Fugitive Slaves and the Other Story of Knowledge and Power

From the 1600s to the 1800s, African and African-American runaway slaves ventured into distant lands with the intent of acquiring knowledge about the places and peoples they encountered. Although white Americans were usually familiar with these lands, most enslaved blacks were either entirely uninformed about them or knew them only through rumor. Not all runaways engaged in exploring, of course, but the efforts of the women and men who did were vital to undermining US slavery. By returning south to guide kin out of bondage, sharing details about routes and sympathizers that facilitated escape, and seeking connections with powerful allies in places like Spanish Florida, the British Empire, and the US North, fugitive explorers not only enabled thousands of individuals to achieve liberty but helped foment the sectional crisis that led to Civil War and emancipation.

Approaching runaway slaves as explorers also offers new insights into the histories of both exploration and black America, two fields rarely put in conversation. Scholars of exploration have long emphasized connections between knowledge and power, particularly how ambitions to control lands and peoples engendered exploration and how the knowledge developed through exploration encouraged conquest. However, these connections were only half the story of knowledge, power, and exploration: far from seeking to rule over others, runaways—as well as many Indigenous and white Americans—pursued exploration to resist domination. As for African-American history, my research develops a new intellectual history of fugitivity, one rooted in part in West African traditions (captured in oral and written histories) of using exploratory travel to evade oppressive forces, protect kin, and build alliances. Exploration, in short, was not simply a European category. The goals, practices, and geopolitical consequences of fugitives’ journeys were integral to—and challenge longstanding interpretations of—American exploration on the whole.