Atlantic connections and the construction of the free subject: the trajectory of Frederick Douglass

Abstract

This article aims to demonstrate how the trajectory of Frederick Douglass relates to Atlantic History through the analysis of his first autobiography, A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845). A prominent figure in the nineteenth-century American historical context, Douglass established transnational contacts that also influenced him. Therefore, we start from the hypothesis that the trajectory of the former slave and abolitionist reflects a relationship with the context of Atlantic History, demonstrating the complexity of contacts and dialogues in the nineteenth-century slave world, notably on the European and American continents, and was also important for the construction of Douglass' own identity.