Examines how a Caribbean thinker, Theophilus Scholes, used the figure of the "white Negro" to expose the linkages between ethnological preoccupation with black bodies and an imperial network of power that held implications for political equality.
Since its publication in 1976, Ivan van Sertima's book They Came Before Columbus has gone through 21 printings, while receiving widespread--though not unanimous--condemnation from the American archaeological establishment, culminating in a hostile, full-length forum in Current Anthropology. And yet, startlingly, the field of American archaeology has recently found itself in the midst of a major paradigm shift, caused by archaeological evidence that obliterates the Clovis model as a legitimate demarcation of the first presence of human settlement in the New World. Kamugisha proposes to trace the response to They Came Before Columbus, while discussing the issue of diffusionism in van Sertima's work.;
As anonymously as Anton de Kom began his life in 1898 in a small nineteenth-century Surinam village, it would be terminated forty-seven years later by forces beyond his control. His death, however, was not a singular event, but one representative of an entire generation of Surinamese migrants who, desiring to improve their lives, travelled northward to Holland, the "mother country", only to find a deeper sense of pain as unwanted and abused eacute;migrés. De Kom's migration to Holland occurred twice. First, as a youth he was pulled northward to understand better "her greatness". A decade later, he was forcibly pushed and exiled northward by the Dutch colonial authorities. On the second occasion, he became aware of his own illegitimate political birth as a colonial subject, and the psychological trap that awaited him when asked to defend the imperial country against an invading German army. His residence in exile exposed the serious dilemma of "two-ness", described by W.E.B. DuBois, when the colonized becomes psychologically and aesthetically committed to the colonizer's world, as well as that of the colonized. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT];
The revisionings proposed by Sultana Afroz regarding the pervasiveness of the African Islamic presence in plantation Jamaica are contested, on grounds of her falsification of demographic data and of contemporary historical sources, non-differentiation in the treatment of historical processes in West Africa, unsubstantiated or inadequate proof of claims, attribution of causality and relatedness to parallel phenomena, questionable etymological assertions, unfamiliarity with African cultural history, and a general tendency to make exaggerated and dogmatic statements. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT];
Rizzo examines how lawyers represent their clients in the twilight years of the Old Regime France. During this period, lawyers always depict their clients as more metropolitan than their opponent in order to render colonial "others" both more exotic and more accessible to readers and judges.;
Robertson examines how people in St. Lucia percieve emancipation. She argues that the circumstances of St. Lucia's colonial past made ideals of freedom pervasive and emancipation intensely complicated, with consequences that are felt in contemporary St. Lucian identity and in strongly African cultural foundations and continuities.;
"Alexander Bedward, minister of the revivalist Jamaica Native Baptist Free Church during the period 1889-1921, emerged as one of the island's earliest black nationalists. Under the guise of religion Bedward called on the black majority to rise up and take action against the prevailing system of racial discrimination, socio-economic deprivation, injustice, the tyranny of minority colonial rule, and to establish a government representative of the people. While he was revered by the masses, attracting thousands of followers at home and abroad, he was feared by the upper classes and colonial authorities, who saw him as a threat to political stability. An antagonistic relationship developed between the government and Bedward. Eventually, he was arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to the lunatic asylum, where he later died." (publication abstract);
Sheridan discusses some of the common endeavours he shared with Douglas Gordon Hawkins Hall concerning the West Indian Economic and Social History. Foremost among the historians of the transition from slavery to freedom in individual West Indian colonies is Douglas Hall, whose contributions to West Indian history and culture are manifold.;
This article focuses on the process of "encolouring" social reality in the Caribbean. This is done by investigating how connections between status and colour were created in the Danish West Indies by using certain strategies and techniques of power. Essential to the regulatory efforts of planters and officials were three variables: time, space and body. By the manipulation of these phenomena colonial masters managed to make skin colour represent something other than itself. It came to be associated with a web of ideas concerning the constitution of society and its subjects--their status, condition and opportunities in life. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT];
Alcohol was familiar to newly arrived Africans enslaved in the British and French Caribbean, and the spiritual meanings enslaved persons attached to drinking reflect the continuity of African cultural beliefs. Despite occasional efforts by colonial officials to restrict drinking by enslaved persons, they had easy access to rum and other alcoholic beverages. The ready availability of alcohol sparked the creation of new African-oriented drinking practices, which, at the level of the lowest common denominator, combined the social and sacred alcohol-based traditions of diverse African ethnic groups. As in Africa, alcohol helped foster spirituality and promote group identity among enslaved persons. The construction of new drinking styles also strengthened resistance ideologies, which challenged European efforts to suppress African-oriented customs. Understanding alcohol use by enslaved persons provides a prism through which to view underlying principles that helped shape the life of enslaved persons, and highlights the way Africans in their homeland and the diaspora maintained cultural links across the Atlantic. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT];
Colonial laws maintained the social and physical security of English settlements in the New World. This essay compares those laws that attempted to define and regulate servants and labour in seventeenth-century Virginia and Jamaica. The laws reveal differences in the social composition of their early populations and in the relationships each colony had with the imperial government. Earlier laws reflect a greater concern with the economic value of labour. In the last two decades, however, the laws defined new social constructs that would dominate slave laws in the next century. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT];
Watson investigates the emigration of indigenous Amerindians in the West Indies during the period 1834-1900 and their replacement with enslaved Africans. After the emancipation of the slaves in 1833, the poor whites, who used to perform militia service on plantations in the West Indies, were forced to emigrate due to lack of employment opportunities.;
Glen reviews "The History of Early Methodism in Antigua: A Critique of Sylvia R. Frey and Betty Wood's Come Shouting to Zion: African American Protestantism in the American South and British Carribean to 1830 (University of North Carolina Press, 1998).;
Hall examines the wealth of materials in the diaries of Thomas Thistlewood, a young man with considerable experiences and full of curiosity. Thistlewood's diaries are of special interest, for he entertained representatives from both of the land of gentry and, because of the slaves and free blacks and coloureds.;
In this article, I analyse patterns of classifications and naming of African "nations" in colonial Cuba. Based on parish records, I suggest possible interpretations of African patterns of classification, identities and social arrangements during the formation of Cuban plantations over the course of the eighteenth century. I discuss some of the methodological implications that can be explored regarding marriages of enslaved people in Cuba based on ecclesiastical sources, chiefly in the case of Guanabacoa. I have furthered the social/demographic analysis of "nations" in Cuba, underscoring how Africans could have been the agents of networks and alliances through organizational strategies and the formation of identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR].
Obeah encompasses a wide variety of beliefs and practices involving the control or channelling of supernatural/spiritual forces, usually for socially beneficial ends such as treating illness, bringing good fortune, protecting against harm, and avenging wrongs. Although obeah was sometimes used to harm others, Europeans during the slave period distorted its positive role in the lives of many enslaved persons. In post-emancipation times, colonial officials, local white elites and their ideological allies exaggerated the antisocial dimensions of obeah, minimizing or ignoring its positive functions. This negative interpretation became so deeply ingrained that many West Indians accept it to varying degrees today, although the positive attributes of obeah are still acknowledged in most parts of the anglophone Caribbean. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT];
Blouet profiles author Eliza Fenwick. Fenwick, an articulate, intellectual Englishwoman, operated a private school in Bridgetown for the daughters of upper class Barbadian society in the early nineteenth century.;
Internal, indentured and regional migration were tightly interlinked in post-emancipation Martinique by both contemporary perceptions and migrant actions. Anticipating a flight from the estates, colonial elites were committed before emancipation to constructing a replacement workforce through immigration. Indentureship was therefore a reaction to a crisis of labour relations rather than of labour supply. Such schemes also stimulated regional movements, from marronage by indentured Africans and Asians to recruitment efforts in the British West Indies. Viewed together, the three faces of post-emancipation migration reveal the continuing tension between the colony's search for coerced labour and the migrants' assertions of agency. [abstract];
The Awardee for the 30th Norman Washington Manley Award for Excellence was Jamaican historian Douglas Hall. The Norman Washington Manley Foundation decided that the award this year should go to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to the nation in the field of history. Here, Bryan describes the 1999 recepient of the Norman Washington Manley Award for Excellence, Professor Douglas Gordon Hawkins Hall.;
Campbell discusses the history of education in the Dominican Republic over a long period of time, from the inception of Spanish colonization in Hispaniola to the achievement of its first real independence in 1844. He seeks not to enter into postmodernist debates about the viability of the traditional historical narrative but to search for truth about what really happened through the traditional use of the sources.;
Studies of political change on Grenada have invariably centred on the activities of T. Albert Marryshow in the period immediately after World War I. Drawing on the rich data available from contemporary newspapers, this paper argues that Donovan's efforts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries provided the impetus and framework for Marryshow's later struggles. In fact, Marryshow himself admits Donovan's contributions to his political growth. The "first of the Federalists", Donovan preached federation long before the concept was fashionable. Embracing a broad approach to the island's situation, both activists linked local demands for change to the plight of Africans worldwide. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT];
Freemasonry has been an important sociocultural institution in the Caribbean since the early eighteenth century, but to date there has been little scholarship on the movement in the region. This article, based on primary Masonic documentation, is a case study of Freemasonry in Barbados between 1880 and 1914. During this period Freemasonry was torn between its idealized notions of brotherhood and the discriminatory practices based on race, class and gender imbedded in colonial relations. Efforts by Barbadian whites to exclude blacks from English Freemasonry were thwarted by London-based Masonic officials. Indeed, the commitment of British Freemasonry to a policy of racial inclusiveness convinced middle-class black Barbadians of British "fair play". [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT];
Based on the correspondence and diaries of three slaveholders in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this article identifies the differences in the attitudes and behaviour of each planter towards his slaves in response to structural constraints or norms. These include political, administrative, civic and religious institutions, but also the economic system, social expectations and cultural norms. The author concludes that, although one can detect degrees of harshness in the treatment of field labourers, sexual exploitation seems constant and intractable in all three cases. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT];
In 1838 Jamaica officially abolished slavery. After 1838 several American missionaries went to the island to assist the former slaves in their transition to freedom. Several of these missionaries were a part of the American Missionary Association, a nonsectarian abolitionist organization established in 1846 with missions in various parts of the world. Many missionaries hoped to use Jamaica as a test case for emancipating slaves in the United States. This article focuses on the missionaries and their endeavours in Jamaica between 1847 and 1858. It centres on Dr. Hyde and how his doctrinal and sexual activities polarized the AMA Jamaica Mission. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT];
