Jason T. Sharples
Ph.D.
Associate Professor of History
“In vivid prose, Sharples distinguishes between bloody fact and paranoid fantasy to reveal how rumors of imminent slave insurrections created the southern surveillance state, informed imperial ambitions, and bound white colonists together in common terror.”
— Richard Bell, author of Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and Their Astonishing Odyssey Home
"Thought-provoking, original, and engaging, The World That Fear Made is sweeping in its chronological scope and rich with details and stories that convey the lived experience of his subjects at key moments of crisis. It is a sophisticated and valuable corrective to the literature on slave rebellions."
—Justin Roberts, Dalhousie University
© Jason T. Sharples. All rights reserved.
Book
In dozens of slave conspiracy scares in North American and the Caribbean, colonists terrorized and killed slaves whom they accused of planning to take over the colony. Jason Sharples explains the deep origins and historical triggers of these incidents and argues that conspiracy scares bound society together through shared fear.
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“Soulevement des Negres à la Jamaïque en 1759”, engraving by François Anne David after the drawing by le Jeune, in David, Histoire d’Angleterre (Paris, 1800), 3: plate 5. Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.
essays
| Title | Published In | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Slavery and Fear | Oxford Bibliographies in Atlantic History | 2018 |
| Discovering Slave Conspiracies: New Fears of Rebellion and Old Paradigms of Plotting in 17th-Century Barbados | American Historical Review | 2015 |
| Hearing Whispers, Casting Shadows: Jailhouse Conversation and the Production of Knowledge during the Antigua Slave Conspiracy Investigation of 1736 | Buried Lives: Incarcerated in Early America | 2012 |
In the Media
| Interviews and Talks | |
|---|---|
| The Truth Behind Slave Rebellion Rumors | Research in Action - FAU Division of Research |
| Interview | Gotham Center For NYC History |
| Recording of Lunch Lecture | David Center at the American Philosophical Society |
| Featured Book | Black Perspectives |
| "In Conversation" Podcast | Florida Atlantic University |
| Claude Moore Colonial Farm | Voice of America Urdu |
| In the News | |
|---|---|
| National Endowment for the Humanities Funds Historian's Research | Research Thursdays, Florida Atlantic University |
| NEH Announces $33 Million for 213 Humanities Projects Nationwide | National Endowment for the Humanities |
| "The World That Fear Made" by Jason Sharples, University of Pennsylvania Press | Research Thursdays, Florida Atlantic University |
| Sharples Receives Peckham Fellowship | Research Thursdays, Florida Atlantic University |
| Fellowships Awarded to 23 Scholars | William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan |
| Slave Conspiracy Scares and the "Powder Alarm" | Boston 1775 |
| History Professor Named Visiting Scholar at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences | The Catholic University of America |
| Sharples on the Common Scripts of Slave Conspiracy in the U.S. and the Caribbean | African Diaspora PhD Blog |
Jason Sharples is Associate Professor of History at Florida Atlantic University.He discovered early American history as a youngster in Western New York when climbing fortifications and exploring the sites of vanished towns.He studied at The College of William and Mary (BA) and Princeton University (MA, PhD) and he has conducted research in archives in the Caribbean, Europe, and the United States.He is currently working on a book on Florida during its colonization by Spain and Britain.
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