Showing papers in "Slavery & Abolition in 2007"
TL;DR: In this article, the bibliography continues its customary coverage of secondary writings published since 1900 in western European languages on slavery or the slave trade anywhere in the world: monographs,...
Abstract: For 2006 the bibliography continues its customary coverage of secondary writings published since 1900 in western European languages on slavery or the slave trade anywhere in the world: monographs, ...
80 citations
TL;DR: This paper argued that Haiti played a far greater role in the cultural and political activities of northern free blacks than historians previously credited, and demonstrated the emigration of the 1820s was not the first wave of African-American interest in the black republic but the culmination of decades of interaction and exposure to the Haitian black nationalist project.
Abstract: This article argues that Haiti played a far greater role in the cultural and political activities of northern free blacks than historians previously credited. The evolving political, economic and social makeup of Haiti during its first three decades of independence spurred African-American interest in the island-nation. Relying on American newspaper reports, sailors' accounts, messages from the state of Haiti, and where possible, African-American voices, this work demonstrates the emigration of the 1820s was not the first wave of African-American interest in the black republic but the culmination of decades of interaction and exposure to the Haitian black nationalist project.
31 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines the development of the practice of Orisa worship in Trinidad which received the bulk of its Yoruba settlers in the post-emancipation period and explores the impact of socioeconomic adjustments of a frontier society on the development and evolution of this religious practice and identifies a process of consolidation, debilitation and resurgence.
Abstract: Studies of the transfer and development of Yoruba religious practices in the Americas have tended to focus on Candomble in Brazil and Santeria in Cuba This essay examines the development of the practice of Orisa worship in Trinidad which received the bulk of its Yoruba settlers in the post-emancipation period It explores the impact of the socio-economic adjustments of a frontier society on the development of this religious practice and identifies a process of consolidation, debilitation and resurgence The essay also discusses the emergence of a constructed Yoruba ethnicity as the signifier for African identity in Trinidad
31 citations
TL;DR: Gelien Matthews as mentioned in this paper argues in Caribbean Slave Revolts and the British Abolitionist Move that slave revolts and British abolitionist move can be traced to the same period.
Abstract: Gelien Matthews Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2006 xii + 197pp., ISBN 0-8071-3131-8 ($42.95) Gelien Matthews argues in Caribbean Slave Revolts and the British Abolitionist Move...
23 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines the virtually unknown biography of Julien Raimond, a wealthy indigo planter of one-quarter African descent who became the leading advocate of racial reforms in Paris during the French Revolution.
Abstract: This paper examines the virtually unknown biography of Julien Raimond, a wealthy indigo planter of one-quarter African descent who became the leading advocate of racial reforms in Paris during the French Revolution. The article explores Raimond's identity before and during the Revolution, challenging his historical reputation as a political conservative whose actions were primarily motivated by financial self-interest.
22 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors apply theoretical formulations of associational life in the public sphere to consider the birth and death of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) between 1833 and 1870, the final years of abolitionism in the United States, in terms of the fulfillment of the purposes established at its founding, concluding that its dissolution was less racist than logical.
Abstract: Real prejudice existed among white abolitionists and within the operations of interracial organisations like the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) Yet an understanding of these organisations that attributes their inevitable doom to fundamental racism shortchanges the accomplishments of the AASS and predicts the same result for such later interracial associations as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) This article applies theoretical formulations of associational life in the public sphere to consider the birth and death of the AASS between 1833 and 1870, the final years of abolitionism in the United States, in terms of the fulfillment of the purposes established at its founding, concluding that its dissolution was less racist than logical
21 citations
TL;DR: In the manner in which they portrayed black masculinity, fugitive slave autobiographies published in the 1840s represented a sharp break from anti-slavery narratives produced during the previous decade as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: In the manner in which they portrayed black masculinity, fugitive slave autobiographies published in the 1840s represented a sharp break from abolitionist narratives produced during the previous decade. Unlike anti-slavery authors writing in the 1830s, slave narrators of the 1840s deliberately renounced any connection between black manhood and a willingness to commit horrific acts of retributive violence against whites. At the same time, fugitive slave authors insisted on the admirable manliness of the African American men they depicted, including themselves as the protagonists of their stories. The return that radical abolitionist authors made to a glorification of black violence in the 1850s marks the publication of slave narratives in the 1840s as an exceptional moment in the history of antislavery literature. The popular success of these narratives, contrasted with the unpopularity of the more violent antislavery texts of the 1830s and the 1850s, also reveals the fears of black violence that white Ame...
21 citations
TL;DR: In the American Civil War, Toussaint Louverture was for African Americans the touchstone of a transatlantic identity, which joined their violent struggle for freedom and equality to a black revolutionary tradition that was deeply rooted in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world.
Abstract: During the American Civil War, Toussaint Louverture was for African Americans the touchstone of a transatlantic identity, which joined their violent struggle for freedom and equality to a black revolutionary tradition that was deeply rooted in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world. White abolitionists reinforced the construction of this identification, for when they saw armed and uniformed black men, they likewise imagined American Toussaints, committed, disciplined, and talented slave soldiers who were eager to both die and kill for freedom. The men and women who seized upon the revolutionary symbols of Toussaint and the Haitian Revolution at this critical moment in the history of the American republic advanced a subversive ideology that undermined the white supremacist ideas that buttressed both the institution of slavery as well as the republic itself.
21 citations
TL;DR: Based on the public and private writings of Southern political leaders and the diplomatic correspondence of Robert Monroe Harrison, consul to Kingston, Jamaica, from 1831 until 1855, the authors argues that Southern Anglophobia was a dominant factor in the movement to annex Texas to the United States.
Abstract: This article contributes to the larger project of situating the United States' struggle over slavery within the Atlantic World. Based on the public and private writings of Southern political leaders and the diplomatic correspondence of Robert Monroe Harrison, consul to Kingston, Jamaica, from 1831 until 1855, the article argues that Southern Anglophobia was a dominant factor in the movement to annex Texas to the United States. Britain's abolition of colonial slavery in her West Indian colonies was a seminal event for the American South. This was especially true for Harrison, a ‘native born Virginian’, who had a fearful personal experience with the abolition of slavery in Jamaica. Harrison came to believe that British abolitionism would be turned against American slavery and he shared his views with the State Department. He even feared that the British would use the West Indies as a staging ground for an attack on America with an emancipated black army that would sow insurrection in the South. Moreover, wh...
18 citations
TL;DR: In their efforts to understand how antebellum American abolitionists interpreted the relationship between slavery and the United States Constitution, scholars have underestimated abolitionists' concern with the question "Is the Constitution a pro-slavery document?" as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: In their efforts to understand how antebellum American abolitionists interpreted the relationship between slavery and the United States Constitution, scholars have underestimated abolitionists' concern with the question ‘Is the Constitution a pro-slavery document?’ Drawing on abolitionist newspapers, periodicals and correspondence, this article shows that the anti-slavery constitutional theories of the 1830s did not presume slavery to be unconstitutional, nor did they assume that the Constitution was pro-slavery, and therefore irrelevant to the abolitionist cause. These constitutional interpretive subtleties laid the foundations for the more prominent and radical theories that came in the following decade from the pens of Wendell Phillips and Lysander Spooner.
14 citations
TL;DR: In this article, Lovejoy argues that the discrepancy between Equiano's baptismal and 1773 naval records, which say he was born in South Carolina, and the claim to an African birth he makes in his 1789 autobiography may be explained by the most plausible contexts of means, motive, and opportunity in which they appeared.
Abstract: Paul Lovejoy may be correct: Olaudah Equiano/Gustavus Vassa’s published claims that he was born in Africa and experienced the Middle Passage may be true. We share the desire to believe those claims true. We disagree over how to resolve the discrepancy between Equiano’s baptismal and 1773 naval records, which say he was born in South Carolina, and the claim to an African birth he makes in his 1789 autobiography. As I have said repeatedly in print over the last dozen years, the evidence for and against his assertion of an African birth is ultimately inconclusive, though, as Lovejoy admits, ‘the existence of independent documents stating a Carolina birth appear to be conclusive proof that [Equiano] was not born in Africa’. I find Lovejoy’s interesting argument for an African birth to be ultimately unconvincing. Occam’s Razor, or the principle of parsimony, seems applicable to our disagreement: the most elegant way to try to explain the discrepancy would be to judge the conflicting statements by the most plausible contexts of means, motive, and opportunity in which they appeared. The respective means and opportunities for the conflicting utterances are probably not disputed: records had to be made of Equiano’s baptism and naval service, and publication gave him the chance to recreate his life in print; the abolitionist debate created a demand for an African victim’s account of the Middle Passage. Motive is the most likely key to recognizing what we should believe in Equiano’s account, as well as to understanding why he suppressed the records in his autobiography. Lovejoy rightly notes that we must appreciate ‘the embellishments of memory that are characteristic’ of autobiography when considering ‘the relationship between autobiography and memory’. Furthermore, he accurately observes that Equiano’s Narrative is, ‘of course, subject to the same criticisms of selectivity and self-interested distortion that characterize the genre of autobiography’. As a literary critic, however, Lovejoy Slavery and Abolition Vol. 28, No. 1, April 2007, pp. 115–119
TL;DR: In the American Revolution, two slaves, one named Leander from South Carolina and another named Caesar from Massachusetts, legally verified their new free status after long battles to become free as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: During the Revolutionary era, two slaves, one named Leander from South Carolina and another named Caesar from Massachusetts, legally verified their new free status after long battles to become free. These two cases expose some similarities in the slave systems of Massachusetts and South Carolina. However, they more strongly show deep differences in the legal status of slaves in the emerging nation. Caesar legally established his freedom by suing his master, and Leander registered his emancipation with the South Carolina Secretary of State's office. While the legal system in Massachusetts protected Caesar's right to own property, to make a contract, to sue and have other blacks testify on behalf of him, Leander's legal action marked a protection for him against re-enslavement since free blacks and slaves had practically no legal status in South Carolina. These two legal systems were always fundamentally different, but it was not until the American Revolution when many slaves like Caesar and Leander demande...
TL;DR: Galveston's slave codes were modeled on those adopted by other Southern states in response to slave rebellions and the rise of militant abolitionism in the 1830s as mentioned in this paper, and black Galvestonians like black seaport residents found greater possibilities for resisting or fleeing slavery than were available to African Americans in the interior.
Abstract: Historians of urban slavery, free black people and the Atlantic maritime world have demonstrated that the urban milieu, maritime commerce and proximity to the sea provided free and enslaved African Americans in seaport cities with opportunities that challenged the premises and practices of bondage. Yet the relatively young and small seaport of Galveston, Texas, has received little attention from scholars. Growing in the two decades before the American Civil War from a rough village to one of the most important cotton ports on the Gulf of Mexico, Galveston maintained strict slave codes modelled on those adopted by other Southern states in response to slave rebellions and the rise of militant abolitionism in the 1830s. Nevertheless, black Galvestonians, like black seaport residents elsewhere, found greater possibilities for resisting or fleeing slavery than were available to African Americans in the interior.
TL;DR: In his assessment, Vincent Carretta almost states that Vassa was born in South Carolina as discussed by the authors, almost, because once again, he does not actually say it. In this paper, we will focus on the South Carolina part of the state.
Abstract: In his assessment, Vincent Carretta almost states that Vassa was born in South Carolina – almost, because once again, he does not actually say it. In my opinion Vassa's claim to an African birth sh...
TL;DR: This paper provided more information on the lives of the free people of colour of Barbados, predominately those manumitted, and especially the life of London Bourne, providing a window on complex kin and other relationships, attitudes, life chances and the ideological tendencies of the elite strata of free blacks and free coloureds in Barbados in this era.
Abstract: Free coloureds and free blacks in Caribbean societies have often been called an ‘intermediate group’, at times, a ‘marginal group’. However, comparative cross-cultural studies caution us of the need to be careful of lumping such a large and multi-faceted section of the population into a ‘group’. Biographical and genealogical research has yielded a great deal of evidence that provides greater understanding of the complexities of relationships between the various social fractions. This study provides more information on the lives of the free people of colour of Barbados, predominately those manumitted, and especially the life of London Bourne. London Bourne's life spanned the late slavery and early post-emancipation periods and his family and associates provide a window on complex kin and other relationships, attitudes, life chances and the ideological tendencies of the elite strata of free blacks and free coloureds in Barbados in this era.
TL;DR: This article argued that Indian-Mestizo servitude was inconsistent with newly passed anti-slavery legislation and should be abrogated permanently and argued that kinship practices did resonate expansively within the slave trade, but they did not necessarily transcend custodial relationships that were ultimately based on dominance and subordination.
Abstract: This article explores how Congress decided that captive-taking customs, such as Indian-Mestizo servitude were on balance, more like Black slavery than not and should be abolished as a result. I contrast the scholarly literature against first-hand accounts of the slave trade as it appeared to several witnesses at the time. I argue that captive-taking customs were complicated and unstable institutions. If kinship practices did resonate expansively within the trade, they did not necessarily transcend custodial relationships that were ultimately based on dominance and subordination. In this sense, captive-taking customs paralleled black servitude institutions. Congress, too, reached these same conclusions after reviewing the evidence. Collectively, legislators decided that Indian-Mestizo servitude was inconsistent with newly passed anti-slavery legislation and should be abrogated permanently.
TL;DR: In this article, Wilentz argues that George Bancroft voted for Andrew Jackson on every page of his grand American history book, and that Jackson was a traitor to the United States.
Abstract: Sean Wilentz New York: W.W. Norton, 2005 xxiii + 1044 pp., ISBN 0-393-08520-4 ($35.00 hardcover) It is said that George Bancroft voted for Andrew Jackson on every page of his grand American histori...
TL;DR: For example, during the antebellum era, especially its latter stages, some Southern state legislatures and county courts received petitions on behalf of free people of colour requesting enslavement and their reasons for doing so varied, and while these individuals are atypical in the sense that their often desperate actions were not representative of the aspirations of the majority of free blacks, as a group they reveal much about the intersection of race, class and gender during a highly uncertain time in Southern history as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: During the antebellum era, especially its latter stages, some Southern state legislatures and county courts received petitions on behalf of free people of colour requesting enslavement. Their reasons for doing so varied, and while these individuals are atypical in the sense that their often desperate actions were not representative of the aspirations of the majority of Southern free blacks, as a group they reveal much about the intersection of race, class and gender during a highly uncertain time in Southern history. These cases offer a fascinating insight into economic conditions and the impact of legislation upon free people of colour, marital and other familial ties across the slave-free divide, relationships across the colour line and the broader pro-slavery defence in the Old South.
TL;DR: This article examined a small community of former slaves in Texas's leading sugar-producing county and argued that local conditions fostered the growth of a Caribbean-style "reconstituted peasantry".
Abstract: This article examines a small community of former slaves in Texas's leading sugar-producing county and argues that local conditions fostered the growth of a Caribbean-style ‘reconstituted peasantry’. Using local sources to compile a database of 79 African American landowners, it traces the postwar decline of the sugar plantations, the process of black land acquisition and the smallholders' strategies for survival. The smallholders' position, however, was precarious, and most lost their lands at the close of the nineteenth century. The piece concludes by suggesting that more intensive local research into former-slave communities may force a reconsideration of the notion that all American slaves became landless wage labourers.
TL;DR: Adéèkó as discussed by the authors examines slave rebellion in various modes of fiction from different points around the Atlantic and examines forms of servitude and resistance both in Africa and in the New World, and propels himself into a series of readings whose cumulative effects are quite impressive.
Abstract: ‘Slave’ and ‘revolt’ go together with an ineluctable logic. When we hear of slavery we can only think of its end through either abolition or revolt; the latter makes a better story. The fact that there was only one truly successful slave rebellion in the history of the New World – the Haitian Revolution – has not diminished the enthusiasm of literary authors for plots of resistance and revolt. Adélékè Adéèkó’s remarkable book, The Slave’s Rebellion, asks why this ‘idea that has no model’ (35) became so popular, how we might ‘conceptualize the telos of black struggles’ by looking at these narratives of slave rebellion and what work the slave rebel does as a symbol in literature and orature (1). Adéèkó launches his project by engaging with both Paul Gilroy and Achille Mbembe, situating himself in relation to their basic revisions of previous models. A ‘distinct body of knowledge is being amassed’, writes Adéèkó, ‘around the defining impact of the flow of ideas enabled by colonization and modern transatlantic slave trade on the cultures of the African Old World and the American New World’ (10). With reference to what Gilroy called the slave’s ‘counter-violence’, Adéèkó wants to ‘gauge the meaning of the attempts which black folks have made to cut the normative strings that bound their fate to the will of those who claimed to be their masters’ (12). Advancing into the substance of his own original argument, Adéèkó asserts that ‘the slave rebellion is a name given to the path to a revolution . . . that has no model’ (21). Reading authors who attempt to follow that path is the challenging goal of this book. The Slave’s Rebellion is a rare work of literary criticism that takes both the New World and Africa into account. After decades of nervously guarding a firm distinction between African and New World forms of servitude, and of insisting that chattel slavery as such did not exist in Africa, academia now seems somewhat more ready to re-appraise this view. Adéèkó writes across the Atlantic and addresses talk about slavery on both sides. By considering forms of servitude and resistance both in Africa and in the New World, Adéèkó propels himself into a series of readings whose cumulative effects are quite impressive. The theme of the rebellious slave is, of course, widely recognised in African American literature (and in Western literatures in general); but by carrying this inquiry into Africa, Adéèkó departs from the normal script and opens new horizons. The book examines slave rebellion in various modes of fiction from different points around the Atlantic. Beginning with antebellum African American fiction, Adéèkó explores ‘simulated “history”‘(49) in the works of Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown and Martin Delany; the ‘impasse’ of subjection after emancipation in Charles Chesnutt (65); the ‘historical realism’ of C. L. R. James’ The Black Jacobins; the Slavery and Abolition Vol. 28, No. 2, August 2007, pp. 289–307
TL;DR: Figueroa et al. as mentioned in this paper studied sugar, slavery, and freedom in 19th-century Puerto Rico and found that sugar, slaves and freedom were inseparable in the antecedents of modern Puerto Rico.
Abstract: Luis A. Figueroa Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2005 290 pp., ISBN 0-8078—5610-X In Sugar, Slavery and Freedom in Nineteenth-century Puerto Rico, historian Luis A. Figueroa ta...
TL;DR: A first biography of a St. Kitts antislavery free coloured activist who campaigned for the twin objectives of free coloureds' civil rights and slave emancipation is given in this paper.
Abstract: A first biography of a St. Kitts antislavery free coloured activist who campaigned for the twin objectives of free coloureds' civil rights and slave emancipation. Cleghorn's service as Stipendiary Magistrate, Member of the Assembly, and finally president and senior member of Council of Nevis casts light on both the possibilities available to well-connected ‘qualified’ free coloureds and the persistence of racial prejudice in post-emancipation St. Kitts and Nevis.
TL;DR: Adeleke Adeeko Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2005 203 pp., ISBN 0-253-34596-0 ($50 hardcover); 0- 253-21777-6 ($21.95 paper) as mentioned in this paper
Abstract: Adeleke Adeeko Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2005 203 pp., ISBN 0-253-34596-0 ($50 hardcover); 0-253-21777-6 ($21.95 paper) ‘Slave’ and ‘revolt’ go together with an ineluctable logic. ...
TL;DR: The Sounds of Silence: Nineteenth-century Portugal and the Abolition of the Slave Trade as mentioned in this paper, by JoÃO PEDRO MARQUES New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2006 xix, 282 pp., ISBN 1-57181-447-7 (Volume 4 in the series ‘European Expansion and Global Interaction’.
Abstract: The Sounds of Silence: Nineteenth-century Portugal and the Abolition of the Slave Trade JOÃO PEDRO MARQUES New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2006 xix, 282 pp., ISBN 1-57181-447-7 (Volume 4 in the series ‘European Expansion and Global Interaction’. Translated and slightly abridged by Richard Wall, from Os sons do silêncio: o Portugal de oitocentos e a abolição do tráfico de escravos. Lisbon: Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 1999. 509 pp., ISBN 972-671-056-1).