scholarly journals SLAVE RESISTANCE AND DECOLONIZING CARIBBEAN HISTORY IN ANDREA LEVY’S THE LONG SONG

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tia Byer
Keyword(s):  
Historical Record ◽  
Individual Experience ◽  
Slave Narrative ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Historiographic Metafiction ◽  
Slave Resistance ◽  
Caribbean History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Planter Class

Set during the final days of Slavery on the island of Jamaica, Andrea Levy’s 2010 novel, The Long Song is a neo-slave narrative that explores the nature of slave resistance and colonial historiographical control. When read through a postcolonial lens, The Long Song takes the form of a counter-discourse, where the main character of Miss July offers a corrective to the dominant white narratives of Caribbean history. This essay argues that the experience of resistance in Levy’s narrative is one of literary mimicry, analysing July’s written resistance as it answers back to and confronts the colonial narratives that disregard the oppressed individual experience from history. Levy, in reanimating the history of Jamaican slavery by aligning her text with the unheard ‘History From Below’ perspective, demonstrates and replicates the unreliable narratives orchestrated by those ‘From Above’. As such, both Levy and her fictional July employ a method of historiographic metafiction to reclaim the previously silenced voice of the Jamaican slaves that the hegemonic White Planter class seek to oppress and obliterate from historical record. <p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0751/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Ethnic Distinctions and Wealth among Colonial Jamaican Merchants, 1685–1716

1998 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-81
Author(s):  
Allan D. Meyers
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
International Trade ◽  
Capital Investment ◽  
Caribbean History ◽  
Agricultural Revolution ◽  
Merchant Class ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Planter Class

For most of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, Jamaica was the center of trade and commerce in the English Caribbean. Its economic growth was influenced little by the planter class, which was slow to develop and would not fully emerge until the mid-eighteenth century (Dunn 1973: 204; Sheridan 1965: 292–311). Jamaica grew prosperous, instead, from a merchant class that mediated international trade on one level and distributed goods to the island's inhabitants on another. It was the capital derived from such trade and commerce that ultimately fueled the island's agricultural revolution (Zahedieh 1986b), because many merchants became affluent from trade and then financed investments in sugar plantations, livestock, and secondary staples (Claypole 1970: 174–95). So, unlike other colonies in the Caribbean, where most capital investment originated in England and was sustained by agriculture, Jamaica's capital was locally generated with predominantly external commodities. The early merchants thus have a prominent position both in the history of the island and in Caribbean history in general.

‘The greatest irregular’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Scurr
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Thomas Carlyle ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dramatic Narrative ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

Thomas Carlyle claimed that his history of the French Revolution was ‘a wild savage book, itself a kind of French Revolution …’. This chapter considers his stylistic approaches to creating the illusion of immediacy: his presentation of seemingly unmediated fact through the transformation of memoir and other kinds of historical record into a compelling dramatic narrative. Closely examining the ways in which he worked biographical anecdote into the fabric of his text raises questions about Carlyle’s wider historical purposes. Pressing the question of what it means to think through style, or to distinguish expressive emotive writing from abstract understanding, is an opportunity to reconsider Carlyle’s relation to his predecessors and contemporaries writing on the Revolution in English.

‘Importunity Which Mocked All Denial’: The Amherst Charity Fund and the Foundation of Amherst College

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl I Hammer
Keyword(s):  
Early Growth ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Williams College ◽  
Education Society ◽  
Amherst College ◽  
History Of ◽  
Noah Webster

This chapter discusses the complex history of the Amherst Charity Fund and Amherst College, located in western Massachusetts. The story of the Charity Fund, an independent fund which financed the foundation and early growth of Amherst College through designated scholarships and loans, incorporates many elements of the larger American myth. This chapter offers an alternative story based on the surviving historical record. In particular, it draws on the accounts of Noah Webster and Rufus Graves. It also cites the founding in 1815 of the Hampshire Education Society, whose aims contrast sharply with those embraced by the trustees of Amherst Academy, and how Amherst’s history was intertwined with that of Williams College. Finally, it highlights the important roles played by such men as Pastor David Parsons and Samuel F. Dickinson.

The Oxford Handbook of American Women's and Gender History

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Women Of Color ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Gender History ◽  
Artistic Production ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Power ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Free Women

The Oxford Handbook of American Women’s and Gender History boldly interprets the history of diverse women and how ideas about gender shaped their access to political and cultural power in North America over six centuries. In twenty-nine chapters, the Handbook showcases women’s and gender history as an integrated field with its own interpretation of the past, focused on how gender influenced people’s lives as they participated in migration, colonialism, trade, warfare, artistic production, and community building. Organized chronologically and thematically, the Handbook’s six sections allow readers to consider historical continuities of gendered power as well as individual innovations and ruptures in gender systems. Theoretically cutting edge, each chapter bursts with fascinating historical characters, from young Chicanas transforming urban culture, to free women of color forging abolitionist doctrines, to Asian migrant women defending the legitimacy of their marriages, to working-class activists mobilizing international movements, to transwomen fleeing incarceration. Together, their lives constitute the history of a continent. Leading scholars from multiple generations demonstrate the power of innovative research to excavate a history hidden in plain sight. Scrutinizing silences in the historical record, from the inattention to enslaved women’s opinions to the suppression of Indian women’s involvement in border diplomacy, the authors challenge the nature of historical evidence and remap what counts in our interpretation of the past. They demonstrate a way to extend this more capacious vision of history forward, setting an intellectual agenda informed by intersectionality and transnationalism, and new understandings of sexuality.

Arthropod Terrestriality

1990 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 214-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Conrad C. Labandeira ◽  
Bret S. Beall
Keyword(s):  
Historical Record ◽  
Early History ◽  
Late Paleozoic ◽  
Diverse Group ◽  
Arthropod Diversity ◽  
Terrestrial Arthropods ◽  
Terrestrial Habitats ◽  
History Of

Since the late Paleozoic, insects and arachnids have diversified in the terrestrial world so spectacularly that they have become unquestionably the most diverse group of organisms to ever inhabit the planet. In fact, this 300 million year interval may appropriately be referred to as the age of arthropods. What is the origin and history of terrestrial arthropods? How is arthropod diversity maintained on land? In this rhetorical context we will discuss (1) the degree to which terrestriality is found in arthropods, (2) the physiological barriers to terrestrialization that arthropod clades confronted, (3) the historical record of arthropod diversity on land based on paleobiological, comparative physiological and zoogeographical evidence, and (4) some tentative answers to the “why” of terrestrial arthropod success. We are providing a geochronologic scope to terrestriality that includes not only the early history of terrestrial arthropods, but also the subsequent expansion of arthropods into major terrestrial habitats.

September 11 and the Mourning After: Reflections on Collecting and Interpreting the History of Tragedy

2002 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 37-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
James B. Gardner ◽  
Sarah M. Henry
Keyword(s):  
September 11 ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Challenges ◽  
Sense Of Obligation

In the aftermath of September 11, public historians working in museums have faced new challenges to our sense of our work and ourselves as professionals. In addressing our collecting and interpretive responsibilities, we have had to grapple with the tension between our sense of obligation to the historic nature of the events and their aftermath and our concern that we are still too close to them to be able to judge clearly what is truly historically important. Our goal has been to respond to those challenges thoughtfully and positively, embracing the opportunity to help our visitors understand these tragic events and to contribute to the nation's healing, while remaining true to our obligation to enrich the historical record.

The Image of Petrushka in Russian Children’s Books of the 1920s — Early 1930s

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 424-435
Author(s):  
Dmitry V. Fomin
Keyword(s):  
Complete Loss ◽  
National Character ◽  
Children's Books ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Children’S Books ◽  
Book Art ◽  
Russian Culture ◽  
Source Studies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Visual Range

The image of Russian puppet theater’s main character, Petrushka, played an important role in the history of Russian culture and embodied some important features of the national character. His images are quite widely and variously represented on the pages of children’s books. At the beginning of the 20th century and in the first post-revolutionary years, publications about the adventures of Petrushka fulfilled an important mission: they recorded characteristic examples of folk art, preserved the memory of farcical performances, and supported the tradition of the art of “Petrushka makers”. The books served as manuals for novice puppeteers.In the 1920s — early 1930s, Petrushka continued to be one of the most popular characters of children’s books and aroused interest of many Russian writers and graphic artists. This indicates their desire to find a basis and support in the popular laughter culture, to continue its traditions, to bring elements of theatrical aesthetics into books.Using a complex of methods of book, art and source studies, the article aims to consider the transformation of the image of Petrushka in children’s books of the 1920s — early 1930s.The author draws attention to the significant differences between the literary component of such publications and their visual range. Writers, as a rule, sought to “re-educate” the areal joker and brawler, to ennoble his manners, modernize his appearance, and involve the popular character in solving actual ideological and pedagogical problems. Artists were more careful about the canonical, historically formed image of Petrushka, resisted too radical reinterpretation of it. Of particular interest in this regard are the illustrative cycles of I.S. Efimov, A.I. Sokolov-Asi, A.A. Radakov, V.M Konashevich, L.V. Popova, F.F. Kondratov.The best writers and artists of those years managed to preserve the most essential features of the character, breathe new life into him, save him from oblivion, from complete loss of identity, and pass him on to new generations of creators and readers of children’s books.

Madhouse

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 347-363
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Tilley ◽  
Paul Christian ◽  
Susan Ledger ◽  
Jan Walmsley
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Learning Disability ◽  
Social History ◽  
Learning Difficulties ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Immersive Theatre ◽  
Disability Research ◽  
History Of Institutions

Until the very end of the twentieth century the history of learning difficulties was subsumed into other histories, of psychiatry, of special education and, indeed, of disability. Initiatives to enable people with learning difficulties and their families to record their own histories and contribute to the historical record are both recent and powerful. Much of this work has been led or supported by The Open University’s Social History of Learning Disability Research (SHLD) group and its commitment to developing “inclusive history.” The article tells the story of the Madhouse Project in which actors with learning difficulties, stimulated by the story of historian activist Mabel Cooper and supported by the SHLD group, learned about and then offered their own interpretations of that history, including its present-day resonances. Through a museum exhibition they curated, and through an immersive theatre performance, the actors used the history of institutions to alert a wider public to the abuses of the past, and the continuing marginalization and exclusion of people with learning difficulties. This is an outstanding example of history’s potential to stimulate activism.

Reproductive Citizens

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nimisha Barton
Keyword(s):  
Historical Record ◽  
Child Rearing ◽  
Social Citizenship ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Foreign Born ◽  
Mass Migration ◽  
Shared Goal ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
French Nation

In the familiar tale of mass migration to France from 1880 onward, we know very little about the hundreds of thousands of women who formed a critical part of those migration waves. This book argues that their relative absence in the historical record hints at a larger and more problematic oversight — the role of sex and gender in shaping the experiences of migrants to France before the Second World War. This compelling history of social citizenship demonstrates how, through the routine application of social policies, state and social actors worked separately toward a shared goal: repopulating France with immigrant families. Filled with voices gleaned from census reports, municipal statistics, naturalization dossiers, court cases, police files, and social worker registers, the book shows how France welcomed foreign-born men and women — mobilizing naturalization, family law, social policy, and welfare assistance to ensure they would procreate, bearing French-assimilated children. Immigrants often embraced these policies because they, too, stood to gain from pensions, family allowances, unemployment benefits, and French nationality. By striking this bargain, they were also guaranteed safety and stability on a tumultuous continent. The book concludes that, in return for generous social provisions and refuge in dark times, immigrants joined the French nation through marriage and reproduction, breadwinning and child-rearing — in short, through families and family-making — which made them more French than even formal citizenship status could.

The Chronology of Sudanese Arabic Genealogical Tradition

2000 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 325-337 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jay Spaulding
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
World War I ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Economic Transformation ◽  
Nile Valley ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Old Kingdom ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
Islamic Faith

Modern nationalisms first arose during the later eighteenth century around the wide periphery of the ancient heartland of western culture and gnawed their way inward during the course of the nineteenth century to the core, culminating in World War I, Each new nationalism generated an original “imagined community” of human beings, part of whose ideological cohesion derived from a sense of shared historical experience. Since the actual historical record would not necessarily satisfy this hunger, it was often found expedient to amend the past through acts of imagination aptly termed the “invention of tradition.”One of the many new “imagined communities” of the long nineteenth century took shape in the northern Nile-valley Sudan between the final disintegration of the old kingdom of Sinnar (irredeemable after the death of the strongman Muhammad Abu Likaylik in 1775) and the publication of Harold MacMichael's A History of the Arabs in the Sudan in 1922. The new national community born of the collapse of Sinnar, strongly committed to Arabic speech and Islamic faith, was tested by fire through foreign conquest and revolution, by profound socio-economic transformation, and by the challenges attendant on participation in an extended sub-imperialism that earned it hegemony—first cultural, and ultimately political—over all the diverse peoples of the modern Sudan.One important response of the nascent community to the trials of this difficult age was the invention of a new national historical tradition, according to which its members were descended via comparatively recent immigrants to the Sudan from eminent Arabs of Islamic antiquity.

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