scholarly journals African oral tradition, cultural retentions and the transmission of knowledge in the West Indies

IFLA Journal ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cherry-Ann Smart
Keyword(s):  
West Indies ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Modern Concept ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
The West ◽  
Transmission Of Knowledge ◽  
Cultural Retention ◽  
African Slaves ◽  
History Of ◽  
Uncertain Future

For three centuries Africans were trafficked to slave for Europeans in the West Indies. Forcibly uprooted from their homes, they carried only recollections of a way of life as they faced an uncertain future while enduring gruelling conditions. Unversed in the enslavers’ language and custom, their past was mentally retained and transmitted through oral expressions and cultural products. Yet, the history of libraries as repositories of knowledge gives credit to all newcomers except these Africans. This paper proposes the modern concept of a library supports African slaves’ cultural retention and transmission of knowledge as important in the development of life in the West Indies.

scholarly journals The sportification of judo: global convergence and evolution

2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 299-317 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shohei Sato
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Global Convergence ◽  
Martial Arts ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
The West ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Olympic Sport

AbstractThis article re-examines our understanding of modern sport. Today, various physical cultures across the world are practised under the name of sport. Almost all of these sports originated in the West and expanded to the rest of the world. However, the history of judo confounds the diffusionist model. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, a Japanese educationalist amalgamated different martial arts and established judo not as a sport but as ‘a way of life’. Today it is practised globally as an Olympic sport. Focusing on the changes in its rules during this period, this article demonstrates that the globalization of judo was accompanied by a constant evolution of its character. The overall ‘sportification’ of judo took place not as a diffusion but as a convergence – a point that is pertinent to the understanding of the global sportification of physical cultures, and also the standardization of cultures in modern times.

The Achievements of the Douglass Company in North America: 1758–1774

1982 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
David D. Mays
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
North America ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Theatre History ◽  
The West ◽  
American Theatre ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Theatre History ◽  
A Company

On Monday, October 16, 1758., Hugh Gaine reported a novelty. “Friday last,” he told his readers in the New-York Mercury, “arrived here from the West Indies, a Company of Comedians; some Part of which were here in the Year 1753.” This brief notice, which went on to assure its readers that the company had “an ample Certificate of their Private as well as publick Qualifications,” marks the beginning of the most significant event in American theatre history: the establishment of the professional theatre on this continent. The achievements of the Company of Comedians during its sixteen-year residence in North America are virtually without parallel in the history of the theatre, and have not received sufficient recognition by historians and scholars.

1. Drinking and temperance

2020 ◽  
pp. 7-27
Author(s):  
W. J. Rorabaugh
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Alcohol Consumption ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Heavy Drinking ◽  
The United States ◽  
The West ◽  
Temperance Movement ◽  
History Of ◽  
Viable System ◽  
The Revolution

‘Drinking and temperance’ describes the history of alcohol consumption in the United States and the introduction of the temperance movement. From the earliest European settlers to the fighters of the Revolution, Americans were among the world’s heartiest drinkers, producing their own corn beer and importing rum from the West Indies. The British blockades during the war meant access to rum was lost. Americans began to distill whiskey from corn instead, which became the country’s patriotic drink. Problems associated with heavy drinking resulted in reformers creating the temperance movement, a cause that was then taken up by Protestant preachers. In the 1850s, evangelicals lobbied for statewide prohibition laws, but there was no viable system of enforcement.

The Amazons of Dahomey

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agbenyega Adedze
Keyword(s):  
Oral Tradition ◽  
West African ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
The West ◽  
West African Coast ◽  
African Coast ◽  
History Of ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
Female Fighters

The Amazons in general come from Greek legend and myth without any palpable historical evidence. However, there is no doubt about the historical female fighters of the erstwhile Kingdom of Dahomey (Danhome or Danxome) in West Africa, which survived until their defeat by the French colonial forces in 1893. The history of the historical Amazons of the Kingdom of Dahomey stems from vast amounts of oral tradition collected and analyzed over the years, as well as written accounts by Europeans who happened to have visited the kingdom or lived on the West African coast since Dahomey’s foundation in the 17th century to its demise in the late 19th century. These sources have been reviewed and debated by several scholars (including Amélie Degbelo, Stanley B. Alpern, Melville J. Herskovits, Hélène d’Almeida-Topor, Boniface Obichere, Edna G. Bay, Robin Law, Susan Preston Blier, Auguste Le Herisse, etc.), who may or may not agree on the narrative of the founding of the kingdom or the genesis of female fighters in the Dahomean army. Nonetheless, all scholars agree that the female forces traditionally called Ahosi/Mino did exist and fought valiantly in many of Dahomey’s battles against their neighbors (Oyo, Ouemenou, Ouidah, etc.) and France. The history of the Ahosi/Mino is intricately linked to the origins and political and social development of the Kingdom of Dahomey. Ahosi/Mino are still celebrated in the oral traditions of the Fon.

scholarly journals III.—Restoration of the Antillean Continent

1894 ◽  
Vol 1 (10) ◽  
pp. 448-451
Author(s):  
J. W. Spencer
Keyword(s):  
Coastal Plain ◽  
West Indies ◽  
The West ◽  
Great Rivers ◽  
Northern Continent ◽  
History Of ◽  
Forms Of Life

There have been many suggestions respecting a continental connection of the West Indies, but this is the first attempt made to restore the Antillean lands. It is based upon the slowly accumulating evidence of great systems of submerged valleys, or fjords extending from the commonly buried lower reaches of all the great rivers, upon the terrestrial deformation involved in the changes of level over large regions and upon the distribution of the characteristic forms of life. The present investigations confirm and amplify the history of the coastal plain of the northern continent.

"Not worth one Groat": The Status, Gentility and Credit of Lawrence and Sarah Crabb of Antigua

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Barber
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Base Point ◽  
The West ◽  
Leeward Islands ◽  
George Moore ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
Initial Wealth ◽  
Plantation Society

AbstractThis article recreates the lives of two settlers in Antigua between the years 1690 and 1740. As such, it is a key addition to the paltry number of studies of the island of Antigua and the other Leeward Islands of the West Indies. It takes as its base point the study of the Antigua settler elite identified by Richard Sheridan in his article, now forty years old, which constructed the institutional systems of landholding, taxation, customs and the Slave Trade which produced so-called Plantation Society. In the years preceding this, however, life for everyone concerned in the West Indies was uncertain and insecure. is was as much the case for those at the top of the socio-political ladder, such as island governors and Crown viceroys, as for relatively modest settlers, such as the subjects of this essay, Lawrence and Sarah Crabb. For all of those who were incorporated into the 18thcentury Plantocracy, many more were sacrificed in the struggles of early capitalism, buoyed up not by the level of 'credit' that they were accorded, but by the levels of debt they carried. The construction of a social history of modest settlers is made possible through the survival of documents which were kept by the Crabb's agent, George Moore, and which he would subsequently use in a Chancery case against his late friend's widow. These manuscripts have not been used before, except for occasional references to the legal precedents established by the case, Moore v. Meynell, and, given the paucity and patchiness of manuscript survivals for the Caribbean in the seventeenth century, show what can be reconstructed from otherwise overlooked sources. The result is a study of the measurement of a person's worth, and the increasing elision of God and Mammon in gauging credit, value and trust. In the case of the Crabbs, particularly because Lawrence was himself a man of little initial wealth who clawed his way up through his own ingenuity and his wife's family's West Indian estates, we are able to demonstrate how the language of credit and worthiness applied not only to men of business and politics but also to women.

scholarly journals Report on the eruptions of the soufrière in St. Vincent in 1902, and on a visit to Montagne Pelée in Martinique. Part II.—The changes in the districts and the subsequent history of the volcanoes

1908 ◽  
Vol 80 (538) ◽  
pp. 281-284
Keyword(s):  
West Indies ◽  
Field Observations ◽  
The West ◽  
Volcanic Ejecta ◽  
History Of

This Report, and the accompanying Report by Dr. Flett on The Petrology of the Ejected Materials, form the sequel to the Report by Drs. Tempest Anderson and J. S. Flett on “The Eruptions of the Soufrière in St. Vincent in 1902, and on a Visit to Montagne Pelée in Martinique, Part I.” At the time when that Report was published it was contemplated that an account should be given later on of the subsequent changes in the deposits of volcanic ejecta, and also on the petrology of the specimens collected in 1902. In the spring of 1907 I visited the West Indies, but Dr. Flett was unfortunately detained in England by his official duties. I am therefore responsible for the field observations on the topography and geology, and on the return of vegetation, while Dr. Flett’s Report deals with the petrology of the ejected materials.

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