A Post-Emancipation Fiction of Black Imperial Masculinity: John Briggs’s The History of Jim Crow (1839)

Abstract

Although forgotten today, The History of Jim Crow (1839) is a singular Victorian literary effort to defend Black masculinity against denigrating ‘Jim Crow’ caricature. The novel’s author, Major General John Briggs (1785–1875; service, 1801–1835), was a British Indian solider and civil servant who, as a co-founder the British India Society (1839–1840), sought to link anti-slavery and imperial reform. On the one hand, The History demonstrates that white British reformers made a deliberate effort, following the Emancipation Act (1833), to represent Black men as British subjects and, so, to incorporate them into the imperial family. On the other hand, the book reveals that these representations did not dispense with fantasies of racial hierarchy. A fictional autobiography in which Briggs speaks for his Black protagonist, The History imagines that emancipated Black men earn imperial citizenship only by participating in dynamics of obligation with white male ‘superiors’.

Department(s)

English

Document Type

Article

DOI

10.1080/0144039X.2025.2502727

Keywords

abolitionist literature, British anti-slavery, Jim Crow

Publication Date

1-1-2025

Journal Title

Slavery and Abolition

Link to Full Text

Share

COinS