The article discusses the history of philosophy in the Caribbean. Particular focus is given to the philosophies of the peoples who lived and worked on sugar cane plantations, also called the canepiece. These include the Taíno people, enslaved Africans, indentured Indian and Chinese workers, and their descendants. Details related to Taíno ontology, the roles of slavery and liberty in Afro-Caribbean philosophy, and the role of labor in Indo-Caribbean philosophy are presented. Other topics include genocide, social harmony, and the relationship between the Enlightenment and colonialism.
Examines changes in enslaved women's working lives as planters sought to increase birth rates to replenish declining laboring populations. Establishes that enslaved women in Jamaica experienced a considerable shift in their work responsibilities and their subjection to discipline as slaveholders sought to capitalize on their abilities to reproduce. Enslaved women's reproductive capabilities were pivotal for slavery and the plantation economy's survival once legal supplies from Africa were discontinued.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
446 p., The sugar revolution made the English, in particular, a nation of voracious consumers. The wealth of her island colonies became the foundation and focus of England's commercial and imperial greatness, underpinning the British economy and ultimately fueling the Industrial Revolution. Yet with the incredible wealth came untold misery: the horror endured by slaves, on whose backs the sugar empire was brutally built; the rampant disease that claimed the lives of one-third of all whites within three years of arrival in the Caribbean; the cruelty, corruption, and decadence of the plantation culture.
