"[Thomas] Sutpen launches his design with that obliviousness that is American innocence. Once on Haiti, Sutpen disregards the manifest evidence of impending 'slave' revolt and hybrid racial ancestries. Sutpen's famously preserved innocence amounts to the habit of looking without seeing." (author)
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Journal Title Details:
39(2) : 196-210
Notes:
Reviews several books on slavery. Silver, Trade and War: Spain and America in the Making of Early Modern Europe, by Stanley J. Stein and Barbara H. Stein; Black Society in Spanish Florida, by Jane Landers; Gobernar Colonias, by Josep M. Fradera.;
Reviews several books on slavery. The Abolition of Slavery in Brazil: The "Liberation" of Africans Through the Emancipation of Capital, by David Baronov; The Virgin, The King and the Royal Slaves of El Cobre: Negotiating Freedom in Colonial Cuba, 1670-1780, by María Elena Díaz; The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas, by David Eltis.;
Although the program has a long, academic-sounding formal tide, "Sugar, Slavery and Imperialism: How Sugar Drove the Forced Migration of Africans to the Caribbean and the Impact of the Haitian Revolution," it is an informal presentation aimed at general audiences. This is a rare opportunity to learn more about Haiti's former status, as the richest, rather than the poorest, country in the hemisphere; about Haitian participation in the American Revolutionary War and aid to other independence struggles; about the brilliant diplomatic and military leadership of Toussaint L'Ouverture, Dessalines, Petion and others, who defeated the forces of Napoleon, Britain and Spain together; about how the Haitian victory caused Napoleon to sell the vast Louisiana territory to the United States, and about the great heroism of ordinary Haitians that was required for victory to be won. (The Louisiana Purchase, which will be commemorated on specially minted nickel coins in 2004, also opened the way for an expanded domestic "slave trade" within the United States, which was even larger than the former Atlantic trade).
