"This study of black refugees to British Canada fills in another part of the puzzle that is African American history. Slowly the simplistic view of blacks fleeing to Canada on the legendary ‘underground railroad’ is evolving into a more authentic study of the spread of African culture throughout the northern hemisphere. Studying the scattered migration of ‘Diaspora’ of blacks away from slavery toward freedom is giving us a clearer picture of the scope of American history from early colonization, through the Civil War and Civil Rights to the modern day."—seacoastNH.com
“Canadians, especially Nova Scotians, are indebted to Amani Whitfield, an American scholar, who first came to Nova Scotia in 1997 to study for his masters in history. After six years of research and writing and a recent Ph.D., he has written a powerful book, a tour de force. With insightful analysis, he describes how former American slaves from diverse backgrounds became Black Refugees in Canada and eventually formed a distinct culture of Black people before the American Civil War.”—New England Quarterly
“...[A]n inspiration for other historians who want to understand race and identity in the Atlantic world.”—Journal of the Early Republic
“Originally researched, fully contextualized, persuasively argued, and leanly and lucidly written, this ostensibly regional study is in fact a work of transborder and continental, if not hemispheric, history. Some 35 years ago another American historian, the late Robin Winks, put African-Canadian history on the scholarly map. It now falls to Harvey Amani Whitfield to take up the torch and write a braver and newer history which takes seriously the African-Canadian experience and fully integrates it into the wider history—not only of the Diaspora and the Black Atlantic, but also of Blacks in the British Empire.” —Barry Cahill, Independent Scholar, Halifax, Nova Scotia
“By focusing his lens on Nova Scotia, Harvey Amani Whitfield illuminates the experience of one of the largest and yet most neglected free black communities in all of antebellum North America. This lucid monograph weaves together several important strands of historiography as it seeks to understand the complex identity African-American refugees constructed for themselves on the fringes of the Atlantic world. Perhaps not since Robin Winks has a scholar done as much to illuminate the black experience in Canada.”—Patrick Rael, author of Black Identity and Black Protest in the Antebellum North (2002)
