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.
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.
"[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)
The book under review was mostly about United States slavery, but included information about the West Indies; on population and demography, emancipation, the Haitian slave revolt and the sugar trade. The book also included information about the Caribbean and South America in the chapter on "The International Context of U.S. Slavery," pp. 13-37
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
Literary criticism of the book "A Description of Millennium Hall" by Sarah Scott. Focuses on the roles of slavery and imperialism in the novel. Details on the charitable transfer of wealth gained and the narrator's identity as a creole planter and slaveowner in Jamaica are also discussed.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
2 vols., Subtitled: With remarks upon the cultivation of the sugar-cane, throughout the different seasons of the year, and chiefly considered in a picturesque point of view; also observations and reflections upon what would probably be the consequences of an abolition of the slave-trade, and of the emancipation of the slaves.
