The information in the dataset is extracted from newspapers across the region of the Lesser Antilles. The Lesser Antilles, for the purpose of this dataset, begin with the Virgin Islands, extend south to Barbados, Grenada, and Tobago, and circle west towards Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao (see fig. 1). Researchers knowledgeable about Caribbean history will recognize that the question of what constitutes the Lesser Antilles is not entirely settled. While some scholars front geological developments as key to their definition of the Lesser Antilles, others emphasize historical developments, such as the spread of the plantation-slavery complex in the region.2 The definition we have used in compiling this dataset highlights the historical dynamics created by the smallness, proximity, and interconnection of the Lesser Antillean islands during slavery.3 This perspective explains why Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao (the ABC islands) and the Virgin Islands are included in the dataset.4 The dataset records fugitives from more than one empire and is multilingual because the sources reveal the necessity of this approach, as enslaved people crisscrossed watery borders between islands and empires. Altogether, this definition of the Lesser Antilles has allowed us to establish a dataset regarding enslaved fugitives on islands in the Lesser Antilles that were colonized by English/British, French, Dutch, Danish, and Swedish empires during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.
