution not only to our understanding of Canada and its relationship with slavery, but to slavery and abolition print cultures in the Black Atlantic World.
Author Biography
Eleanor Bird is a Research Associate in the Department of English Literature and Creative Writing at Lancaster University
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View all titlesBibliographic Information
- Publisher Manchester University Press
- Publication Date April 2025
- Orginal LanguageEnglish
- ISBN/Identifier 9781526174291 / 1526174294
- Publication Country or regionUnited Kingdom
- FormatPrint PDF
- Pages200
- ReadershipGeneral/trade
- Publish StatusPublished
- Dimensions216 X 138 mm
- Biblio NotesDerived from Proprietary 5929
- SeriesInterventions: Rethinking the Nineteenth Century
- Reference Code15737
