Blacks on the Border: The Black Refugees in British North America, 1815–1860 (review)

In his timely and important study of the Black Refugees from the War of 1812, Harvey Amani Whitfield has reminded us that the black communities established in Nova Scotia in the nineteenth century were among the connected nodes of black freedom in the Atlantic world. Whitfield traces the regional, cultural, and social histories of the Black Refugees, a constellation of former American slaves who fled to the British Army during the war, from the Chesapeake and Lowcountry (primarily Virginia and Georgia's Sea Islands). Ultimately, he confronts a profound issue: How did the cultural and social worldviews of the Black Refugees with such deep roots in American slavery endure migration and resettlement to Nova Scotia? Much as American historians have discovered in their studies of nineteenth-century urban black communities in the American North, Whitfield sees the ways in which economic, social, and political marginalization in Nova Scotia promoted a black racial consciousness, becoming the impetus for community development, political action, and identity formation. As Whitfield demonstrates, the Black Refugees embraced their identity as subjects of the British monarchy, and moved from that position to advocate for their rights as citizens in Nova Scotia.

Blacks on the Border opens with two narratives: The history of blacks in Nova Scotia and the history of American slavery in the Chesapeake and Lowcountry. Weaving together Canadian and American historiography, Whitfield illuminates the ways in which the longer history of blacks in Nova Scotia, particularly the legacies of the Black Loyalists and Jamaican Maroons, influenced the Black Refugee experience. Furthermore, he demonstrates how slave culture and society in the American South shaped their lives in nineteenth-century Nova Scotia. These histories and traditions would collide and define the contours of black life in this maritime Canadian province. Like the Black Loyalists during the Revolutionary War, the Black Refugees were promised land and freedom for their support of the British military. And similar to the Black Loyalist experience, this next wave of black American migrants encountered a government and communities in Nova Scotia hostile to their arrival. Indeed, the Black Refugees discovered a harsher racial climate because of the history of tense race relations in the province. Ultimately nearly half of the Black Loyalists left to help found the Afro-British colony of Sierra Leone, and most of the Jamaican Maroons left Nova Scotia as well. Many white Nova Scotians hoped the Black Refugees would follow these earlier examples and leave the colony. While a few of the Refugees would accept the offer of removal to the Caribbean, most decided to stay and make a life in Nova Scotia.

It is in the stories of the struggles and hardships of the Black Refugees in the early years of their settlement that we see the richness of Whitfield's research. Significantly, Chesapeake blacks settled in Preston, a rural area outside of Dartmouth (a suburb of Halifax) while Lowcountry migrants settled in Hammonds Plains, another area bordering the seaport, although distant from the black community in Preston. Looking at the petitions submitted by Black Refugees for land and supplies, Whitfield discovered work patterns that paralleled the black experience in the American South, particularly in the insistence of the Refugees to pursue farming and practice traditional artisan trades, occasionally engaging the urban labor market in Halifax. In their work and labor, the Black Refugees were practicing cultural and social traditions tied to their experience in American slavery, and identified their commitment to farming with ideas of independence and freedom.

Indeed, it is this context of persistent commitment to yeomanry that would facilitate black identity and community in Nova Scotia. The Black Refugees were allotted so little acreage, most of which was unsuitable for farming, that they were unable to provide for themselves, becoming destitute and sick. Furthermore, their having lived in the warmer climates of the American South...