Internal, indentured and regional migration were tightly interlinked in post-emancipation Martinique by both contemporary perceptions and migrant actions. Anticipating a flight from the estates, colonial elites were committed before emancipation to constructing a replacement workforce through immigration. Indentureship was therefore a reaction to a crisis of labour relations rather than of labour supply. Such schemes also stimulated regional movements, from marronage by indentured Africans and Asians to recruitment efforts in the British West Indies. Viewed together, the three faces of post-emancipation migration reveal the continuing tension between the colony's search for coerced labour and the migrants' assertions of agency. [abstract];
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
322 p., When a small group of free men of color gathered in 1838 to celebrate the end of apprenticeship in Barbados, they spoke of emancipation as the moment of freedom for all colored people, not just the former slaves. The fact that many of these men had owned slaves themselves gives a hollow ring to their lofty pronouncements. Newton demonstrates that simply dismissing these men as hypocrites ignores the complexity of their relationship to slavery. Exploring the role of free blacks in Barbados from 1790 to 1860, Newton argues that the emancipation process transformed social relations between Afro-Barbadians and slaves and ex-slaves.
Drescher,Seymour (Editor) and McGlynn,Frank (Editor)
Format:
Book, Edited
Publication Date:
1992
Published:
Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
"Outcome of an international conference ... held at the University of Pittsburgh ... 25-27 August 1988", 333 p., This study considers the aftermath of slavery, focusing on Caribbean societies and the southern United States and addressing such questions as: what was the nature and impact of slave emancipation? And did the change in legal status conceal underlying continuities in plantation societies?
