Human Capital in Business

Employees are rated as the most valuable asset of an organization. Therefore, the care, development, and maintenance of strong staff motivation are essential to achieve the core business goals. In the early 90s human capital had completely different value in the post-socialist countries. Unlike East Germany, in Bulgaria private property and entrepreneurship did not exist during the Soviet period. The education of an entrepreneurship spirit in free people had to start from scratch. The first part of the chapter examines the most important theoretical contributions and basis of the human capital and human capital resource theories. The second part is dedicated to the practical implications of these concepts in a newborn Bulgarian company which has a vision to transform the society it operates in. In addition, the chapter analyzes how these concepts reflect on a broader business audience, thus becoming a role model for multiplication of other companies from the responsible business circle in Bulgaria.

Witchcraft in Colonial Latin America

The European ideas associated with witchcraft came to the Americas as a multipronged weapon of imperialism, a conception of non-Christian beliefs not as separate worldviews but as manifestations of evil and the reigning power of the devil over Indigenous peoples and, slightly later, African slaves and free people of African origins or heritage. To create this imperialist concept, colonizers drew from a late medieval demonological literature that defined witchcraft as ways of influencing one’s fate through a pact with the devil and the ritual of witches’ sabbaths. Through the court structure of the Holy Offices of the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions, Iberian imperialists set up judicial processes that they designed to elicit confessions from their colonial subjects regarding their involvement in what was labeled witchcraft and witches’ sabbaths, but which was most likely either non-European beliefs and practices, or even popular European ideas of healing. Archival documents from the Holy Office fueled Europeans’ vision of themselves as on the side of cosmic good as well as providing some details regarding popular practices such as divination and love magic. Whatever ethnographic details emerge from this documentation, the use of the terminology of witchcraft always signals an imperialistic lens.

The Birthright of Economic Liberty

Economic liberty—the right to earn an honest living—is one of the most important rights of free people. Over time, this right has been restricted by unnecessary laws and regulations. Legislators should govern from a presumption of liberty. Applied practically, this means legislators should presume individuals have the right to practice their chosen occupations free from government regulation unless and until systematic evidence shows this right must be curtailed to protect the public.

Rituals, Runaways, and the Haitian Revolution

The Haitian Revolution was perhaps the most successful slave rebellion in modern history; it created the first and only free and independent Black nation in the Americas. This book tells the story of how enslaved Africans forcibly brought to colonial Haiti through the trans-Atlantic slave trade used their cultural and religious heritages, social networks, and labor and militaristic skills to survive horrific conditions. They built webs of networks between African and 'creole' runaways, slaves, and a small number of free people of color through rituals and marronnage - key aspects to building the racial solidarity that helped make the revolution successful. Analyzing underexplored archival sources and advertisements for fugitives from slavery, Crystal Eddins finds indications of collective consciousness and solidarity, unearthing patterns of resistance. Considering the importance of the Haitian Revolution and the growing scholarly interest in exploring it, Eddins fills an important gap in the existing literature.

Thralls’ Names in Scandinavia

Thanks to the Old Norse literature we have an large corpus of slave names to consider. When analysing these names, we arrive at the unfortunate conclusion that in many (most?) cases these names look like fictious, generative names, created to fit with the thrall topoi in the narrative. This is evident in the enumeration of thrall names in the poem Rígsþula, where all the names for male and female slaves are highly derogatory, obviously to make a statement of these unfree people being firmly at the bottom of society and to be looked upon with contempt. There are some names on slaves which have an origin in Celtic language, which are interesting, and some probably have a historical background. In the will of freed slaves, mentioned before, all former slaves have ordinary personal names that we find among free people. This raises the question if freed slaves took or were given a new, proper and Christian name at the manumission.

The Tumultuous Island

The years following Sarah and Isaac’s conversion were ones of great change on the island, rife with controversies and rebellion. On the one hand the Brandon-Lopez-Gill clan was prospering, with both Brandon cousins and Lopez-Gill uncles making important marriages. Yet the synagogue was in disarray, with interracial sex often at the center of controversies. While unmarried Jewish men like Sarah and Isaac’s father suffered no penalties for extramarital affairs, married Jews and religious leaders found themselves repeatedly sanctioned by the synagogue, their intimate affairs laid open. Racial tensions on the island reached a peak in 1816 when a slave revolt broke out near the southern coast. In the years following the revolt, free people of color would seek compensation for their support in suppressing the insurrection. Petitions and religion, rather than open rebellion, became the new path to power.

This Liberal 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.

Aspects of the Narratives of Slavery in the Afro-American Literature as Represented by Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass’ Works

Harriet Ann Jacobs’ Incidents in the life of a Slave Girl (1861) and Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave (1845) are two very significant works to show slave narratives Afro-American Literature. They provide many aspects in attempting to portray the complex sufferings and different kinds of frustrations, especially that the threat to the existence of their families and their rights as human beings in American society. The works present real stories and scenes lived by both writers in that dark era. The article makes a kind of comparison between them to highlight how both sexes suffered to the same extent. Jacobs represented the female side while Douglass represented the male side of black slaves in America through their works. The article aims to shed light on the brutal effect of slave and the crimes of the racist white American people upon these vulnerable people in a society of an ideal country in which the worst forms of racism are still practiced and the murder of George Floyd’s crime is not far from us. Therefore, it is the duty of the free people of the whole world to expose these heinous acts and work to prevent them and support the oppressed.

One and Indivisible?

Histories of the French Revolution usually locate the origins of the “one and indivisible Republic” in a strictly metropolitan context. In contrast, this article argues that the French Revolution's debates surrounding federation, federalism, and the (re)foundation of the French nation-state were interwoven with colonial and transimperial matters. Between 1776 and 1792 federalism in a French imperial context went from an element of an academic conversation among bureaucrats and economists to a matter of violent struggle in Saint-Domingue that generated new agendas in the metropole. Going beyond the binary language of union and secession, the article examines the contest over federation and federalism in Saint-Domingue between free people of color and white planters who, taking inspiration from both metropolitan and non-French experiences with federalism, sought to alter the colony's relationship with the metropole while also maintaining the institution of slavery. Revolutionaries on both sides of the Atlantic, unsure which direction to take and without the benefit of hindsight, used the language of federalism to pursue rival interests despite a seemingly common vocabulary. This entangled history of conflicts, compromises, and misunderstandings blurred ideological delineations but decisively shaped the genesis of the French imperial republic. Généralement, les histoires de la Révolution française placent les origines de la « République une et indivisible » dans un contexte strictement métropolitain. Cet article soutient en revanche que les débats de la Révolution française sur la fédération, le fédéralisme et la (re)-fondation de l'Etat-nation français étaient liés à des questions coloniales et transimpériales. Dans le contexte impérial français, entre 1776 et 1792, le fédéralisme ne fut plus seulement un objet de débats académiques entre bureaucrates et économistes, mais devint un élément central dans une lutte violente à Saint-Domingue qui contribua à infléchir les choix politiques faits en métropole. Au-delà du langage binaire de l'union et de la sécession, l'article examine les conflits cristallisés par les notions de fédération et de fédéralisme entre des libres de couleur et des planteurs blancs qui, s'inspirant d'expériences fédéralistes métropolitaines et étrangères, cherchèrent à modifier la relation de la colonie avec la métropole tout en maintenant l'institution esclavagiste. Des deux côtés de l'Atlantique, les révolutionnaires, qui ne savaient quelle direction emprunter, employèrent le langage du fédéralisme pour défendre des intérêts contradictoires malgré l'usage d'un vocabulaire apparemment commun. Cette histoire faite de conflits, de compromis et de malentendus contribua à brouiller les partages idéologiques mais n'en influença pas moins la genèse de la République impériale française.

“They Proved to Be Very Good Sailors”: Slavery and Freedom in the South Sea

This article mines archival sources and published accounts from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries to highlight the extent to which enslaved men, women, and children in the South Sea came into contact with British corsairs. It does so in ways that lend to three important observations: that people of African descent occupied a central role within the history of British corsair activity in the South Sea; that British corsair activity in the South Sea forms part of the history of the slave trade; and that there are important differences between British corsairs’ use of enslaved and free people of African descent in the South Sea as compared to the Atlantic World. The latter point, which rests on the recognition of the particular linguistic skills and geographic knowledge held by people of African descent in the South Sea and British corsairs' particular vulnerabilities, also provides a useful framework for future research on both the specificity of black life in the region and the meanings those skills and knowledge held for Africans and their descendants themselves.