BA (Colorado State University), MA (Dalhousie), PhD (Dalhousie)
Harvey Amani Whitfield comes to King’s after 17 years at the University of Vermont and four years at the University of Calgary. He grew up in Maryland and attended Colorado State University earning Magna Cum Laude and membership in Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Alpha Theta. His MA at Dalhousie focused on West African history. Dr. Whitfield’s doctoral work highlighted the experience of the War of 1812 Black Refugees under the direction of Judith Fingard and David Sutherland.
His area of research interest is Black migration, coerced and free, to the Maritimes during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Dr. Whitfield is the author of several books including Blacks on the Border: The Black Refugees in British North America, 1815-1860; North to Bondage: Loyalist Slavery in the Maritimes; Biographical Dictionary of Enslaved Black People in the Maritimes; Black Slavery in the Maritimes: A History in Documents; and The Problem of Slavery in Early Vermont, 1777-1810.
Dr. Whitfield enjoys living in rural Nova Scotia, cats, and spending time with his young daughter.
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)
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)
