Done with Slavery: The Black Fact in Montreal, 1760-1840

Done with Slavery: The Black Fact in Montreal, 1760-1840

by Frank Mackey
ISBN-10:
0773535780
ISBN-13:
9780773535787
Pub. Date:
02/01/2010
Publisher:
McGill-Queens University Press
ISBN-10:
0773535780
ISBN-13:
9780773535787
Pub. Date:
02/01/2010
Publisher:
McGill-Queens University Press
Done with Slavery: The Black Fact in Montreal, 1760-1840

Done with Slavery: The Black Fact in Montreal, 1760-1840

by Frank Mackey

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Overview

Did slavery exist in Montreal, and if so what did it look like? Frank Mackey grapples with this question in Done with Slavery, a study of black Montrealers in the eighty years between the British Conquest and the union of Lower and Upper Canada. Through close examination of archival and contemporary sources, Mackey uncovers largely unknown aspects of the black transition from slavery to freedom. While he considers the changing legal status of slavery, much of the book provides a detailed and nuanced reconstruction of the circumstances of black Montrealers and their lived experience. The resulting picture is remarkably complex, showing the variety of occupations held by blacks, the relationships they had with those they served, their encounters with the judicial and political systems, and the racial mingling that came with intermarriage and apprenticeships. Done with Slavery casts the categories of blackness and slavery in a new light, showing that broad histories of the phenomenon must begin to take into account the specifics of the lives of "marginal" black populations. Done with Slavery is an invitation to look at a colonial society through the prism of documented black experience, revealing that the roots of the present are neither as wholesome as some would hope nor as bitter as others might suppose.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780773535787
Publisher: McGill-Queens University Press
Publication date: 02/01/2010
Series: Studies on the History of Quebec , #21
Pages: 568
Product dimensions: 6.60(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.80(d)

About the Author

Frank Mackey is the author of Steamboat Connections: Montreal to Upper Canada, 1816-1843, and Black Then: Blacks and Montreal, 1780s-1880s.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 3

1 What slavery? 15

2 There ought to be a law 36

3 Still counting 79

4 "Things as they were" 108

5 Deer out of a cage 136

6 On steamboats 164

7 Jacks of all trades 183

8 Political colours 218

9 The colour of justice 236

10 Shoulder to shoulder, arm in aim 266

11 One thousand characters in search of an author or two 292

Appendices

I Newspaper notices

A Slave sales and fugitives 307

B Miscellaneous notices referring to blacks 340

C Three earliest advertisements by blacks 344

II Slavery in the judges' eyes 345

III Spoils of war 381

IV The King v. Alexander Grant, George Nixon and Moses Powell Wormley 408

Abbreviations 417

Notes 419

Sources 553

Information on illustrations 577

Index 581

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