"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)
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 .
Benes,Peter (Author), Benes,Jane Montague (Author), Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife (33rd : 2008 : Deerfield, Mass.), and Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife (Author)
Format:
Book, Edited
Publication Date:
2012
Published:
Deerfield, MA: Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
156 p, Contents include: Section I. Extractive and provisioning trades -- Section II. Plantations and business ventures -- Section III. Slavery and piracy -- Section IV. Caribbean immigrants to New England -- Section V. Architecture -- Caribbean--New England bibliography.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
309 p, Using the stories of ordinary people, Block illustrates how engaging with the powerful rhetoric and rituals of Christianity was central to survival. Isobel Criolla was a runaway slave in Cartagena who successfully lobbied the Spanish governor not to return her to an abusive mistress. Nicolas Burundel was a French Calvinist who served as henchman to the Spanish governor of Jamaica before his arrest by the Inquisition for heresy. Henry Whistler was an English sailor sent to the Caribbean under Oliver Cromwell's plan for holy war against Catholic Spain. Yaff and Nell were slaves who served a Quaker plantation owner, Lewis Morris, in Barbados. Seen from their on-the-ground perspective, the development of modern capitalism, race, and Christianity emerges as a story of negotiation, contingency, humanity, and the quest for community.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
194 p, Chronicles how the unprecedented demand for sugar radically transformed Western civilization at every level of society. The book details how technologies of human control developed in the African slave trade combined with missionary Christian theology to lay the foundations for the language, literature and cultural dictates of race we know today.
Chivallon,Christine (Author) and Alou,Antoinette Tidjani (Author)
Format:
Book, Whole
Publication Date:
2011
Published:
Kingston Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
231 p, The forced migration of Africans to the Americas through the transatlantic slave trade created primary centres of settlement in the Caribbean, Brazil and the United States - the cornerstones of the New World and the black Americas. However, unlike Brazil and the US, the Caribbean did not (and still does not) have the uniformity of a national framework. Instead, the region presents differing situations and social experiences born of the varying colonial systems from which they were developed.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
216 p, A history of the Black Church as it developed both in the United States and the Caribbean after the arrival of enslaved Africans. Examines the parallel histories of these two strands of the Black Church, showing where their historical ties remain strong and where different circumstances have led them down unexpectedly divergent paths.
Fradera,Josep Maria (Editor) and Schmidt-Nowara,Christopher (Editor)
Format:
Book, Edited
Publication Date:
2013
Published:
New York: Berghahn Books
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
340 p, African slavery was pervasive in Spain's Atlantic empire yet remained in the margins of the imperial economy until the end of the eighteenth century when the plantation revolution in the Caribbean colonies put the slave traffic and the plantation at the center of colonial exploitation and conflict. The international group of scholars brought together in this volume explain Spain's role as a colonial pioneer in the Atlantic world and its latecomer status as a slave-trading, plantation-based empire.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
447 p., Traces the story of the Caribbean area from the northern rim of South America up to Cuba, and from discovery through colonialism to today, offering a vivid, panoramic view of this complex region and its rich, important history.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
389 p., Thirteen-year-old Hazel leaves her comfortable, if somewhat unconventional, London home in 1913 after her father has a breakdown, and goes to live in the Caribbean on her grandparents' sugar plantation where she discovers some shocking family secrets.
