A notice dated 30 January 1822 listed Linval, Nina, Pamphile, and others who had fled their enslavers. The official newspaper printed names alongside age, origin, and physical description to help capture them. Read against the grain, these records preserve traces of people’s decisions to escape and of the colonial surveillance designed to return them to bondage. The date is the notice date; the source does not establish a single escape date for all those listed.
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What is the best way to read the 1822 notices about Linval, Nina, Pamphile, and others?
The notices were produced by the colonial system to facilitate recapture, but preserve names and traces of resistance.
The 1822 escape notices were written from the perspective of the people who escaped.
They were colonial notices, generally issued to identify and recapture people; reading them critically can still reveal agency.