Speculation against Insurgency: Uprising and Atlantic Slave Trade Profit-Seeking in the Early United States

"Speculation against Insurgency" is a part of a new project examining transformations in trans-Atlantic slave trade speculation alongside the history of enslaved people's uprisings during the Age of Revolutions. This talk focuses particularly upon how the social relations made through U.S.-based slave trade speculation provide an alternative perspective for considering racial slavery's consequences in the making of the early Unites States.

Zach Sell is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of History, College of Arts and Sciences, Drexel University

Biography:

I am a scholar of slavery, empire, and colonialism in the nineteenth century. My book, Trouble of the World: Slavery and Empire in the Age of Capitalexamines the terrible convergence between the expansion of U.S. slavery and the growth of the British Empire in the mid-nineteenth century. I have begun working on a second project focused on global transformations in trade, slavery, and colonialism in the era of the American Revolution.

Before joining Drexel University, I was Ruth J. Simmons Postdoctoral Fellow and visiting assistant professor at Brown University's Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice. I am committed to public history and have worked on several projects related to the histories and legacies of racial slavery in the Atlantic world. I have recently served as a faculty advisor for the Choices curriculum Racial Slavery in the Americas: Resistance, Freedom, and Legacies and am also involved in the making of a multi-part documentary film series on the Atlantic slave trade directed by Stanley Nelson.