Boundaries of Bondage: Slavery and Freedom amidst Atlantic Warfare

During the late-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, war was endemic in the Atlantic Basin, affecting nearly all colonial holdings in the New World. Recognizing that war was a structural feature of colonial society, this paper uses it as a filter through which to view the ambiguity of slavery and freedom in the Southeast during the War of Jenkins' Ear. Although the dominant notion about slavery during the colonial period suggests that slavery and freedom were distinct statuses, this paper argues that slavery and freedom could be ambiguous categories, and that examining warfare during this time highlights their muddled relationship. By arguing for the importance of warfare to our comprehension of early modern slave societies, this paper explores the relative power enslaved people possessed amidst war, slaves' chance at gaining legal freedom as a by-product of imperial conflict, and how warfare shaped British slave policy.