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];
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];
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];
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];
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];
