Book Review: Freedom Seekers: Escaping From Slavery In Restoration London by Simon P. Newman.
This week’s reading for our Early Modern England history class was Simon P. Newman’s Freedom Seekers: Escaping From Slavery In Restoration London, published in 2022. The book covers the history of enslaved people during Restoration London. When you think of slavery, you normally think of it as happening across the Atlantic, but Simon Newman provides evidence that it happened in London as well. If you think about Great Britain in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, do you picture people of color on the streets as well? Simon Newman uses the intimate stories of enslaved people to inform the reader of racial slavery in Restoration England, a time and setting in which slavery is not commonly associated with. The main idea that Newman is presenting in Freedom Seekers is that the people who owned slaves in Restoration London were contributed to the construction of racial slavery. The sources that he uses are newspapers, slave advertisements, church records,etc. Despite the limited historical research upon this topic, Newman uses reasoned interpretation to draw historically sound conclusions to determine that.
Simon P. Newman structures his book into three parts. The first part, Restoration London and the enslaved, is Newman plunging the reader into the world in which the book takes places. The reader is introduced to the workings of Restoration London and how slavery fit into this world. The second part is called The freedom Seekers, this part is 12 shorter chapters that all are about a different enslaved person/person. The third and final part is Freedom seekers in the colonies. This final part touches upon the laws passed in the colonies that effected enslaved people. These chapters are meant to explore what life was like in Restoration London for the enslaved person and it proves that main idea that the enslavers contributed to the construction of racial slavery.
What is Freedom Seekers trying to say? In his introduction, Simon P. Newman writes “Given that surviving records tell us rather more about enslavers and the community than about the enslaved, this book also seeks to illuminate how those who owned bound people of colour in Restoration London were constructing and defending racial slavery in the metropole.” (xxviii). Despite records to the contrary, one of Newman’s arguments is that the owners of enslaved people of color in London were connected to the creation of racial slavery. How does Newman illustrate this point? Newman writes” Londoners who claimed ownership of these people were themselves part of the vast imperial project and their dedication to the expansion and preservation of the slave trade and slavery included the development of a system for the recapture of any enslaved or bound person of colour who dared to reject their subordination by attempting to escape”(37). This quote proves Newman’s main point that the enslavers contributed to the construction of the racial slavery system.
One of the things I liked about this book was how immersive it was. That first chapter about London really submerges you into Restoration London. This is important because in order to understand what life as a slave in Restoration London, firstly you must understand what London was like in this period. Newman really paints a picture complete with sailors, coffee houses. The topic is also quite niche but interesting. Slaves in Restoration London is not exactly something many people know about or think about. This shows the quality of Newman’s research because he makes such a detailed book from a topic that has received few, if any attention.
The sources used by Newman are both similar and different to sources used in previous works we have read before. For example. Newman discusses a historian who used church court depositions (p.9) This kind of source is similar to the sources used in books such as A People’s Reformation, or The Dissolution of the Monasteries. But Newman also goes into his usage of wanted posters for runaway slaves. While these posters contain valuable insight on the period, Newman also points out that “.‘Runaway slave’ advertisements rendered the very people they described as property and as criminally fugitive: by their very nature, these advertisements became part of the process of the commodification and depersonalization of enslaved people. Historians today who collate and analyze these advertisements engage in an act of remediation that risks continuing the datafication of enslaved people.” The use of these sources helps prove Newman’s main idea of enslavers in Restoration London contributing to the construction of the racial slave system.
The runaway slave poster, which many of us see as just a piece of paper, Newman describes as “This mechanism for the recovery of enslaved people who had escaped would eventually create and largest and richest resource for the study of resistance of escape in England’s colonies and then in the United States”(218).Newman also writes “During the seventeenth century Londoners made use of newspaper advertisements in constructing the idea of the runaway slave and the practice of broadcasting information designed to secure freedom seekers, while English colonists responded to runaway in a more forceful and comprehensive manner by creating new laws and practices that were unprecedented in English law.”(196). Newman uses these sources and analyzes in a way that doesn’t devalue the enslaved person that is portrayed. But Newman sees them as a human rather than property.
“Can a historian imagine London’s enslaved in a manner that transcends an archival record constructed by their enslavers? Perhaps the best we can do, treading carefully as we go, is to build from archival research to hint at possibilities, encouraging readers to imagine real people who remembered, who suffered, who are, who slept, who laughed, who sang and who danced.” (xxv). This is what Newman does for Part 2 of his book, The freedom seekers. This is 12 chapters, each revolving around one or more enslaved persons. As the quote above mentioned, because there is not as much primary sources or scholarly evidence alone, Newman must use archival research to build what could have happened in a historically plausible way. I believe this is called reasoned interpretation which Newman uses. Each chapter uses one enslaved person to explore a specific particle of life in Restoration London for an enslaved person. For example, the Pompey chapter goes into the kind of shackles that was put upon a enslaved person. The Jack chapter goes into what young, enslaved boys experienced. These chapters all contribute to Newman’s main idea which is that the enslavers of Restoration London helped build the racial slavery system. We see this in the chapters and through Newman’s detailed research.
What I liked About Simon P. Newman’s Freedom Hunters is that for a book about a topic that does not cross most people’s mind, it is well-researched, and provides a perspective rarely seen in historical works today. I was particularly interested in the mention of South-Asian enslaved people which you rarely hear about, or at least I rarely heard about it. Freedom Seekers is a well-researched book that touches upon how the slavery system was constructed In Restoration England. He uses reasoned interpretation to infer conclusions to story that we simply don’t have all the details to. This was a good book on a topic I admittedly knew nothing about. It was very informative.