The Caribbean island of Carriacou was ceded to the British by the French after the Seven Years’War (1763). Carriacou’s population of Englishmen, Frenchmen, Scots, and free people of color, along with their enslaved workers, comprised a distinctive slaveholding society in comparison to that of the old British colonies.
Examines the women who became involved in Cuba's slave resistance movements of 1843 and 1844, drawing attention to those who molded that resistance in visible and public ways and those whose involvement has often been obscured or unnoticed. The narratives created around Fermina and Carlota Lucumf, two leading figures in the 1843 insurgencies, both rupture and complicate the masculine discourse around slave-movement leadership that has been central to historiographies of slave rebellion.
"[Examines] le développement historique et socio-économique des Caraïbes dans le roman de Paule Marshall: The Chosen Place, The Timeless People (publié en 1963), à travers la relation de deux femmes, l'une noire, l'autre blanche, dont les destins et l'héritage sont liés à l'histoire particulière des relations de genre caractéristiques de l'esclavage et de la vie sur les plantations." (Refdoc.fr)
Review also covers Whither Thou Goest -- Creoles of Color in the Bayou Country by Carl A. Brasseaux and others; and 'Who Set You Flowin'?' by Farah Jasmine Griffin
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];
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.
Relying mainly on the manuscript records of the Royal African Company, we explore the factors that contributed to the large gap between slave prices in Africa and the Caribbean. Twenty-two voyages from the mid-1680s are analyzed. These were conducted with hired ships and the payments to the shipowners and captains were recorded. In addition to transport costs, mortality and morbidity had a big effect on slave prices; while the earnings from the trade in gold and ivory had a moderating influence. The effect of mortality and transport costs on slave prices during the eighteenth century is also explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR].
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];.
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.
Traces the history of the Black Caribs of Saint Vincent. Origin of the Black Carib population; Description of the Carib culture; Details on their fight for freedom in the 1700s.
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."
"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)
Proposes that civilizational analysis has yet to fully address the colonial legacy and, to clarify the stakes at play, compares and contrasts the historical sociology of CLR James with the mytho-poetics of Derek Walcott. Both authors, in different ways, have attempted to endow that quintessentially un-civilizable body -- the New World slave -- with subjecthood.
Provides information on the significance of the Underground Railroad, which carried slaves to freedom across the Rio Grande from Mexico. Overview of slavery in Mexico and Texas; Slave ownership in the United States; Demographic information on Texas; Informal network of transportation for the Black Seminoles and other Indians;
Focuses on the book "Casa-grande e senzala," by Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre. In his book, Freyre introduces the idea of Brazilian racial democracy (democracia racial) and analyzes the views of black people in Brazil. Freyre and his ideas were said to be controversial and racist and many believed that these ideas created myths within society
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.
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.;
