Slave

2021 ◽  
pp. 84-132
Author(s):  
Mark Storey
Keyword(s):  
Toni Morrison ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Ralph Ellison ◽  
The Political ◽  
Long Term Conditions ◽  
American Slavery ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Atlantic Slave Trade

Twinned with the first chapter, this takes up the subject of American slavery and its intricate connections to the political philosophies of Roman slavery. The subject here is both the racialized figure of the Atlantic slave trade and the metaphorized “slave” as the coerced and oppressed subject of capitalist modernity. Engaging with the fields of Black classicism and theoretical history, the chapter begins with the photography of Carrie Mae Weems before moving into a series of textual engagements with the Roman slave: Toni Morrison, Howard Fast, Ralph Ellison, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Robert Montgomery Bird all feature, amongst a host of other writers. The chapter argues that Rome has proved to be a way of suturing the embodied and contingent experience of American slavery and subjugation into a fuller apprehension of imperial sovereignty and its long-term conditions.

Slave Traders by Invitation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Finn Fuglestad
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Human Settlement ◽  
Local Setting ◽  
Slave Traders ◽  
Atlantic Slave Trade

The small Slave Coast between the river Volta and Lagos, and especially its central part around Ouidah, was the epicentre of the slave trade in West Africa. But it was also an inhospitable, surf-ridden coastline, subject to crashing breakers and devoid of permanent human settlement. Nor was it easily accessible from the interior due to a lagoon which ran parallel to the coast. The local inhabitants were not only sheltered against incursions from the sea, but were also locked off from it. Yet, paradoxically, this small coastline witnessed a thriving long-term commercial relationship between Europeans and Africans, based on the trans-Atlantic slave trade. How did it come about? How was it all organized? Dahomey is usually cited as the Slave Coast's archetypical slave raiding and slave trading polity. An originally inland realm, it was a latecomer to the slave trade, and simply incorporated a pre-existing system by dint of military prowess, which ultimately was to prove radically counterproductive. Dahomey, which never controlled more than half of the region we call the Slave Coast, represented an anomaly in the local setting, an anomaly the author seeks to define and to explain.

Building Up Belonging: Diasporic “Homecomers”, the Ghanaian Government and Traditional Rulers: A Case of Return

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gaia Delpino
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
The Political ◽  
Local Authorities ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Political Dynamics ◽  
Dynamic Relation ◽  
Atlantic Slave Trade ◽  
Southern Ghana ◽  
The Way

AbstractThis essay analyzes the political dynamics involved in the construction of belonging in the case of African Americans’ “return” from the diaspora generated by the Atlantic slave trade to a town in Southern Ghana. Given the articulated belief of common ancestral origins, such arrival was initially welcomed by all the three groups of actors involved: thereturnees, the local authorities, divided by a chieftaincy dispute, and the Ghanaian government that was supporting homecoming policies. The concepts of origins and kinship and the way to validate them, though, were differently conceived by the various political actors; furthermore each of them held dissimilar reasons and had different expectations behind this return. All these differences created a mutual, mutable and dynamic relation between the actors who were involved in the arrival and aimed to assert their authority.

scholarly journals EXTRAVERSION, CREOLIZATION, AND DEPENDENCY IN THE ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE

2014 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa A. Lindsay
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
African History ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
New Goods ◽  
Atlantic Slave Trade ◽  
Atlantic Slavery ◽  
External Connections

AbstractThis article considers the Atlantic slave trade in relation to ‘extraversion’ in African history. Drawing especially on the work of Jean-François Bayart, it argues that slaving fit a long-term pattern in which elites drew on external connections in order to further their wealth and power at home. In doing so, they also opened their societies to new goods and ideas, thus bringing about cultural creolization. This is a different approach to the question of creolization than is commonly found among Americanist studies of Atlantic slavery, which tend to treat cultural change without consideration of politics. The concept of extraversion thus helps to link culture and political economy. Nevertheless, it also bears refinement. Recent scholarship on African involvement in the Atlantic slave trade – some of it detailed in this article – makes clear that extraversion may have reflected African agency, as Bayart insisted, but that it also entangled African societies in destructive relationships of dependency.

Public Memories of the Atlantic Slave Trade and Slavery in Contemporary Europe

2009 ◽  
Vol 17 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 611-626 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gert Oostindie
Keyword(s):  
Slave Trade ◽  
European History ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Atlantic Slave Trade

For centuries, major European states were involved in the Atlantic slave trade and in slavery in their colonies in the Americas. In the last decade, this subject has attracted serious but uneven attention in Europe beyond the realms of descendants and academia. The British, French and Dutch governments have engaged with the subject, expressing remorse and stimulating public commemorations. Portugal and Spain on the other hand have hardly addressed the subject. The reason for this remarkable divergence, the author suggests, lies with divergent commemorative traditions and the fact that the two Iberian countries have no substantial Caribbean communities as visible reminders of this past. The last part of the article discusses some problems associated with the politicized rediscovery of these embarrassing chapters in European history.

Deaths of Slaves in the Middle Passage

1985 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 685-692 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raymond L. Cohn
Keyword(s):  
Slave Trade ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
First Person ◽  
Middle Passage ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Consensus View ◽  
Atlantic Slave Trade ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
Over Time

It is widely accepted by students of the slave trade that slave mortality during the Middle Passage fell between the seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries. The first person to make the claim of declining mortality was Philip Curtin, who reopened research on slave mortality in his book The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census. Curtin examined a number of sources, and his conclusion was that “… there is a decreasing rate of loss over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.” Curtin's book stimulated a great deal of further research, much of it by Herbert Klein. Klein's conclusion was the same as Curtin's: “it is undoubtedly true that over the whole of the 18th century, mortality in the Middle Passage was on the decline.” This result has since been repeated in a number of places. Riley has recently summed up the consensus view on the subject: “Most students of this question report that mortality declined over time, but the available data are sporadic in time and place.” The only dissenting view has come from Postma who found “no discernible trend toward decrease or increase in the overall pattern” in the Dutch trade.

Witchcraft in Africa: Political Power and Spiritual Insecurity from the Precolonial Era to the Present

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Redding
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Political Power ◽  
P Systems ◽  
The Political ◽  
Global Trade ◽  
Social Landscape ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
Atlantic Slave Trade ◽  
Political Economic

Historically, witchcraft in Africa has not comprised a stable or uniform set of beliefs. The idea of witchcraft, which might loosely be defined as the belief that people exist who use supernatural means to harm others, has existed in African societies from the precolonial, through the colonial, and into the postcolonial periods. But ideas about the kinds of powers that witches are alleged to use and the types of people often accused of using witchcraft have shifted in response to the changing political, economic, and social landscape. While witchcraft beliefs can sometimes be understood as metaphors for political forces and social ills, they must also be understood as separate systems of signs and meanings that have their own historical trajectories rooted in local cultures. Beliefs in witchcraft are beliefs in systems of power derived from unseen forces, and for those people who believe in supernatural powers those forces are quite real and are not merely metaphorical allusions to other phenomena. In the precolonial era, the political power that many chiefs and kings had was based in supernatural powers; these occult powers were potentially usable for either positive, socially accepted ends or for evil, selfish, and greedy ends. In the colonial and postcolonial eras, states and politicians have also been seen to have supernatural powers but are believed to have used them largely for self-enrichment or empowerment. Systems of global trade, including the trans-Atlantic slave trade and later colonial production of various commodities, both created wealth for a few and inflicted harm on many people. The perceived immorality of these economic and social networks was often captured in stories of witches ambushing people and selling them or consuming their life forces. The spiritual insecurity represented in these beliefs in witchcraft has continued into the postcolonial era.

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