by the Past & Present editorial team
Past and Present was pleased to learn that Dr. Samantha Payne (College of Charleston) has won the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians “article prize for 2022 for an article in any field of history by a woman scholar”. The award was made for her article “‘A General Insurrection in the Countries with Slaves’: The US Civil War and the Origins of an Atlantic Revolution, 1861–1866” which was published in Past & Present no. 257 (November 2022).
The prize committee noted that:
“Payne foregrounds the actions of enslaved people in the debate about emancipation following the American Civil War and its ripple effects on the other slave states of the Americas. She argues the end of the Civil War precipitated the abolition of slavery in Cuba and Brazil because of the actions of these slaves.
Members of the Committee were impressed by the breadth of her research, with archives in several countries and multiple languages.
By considering the communications network that existed among enslaved people and free people of color in the Atlantic world, she was able to consider how much their participation of affected the changing discourse of emancipation
By reading across the micro to the macro, the changing circumstances for both enslaved people and free people of color as increased surveillance and restrictions were enforced in the wake of the American Civil War in the remaining slave states of the Americas, where authorities were concerned that liberty was contagious. Her work brings into clearer view the role of black people in the pursuit of liberty and in the discourse of emancipation through the Atlantic World.”
Our congratulations to Dr. Payne. In recognition of this prestigious award and to enable more people to read Dr. Payne’s award winning scholarship our publisher Oxford University Press has made the prize winning article “‘A General Insurrection in the Countries with Slaves’: The US Civil War and the Origins of an Atlantic Revolution, 1861–1866” free to read for the next few months.
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