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In 1838, the British government outlawed the slave trade, emancipated all of the slaves in its possessions, and began to interdict slave ships en route to the Americas. Almost at once, colonies that had depended on slave labour were faced with a liberated and unwilling labour force. At the same time, newly freed slaves in Sierra Leone (and later from America and elsewhere) were "persuaded" to emigrate to other British colonies to provide a new workforce to replace or augment remnants of the old. Some became paid labourers, others indentured servants. These two groups - one, English-speaking colonists; the other, new African immigrants - are the focus of this study of "receptive" communities in the West Indies. Adderley describes the formation of these settlements, and, working from scant records, tries to tease out information about the families of liberated Africans, the labour they performed, their religions, and the culture they brought with them. She addresses issues of gender, ethnicity, and identity, and concludes with a discussion of repatriation.
Celebrated as new consumers and condemned for their growing delinquencies, teenage girls emerged as one of the most visible segments of American society during and after World War II. Contrary to the generally accepted view that teenagers grew more alienated from adults during this period, Rachel Devlin argues that postwar culture fostered a father-daughter relationship characterized by new forms of psychological intimacy and tinged with eroticism. According to Devlin, psychiatric professionals turned to the Oedipus complex during World War II to explain girls' delinquencies and antisocial acts. Fathers were encouraged to become actively involved in the clothing and makeup choices of their t...
A stunning behind-the-curtain look into the last years of the illegal transatlantic slave trade in the United States Long after the transatlantic slave trade was officially outlawed in the early nineteenth century by every major slave trading nation, merchants based in the United States were still sending hundreds of illegal slave ships from American ports to the African coast. The key instigators were slave traders who moved to New York City after the shuttering of the massive illegal slave trade to Brazil in 1850. These traffickers were determined to make Lower Manhattan a key hub in the illegal slave trade to Cuba. In conjunction with allies in Africa and Cuba, they ensnared around two hundred thousand African men, women, and children during the 1850s and 1860s. John Harris explores how the U.S. government went from ignoring, and even abetting, this illegal trade to helping to shut it down completely in 1867.
Current historiography on aspects of Bahamian history presents limited research on the African presence in the islands, irrespective of the fact that arguably 85% of the population of that country is represented by such persons. One primary objective of this book is to begin to more adequately address this literary ommission by presenting an initial comprehensive work on the subject. The book attempts to trace the origin of this migration by focusing on some of the primary dynamics of ethnicity within the context of the geo-politics and geo-economics of the emerging Atlantic world. It is hoped that the reader will emerge with a greater awareness of, and wider insight into Bahamian history, and, the Bahamian majority will leave with a greater sense of what it truly means to be a Bahamian....
This collection examines the effects of slavery and emancipation on race, class and gender in societies of the American South, the Caribbean, Latin America and West Africa. The contributors discuss what slavery has to teach us about patterns of adjustment and change, black identity and the extent to which enslaved peoples succeeded in creating a dynamic world of interaction between the Americas. They examine how emancipation was defined, how it affected attitudes towards slavery, patterns of labour usage and relationships between workers as well as between workers and their former owners.
Fresh perspectives on the black diaspora's global histories
In 1891 a young W. E. B. DuBois addressed the annual American Historical Association on the enforcement of slave trade laws: “Northern greed joined to Southern credulity was a combination calculated to circumvent any law, human or divine.” One law in particular he was referring to was the Abolition Act of 1808. It was specifically passed to end the foreign slave trade. However, as Ernest Obadele-Starks shows, thanks to profiteering smugglers like the Lafitte brothers and the Bowie brothers, the slave trade persisted throughout the south for a number of years after the law was passed. Freebooters and Smugglers examines the tactics and strategies that the adherents of the foreign slave trade used to challenge the law. It reassesses the role that Americans played in the continuation of foreign slave transshipments into the country right up to the Civil War, shedding light on an important topic that has been largely overlooked in the historiography of the slave trade.
The unique story of a small community of escaped slaves who revolted against the British government yet still managed to maneuver and survive against all odds After being exiled from their native Jamaica in 1795, the Trelawney Town Maroons endured in Nova Scotia and then in Sierra Leone. In this gripping narrative, Ruma Chopra demonstrates how the unlikely survival of this community of escaped slaves reveals the contradictions of slavery and the complexities of the British antislavery era. While some Europeans sought to enlist the Maroons’ help in securing the institution of slavery and others viewed them as junior partners in the global fight to abolish it, the Maroons deftly negotiated their position to avoid subjugation and take advantage of their limited opportunities. Drawing on a vast array of primary source material, Chopra traces their journey and eventual transformation into refugees, empire builders—and sometimes even slave catchers and slave owners. Chopra’s compelling tale, encompassing three distinct regions of the British Atlantic, will be read by scholars across a range of fields.
This book develops a theory of a Caribbean-Atlantic imaginary by exploring the ways two colonial texts represent the consciousnesses of Amerindians, Africans, and Europeans at two crucial points marking respectively the origins and demise of slavocratic systems in the West Indies. Focusing on Richard Ligon’s History of Barbados (1657) and Matthew ‘Monk’ Lewis’ Journal of a West India Proprietor (1834), the study identifies specific myths and belief systems surrounding sugar and obeah as each of these came to stand for concepts of order and counterorder, and to figure the material and symbolic power of masters and slaves respectively. Rooting the imaginary in indigenous Caribbean myth...
During the era of the Atlantic slave trade, vibrant port cities became home to thousands of Africans in transit. Free and enslaved blacks alike crafted the necessary materials to support transoceanic commerce and labored as stevedores, carters, sex workers, and boarding-house keepers. Even though Africans continued to be exchanged as chattel, urban frontiers allowed a number of enslaved blacks to negotiate the right to hire out their own time, often greatly enhancing their autonomy within the Atlantic commercial system. In The Black Urban Atlantic in the Age of the Slave Trade, eleven original essays by leading scholars from the United States, Europe, and Latin America chronicle the black ex...