Black Feminist Approaches to Insurrection at Sea
from Part IV - On Method
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 September 2025
This chapter explores a form of anticolonial resistance that has gone relatively unnoticed by social theorists – insurrections aboard slaving ships. How might social theorists effectively represent, theorize, and contextualize these moments of anticolonial action? Drawing on the materials from the newly opened Lloyd’s archives, we discuss the importance of the insurance archive to histories of slavery and how these materials – despite their colonial ontologies – can offer novel understandings of anticolonial action. The materials permit scholars to uncover a complex set of financial logics that convey multiple different meanings about the category of the human and allow social theorists to ask different questions. Even the smallest details in the most highly localized spaces can provide insight into the nature of resistance and revolution.
London Metropolitan Archives
Royal Maritime Museum Library and Archive
British National Archives at Kew
Guildhall Library and Archive
Chester Local Archive
Liverpool Records Office
Lloyd’s List
Lloyd’s Register
Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
Legacies of British Slavery
London Metropolitan Archives
Royal Maritime Museum Library and Archive
British National Archives at Kew
Guildhall Library and Archive
Chester Local Archive
Liverpool Records Office
Lloyd’s List
Lloyd’s Register
Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
Legacies of British Slavery
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