85 p., This thesis examines the practice of Obeah--an Afro-Caribbean system of healing, harming, and divination through the use of spiritual powers--within two slave communities in Berbice and Demerara (British Guiana). This study is based primarily on legal documents--including testimony from more than a dozen slaves--generated during the criminal trials of two men accused of practicing Obeah in 1819 and 1821-22. In contrast to most previous studies of Obeah, which have been based largely on descriptions provided by British observers, this project takes advantage of this complex, overlapping body of evidence to explore the social dynamics of Obeah as experienced by enslaved men and women themselves, including Obeah practitioners, their clients, and other witnesses. This study reveals that Obeah rituals could be extremely violent, that Obeah practitioners were feared as well as respected among their contemporaries, that the authority of Obeah practitioners was based on demonstrable success, and that slave communities in general were complex social worlds characterized by conflict and division as well as by support and unity--conclusions that combine to produce a fresh, humane vision of Afro-diasporan culture and community under slavery.
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.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
311 p, An examination of slavery that covers the Spanish, Portuguese and French regions of Latin America and examines the latest findings on the plantation system, demography, the slave trade, the construction of the slave community and Afro-American culture; Includes index./ Bibliography: p. 273-294.
Hauser,Mark W. (Author) and Florida museum of natural history (Author)
Format:
Book, Whole
Publication Date:
2008
Published:
Gainesville: University Press of Florida
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
269 p., In 18th-century Jamaica, an informal, underground economy existed among enslaved laborers. Utilizes both documentary and archaeological evidence to reveal how slaves practiced their own systematic forms of economic production, exchange, and consumption. Hauser compares the findings from a number of previously excavated sites and presents new analyses that reinterpret these collections in the context of island-wide trading networks
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.
Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer on Saturday. August 1 urged citizens to ensure that the horrible and dehumanising system of slavery is never allowed to happen again while encouraging closerunity between the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and Africa. "Therefore celebrating our Emancipation should inspire us to unite as citistens of the Caribbean to ensure that we never allow ourselves to be subjected to any form of slavery^'Spencer said in a message marking the 175th anniversary of the end of slavery.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
Originally published in 1969 in Spanish as Los negros, los mulatos y la Nación Dominicana., 122 p, Contents: The Black population -- The Black population and the national consciousness -- The Constitution of 1801 -- The other face of the reconquest -- "Foolish Spain" and "rebellious Africa" -- Complete unity and national unity.
Kingston, Jamaica: University Of West Indies Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
292 p, Presentation of empirical historical data on Britain’s transatlantic slave economy and society supports the legal claim that chattel slavery as established by the British state and sustained by citizens and governments was understood then as a crime, but political and moral outrage were silenced by the argument that the enslavement of black people was in Britain’s national interest. Slavery was invested in by the royal family, the government, the established church, most elite families, and large public institutions in the private and public sector. Citing the legal principles of unjust and criminal enrichment, the author presents a compelling argument for Britain’s payment of its black debt, a debt that it continues to deny .
"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)
