85 p., This thesis examines the practice of Obeah--an Afro-Caribbean system of healing, harming, and divination through the use of spiritual powers--within two slave communities in Berbice and Demerara (British Guiana). This study is based primarily on legal documents--including testimony from more than a dozen slaves--generated during the criminal trials of two men accused of practicing Obeah in 1819 and 1821-22. In contrast to most previous studies of Obeah, which have been based largely on descriptions provided by British observers, this project takes advantage of this complex, overlapping body of evidence to explore the social dynamics of Obeah as experienced by enslaved men and women themselves, including Obeah practitioners, their clients, and other witnesses. This study reveals that Obeah rituals could be extremely violent, that Obeah practitioners were feared as well as respected among their contemporaries, that the authority of Obeah practitioners was based on demonstrable success, and that slave communities in general were complex social worlds characterized by conflict and division as well as by support and unity--conclusions that combine to produce a fresh, humane vision of Afro-diasporan culture and community under slavery.
Examines the women who became involved in Cuba's slave resistance movements of 1843 and 1844, drawing attention to those who molded that resistance in visible and public ways and those whose involvement has often been obscured or unnoticed. The narratives created around Fermina and Carlota Lucumf, two leading figures in the 1843 insurgencies, both rupture and complicate the masculine discourse around slave-movement leadership that has been central to historiographies of slave rebellion.
Literary criticism of the book "A Description of Millennium Hall" by Sarah Scott. Focuses on the roles of slavery and imperialism in the novel. Details on the charitable transfer of wealth gained and the narrator's identity as a creole planter and slaveowner in Jamaica are also discussed.
Bryant,Sherwin K. (Author), O'Toole,Rachel Sarah (Author), and Vinson,Ben (Author)
Format:
Book, Whole
Publication Date:
2012
Published:
Urbana: University of Illinois Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
279 p, The Shape of a Diaspora : The Movement of Afro-Iberians to Colonial Spanish America / Leo Garofalo -- African Diasporic Ethnicity in Mexico City to 1650 / Frank "Trey" Proctor -- To Be Free and Lucumí : Ana de la Calle and Making African Diaspora Identities in Colonial Peru / Rachel Sarah O'Toole -- Between the Cross and the Sword : Religious Conquest and Maroon Legitimacy in Colonial Esmeraldas / Charles Beatty-Medina -- Finding Saints in an Alley : Afro-Mexicans in Early Eighteenth-Century Mexico City / Joan Cameron Bristol -- The Religious Servants of Lima, 1600-1700 / Nancy E. van Deusen -- Whitening Revisited : Nineteenth-Century Cuban Counterpoints / Karen Y. Morrison -- Tensions of Race, Gender, and Midwifery in Colonial Cuba / Michele B. Reid -- The African American Experience in Comparative Perspective : The Current Question of the Debate / Herbert S. Klein; Time: To 1830
Bryant,Sherwin K. (Editor), O'Toole,Rachel Sarah (Editor), and Vinson,Ben III (Editor)
Format:
Book, Edited
Publication Date:
2012
Published:
Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
279 p, Africans to Spanish America expands the diaspora framework to include Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, and Cuba, exploring the connections and disjunctures between colonial Latin America and the African diaspora in the Spanish empires. Analysis of the regions of Mexico and the Andes opens up new questions of community formation that incorporated Spanish legal strategies in secular and ecclesiastical institutions as well as articulations of multiple African identities.
On Christmas Day 1521, in the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo, the first recorded slave revolt in the Americas occurred. A group of African, likely Wolof, slaves came together with native Indians led by the Taino cacique Enriquillo to assert their independence. Beyond being the first slave revolt in the Americas, it was also one of the most important moments in Colonial American history because it was the first known instance when Africans and Indians united against their Spanish overlords in the Americas.
Hauser,Mark W. (Author) and Florida museum of natural history (Author)
Format:
Book, Whole
Publication Date:
2008
Published:
Gainesville: University Press of Florida
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
269 p., In 18th-century Jamaica, an informal, underground economy existed among enslaved laborers. Utilizes both documentary and archaeological evidence to reveal how slaves practiced their own systematic forms of economic production, exchange, and consumption. Hauser compares the findings from a number of previously excavated sites and presents new analyses that reinterpret these collections in the context of island-wide trading networks
Archaeologists are studying changes in slaves' lives in the Caribbean and the United States. Some 57,000 artifacts have been recovered from Papine, ranging from tools to ceramics to glass bottles to beads. A number of ackee trees grow on the site, and oral tradition has it that ackee and other fruit trees are good indicators of historic habitation sites.
Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer on Saturday. August 1 urged citizens to ensure that the horrible and dehumanising system of slavery is never allowed to happen again while encouraging closerunity between the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and Africa. "Therefore celebrating our Emancipation should inspire us to unite as citistens of the Caribbean to ensure that we never allow ourselves to be subjected to any form of slavery^'Spencer said in a message marking the 175th anniversary of the end of slavery.
