Discusses the relationship between economic conditions and discourses surrounding partner choice in Cuba. Holds that economic changes caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union have necessitated strategies economic survival which differ from previously-held ideals of romantic partnerships. Suggests that anxieties surrounding changes in gender and kinship relations also reflect broader concerns about Cuba's social and economic hierarchies and the future of socialism.
The article presents an examination into the history and influence of the Black community of Montevideo, Uruguay during the 19th and 20th centuries. Details are given noting how the African community of Montevideo became a powerful cultural and advocacy hub for the African diaspora in Latin America. Description is provided regarding the various racial identity issues which manifested themselves in the Uruguayan community during the period along with analysis of the means by which they were addressed such as African journalism, social institutionalism and other forms of cultural production.
Considers the second part of Eric Williams book Capitalism and Slavery, where he argues that "Britain's changing attitude to slavery and the slave trade was essentially a function of her changing economic situation and interest." Looks at the Williams' "interpretation of Pitt's conduct, of the abolition of the British slave trade in 1807, and of Palmerston and the suppression of the foreign slave trade."
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.
This essay is framed around interpretations of Haiti's long history in order to demonstrate that there is neither curse nor punishment in Haiti's history; there is only intrigue, interest, and interference. The natural disasters whether earthquakes or hurricanes do not occur because of some rational targeting of the country but are the results of the arbitrariness of nature.
The intimate relationships between white men and women of color in antebellum New Orleans, commonly known by the term plaçage, are a large part of the romanticized lore of the city and its history. This article exposes the common understanding of plaçage as myth. First, it reveals the source of the myth in a collection of accounts by travelers to the city in the decades leading up to the Civil War. Next, it uses a database of information on hundreds of white male-colored female relationships during the period to provide a more accurate account of the people in and nature of these relationships. Finally, it explains the purpose served by the myth by identifying three traditions that shaped its development.
The essay uses ethnographic studies to provide insights into the history and historiography of the African-Atlantic winter celebration known alternately as Jankunu, John Canoe, Jonkonnu, Junkanoo, or John Kuner, celebrated in English-speaking areas of the Caribbean and Central America. Some of the subjects include the festival's religious and/or secular nature, 19th century accounts of the festivals originally held by slaves, and similar West African festivals.
This articles deals with the importance of the Sandinista Revolution and critiques the Latin American's "class-based radical movement." The author as well speaks about events that contradicts Nicaraguan mestizo representations of Creoles as "political passive subjects."
Archaeologists are studying changes in slaves' lives in the Caribbean and the United States. Some 57,000 artifacts have been recovered from Papine, ranging from tools to ceramics to glass bottles to beads. A number of ackee trees grow on the site, and oral tradition has it that ackee and other fruit trees are good indicators of historic habitation sites.
"C.L..R. James' 1938 seminal text, The Black Jacobins, and Eric Williams' 1944 tour de force, Capitalism and Slavery, constitute much more than foundational works in West Indian nationalist historiography. Both authors, born in colonial Trinidad and writing Caribbean history within its Atlantic context, made significant contributions to development discourse within the traditions of Enlightenment Idealism. As critical realists they considered popular historiography indispensable to any attempt to root philosophical ideals within recognizable terms of everyday living. In The Black Jacobins, James documents the struggles of the enslaved peoples of St. Dominique, the mercantile showpiece of French colonial capitalism in the West Indies for freedom and social justice. In addition, he details the transformation of this successful anti-slavery rebellion into something much more elaborate in terms of Atlantic history--the creation of Haiti, the Caribbean's first nation-state. In Capitalism and Slavery, Williams expands and develops the paradigm of African labor enslavement and European capital liberation, first outlined by James in The Black Jacobins, that became the basis of the revolutionary reorganization of productivity for European economic development." (author)
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
In recent years the People's Republic of China (China) has expanded its economic relations with CARICOM (the member states of CARICOM are Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago). This is evident in the increase in trade and development assistance. The objective of this article is to explain the expanded and intensified economic presence of China in the CARICOM region.
The article reviews the book “'New Negroes from Africa': Slave Trade Abolition and Free African Settlement in the Nineteenth-Century Caribbean," by Rosanne Marion Adderley.
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];
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.
Reviews books on the history of Caribbean countries. Includes The Tainos: Rise and Decline of the People Who Greeted Columbus, By Irving Rouse, The Boni Maroon Wars in Suriname, by Wim Hoogbergen, translated by Marilyn Suy and Alabi's World, by Richard Price.;
In April 1999, Dionne Brand, Leslie Sanders, and Rinaldo Walcott sat down to have a conversation about Brand's second novel At The Full and Change of the Moon. The
interview took place over a promised riposte, and was a conversation among friends.
The novel concerns itself with the contemporary lives of the descendents of Marie Ursule a slave who commits a rebellious and horrific act of mass poisoning on a plantation but saves her daughter Bolla.
In the Caribbean, researching women's lives in the past is made easier by the discovery of a few key sources which allow an insight into the private sphere of Caribbean women's lives. These records of women who have lived in the Caribbean since the 1800s consist of memoirs, diaries and letters. The autobiographical writings include the extraordinary record of Mary Prince, a Bermuda-born enslaved African woman. Other sources which have been examined are the diaries of women who were members of the elite in the society, and educated women who worked either in professions or through the church to assist others in their societies.
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];
"After an introduction providing biographical details and some historical context for the Caribbean in the period 1811–1830, the article looks in detail at what have been seen to be [MacGregor's] successes and failures in the Caribbean region. It asks to what extent questions of ethnicity or masculinity have affected the way contemporaries and historians viewed MacGregor and his actions." (IngentaConnect Blog)
"Strange as it may seem today, contemporaries drew no distinction between the mainland and the islands -- and for many, the attractions of the latter at first exceeded those of the former."
In this article, I explore the impact of slavery and the Slave trade on the most fundamental relationship in human societies, the bond between mother and child. Firstly, I review European accounts of motherhood and childrearing (pre-enslavement) in the African cultures of origin. Secondly, I address the traumas of dislocation and enslavement during the Middle Passage. This is followed by some insights into the experiences of women and children in Caribbean Slave societies where I argue that, despite the harsh conditions, African-derived conceptualisations of motherhood and parenting endured. I conclude with a brief consideration of the reverberations of slavery into the post slavery era, specifically in relation to European attempts to change African-derived practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR];.
Campbell discusses the history of education in the Dominican Republic over a long period of time, from the inception of Spanish colonization in Hispaniola to the achievement of its first real independence in 1844. He seeks not to enter into postmodernist debates about the viability of the traditional historical narrative but to search for truth about what really happened through the traditional use of the sources.;
The concept of a unified African-Caribbean community or identity is a modern construction in that it emerged in its present guise during the second half of the twentieth century. Prior to this, the identity politics of the ‘black’ people from this region were largely polarized. They were frequently divided along lines of island identities (Jamaica, Barbados, St Kitts etc.). Focusing on the period between 1970 and 1979, this article sketches out the ways in which the black experience within local-level football also contributed to identity change among a particular group of young sportsmen in Leicester.
This article uses the details of those who fled to Trinidad from the violence of the Venezuelan war of independence in 1814, 1815 and 1816 as a prism through which to view female agency in the southern Caribbean during first two decades of the nineteenth century. In particular it focuses on free coloured women as being able to exploit the poorly controlled edges of empire for their own advantage. Characterised by a self-reliant independence these women were at once highly mobile, independent and influential. These women have been marginalised in the histories of the region and yet this research suggests that they had a far more prevalent and powerful role in shaping its character and history than has been recognised to date. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR].
