Curtis J. Evans
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195328189
- eISBN:
- 9780199870028
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195328189.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter explores how the conversion of African slaves in the British North American colonies to Christianity became an object of analysis and how debates about the role that blacks would play in ...
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This chapter explores how the conversion of African slaves in the British North American colonies to Christianity became an object of analysis and how debates about the role that blacks would play in the American nation focused on their religion. The chapter examines the crucial connection between denials of African intellectual capacity and assertions of the uniqueness of slave religious expression. Romantic racialists like Harriet Beecher Stowe asserted that black slaves were naturally or peculiarly religious and their explanation of black religion as feeling or emotion became the dominant paradigm for understandings of black cultural contributions to the United States. Yet there was an inherent tension in this view of black religion because it linked black uniqueness to Africa and painted a rather hazy picture about the specific nature of black participation in America, if slavery were to be abolished. Romantic racialists left their legatees with a conflicted notion of intellectually inferior Africans in their midst with alleged special religious qualities as the locus of their potential contribution of an ambiguous “spiritual softness” to American culture.Less
This chapter explores how the conversion of African slaves in the British North American colonies to Christianity became an object of analysis and how debates about the role that blacks would play in the American nation focused on their religion. The chapter examines the crucial connection between denials of African intellectual capacity and assertions of the uniqueness of slave religious expression. Romantic racialists like Harriet Beecher Stowe asserted that black slaves were naturally or peculiarly religious and their explanation of black religion as feeling or emotion became the dominant paradigm for understandings of black cultural contributions to the United States. Yet there was an inherent tension in this view of black religion because it linked black uniqueness to Africa and painted a rather hazy picture about the specific nature of black participation in America, if slavery were to be abolished. Romantic racialists left their legatees with a conflicted notion of intellectually inferior Africans in their midst with alleged special religious qualities as the locus of their potential contribution of an ambiguous “spiritual softness” to American culture.
Lacy K. Ford, Jr.
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195118094
- eISBN:
- 9780199870936
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195118094.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
This chapter details how the first short-staple cotton boom linked cotton profits, slavery, and territorial expansion in momentous ways. It examines South Carolina's contested decision to reopen the ...
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This chapter details how the first short-staple cotton boom linked cotton profits, slavery, and territorial expansion in momentous ways. It examines South Carolina's contested decision to reopen the African slave trade to meet the labor demands of the cotton boom and supply slaves to the nation's new purchase, Louisiana.Less
This chapter details how the first short-staple cotton boom linked cotton profits, slavery, and territorial expansion in momentous ways. It examines South Carolina's contested decision to reopen the African slave trade to meet the labor demands of the cotton boom and supply slaves to the nation's new purchase, Louisiana.
David Richardson
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199290673
- eISBN:
- 9780191700569
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199290673.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, World Modern History
This chapter focuses on the movement of Africans to America on British slave ships. The exact number of British ships that participated in the slave trade will probably never be known, but in the 245 ...
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This chapter focuses on the movement of Africans to America on British slave ships. The exact number of British ships that participated in the slave trade will probably never be known, but in the 245 years separating the first known English slaving voyage to Africa in 1562 and the abolition of the British slave trade in 1807, merchants in Britain despatched about 10,000 voyages to Africa for slaves, with merchants in other parts of the British empire perhaps fitting out a further 1,150 voyages. Altogether, the ships involved in these British and British empire voyages were responsible for carrying possibly 3.4 million or more enslaved Africans to the Americas, or one in three or four of all enslaved Africans entering the Atlantic slave trade during its history.Less
This chapter focuses on the movement of Africans to America on British slave ships. The exact number of British ships that participated in the slave trade will probably never be known, but in the 245 years separating the first known English slaving voyage to Africa in 1562 and the abolition of the British slave trade in 1807, merchants in Britain despatched about 10,000 voyages to Africa for slaves, with merchants in other parts of the British empire perhaps fitting out a further 1,150 voyages. Altogether, the ships involved in these British and British empire voyages were responsible for carrying possibly 3.4 million or more enslaved Africans to the Americas, or one in three or four of all enslaved Africans entering the Atlantic slave trade during its history.
Thelma Wills Foote
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195165371
- eISBN:
- 9780199871735
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195165371.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
Race first emerged as an important ingredient of New York City's melting pot when it was known as New Amsterdam and was a fledgling colonial outpost on the North American frontier. This book details ...
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Race first emerged as an important ingredient of New York City's melting pot when it was known as New Amsterdam and was a fledgling colonial outpost on the North American frontier. This book details the arrival of the first immigrants, including African slaves, and traces encounters between the town's inhabitants of African, European, and Native American descent, showing how racial domination became key to the building of the settler colony at the tip of Manhattan Island. During the colonial era, the art of governing the city's diverse and factious population, the book reveals, involved the subordination of confessional, linguistic, and social antagonisms to binary racial difference. Everyday formations of race are investigated — in slave owning households, on the colonial city's streets, at its docks, taverns, and marketplaces, and in the adjacent farming districts. Even though the northern colonial port town afforded a space for black resistance, that setting did not, this book argues, effectively undermine the city's institution of black slavery. This history of New York City demonstrates that the process of racial formation and the mechanisms of racial domination were central to the northern colonial experience and to the founding of the United States.Less
Race first emerged as an important ingredient of New York City's melting pot when it was known as New Amsterdam and was a fledgling colonial outpost on the North American frontier. This book details the arrival of the first immigrants, including African slaves, and traces encounters between the town's inhabitants of African, European, and Native American descent, showing how racial domination became key to the building of the settler colony at the tip of Manhattan Island. During the colonial era, the art of governing the city's diverse and factious population, the book reveals, involved the subordination of confessional, linguistic, and social antagonisms to binary racial difference. Everyday formations of race are investigated — in slave owning households, on the colonial city's streets, at its docks, taverns, and marketplaces, and in the adjacent farming districts. Even though the northern colonial port town afforded a space for black resistance, that setting did not, this book argues, effectively undermine the city's institution of black slavery. This history of New York City demonstrates that the process of racial formation and the mechanisms of racial domination were central to the northern colonial experience and to the founding of the United States.
Herbert Klein
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807828755
- eISBN:
- 9781469603667
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807895627_schwartz.11
- Subject:
- History, Latin American History
By examining the Atlantic slave trade in the period prior to 1650, this chapter argues that despite its synchrony with the rise of sugar production, the slave trade evolved independently of the ...
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By examining the Atlantic slave trade in the period prior to 1650, this chapter argues that despite its synchrony with the rise of sugar production, the slave trade evolved independently of the expansion of the sugar economy. It describes the purchase of African slaves from European ships, including the high mortality of slaves in Atlantic slave trade voyages. Since data from this early period is admittedly difficult to obtain, the relative significance of the slave trade to the early sugar industry is considerably more problematic than has been previously thought.Less
By examining the Atlantic slave trade in the period prior to 1650, this chapter argues that despite its synchrony with the rise of sugar production, the slave trade evolved independently of the expansion of the sugar economy. It describes the purchase of African slaves from European ships, including the high mortality of slaves in Atlantic slave trade voyages. Since data from this early period is admittedly difficult to obtain, the relative significance of the slave trade to the early sugar industry is considerably more problematic than has been previously thought.
Terence Walz and Kenneth M. Cuno
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789774163982
- eISBN:
- 9781617970221
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- American University in Cairo Press
- DOI:
- 10.5743/cairo/9789774163982.003.0005
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Middle Eastern Studies
Many enslaved Africans lived in households headed by Europeans in Cairo and Alexandria during the nineteenth century. African slaves who were owned by the Europeans were generally Christians by ...
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Many enslaved Africans lived in households headed by Europeans in Cairo and Alexandria during the nineteenth century. African slaves who were owned by the Europeans were generally Christians by culture, if not always by frequent church attendance. They were often diplomats, doctors, merchants, military officers, or employees of the Egyptian government. As migrants to Egypt, European masters and African slaves alike acculturated to local views and practices. The practice of taking a slave wife has counterparts in other cross-cultural and colonial situations, and similar domestic arrangements were made by Egyptian men with African slave women. The working-class Saint-Simonian Voilquin and the high-society Saint Elme each elicited interesting, detailed, and intimate information from their male and female sources about the lives of African slaves in European households.Less
Many enslaved Africans lived in households headed by Europeans in Cairo and Alexandria during the nineteenth century. African slaves who were owned by the Europeans were generally Christians by culture, if not always by frequent church attendance. They were often diplomats, doctors, merchants, military officers, or employees of the Egyptian government. As migrants to Egypt, European masters and African slaves alike acculturated to local views and practices. The practice of taking a slave wife has counterparts in other cross-cultural and colonial situations, and similar domestic arrangements were made by Egyptian men with African slave women. The working-class Saint-Simonian Voilquin and the high-society Saint Elme each elicited interesting, detailed, and intimate information from their male and female sources about the lives of African slaves in European households.
Jeffrey D. Needell
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781503609020
- eISBN:
- 9781503611030
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9781503609020.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, Latin American History
This chapter provides the urban context and describes the socioeconomic and political milieu of the movement. Its major points include the prospects for Afro-Brazilian political mobilization, ...
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This chapter provides the urban context and describes the socioeconomic and political milieu of the movement. Its major points include the prospects for Afro-Brazilian political mobilization, reviewing the latter up through 1871 and taking into account religious brotherhoods, urban festivals and culture, and mutual aid and labor organizations. It also reviews Afro-Brazilian divisions and creolization, with the end of the African trade, the ebb of African ethnicities, and the potential of religious synthesis. It concludes with an overview of the imperial political structure, highlighting the emperor’s increasing impact on cabinets and policy, and particularly the divisive Conservative passage of the gradualist abolitionist law of 1871 and the debate’s significance in terms of state-elite relations and slavery’s prospects.Less
This chapter provides the urban context and describes the socioeconomic and political milieu of the movement. Its major points include the prospects for Afro-Brazilian political mobilization, reviewing the latter up through 1871 and taking into account religious brotherhoods, urban festivals and culture, and mutual aid and labor organizations. It also reviews Afro-Brazilian divisions and creolization, with the end of the African trade, the ebb of African ethnicities, and the potential of religious synthesis. It concludes with an overview of the imperial political structure, highlighting the emperor’s increasing impact on cabinets and policy, and particularly the divisive Conservative passage of the gradualist abolitionist law of 1871 and the debate’s significance in terms of state-elite relations and slavery’s prospects.
Seymour Drescher
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814740910
- eISBN:
- 9780814786796
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814740910.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, American History: Civil War
This chapter examines the role of Jews and New Christians in the Atlantic slave trade. It discusses the three phases of the African slave trade, each succeeding phase numerically larger than its ...
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This chapter examines the role of Jews and New Christians in the Atlantic slave trade. It discusses the three phases of the African slave trade, each succeeding phase numerically larger than its predecessor. In the century and a half of the first phase (1500–1640), nearly 800,000 Africans embarked on the “Middle Passage.” During the course of the second phase (1640–1700), 817,000 left Africa. In the final phase, between 1700 and British abolition in 1807, 6,686,000 were exported. This means that four out of every five Africans transported to the New World between 1500 and 1807 were boarded in the final phase. This chapter also considers how the slave trade opened up transoceanic niches of entrée and refuge that gave New Christians an initial advantage in human capital over other merchants. It also suggests that Jewish merchants were marginal collective actors in most places and during most periods of the Atlantic system: its political and legal foundations; its capital formation; its maritime organization; and its distribution of coerced migrants from Europe and Africa.Less
This chapter examines the role of Jews and New Christians in the Atlantic slave trade. It discusses the three phases of the African slave trade, each succeeding phase numerically larger than its predecessor. In the century and a half of the first phase (1500–1640), nearly 800,000 Africans embarked on the “Middle Passage.” During the course of the second phase (1640–1700), 817,000 left Africa. In the final phase, between 1700 and British abolition in 1807, 6,686,000 were exported. This means that four out of every five Africans transported to the New World between 1500 and 1807 were boarded in the final phase. This chapter also considers how the slave trade opened up transoceanic niches of entrée and refuge that gave New Christians an initial advantage in human capital over other merchants. It also suggests that Jewish merchants were marginal collective actors in most places and during most periods of the Atlantic system: its political and legal foundations; its capital formation; its maritime organization; and its distribution of coerced migrants from Europe and Africa.
Yvonne P. Chireau
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520209879
- eISBN:
- 9780520940277
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520209879.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
This chapter considers the centrality of supernatural traditions of Conjure in the African American spirituality, presenting examples from various historical contexts. Conjure is a magical tradition ...
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This chapter considers the centrality of supernatural traditions of Conjure in the African American spirituality, presenting examples from various historical contexts. Conjure is a magical tradition in which spiritual power is invoked for various purposes, such as healing, protection, and self-defense. From slavery days to the present, many African Americans have readily moved between Christianity, Conjure, and other forms of supernaturalism with little concern for their purported incompatibility. During the slavery period, persons believed to possess special powers were present in black populations throughout the United States, and African American practitioners of Christianity often mingled unusual practices with their traditions. African American testimonials describe how some slaves believed that the power of charms and amulets provided them with protection from abuse and racial subjugation by white slaveholders and affliction such as sickness and destitution. Supernatural practitioners often adopted symbols from Christian traditions for use in their own practices and rituals, such as protective charms and Christian accoutrements.Less
This chapter considers the centrality of supernatural traditions of Conjure in the African American spirituality, presenting examples from various historical contexts. Conjure is a magical tradition in which spiritual power is invoked for various purposes, such as healing, protection, and self-defense. From slavery days to the present, many African Americans have readily moved between Christianity, Conjure, and other forms of supernaturalism with little concern for their purported incompatibility. During the slavery period, persons believed to possess special powers were present in black populations throughout the United States, and African American practitioners of Christianity often mingled unusual practices with their traditions. African American testimonials describe how some slaves believed that the power of charms and amulets provided them with protection from abuse and racial subjugation by white slaveholders and affliction such as sickness and destitution. Supernatural practitioners often adopted symbols from Christian traditions for use in their own practices and rituals, such as protective charms and Christian accoutrements.
Robert W. Slenes
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300103557
- eISBN:
- 9780300129472
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300103557.003.0014
- Subject:
- History, Imperialism and Colonialism
This chapter defines “internal slave trade” as the practice of selling people within the society where they reside. For analytical purposes, however, the term is more usefully reserved for a system ...
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This chapter defines “internal slave trade” as the practice of selling people within the society where they reside. For analytical purposes, however, the term is more usefully reserved for a system of commerce in human beings that is relatively autonomous—with primarily endogenous determinants of prices and other characteristics—and that integrates local buyers and sellers within a region, colony, or nation, or even within an area that overlaps political boundaries, into a common market. The paradigm, of course, is the commerce in bondspeople in the American South after the abolition of the African slave trade to the United States in 1807. In Brazil, a similar mercantile system dealing in forced labor fully emerged only with the end of the African traffic to that country in 1850.Less
This chapter defines “internal slave trade” as the practice of selling people within the society where they reside. For analytical purposes, however, the term is more usefully reserved for a system of commerce in human beings that is relatively autonomous—with primarily endogenous determinants of prices and other characteristics—and that integrates local buyers and sellers within a region, colony, or nation, or even within an area that overlaps political boundaries, into a common market. The paradigm, of course, is the commerce in bondspeople in the American South after the abolition of the African slave trade to the United States in 1807. In Brazil, a similar mercantile system dealing in forced labor fully emerged only with the end of the African traffic to that country in 1850.
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846310676
- eISBN:
- 9781846314070
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846314070.005
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
This chapter discusses the complexities of the slave trade gleaned from Irving's letters. The African destinations mentioned in Irving's letters included some of the most important trading locations ...
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This chapter discusses the complexities of the slave trade gleaned from Irving's letters. The African destinations mentioned in Irving's letters included some of the most important trading locations for British ships in the late eighteenth century. All of the voyages in which he participated between 1783 and 1788 obtained slaves in the Bight of Biafra. In letters written on board the Jane, Princess Royal and Ellen, Irving also repeatedly commented on his own health and that of the officers, suggesting that the threat of illness was pervasive.Less
This chapter discusses the complexities of the slave trade gleaned from Irving's letters. The African destinations mentioned in Irving's letters included some of the most important trading locations for British ships in the late eighteenth century. All of the voyages in which he participated between 1783 and 1788 obtained slaves in the Bight of Biafra. In letters written on board the Jane, Princess Royal and Ellen, Irving also repeatedly commented on his own health and that of the officers, suggesting that the threat of illness was pervasive.
Benjamin N. Lawrance
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780300198454
- eISBN:
- 9780300210439
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300198454.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
Nineteenth-century slave traders recognized children as effective tools with which to avoid new slave trading restrictions and prohibitions. This chapter explores the contextual perimeters of ...
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Nineteenth-century slave traders recognized children as effective tools with which to avoid new slave trading restrictions and prohibitions. This chapter explores the contextual perimeters of children and child slaves in the nineteenth century against broader scholarly debates about childhood. Reuniting the orphans of La Amistad as an imagined slave ship family somehow provides a pattern for understanding the outline of the nineteenth-century African child slave experience. From the enslavement in their original villages, journey to the coastal prisons or barracoons, to the deep and dark activities of a slave ship, the chapter examines the different aspects of child enslavement within the context of the 1830s–40s illegal slave trade, along with the relationship between child enslavement and the expansion of prohibitions on slave trading.Less
Nineteenth-century slave traders recognized children as effective tools with which to avoid new slave trading restrictions and prohibitions. This chapter explores the contextual perimeters of children and child slaves in the nineteenth century against broader scholarly debates about childhood. Reuniting the orphans of La Amistad as an imagined slave ship family somehow provides a pattern for understanding the outline of the nineteenth-century African child slave experience. From the enslavement in their original villages, journey to the coastal prisons or barracoons, to the deep and dark activities of a slave ship, the chapter examines the different aspects of child enslavement within the context of the 1830s–40s illegal slave trade, along with the relationship between child enslavement and the expansion of prohibitions on slave trading.
Babacar M’Baye
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781604732337
- eISBN:
- 9781604733525
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781604732337.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Folk Literature
This chapter discusses the most celebrated autobiography of a black writer from the West—The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Written by Himself. Vincent Carretta depicts the ...
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This chapter discusses the most celebrated autobiography of a black writer from the West—The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Written by Himself. Vincent Carretta depicts the book as being “motivated by a combination of factors,” including “a desire to recount his spiritual autobiography and an interest in outlawing the African slave trade.” Carretta, however, maintains that Equiano “may have invented rather than reclaimed an African identity” and that he may have also “invented his African childhood and his much-quoted account of the Middle Passage on a slave ship.” This thesis was challenged by G. Ugo Nwokeji’s revelation that “Equiano’s baptism in January 1759, arranged by his owner and his relatives, happened more than three years after his slave name and purported Carolina birthplace had appeared on record for the first time through the handiwork of his naval officer master, Michael Henry Paschal.”Less
This chapter discusses the most celebrated autobiography of a black writer from the West—The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Written by Himself. Vincent Carretta depicts the book as being “motivated by a combination of factors,” including “a desire to recount his spiritual autobiography and an interest in outlawing the African slave trade.” Carretta, however, maintains that Equiano “may have invented rather than reclaimed an African identity” and that he may have also “invented his African childhood and his much-quoted account of the Middle Passage on a slave ship.” This thesis was challenged by G. Ugo Nwokeji’s revelation that “Equiano’s baptism in January 1759, arranged by his owner and his relatives, happened more than three years after his slave name and purported Carolina birthplace had appeared on record for the first time through the handiwork of his naval officer master, Michael Henry Paschal.”
Robert Westley
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781496805553
- eISBN:
- 9781496805591
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496805553.003.0003
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
This chapter begins with the suggestion made by Judge Posner in his opinion for the majority in the case of In re African-American Slave Descendants Litigation to the effect that the injuries exacted ...
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This chapter begins with the suggestion made by Judge Posner in his opinion for the majority in the case of In re African-American Slave Descendants Litigation to the effect that the injuries exacted by slavery were imposed on the slaves alone, and thus provide no standing to their descendants to sue for restitution of their ancestors’ injuries. Legal procedural doctrines such as standing or time limits or sovereign immunity have successfully blocked consideration by courts of contemporary claims for slavery reparations. In light of conflicting views about the significance of temporality, it has become clear that part of the challenge of understanding contemporary whiteness practices was to make a constructive return to their foundational moments during slavery, to determine what discourses governed the allocation of restitution in both law and equity when enslavement was acknowledged in some cases to have been wrongful, and no procedural doctrines blocked consideration of restitution on the merits.Less
This chapter begins with the suggestion made by Judge Posner in his opinion for the majority in the case of In re African-American Slave Descendants Litigation to the effect that the injuries exacted by slavery were imposed on the slaves alone, and thus provide no standing to their descendants to sue for restitution of their ancestors’ injuries. Legal procedural doctrines such as standing or time limits or sovereign immunity have successfully blocked consideration by courts of contemporary claims for slavery reparations. In light of conflicting views about the significance of temporality, it has become clear that part of the challenge of understanding contemporary whiteness practices was to make a constructive return to their foundational moments during slavery, to determine what discourses governed the allocation of restitution in both law and equity when enslavement was acknowledged in some cases to have been wrongful, and no procedural doctrines blocked consideration of restitution on the merits.
BERNARD LEWIS
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195053265
- eISBN:
- 9780199854561
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195053265.003.0010
- Subject:
- History, Middle East History
The chapter discusses slaves during the nineteenth century. From the late eighteenth century onwards, there are numerous accounts by contemporary observers of the processes by which African slaves ...
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The chapter discusses slaves during the nineteenth century. From the late eighteenth century onwards, there are numerous accounts by contemporary observers of the processes by which African slaves were caught, transported, and sold in the markets of the Middle East and North America. The main purpose for which blacks were imported was domestic service. A certain number of free blacks also found employment. In Egypt their role was usually humble. Eunuchs were in considerable numbers for households from the palace downward. They were also employed in the service of mosques and made custodians of the tomb, which gave them an almost priestly status. By the nineteenth century, they were recruited overwhelmingly from Africa. In the course of the nineteenth century, black slaves or black freedmen were found to be occupying important positions and often exercised great power. This occurred frequently in Arabia.Less
The chapter discusses slaves during the nineteenth century. From the late eighteenth century onwards, there are numerous accounts by contemporary observers of the processes by which African slaves were caught, transported, and sold in the markets of the Middle East and North America. The main purpose for which blacks were imported was domestic service. A certain number of free blacks also found employment. In Egypt their role was usually humble. Eunuchs were in considerable numbers for households from the palace downward. They were also employed in the service of mosques and made custodians of the tomb, which gave them an almost priestly status. By the nineteenth century, they were recruited overwhelmingly from Africa. In the course of the nineteenth century, black slaves or black freedmen were found to be occupying important positions and often exercised great power. This occurred frequently in Arabia.
Benjamin N. Lawrance
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780300198454
- eISBN:
- 9780300210439
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300198454.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
This book traces the lives of six African children in an attempt to demonstrate that the lived experiences of slave children are indeed recoverable, arguing that the role of African child slaves in ...
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This book traces the lives of six African children in an attempt to demonstrate that the lived experiences of slave children are indeed recoverable, arguing that the role of African child slaves in the illegal slave trade has been underestimated and their experiences misunderstood. A reassessment of the children's participation in the nineteenth-century Atlantic slave-trading networks reveals that the establishment of abolitionism marked the beginning of the child enslavement era. These six lives illustrate the broader experience of African child enslavement and mobility during the early to mid-nineteenth century, as well as the centrality of child mobility to the huge illegal trafficking enterprise supporting the nineteenth-century trans-Atlantic trade. The book shows how these six lives constitute an imagined Atlantic “slave ship family” born of fictional bond, molded by shared traumas, and united by a common goal of survival.Less
This book traces the lives of six African children in an attempt to demonstrate that the lived experiences of slave children are indeed recoverable, arguing that the role of African child slaves in the illegal slave trade has been underestimated and their experiences misunderstood. A reassessment of the children's participation in the nineteenth-century Atlantic slave-trading networks reveals that the establishment of abolitionism marked the beginning of the child enslavement era. These six lives illustrate the broader experience of African child enslavement and mobility during the early to mid-nineteenth century, as well as the centrality of child mobility to the huge illegal trafficking enterprise supporting the nineteenth-century trans-Atlantic trade. The book shows how these six lives constitute an imagined Atlantic “slave ship family” born of fictional bond, molded by shared traumas, and united by a common goal of survival.
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804757041
- eISBN:
- 9780804784603
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804757041.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, Latin American History
This chapter examines the slave trade in Guatemala. It argues that Afro-Guatemalan slavery was dismantled gradually by the responses of slaves and slaveholders to the particular structures of slavery ...
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This chapter examines the slave trade in Guatemala. It argues that Afro-Guatemalan slavery was dismantled gradually by the responses of slaves and slaveholders to the particular structures of slavery as it existed locally. These structures were products of centuries-old Iberian understandings of slavery, and products of long-term social transformations—racial and cultural mestizaje in particular—in the colonial American context. Such transformations were beyond the control of legislation. Slavery itself was crumbling in Guatemala well before the new independent government issued the general emancipation. Across the generations preceding independence, African slaves had come to be integrated into the colony's Hispanic culture, society, and economy.Less
This chapter examines the slave trade in Guatemala. It argues that Afro-Guatemalan slavery was dismantled gradually by the responses of slaves and slaveholders to the particular structures of slavery as it existed locally. These structures were products of centuries-old Iberian understandings of slavery, and products of long-term social transformations—racial and cultural mestizaje in particular—in the colonial American context. Such transformations were beyond the control of legislation. Slavery itself was crumbling in Guatemala well before the new independent government issued the general emancipation. Across the generations preceding independence, African slaves had come to be integrated into the colony's Hispanic culture, society, and economy.
A. Roger Ekirch
- Published in print:
- 1990
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198202110
- eISBN:
- 9780191675157
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198202110.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, World Modern History
During the 18th century, transportation to the colonies became Britain's foremost criminal punishment. From 1718 to 1775, British courts banished fifty thousand convicts. They formed the largest body ...
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During the 18th century, transportation to the colonies became Britain's foremost criminal punishment. From 1718 to 1775, British courts banished fifty thousand convicts. They formed the largest body of emigrants after African slaves ever compelled to go to America. A comprehensive account of the transportation in the years preceding the settling of Australia, this book combines analysis with a vivid narrative to provide new insights into the origins of crime and the treatment of offenders on both sides of the Atlantic.Less
During the 18th century, transportation to the colonies became Britain's foremost criminal punishment. From 1718 to 1775, British courts banished fifty thousand convicts. They formed the largest body of emigrants after African slaves ever compelled to go to America. A comprehensive account of the transportation in the years preceding the settling of Australia, this book combines analysis with a vivid narrative to provide new insights into the origins of crime and the treatment of offenders on both sides of the Atlantic.
Laura J. Rosenthal
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781501751585
- eISBN:
- 9781501751608
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501751585.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter looks at William Congreve's enormously popular but now unfamiliar play The Mourning Bride (1697) alongside Aphra Behn's play about an Indian queen, The Widow Ranter, and her heroic ...
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This chapter looks at William Congreve's enormously popular but now unfamiliar play The Mourning Bride (1697) alongside Aphra Behn's play about an Indian queen, The Widow Ranter, and her heroic novella about an enslaved African prince, Oroonoko. The Mourning Bride has become almost invisible in scholarship, but it remained one of the most frequently performed tragedies throughout the eighteenth century and consolidated Congreve's reputation as a serious artist. This tragedy persists mostly through the misquotation “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”. The discussion focuses on Zara, a powerful African queen reduced to captivity and humiliated by her European lover for whom she betrays her nation. Zara echoes the powerful Indian queens created by John Dryden. Dryden's Mesoamerican plays first appeared at the beginning of England's entry into the African slave trade in the form of a royal monopoly; The Mourning Bride appeared in the midst of a pamphlet war over the fate of the Royal African Company generated by the threat to its monopoly when its governor, James II, fled the country. While The Mourning Bride does not depict plantation slavery or the slave trade itself, it nevertheless registers the impact of trafficking in African bodies. Congreve's Zara evokes the exotic queens of the Restoration, but is a more complicated figure who demands respect for her dignity and empathy over her abuse. As the chapter suggests, Zara moved audiences not just as a “woman scorned,” but as an African who has been deracinated and enslaved.Less
This chapter looks at William Congreve's enormously popular but now unfamiliar play The Mourning Bride (1697) alongside Aphra Behn's play about an Indian queen, The Widow Ranter, and her heroic novella about an enslaved African prince, Oroonoko. The Mourning Bride has become almost invisible in scholarship, but it remained one of the most frequently performed tragedies throughout the eighteenth century and consolidated Congreve's reputation as a serious artist. This tragedy persists mostly through the misquotation “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”. The discussion focuses on Zara, a powerful African queen reduced to captivity and humiliated by her European lover for whom she betrays her nation. Zara echoes the powerful Indian queens created by John Dryden. Dryden's Mesoamerican plays first appeared at the beginning of England's entry into the African slave trade in the form of a royal monopoly; The Mourning Bride appeared in the midst of a pamphlet war over the fate of the Royal African Company generated by the threat to its monopoly when its governor, James II, fled the country. While The Mourning Bride does not depict plantation slavery or the slave trade itself, it nevertheless registers the impact of trafficking in African bodies. Congreve's Zara evokes the exotic queens of the Restoration, but is a more complicated figure who demands respect for her dignity and empathy over her abuse. As the chapter suggests, Zara moved audiences not just as a “woman scorned,” but as an African who has been deracinated and enslaved.
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804753692
- eISBN:
- 9780804768061
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804753692.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, Latin American History
This chapter examines the issues of political patronage, provincial politics, and foreign affairs in Brazil during the period from 1848 to 1853. It describes the provincial political milieu of the ...
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This chapter examines the issues of political patronage, provincial politics, and foreign affairs in Brazil during the period from 1848 to 1853. It describes the provincial political milieu of the mid-century, discusses the costs and contradictions of political consolidation, and evaluates the local impact of the looming foreign-policy crises, particularly the African slave trade. This chapter also considers the failure of the saquaremas to resolve the conflicts between the orderly and ordering state they envisioned, the intervention of the emperor and the state's abuse in the hands of violent and competitive provincial oligarchies and the associated system of patronage and spoils.Less
This chapter examines the issues of political patronage, provincial politics, and foreign affairs in Brazil during the period from 1848 to 1853. It describes the provincial political milieu of the mid-century, discusses the costs and contradictions of political consolidation, and evaluates the local impact of the looming foreign-policy crises, particularly the African slave trade. This chapter also considers the failure of the saquaremas to resolve the conflicts between the orderly and ordering state they envisioned, the intervention of the emperor and the state's abuse in the hands of violent and competitive provincial oligarchies and the associated system of patronage and spoils.