-, Jamaica, in 2007, led the call for the UN to erect a permanent memorial, which UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said would acknowledge the struggles of the millions of Africans who, over more than three centuries, 'were violently removed from their homelands, ruthlessly abused and robbed of their dignity'. As was the case in 2007, Jamaica took centre stage on Day One of the 68th session of the UN General Assembly. The country's permanent representative to the UN and chair of the Permanent Memorial Committee, Ambassador Courtenay Rattray, was the one who announced the Ark of No Return', done by Roger Leon, as the winning design.
333 p., Examines both historical and contemporary attempts by the people of Ouidah, Benin Republic in West Africa and in the Caribbean country of Haiti to confront and reconcile their relationship via the transatlantic slave trade. Oral and visual narrative have been central to this process as people represent, reflect and interpret a past that is fraught with gaps, silences and erasures. Proposes that the process of remembrance mirrors a traditional rites of passage whereby one lives as part of a community, dies to the past and then is reborn anew in the community. Both Ouidahans and Haitians now occupy a liminal space--an exilic space--in which they struggle to remember a past that was for many years repressed and suppressed.
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.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
246 p., With the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and the emancipation of all slaves throughout the British Empire in 1833, Britain washed its hands of slavery. Not so, according to Marika Sherwood, who sets the record straight in this provocative new book. In fact, Sherwood demonstrates Britain continued to contribute to and profit from the slave trade well after 1807, even into the twentieth century. Chapter 4 is about Cuba and Brazil, pp. 83-111.
Provides information on how the enforced diaspora of the slave trade shaped Brazil as a nation. Information about the coming of the first African slaves in 1538; Burgeoning of Brazil's African descended population in the sixteenth century; Reasons for the survival of African cultural traditions in Brazil; Distinctive African stocks in Brazil; Abolishment of the slave trade in Brazil in 1850; Percentage of the 1997 Brazilian population that is of African descent.
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 .
