Maintains that the period between 1750 and 1850 represented an age of interrelated revolutions, and events in Haiti constitute an integral part of the history of the Atlantic world
Addresses change and continuity in mortuary practices from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries within enslaved and free populations on the former Danish and current US Virgin Island of St. John. St. John's former residents created diverse burial sites for practical and symbolic reasons related to environment, kinship, socio-cultural politics, and religion. Reveals how people historically transformed identities of selves and communities as they perceived and commemorated the dead through meaningful mortuary sites and practices within dynamic local and regional contexts.
During the period of slavery in the West Indies some slaves became literate. This enhanced their social status and allowed them to move into occupations such as artisan or overseer
Argues that free African and African-descended women participated in Spain's colonization of the Caribbean to a degree that has not been fully recognized. Regularly described as vecinas (heads of household) and as spouses to Iberian men in key port cities, free women of color played active roles in the formation and maintenance of Spanish Caribbean society during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, not as peripheral or marginalized figures, but as non-elite insiders who pursued their own best interests and those of their families and associates.
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];
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.;
The article reports on archaeologists search for archaeological sites of the Maroons, runaway slaves of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in West Indies. Archaeologists claim that Maroons have the ability to become invisible. The efficacy of their tactic has made them elusive to slavery. It states that the constant threat of recapture and castigation on the island of Saint Croix led them to hide in remote, defensible spots that were hard to see. Moreover, archaeologists face difficulties in predicting the locations of the Maroons because they are do not leave any evidence of their presence.
Reviews books on Latin American slavery. Includes Slavery and Abolition in Early Republican Peru, by Peter Blanchard; Slave Women in Caribbean Society, ,1650-1838, by Barbara Bush; Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System, edited by Barbara L. Solow.;
