Beyond Sugar

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane I. Seiter
Keyword(s):  
People Of Color ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Free People Of Color ◽  
Lime Kilns ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
Develop Land ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Landscape Survey ◽  
Free People

Much has been written about the “sugar revolution” sweeping the islands of the Caribbean in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Recent work by archaeologists, however, has challenged this overarching narrative. On the island of St. Lucia, a program of landscape survey joined with a close analysis of maps and census records has revealed a very different pattern of landscape development. Underneath the remains of vast sugar estates with their monumental surviving architecture—the curing and boiling houses, lime kilns, windmills and water wheels—lies evidence of an earlier phase of small-scale plantations growing a surprising diversity of crops. Building on a legacy of subsistence agriculture inherited from the Amerindians, European settlers on St. Lucia carved out a patchwork of small holdings cultivating cotton, cocoa, coffee, tobacco, ginger, cassava, indigo, and bananas. The comparative absence of large sugar plantations allowed people without much capital to purchase and develop land, creating new opportunities for free people of color to amass wealth and gain political power. The emergence of this class of free black landowners had a profound impact on St. Lucian society, which in turn greatly affected the larger political struggles that rocked the Caribbean in the late eighteenth century.

New Struggles and Old Ideas, 1813–1833

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Livesay
Keyword(s):  
Mixed Race ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
White Population ◽  
Mixed Ancestry ◽  
Social Marginalization ◽  
Free People Of Color ◽  
Legal Position ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Free People

This chapter explores the immediate years leading up to the emancipation of Britain’s enslaved population in 1833 and that period’s effect on mixed-race migrants. It contends that Britain was an increasingly hostile place for Jamaican migrants of color, as family and class position no longer sufficiently modified racialized oppression. This is seen in both family correspondences as well as in the experiences of political radicals such as Robert Wedderburn, whose mixed ancestry and social marginalization informed his activist ideologies in London. In Jamaica, however, mixed-race migrants who had returned to the Caribbean made advancements. Not only did the assembly improve the legal position of free people of color, but it promoted British-trained individuals of color in anticipation of the emancipation of enslaved Jamaicans. In particular, emancipation appeared to spell the doom of a permanent, growing white population. A British-educated class of color was now seen as the proper replacement for a declining white cohort.

Manumission on the Land: Slaves, Masters, and Magistrates in Eighteenth-Century Mompox (Colombia)

2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 511-543
Author(s):  
Edgardo Pérez Morales
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Caribbean Sea ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Panthera Onca ◽  
Free People Of Color ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Magdalena River ◽  
Free People ◽  
The Town

In the mid-1700s, the town of Mompox flourished in the Spanish viceroyalty of the New Kingdom of Granada, today part of the Republic of Colombia. Built on the banks of the northern Magdalena River, an important waterway connecting the Andean interior with the Caribbean Sea, Mompox constantly buzzed with travelers and trade alike. Mompox was home to a community of merchants who profited handsomely from both legal trade and smuggling, their networks reaching places as far away as Lima in Peru and Cádiz in Spain. These merchants were frequently also slaveholders and landowners. On haciendas outside of town, slaves cultivated the land and tended large herds of cattle. They gathered wood and resins and hunted for game and jaguars (panthera onca) that preyed on livestock. Along with free people of color, slaves also worked as artisans, journeymen, and oarsmen on boats transporting goods and people up and down the river (see Figure 1).

This Liberal City

2021 ◽  
pp. 114-124
Author(s):  
Laura Arnold Leibman
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Religious Leader ◽  
The South ◽  
Free People Of Color ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Free People ◽  
Northern City

In July of 1820, Isaac Lopez Brandon and his mother landed in Philadelphia, where they joined the growing community of wealthy free people of color who flocked to the northern city from the South and the Caribbean. As in New York, in Philadelphia gradual emancipation led to new opportunities and instigated a racial backlash. While some Jewish Philadelphians worked on behalf of abolition, others owned the print shops and newspapers that published articles fomenting anti-Black ire. Money would ease the Brandons’ path. Philadelphia would be the first place that Isaac’s mother positioned herself not as Lopez or Gill, but as Mrs. Brandon, despite the fact there is no evidence she married Abraham Rodrigues Brandon. Behind the scenes, Abraham helped his niece’s husband secure a job as hazan (religious leader) of the congregation. As in New York, Sarah’s in-laws helped smooth their transition into Jewish life.

Archaeologies of Slavery and Freedom in the Caribbean

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Complex Dynamics ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Free People Of Color ◽  
Poor Whites ◽  
The Public ◽  
Chattel Slavery ◽  
The Social ◽  
Before And After ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Free People

All parts of the Caribbean were shaped by similar forces, including race-based chattel slavery, sugar, capitalism, and the tropical and sometimes deadly natural environment. Within these commonalities, however, is also a great deal of diversity. Large sugar plantations populated by hundreds of enslaved Africans rightfully receive a great deal of attention from archaeologists, historians, and the public. The authors in this volume, however, use innovative techniques and perspectives to reveal the stories of places and times where the rules of this system did not always apply. Collectively, the chapters focus on the spaces in-between, alternate views of plantation landscapes, and the complex dynamics at play in the days following slavery. The authors assess these threads through the analysis of lesser known contexts, such as Dominica, St. Lucia, and the Dominican Republic, and the reexamination of more familiar places, like Jamaica and Barbados. Despite grueling work regimes, and the social and economic restrictions of slavery, people held in bondage carved out places at the margins of plantation societies. In similar fashion, the lives of poor whites, soldiers, and free people of color demonstrate that binary models of black slaves and white planters do not fully encompass the diverse landscape of Caribbean identities before and after Emancipation. The studies in this volume employ innovative research tools to integrate data from a variety of historical and archaeological sources to better understand these alternate stories within and beyond the sprawling sugar estates.

Racial Segregation under Slavery

Social Forces ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Ruef
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Racial Segregation ◽  
The United States ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Free People Of Color ◽  
Economic Competition ◽  
Black Populations ◽  
Residential Distribution ◽  
Architectural Survey ◽  
Free People

Abstract Social demographers and historians have devoted extensive research to patterns of racial segregation that emerged under Jim Crow and during the post-Civil Rights era but have paid less attention to the role of slavery in shaping the residential distribution of Black populations in the United States. One guiding assumption has been that slavery rendered racial segregation to be both unnecessary and impractical. In this study, I argue that apart from the master–slave relationship, slavery relentlessly produced racial segregation during the antebellum period through the residential isolation of slaves and free people of color. To explain this pattern, I draw on racial threat theory to test hypotheses regarding interracial economic competition and fear of slave mobilization using data from the 1850 Census, as well as an architectural survey of antebellum sites. Findings suggest that the residential segregation of free people of color increased with their local prevalence, whereas the segregation of slaves increased with the prevalence of the slave population. These patterns continue to hold after controlling for interracial competition over land or jobs and past slave rebellions or conspiracies.

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