Harvey Amani Whitfield

Professor; Centennial Carnegie Chair in the History of Slavery in Canada

Harvey Amani Whitfield_Profile
Photo taken by Adams Photography

Email: harvey.whitfield@ukings.ca
Phone: 902-431-8738
Mailing Address: 
Room 3164, Department of History, Marion McCain Arts& Social Sciences Building, 6135 University Ave., PO Box 15000, Halifax, NS B3H 4R2
 
Research Topics:
  • Canadian Slavery
  • American Slavery
  • United States and Canadian History before 1865

Education:

  • BA- Colorado State University
  • MA- Dalhousie University
  • PhD- Dalhousie University


Books

  • Biographical Dictionary of Enslaved Black People in the Maritimes (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2022); Winner of the Canadian Historical Association’s Clio Prize for the Atlantic Region
  • Black Slavery in the Maritimes: A History in Documents (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2018)
  • North to Bondage: Loyalist Slavery in the Maritimes (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2016)
  • The Problem of Slavery in Early Vermont, 1777-1810 (Barre: Vermont Historical Society, 2014)
  • Blacks on the Border: The Black Refugees in British North America, 1815-1860 (Burlington: University of Vermont Press/University Press of New England, 2006)
  • From American Slaves to Nova Scotian Subjects: The Case of the Black Refugees, 1813-1840 (Toronto: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2005)
     


Recent Articles, Book Chapters, Dictionary of Canadian Biography Entries

  • And Jesse R. Eaton, “Somerset, Slavery, and Colonial Canada’s Maritime Region, 1772-1807,” in a collection about the Somerset case, eds., Matt Mason and David Waldstreicher (Under review, 2024)

  • “Lydia Jackson,” “Unrecorded Name,” “Statia,” “Nancy,” “Diana Bastian,” “Isaac Willoughby,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography (Online, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2024)

  • And Franco Paz, “On the Edge of Freedom: The Re-enslavement of Elizabeth Watson in Nova Scotia,” In Search of Liberty: African American Internationalism in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World, ed., Ronald Johnson (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2021)

  • “White Archives, Black Fragments: Problems and Possibilities in Telling the Lives of Enslaved Black People in the Maritimes,” Canadian Historical Review 101 (September 2020): 323-45
  • “Runaway Advertisements and Social Disorder in the Maritimes: A Preliminary Study,” Unrest, Social Violence, and Social Disorder (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019)
  • “The African Diaspora in Atlantic Canada: History, Historians, and Historiography,” Acadiensis: Journal of the History of the Atlantic Region (Spring/Summer 2017)
  • “Slave Life in the Canadian Maritime Colonies,” in Slavery, Memory Citizenship, Paul E. Lovejoy and Vanessa S. Oliveira, eds., (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2016)
  • “The Struggle over Slavery in the Maritime Colonies,” Acadiensis: Journal of the History of the Atlantic Region (Summer/Autumn 2012)
  • Co-Written with Barry Cahill and D.G. Bell, “Slavery and Slave Law in the Maritimes,” in The African Canadian Legal Odyssey: Historical Essays, Barrington Walker, ed., (Toronto: University of Toronto Press [Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History], 2012)
  • “Slavery in English Nova Scotia, 1750-1810,” Journal of the Royal Nova Scotia Historical Society (2010)
  • “American Background of Loyalist Slaves,” Left History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Historical Inquiry and Debate (Autumn, 2009)
  • Co-written with Barry Cahill, “Slave Law and Slave Life on Prince Edward Island, 1763-1825,” Acadiensis: Journal of the History of the Atlantic Region (Summer/Autumn 2009)
  • “African Americans in Burlington, Vermont, 1880-1900,” Vermont History (Summer/Fall, 2007)
  • “Black Loyalists and Black Slaves in Maritime Canada,” History Compass (October 2007)