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.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
259 p, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. set out on a quest to discover how Latin Americans of African descent live now, and how the countries of their acknowledge—or deny—their African past; how the fact of race and African ancestry play themselves out in the multicultural worlds of the Caribbean and Latin America. Starting with the slave experience and extending to the present, Gates unveils the history of the African presence in six Latin American countries—Brazil, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Mexico, and Peru—through art, music, cuisine, dance, politics, and religion, but also the very palpable presence of anti-black racism.
There are 38.9 million blacks in the United States. According to the 2000 census there are 75.9 million citizens of Brazil who would be classified as African American in the U.S. Since there are only 91.3 million Brazilian whites, who dominate the country, one wonders why so many blacks are living in poverty in favelas (slums).
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:
160 p., Chronicles the history of slavery in Haiti through a recitation of the brutality of the colonisers and the often mundane and trivial ways in which they attempted to dehumanize Haitians. It seeks to illustrate how Haitians' 300-year journey to freedom was illuminated by the African philosophy of Ubuntu, a world view that embodies human solidarity, respect, dignity, justice, liberty, and love. In this philosophy, Africans found an unmatched strength to resist slavery.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
336 p., Chapter 3, "Race and citizenship in the New Republics," examines Brazil, Cuba,
and the United States as three examples of distinct processes of emancipation. The chapter argues that the differences in the nature of slavery in these societies, along with different processes of emancipation, had important implications for the ways that race and citizenship were constituted in post-emancipation societies.
409 p., By exploring how colonists and enslaved folk migrated across island boundaries, manipulated imperial tensions, and organized acts of collective dissent, this dissertation attempts to demonstrate the relationship between space, power, and imperial governance in the British Leeward Islands from the time of transnational colonization through their ascendency as black majorities. It examines the ways British empire makers struggled to turn a series of closely interlinked islands stretching from Guadeloupe to the Virgin Islands into a unified colony and how this effort was challenged by the development of a regional black identity that linked slaves across island and imperial boundaries in the early eighteenth century.
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.
The article discusses engineer and service corps in the British Army which operated during the 18th and 19th centuries and were made up of African, African-American, and West Indian soldiers and laborers. According to the author, the existence of these corps is not readily apparent in the historical record because they depended on commissioned officers from other units for senior command and because for political reasons their funding was taken discreetly from the budgets of other units and government departments. Details on the roles of enslaved soldiers in engineer and service corps are presented. Other topics include the corps' service in Jamaica, Grenada, St. Vincent, the abolition of slavery in Great Britain, and compensation received by the soldiers.
