This volume intriguingly explores running away in the regions of the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean. Its remit is not only geographically large, but also includes a wide range of workers: sailors; soldiers; indentured servants; convicts; and the enslaved. All of these categories of workers were significant in the establishment of European empires and the rise of capitalism from the sixteenth century onwards. As Leo Lucassen and Lex Heerma van Voss point out in the Introduction, capitalism required “that workers from Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa be mobilized in ways that were novel, cooperative, and systemic” (p. 2). The workers numbered in the millions and were subject to severe levels of coercion and constraint. Their response was often to resist, frequently by absconding.

In many cases, workers ran away because of dissatisfaction with their working conditions. In the case of Bengal in the early eighteenth century, as Titas Chakraborty suggests, European soldiers and sailors deserted to gain better wages and working conditions. This was true for the enslaved as well. Writing about the Leeward Archipelago in the Caribbean, James Dator notes that the enslaved ran away seeking better treatment, but also to reconnect with kin. The enslaved in the United States often absconded because of their fear of being sold and especially of being sent to the Deep South. Jesse Olsavsky suggests that runaway slaves in the United States were also responding to the violence and exploitation they experienced. In Australia, convicts absconded because of harsh treatment, but also, as Hamish Maxwell-Stewart and Michael Quinlan point out, because of poor rations and inadequate clothing.

Knowledge was crucial in any attempt to run away. In eighteenth-century Louisiana, as Yevan Terrien suggests, soldiers who deserted used knowledge of the local geography to their advantage. In addition, they knew that Spanish and English settlements such as Texas, Florida, and the Caribbean offered potential havens for them. In the Leeward Islands of the Caribbean, the enslaved were not only able to use the sea to run away, but also knew where to escape: imperial boundaries in islands such as Saint Kitts opened up possibilities for desertion. Knowledge was important for the enslaved in New Orleans as well: Mary Niall Mitchell notes that running away was easier if the enslaved possessed a number of languages and also had an understanding of the geography of the city. Urban runaways were more likely to succeed if they possessed marketable skills so that they could support themselves.

Running away had significant consequences, not just for the runaways themselves, but also for their wider societies. Discussing deserters in the early modern Portuguese empire, Timothy Coates notes that attacks from runaways helped to destroy the sugar industry of São Tomé. Convicts on the Danish island of Saint Thomas ran away in significant numbers and as Johan Heinsen suggests, their resistance had a “decisive impact on the Danish expansionist project” (p. 54). Even when caught, runaways were not always punished. In eighteenth-century Louisiana, French officials frequently pardoned soldiers who deserted: “accommodation was the rule on the margins of the French empire, where runaways showed that the monarch was less absolute than in his home kingdom” (p. 110). Ultimately, and partly because of the desertion of so many soldiers, French imperial ambitions were crippled in Louisiana. In Bengal, the soldiers who ran away – often to rival European companies – had the effect of driving wages higher.

Many runaways absconded on their own, but others did so collectively. In the Cape of Good Hope, the enslaved ran away, often with the assistance of other slaves and workers. As Nicole Ulrich points out, “desertion was embedded in social connections forged between labourers” (p. 122). This could include Maroons in the Cape of Good Hope, but also in the United States: the Maroons there sometimes helped the enslaved to hide before they fled to the North. Free black men and women assisted the enslaved to escape, as did sailors on trading vessels who turned a blind eye to slaves who stowed away on their ships. Similarly, members of the free working class in New Orleans worked alongside the enslaved who had escaped from their masters. For Mitchell, city Maroons occupied a borderland space: they could merge into the urban population of the free and the enslaved and often hide under the noses of their owners.

Inevitably, there are problems in trying to deal in one volume with the desertion of the enslaved, the indentured, convicts, soldiers, and sailors. Soldiers and sailors, for example, had a very different perspective than the enslaved, yet their common experiences often transcended their differences. Moreover, there is much in this volume that is new and often revealing. For example, Matthias van Rossum overturns the view of a revolutionary Atlantic and a peaceful Indian Ocean world: he shows that a great number of employees – between fifteen and thirty per cent in 1760 – absconded from the Dutch East India Company. Anita Rupprecht underscores not only the enormous number of liberated Africans who arrived in the Americas – over 180,000 – but also what she terms “the global landscape of colonial apprenticeship”. For these apprentices, running away was a central site of struggle: they saw themselves as being treated far worse than the enslaved.

Linking these categories of workers, then, highlights their common responses to oppression and coercion. These workers shared a desire for autonomy and for control of their lives, and this volume provides abundant evidence of their shared worlds. It is to be warmly welcomed and should encourage further research in this fascinating area.