Black Yellow Fever Immunities, Innate and Acquired, as Revealed in the American South

1977 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 419-436 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth F. Kiple ◽  
Virginia H. Kiple
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Leone ◽  
American South ◽  
West African ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Tropical Africa ◽  
Cheap Labor ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The American South ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
Differential Experience

West Africa’s disease environment of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was decidedly hazardous to the health of Europeans who ventured there. Comtemporary observers reported die-offs of white troops reaching the 80 percent mark annually, while the loss of one half of a ship’s company on the coast was not all that unusual. Philip Curtin has calculated that on the average England’s loss of white troops ranged between 300-700 per 1,000 mean strength per annum with his most recent word on the subject placing the overall white death toll at about half of the white soldiers, government officials, and civilian personnel who reached West African shores. K. G. Davies, on the other hand, would have the “risks of the African station” even higher with an individual facing “three chances in five of being dead within a year.”West African natives by contrast positively thrived amidst European death. Again referring to Curtin’s data, the biggest killer of whites by far was “fever.” The fevers of Sierra Leone, for example, dispatched white troops at the rate of 410.2 per thousand per annum during the years 1819-1836, yet caused the death of only 2.5 African troops per thousand per annum. A similar differential experience with fevers occurred throughout West Africa—an experience which Professor Curtin has suggested constituted a crucial reason for the Atlantic slave traded Europeans would have preferred to locate plantations in tropical Africa close to a seemingly inexhaustible source of cheap labor, but they were persuaded by the lethal nature of West African fevers to locate those plantations instead in the more salubrious New World. Put plainly, they found the expense of transporting African workers across the Atlantic eminently preferable to challenging the odds against their own survival in Africa.

Dying to Eat

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
American South ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Perspective ◽  
Cultural Perspectives ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Korean Chinese ◽  
The American South

In Dying to Eat: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Food, Death, and the Afterlife, Candi K. Cann examines the role of food in dying, death, bereavement, and the afterlife. The coeditors seek to illuminate on the intersection of food and death in various cultures as well as fill an overlooked scholarly niche. Dying to Eat offers a multi-cultural perspective from contributors examining Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Latin American, European, Middle Eastern and American rituals and customs surrounding death and food. The contributors discuss a wide array of topics, including the role of death in the Islamic Sufi approach to food, the intersection of Buddhism, Catholicism, and Shamanism, as well as the role of casseroles and church cookbooks in the American South. The collection will provide not only food for thought on the subject of death and afterlife, but also theories, methods, recipes, and instructions on how and why food is used in dying, death, mourning, and afterlife rituals and practices in different cultural and religious contexts.

Black, Slave, Woman—The Role of Slave Women in the Ante-bellum South

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 146-154
Author(s):  
Chin Yu Chen
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Black Women ◽  
American South ◽  
The United States ◽  
Work And Family ◽  
Antebellum South ◽  
Slave Women ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The American South

There is a famous Chinese proverb which says “a good man never fights with a woman.” From the viewpoint of this Chinese custom, women should always be respected. This maxim certainly was never applied to Black women in the Ante-bellum south of the United States prior to the Civil War. The intent of this paper is to bring to the attention of the reader some of the inhumanity practiced on slave women when they were required to work, without pay, on the plantations in the American South before that country’s Civil War. The women learned quickly to “respect” the “lash” which beat them if they did not do their work properly, or sassed their master. Slavery, at its best, is a terrible institution, and this paper does not address the subject of slavery in other parts of the world. This study is designed to study the plight of Black women, and their struggles, in that time of supposed Southern “gentility.” This study will also attempt to provide an insight into the work and family life of Black women in the era of the Antebellum South.

Class and Slavery

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Daniel Wells
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
American South ◽  
Class Formation ◽  
Old South ◽  
Basic Assumptions ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The American South ◽  
Southern Society

This article reviews scholarship on class and slavery. The evolution of the historiography on class and slavery is complex, and historians have only recently begun to revisit some of their basic assumptions about class formation, class ideology, and the social structure of the Old South more broadly. New studies raise questions about the ways in which human bondage and class intertwined in slave societies, particularly the American South, and have initiated a discernible shift in the field. While scholars profitably continue to study the plantation and the lives of masters and slaves, many historians now call for a wider view of southern society to take account of life in the region outside the plantation, and the various ways in which different classes of whites interacted with, and were shaped by, the institution of slavery. It is with these new calls that the subject of class is enjoying resurgence.

scholarly journals Looking for Better: A History of Black Southern Migrations

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Selena Sanderfer Doss
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
American South ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Forced Migrations ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Great Migration ◽  
The American South ◽  
Personal Accounts ◽  
Broad Overview

A broad overview of migrations affecting black southerners is presented, including the Atlantic slave trade, the domestic slave trade, colonization movements to Sierra Leone and Liberia, the Exoduster movement, the Great Migration, and the Return South migration. Emigrants convey their experiences and motivations through testimonies and personal accounts. Surviving the trauma of forced migrations, black southerners organized numerous migration movements both outside and within American polities in search of better opportunities. In the late 20th century, black southerners also initiated a return migration to the American South and have since achieved notable socioeconomic and political progress.

Arabic Literacy Among the Yalunka of Sierra Leone

Africa ◽  
1974 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-81
Author(s):  
Leland Donald
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Leone ◽  
West African ◽  
North Eastern ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
Opening Paragraph

Opening ParagraphThe Yalunka of north-eastern Sierra Leone are predominantly Muslim. Their religion seems to be a straightforward variant of contemporary West African Islam. They have been exposed to Islam for several centuries and although they had powerful Muslim neighbours during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for most of this period they resisted conversion and remained pagan (Laing, 1825; Donald, 1968) until 1882, when they were conquered by one of the armies of Samory and forcibly converted. After the establishment of British and French control over their area in the 1890s many Yalunka reverted to paganism, but Islam remained viable and the number of adherents increased steadily. By the 1950s nearly all Yalunka in Sierra Leone were at least nominal Muslims.

scholarly journals On the Mortality among Government Officials on the West Coast of Africa

1897 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 307-310
Author(s):  
J. R. Hart
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Leone ◽  
West Coast ◽  
Short Communication ◽  
West African ◽  
The Gambia ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
Great Weight ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
The West ◽  
Colonial Office

A few statistics relating to this subject recently came into my hands, and although the results obtained from them cannot be considered to be of great weight, a short communication may be of interest. In the hope that useful information might be forthcoming, I made enquiry as to whether any record is kept of the dates of departure, death, or retirement of persons who go out in the employment of African merchants to the West Coast; and ascertained that it was unlikely that data could be supplied from that source. But I thought it worth while to make similar enquiry at the Colonial Office; and although the West African department could not officially furnish me with information, as they had none here of which they could vouch for the accuracy, I obtained, through the courtesy of one of the officials, the particulars given below. These were contained in a list of all the Europeans employed by the Governments of the four West African Colonies—the Gambia, Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, and Lagos—during the ten years, 1 January 1881 to 31 December 1890, showing when their service began, and, if ended before 31 December 1890, when and why it ended.

scholarly journals Hidden Voices and Gothic Undertones: Slavery and Folklore of the American South

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Dos Reis Dos Santos
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
American South ◽  
West African ◽  
Joel Chandler Harris ◽  
American Folklore ◽  
The American South ◽  
Enslaved African Americans ◽  
Folk Stories

African American folklore embodies themes of the Tropical Gothic. It has an air of mystery as it has a deeper meaning underneath the different layers of plot. Folklore of the American South represents the darkness of the slavery period and its implications for African Americans. This article discusses two folklore collections: Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings: The Folk lore of the Old Plantation by Joel Chandler Harris, and From My People: 400 Years of Folklore by Daryl Cumber Dance. Both collections illuminate the ways in which West African oral tradition became a source of empowerment, courage and wisdom for the enslaved African Americans. Folk stories served as a means of silent resistance and preserved the cultural heritage of African Americans.

Newton's Interpolation Formulas. An unpublished Manuscript of Sir Isaac Newton

1927 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-95
Author(s):  
Duncan C. Fraser
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Vital Statistics ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Unpublished Manuscript ◽  
Sir Isaac Newton ◽  
Isaac Newton ◽  
Trading Company ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Colonial Office

The mortality of Europeans in West Africa has on several occasions been the subject of discussion in this Institute or of note in the pages of the Journal. In 1886 Dr. T. B. Sprague read a paper on the mortality of Europeans in the Congo, based on the statistics from Stanley's work on the Pounding of the Free State: In 1892 Dr. T. G. Lyon contributed a paper on mortality in various regions of the world from data gathered from Government Reports of the Colonial Office. In 1897 Dr. A. E. Sprague read a paper on the experience of 971 Belgian Government officials on the Congo and 178 employees of a Dutch Trading Company. In the same year Mr. J. E. Hart gave the experience of Colonial Office officials on the Gold Coast and Sierra Leone. Lastly, in 1911, Mr. Hart furnished a copy of the Report on Vital Statistics of European Government officials in the employ of the Colonial Office for the previous year.

On the Rates of Mortality in Certain Parts of Africa

1897 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 285-307 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfred E. Sprague
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Leone ◽  
West Coast ◽  
Tropical Africa ◽  
The West ◽  
The Subject

As the published facts concerning the rate of mortality in tropical Africa are very scanty, and Insurance Offices are therefore often compelled to fix the extra premiums for African risks in an almost purely arbitrary manner, I venture to lay the following investigation before the members of the Institute as a contribution to our knowledge of the subject. So far as I am aware, the only publications dealing with the subject are a note by my father, Dr. T. B. Sprague, on the Rate of Mortality on the Congo (J.I.A. xxv, 437); a note read by myself before the Actuarial Society of Edinburgh on the Rate of Mortality in Sierra Leone (Transactions, iii, 365); a paper by Mr. J. R. Hart on the Mortality on the West Coast of Africa, which appeared in the Insurance Record of 2 October 1896; and a paper by Dr. T. Glover Lyon on the Mortality amongst Europeans in certain Unhealthy Districts (J.I.A., xxix, 541).

scholarly journals Fisibilillah: Labor as Learning on the Sufi Path

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 3
Author(s):  
Youssef Carter
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
Community Service ◽  
Charitable Giving ◽  
American South ◽  
Black Atlantic ◽  
West African ◽  
The Body ◽  
Bodily Practice ◽  
The American South ◽  
Spiritual Empowerment

At the core of this study of spiritual empowerment and Black Atlantic Sufism lies the pre-occupation of understanding precisely the manner by which particular Muslim subjectivities are fashioned within the bounds of the Mustafawi Sufi tradition of religious cultivation through charitable giving and community service in Moncks Corner, South Carolina. This article examines Black Atlantic Muslim religiosities and argues that West African Sufism in diasporic context—which draws upon nonwestern theories of the body and theories of the soul—can be theorized as a philosophy of freedom and decoloniality. In the American South, spiritual empowerment becomes possible through varying forms of care and bodily practice that take place in a mosque that is situated on a former slave plantation. Meanwhile, that empowerment takes place through discourses on Islamic piety and heightened religiosity in a postcolonial Senegal. Spiritual empowerment occurs, as I show, through attending to the body and spirit as students connect themselves, via West African Sufism, to a tradition of inward mastery and bodily discipline through philanthropic efforts.

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