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Thomas Martin Szymczyk

  • Dissertation

    Working Title: Islands of Fear. Jamaica and Saint-Domingue between War, Autonomy and Revolution in the 18th Century

    Jamaica and Saint-Domingue reached the peak of their prosperity during the so-called Saddle Age between the 18th and 19th centuries. At the same time, it was precisely this prosperity, a product of the ruthless exploitation of slave labour, which formed the basis for the fear of losing these indispensable nodes of the English and French colonial empires. Against the backdrop of the manifold challenges of imperial rule, be it the Anglo-French wars, slave revolts, the emerging abolitionism, or the implementation of the concepts of "liberty" and "liberté" in political reality in 1776 and 1789, respectively, the dissertation project examines the means by which the colonial elites of both islands tried to establish stability in this turbulent period and to strengthen their own social position in the process. With the self-image of the colonial upper class in the form of the "aristocratie de l'épiderme", which transcended national borders and is defined by the demarcation via "class" and "race", a trans-imperially effective category of investigation is introduced, which also had feedback effects on the respective metropolises, not least as a result of the Haitian Revolution. The project thus aims to draw a picture of two societies that, in conflict with themselves, the metropolis and each other, reacted to colonial crises in astonishing parallelity despite political differences.

  • Presentations

    08/2025 Presentation "Islands of Fear. Jamaica and Saint-Domingue between War, Autonomy, and Revolution in the 18th Century"
    9th Summer Academy of Atlantic History, "Revolutions in the Atlantic World (1750-1840)", Praia Grande (Portugal)

    07/2025 Presentation "Inseln der Angst. Jamaika und Saint-Domingue zwischen Krieg, Autonomie und Revolution im 18. Jahrhundert"
    Kolloquium für das 19. Jahrhundert (Ewald Frie und Friedemann Pestel), Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen

    07/2025 Science-Slam-Presentation "Freiheit. Eine kleine Zeitreise mit einem dehnbaren Begriff"
    Abschlusstagung des SFB 138 "Dynamiken der Sicherheit", Marburg

    06/2025 Workshop Organisation "Interculturalities in Imperial Spaces" (gemeinsam mit Philipp Horstmeier)
    Philipps-Universität Marburg

    06/2025 Presentation "Islands of Fear. Jamaica and Saint-Domingue between War, Autonomy and Revolution in the 18th Century"
    Joint Workshop of the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory and Philipps-Universität Marburg, Department of Modern History

    01/2025 Presentation "Inseln der Angst. Jamaika und Saint-Domingue zwischen Krieg, Autonomie und Revolution im 18. Jahrhundert"
    Integriertes Graduiertenkolleg (IGK) des SFB 138 "Dynamiken der Sicherheit", Gießen

    04/2024 Presentation "L'Ennemi Intérieur. Colonial Autonomy, Fear, and Insecurity in Pre-revolutionary Saint-Domingue"
    18th Annual Graduate Conference in European History (GRACEH), European University Institute, Fiesole

    11/2023 Presentation "The Le Jeune Affair. Competing notions of security in pre-revolutionary Saint-Domingue"
    Internationalizing Security - Securitizing the International, Jahrestagung des SFB 138 "Dynamiken der Sicherheit", Gießen

    06/2023 Presentation "Jamaica and Saint-Domingue in the Age of Revolutions"
    Joint Workshop of the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory and Philipps-Universität Marburg, Department of Modern History

    12/2022 Presentation "Jamaika und Saint-Domingue im Zeitalter der Revolutionen"
    Integriertes Graduiertenkolleg (IGK) des SFB 138 "Dynamiken der Sicherheit", Gießen