Tayzhaun Glover, " 'She had been caught in the open sea while escaping': Enslaved Women, Plantation Labor, and the Dynamics of Transmarine Marronage in 19th Century Martinique"

The event will be held in Coble Hall 306 at 3:00 PM on September 28th. 

This talk engages the concept of "transmarine marronage" to analyze how enslaved men and women utilized small-craft infrastructure and rural shorelines to navigate policed waters between neighboring islands in the Lesser Antilles in the early 19th century. By centering enslaved women who acted alongside plantation leaders (commandeurs), this talk reconsiders colonial judicial assumptions that enslaved women lacked the capacity to organize escapes. Ultimately, this research demonstrates how the gendered division of plantation labor informed collective escape strategies, highlighting how enslaved people leveraged changing geopolitical landscapes and abolitionist policies in the Caribbean to seek freedom.

Dr. Tayzhaun Glover is an assistant professor in the History department at UIUC. He specializes in 19th century Caribbean history, and his research examines slavery, mobility, and freedom in the Lesser Antilles. His forthcoming book, Freedom on the Horizon: Transmarine Marronage and the Abolition of Slavery in the Lesser Antilles, explores the seaborne fugitive practices of enslaved men in women in Martinique who crossed the sea to liberate themselves on British soil in the early 19th century. His research has received support from US-France Fulbright, Duke University, and the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.