Simon Newman, Freedom Seekers: Escaping from Slavery in Restoration London. London: University of London Press, 2022. 258 pp. (Paper £ 12.00)
Freedom Seekers is a superb example of how a professional, academic historian can write a book that is both highly readable and important to society as a whole. It could serve as a model for other historians seeking to push the implications of their work beyond the academy, and it demonstrates the quality of writing required to accomplish this. Simon Newman has contributed more than most British scholars to the U.K.’s recent confrontation with its uncomfortable role in expanding and profiting from the enslavement of millions of African people. The fresh and thorough research at the heart of Freedom Seekers offers us another milestone in this confrontation.
Newman begins with “a note on language” about the correct language we should use to describe his subject. This discussion is respectful, compassionate, and empowering, and a model for further scholars determined to engage with difficult histories without perpetuating the language that oppressors used. The book then hones in on its subject through a broader assessment of restoration London and the Black community within it and leads to the main chapters of the book, which break the community of freedom seekers into categories of analysis: boys, South Asians, females, those with distinguishing “country marks,” those branded and/or shackled, those who escaped from ships, those who resided in the Thames-side communities, those working for merchants, and those in the suburbs. The book ends with an analysis of freedom seekers in colonial settings, rounding off Newman’s larger argument about the importance of London in forming aspects of the racial slavery more typically associated with the colonies.
All the chapters offer well-drawn, graphic glimpses of the freedom seekers (as well as those who wished to have them found); they provide an entirely new perspective on a world made familiar to us mainly through the diary of Samuel Pepys. London is wonderfully evoked. Newman offers an especially useful and fascinating discussion of the collars that the fugitives were forced to wear and the connections these horrific practices suggest between the treatment of Africans and previous and concurrent methods of bridling animals. The research is always superbly illustrated and there are well-produced images and maps. Newman is especially authoritative on the core basis for his analysis: the runaway advertisements themselves.
A couple of points in Freedom Seekers might strike some readers as under-explored or not fully justified. I highlight them here with the explicit disclaimer that they do not detract from Newman’s achievements. First, it struck me as strange that he opted to replicate the categorization of the runaway adverts when deciding on a structure for his book. Second, what was the status of the fugitives? Were they definitely enslaved? Newman comes down firmly on the side of “yes,” without completing the analysis of the status of non-African people that would be required to prove this. Such an analysis would necessitate full engagement with the rich literature on early modern English social and economic history. Third, there is a strange sense of stasis in the historical context against which Freedom Seekers is set. Newman focuses on a 50-year period that included remarkable political, constitutional, and economic change. This was also the key period of uplift for the transatlantic trade in enslaved African people. Yet we are told very little about how this hugely important development interacted with issues in the stories Newman is telling. Did treatment of the fugitives alter as public appreciation of the escalation and entrenchment of the enslavement of Africans enslavement broadened? The late seventeenth century was a tumultuous context. The actors in this story are depicted as if they were disconnected from it.
These are either minor matters or evidence of the scale of the implications of Newman’s project. The abundant qualities of Freedom Seekers increase the chances that others will seek to use his analysis as a springboard toward answering these larger, very difficult questions. They certainly do not detract from a work that is hugely enjoyable, timely, and compelling. For all these reasons (quality of the prose, the research, the vivid re-enactment of the archive), the book deserves a wide readership. I am confident that Newman’s success will inspire his own (and future) generations of academic historians to follow in his footsteps.
