Negotiating Enslavement

Negotiating Enslavement
Author: Arnold R. Highfield
Publisher:
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2009
Genre: History
ISBN:

These essays represent af riche cache of historical presentations of papers from past Annual Meetings of The Society of Virgin Islands Historians

The Civil War and Slavery Reconsidered

The Civil War and Slavery Reconsidered
Author: Laura R. Sandy
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2019-02-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0429601999

Following the suggestion of the historian Peter Parish, these essays probe "the edges" of slavery and the sectional conflict. The authors seek to recover forgotten stories, exceptional cases and contested identities to reveal the forces that shaped America, in the era of "the Long Civil War," c.1830-1877. Offering an unparalleled scope, from the internal politics of southern households to trans-Atlantic propaganda battles, these essays address the fluidity and negotiability of racial and gendered identities, of criminal and transgressive behaviors, of contingent, shifting loyalties and of the hopes of freedom that found expression in refugee camps, court rooms and literary works.

From Chattel Slaves to Wage Slaves

From Chattel Slaves to Wage Slaves
Author: Mary Turner
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 334
Release: 1995
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780253210012

"... a very welcome addition to the literature on labour history." --Labour History Review "This is a valuable collection of essays which gives fresh perspectives and interesting empirical data on the modes of labor bargaining by New World slaves and on the transition from 'chattel' to 'wage' slavery." --New West Indian Guide/Nieuwe West-Indische Gids "Of uniformly high quality, these essays underline the fluidity and dynamic of bargaining processes, the diversity of political and economic contexts, and the importance of external factors.... will provoke discussion on parallels between capitalist agriculture and capitalist industrial organization, and will fuel debates on slave as proletarian, and on the notions of 'peasant breach' and the two economies." --Choice "[These essays] provide important answers to questions relating to levels of slave subsistence, the material conditions of the enslaved, the control mechanisms of owners, the contexts which generated labor bargaining on the part of the enslaved and the reasons owners/employers acquiesced to laborers' demands rather than rely on the coercive power of the whip." --Labor History "[The] contributors deserve commendation for making salutary advances towards developing an integrated analysis of the history of labouring people in slavery and freedom that transcends the particularities of their legal status." --Slavery & Abolition "... this collection addresses an important topic and will serve as a valuable resource for scholars and students of comparative slavery in the Americas." --Judy Bieber, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque The status of labor during slavery and post-emancipation in the Caribbean and the Americas. Contributors investigate the terms under which slaves in the Caribbean, the Southern States, and Latin America worked and how they struggled to establish informal contract terms.

Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings

Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings
Author: Annette Gordon-Reed
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Total Pages: 324
Release: 1998-03-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 0813933560

When Annette Gordon-Reed's groundbreaking study was first published, rumors of Thomas Jefferson's sexual involvement with his slave Sally Hemings had circulated for two centuries. Among all aspects of Jefferson's renowned life, it was perhaps the most hotly contested topic. The publication of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings intensified this debate by identifying glaring inconsistencies in many noted scholars' evaluations of the existing evidence. In this study, Gordon-Reed assembles a fascinating and convincing argument: not that the alleged thirty-eight-year liaison necessarily took place but rather that the evidence for its taking place has been denied a fair hearing. Friends of Jefferson sought to debunk the Hemings story as early as 1800, and most subsequent historians and biographers followed suit, finding the affair unthinkable based upon their view of Jefferson's life, character, and beliefs. Gordon-Reed responds to these critics by pointing out numerous errors and prejudices in their writings, ranging from inaccurate citations, to impossible time lines, to virtual exclusions of evidence—especially evidence concerning the Hemings family. She demonstrates how these scholars may have been misguided by their own biases and may even have tailored evidence to serve and preserve their opinions of Jefferson. This updated edition of the book also includes an afterword in which the author comments on the DNA study that provided further evidence of a Jefferson and Hemings liaison. Possessing both a layperson's unfettered curiosity and a lawyer's logical mind, Annette Gordon-Reed writes with a style and compassion that are irresistible. Each chapter revolves around a key figure in the Hemings drama, and the resulting portraits are engrossing and very personal. Gordon-Reed also brings a keen intuitive sense of the psychological complexities of human relationships—relationships that, in the real world, often develop regardless of status or race. The most compelling element of all, however, is her extensive and careful research, which often allows the evidence to speak for itself. Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy is the definitive look at a centuries-old question that should fascinate general readers and historians alike.

Slavery and the Enlightenment in the British Atlantic, 1750-1807

Slavery and the Enlightenment in the British Atlantic, 1750-1807
Author: Justin Roberts
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 367
Release: 2013-07-08
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1107025850

This book focuses on how Enlightenment ideas shaped plantation management and slave work routines. It shows how work dictated slaves' experiences and influenced their families and communities on large plantations in Barbados, Jamaica, and Virginia. It examines plantation management schemes, agricultural routines, and work regimes in more detail than other scholars have done. This book argues that slave workloads were increasing in the eighteenth century and that slave owners were employing more rigorous labor discipline and supervision in ways that scholars now associate with the Industrial Revolution.

New Orleans, Louisiana, and Saint-Louis, Senegal

New Orleans, Louisiana, and Saint-Louis, Senegal
Author: Emily Clark
Publisher: LSU Press
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2019-12-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807171719

This book explores the intertwined histories of Saint-Louis, Senegal, and New Orleans, Louisiana. Although separated by an ocean, both cities were founded during the early French imperial expansion of the Atlantic world. Both became important port cities of their own continents, the Atlantic world as a whole, and the African diaspora. The slave trade not only played a crucial role in the demographic and economic growth of Saint-Louis and New Orleans, but also directly connected the two cities. The Company of the Indies ran the Senegambia slave-trading posts and the Mississippi colony simultaneously from 1719 to 1731. By examining the linked histories of these cities over the longue durée, this edited collection shows the crucial role they played in integrating the peoples of the Atlantic world. The essays also illustrate how the interplay of imperialism, colonialism, and slaving that defined the early Atlantic world operated and evolved differently on both sides of the ocean. The chapters in part one, “Negotiating Slavery and Freedom,” highlight the centrality of the institution of slavery in the urban societies of Saint-Louis and New Orleans from their foundation to the second half of the nineteenth century. Part two, “Elusive Citizenship,” explores how the notions of nationality, citizenship, and subjecthood—as well as the rights or lack of rights associated with them—were mobilized, manipulated, or negotiated at key moments in the history of each city. Part three, “Mythic Persistence,” examines the construction, reproduction, and transformation of myths and popular imagination in the colonial and postcolonial cities. It is here, in the imagined past, that New Orleans and Saint-Louis most clearly mirror one another. The essays in this section offer two examples of how historical realities are simplified, distorted, or obliterated to minimize the violence of the cities’ common slave and colonial past in order to promote a romanticized present. With editors from three continents and contributors from around the world, this work is truly an international collaboration.

Negotiating Abolition

Negotiating Abolition
Author: Shawna Herzog
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2020-12-10
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1350073229

Negotiating Abolition: The Antislavery Project in the British Straits Settlements, 1786-1843 explores how sex and gender complicated the enforcement of colonial anti-slavery policies in the region, the challenges local officials faced in identifying slave populations, and how European reclassification of slave labor to systems of indenture or 'free' labor created a new illicit trade for women and girls to the Straits Settlements of Southeast Asia. Through a history of early-19th century slavery and abolition in this often overlooked region in British imperial history, Herzog bridges a historiographical gap between colonial and modern slave systems. She discusses the dynamic intersectionality between perceptions of race, class, gender, and civilization within the Straits and how this informed behavior and policy regarding slavery, abolition, and prostitution within the settlement. This book provides an important new perspective for scholars of slavery interested in Southeast Asia, British imperialism in the Indian Ocean world and Asia, the East India Company in the Straits, and gender and sexuality in the context of empire.

The Overseers of Early American Slavery

The Overseers of Early American Slavery
Author: Laura R. Sandy
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 397
Release: 2020-04-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000048969

Enmeshed in the exploitative world of racial slavery, overseers were central figures in the management of early American plantation enterprises. All too frequently dismissed as brutal and incompetent, they defy easy categorisation. Some were rogues, yet others were highly skilled professionals, farmers, and artisans. Some were themselves enslaved. They and their wives, with whom they often formed supervisory partnerships, were caught between disdainful planters and defiant enslaved labourers, as they sought to advance their ambitions. Their history, revealed here in unprecedented detail, illuminates the complex power struggles and interplay of class and race in a volatile slave society.

Bonds of Alliance

Bonds of Alliance
Author: Brett Rushforth
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 423
Release: 2013-06-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807838179

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, French colonists and their Native allies participated in a slave trade that spanned half of North America, carrying thousands of Native Americans into bondage in the Great Lakes, Canada, and the Caribbean. In Bonds of Alliance, Brett Rushforth reveals the dynamics of this system from its origins to the end of French colonial rule. Balancing a vast geographic and chronological scope with careful attention to the lives of enslaved individuals, this book gives voice to those who lived through the ordeal of slavery and, along the way, shaped French and Native societies. Rather than telling a simple story of colonial domination and Native victimization, Rushforth argues that Indian slavery in New France emerged at the nexus of two very different forms of slavery: one indigenous to North America and the other rooted in the Atlantic world. The alliances that bound French and Natives together forced a century-long negotiation over the nature of slavery and its place in early American society. Neither fully Indian nor entirely French, slavery in New France drew upon and transformed indigenous and Atlantic cultures in complex and surprising ways. Based on thousands of French and Algonquian-language manuscripts archived in Canada, France, the United States and the Caribbean, Bonds of Alliance bridges the divide between continental and Atlantic approaches to early American history. By discovering unexpected connections between distant peoples and places, Rushforth sheds new light on a wide range of subjects, including intercultural diplomacy, colonial law, gender and sexuality, and the history of race.