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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political control & freedoms > Slavery & emancipation
Hell Without Fires examines the spiritual and earthly results of
conversion to Christianity for African-American antebellum writers.
Using autobiographical narratives, the book shows how black writers
transformed the earthly hell of slavery into a "New Jerusalem," a
place they could call home. Yolanda Pierce insists that for African
Americans, accounts of spiritual conversion revealed "personal
transformations with far-reaching community effects. A personal
experience of an individual's relationship with God is transformed
into the possibility of liberating an entire community." The
process of conversion could result in miraculous literacy,
"callings" to preach, a renewed resistance to the slave condition,
defiance of racist and sexist conventions, and communal uplift.
These stories by five of the earliest antebellum spiritual
writers--George White, John Jea, David Smith, Solomon Bayley, and
Zilpha Elaw--create a new religious language that merges Christian
scripture with distinct retellings of biblical stories, with
enslaved people of African descent at their center. Showing the
ways their language exploits the levels of meaning of words like
master, slavery, sin, and flesh, Pierce argues that the narratives
address the needs of those who attempted to transform a foreign god
and religion into a personal and collective system of beliefs. The
earthly "hell without fires"--one of the writer's characterizations
of everyday life for those living in slavery--could become a place
where an individual could be both black and Christian, and religion
could offer bodily and psychological healing. Pierce presents a
complex and subtle assessment of the language of conversion in the
context of slavery. Her work will be important to those interested
in the topics of slave religion and spiritual autobiography and to
scholars of African American and early American literature and
religion.
Enlightenment thinkers such as Rousseau and Montesquieu are best
known for their humanist theories and liberating influence on
Western civilization. But as renowned French intellectual Louis
Sala-Molins shows, Enlightenment discourses and scholars were also
complicit in the Atlantic slave trade, becoming instruments of
oppression and inequality.
Translated into English for the first time, "Dark Side of the Light
"scrutinizes Condorcet's "Reflections on Negro" "Slavery" and the
works of Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Diderot side by side with the
"Code Noir" (the royal document that codified the rules of French
Caribbean slavery) in order to uncover attempts to uphold the
humanist project of the Enlightenment while simultaneously
justifying slavery. Wielding the pen of both the ironist and the
moralist, Sala-Molins demonstrates the flawed nature of these
attempts and the reasons given for this denial of rights, from the
imperatives of public order to the incomplete humanity of the slave
(and thus the need for his progressive humanization through
slavery), to the economic prosperity that depended on his labor. At
the same time, Sala-Molins uses the techniques of literature to
give equal weight to the perspective of the "barefooted, the
starving, and the slaves" through expository prose and scenes
between slave and philosopher, giving moral agency and
flesh-and-blood dimensions to issues most often treated as
abstractions.
Both an urgent critique and a measured analysis, "Dark Side of the
Light" reveals the moral paradoxes of Enlightenment philosophies
and their world-changing consequences.
Louis Sala-Molins is a moral and political philosopher and emeritus
professor at the University of Toulouse. He is the author of many
books, including "Le Code Noir, ou Le calvaire de Canaan" and
"L'Afrique aux Ameriques."
John Conteh-Morgan is associate professor of French and
Francophone, African-American, and African studies at Ohio State
University. He is the author of "Theatre and Drama in Francophone
Africa: A Critical Introduction. "
Using slave trials from antebellum Virginia, Christopher H. Bouton
offers the first in-depth examination of physical confrontations
between slaves and whites. These extraordinary acts of violence
brought the ordinary concerns of enslaved Virginians into focus.
Enslaved men violently asserted their masculinity, sought to
protect themselves and their loved ones from punishment, and carved
out their own place within southern honor culture. Enslaved women
resisted sexual exploitation and their mistresses. By attacking
southern efforts to control their sexuality and labor, bondswomen
sought better lives for themselves and undermined white supremacy.
Physical confrontations revealed the anxieties that lay at the
heart of white antebellum Virginians and threatened the very
foundations of the slave regime itself. While physical
confrontations could not overthrow the institution of slavery, they
helped the enslaved set limits on their owners' exploitation. They
also afforded the enslaved the space necessary to create lives as
free from their owners' influence as possible. When masters and
mistresses continually intruded into the lives of their slaves,
they risked provoking a violent backlash. Setting Slavery's Limits
explores how slaves of all ages and backgrounds resisted their
oppressors and risked everything to fight back.
An important book of epic scope on America's first racially
integrated, religiously inspired movement for change
The civil war brought to a climax the country's bitter division.
But the beginnings of slavery's denouement can be traced to a
courageous band of ordinary Americans, black and white, slave and
free, who joined forces to create what would come to be known as
the Underground Railroad, a movement that occupies as romantic a
place in the nation's imagination as the Lewis and Clark
expedition. The true story of the Underground Railroad is much more
morally complex and politically divisive than even the myths
suggest. Against a backdrop of the country's westward expansion
arose a fierce clash of values that was nothing less than a war for
the country's soul. Not since the American Revolution had the
country engaged in an act of such vast and profound civil
disobedience that not only challenged prevailing mores but also
subverted federal law.
Bound for Canaan tells the stories of men and women like David
Ruggles, who invented the black underground in New York City; bold
Quakers like Isaac Hopper and Levi Coffin, who risked their lives
to build the Underground Railroad; and the inimitable Harriet
Tubman. Interweaving thrilling personal stories with the politics
of slavery and abolition, Bound for Canaan shows how the
Underground Railroad gave birth to this country's first racially
integrated, religiously inspired movement for social change.
While the plantation accounts for 90% of slave ownership and
experience in the Americas, its centrality to the common
conceptions of slavery has arguably led to an oversimplified
understanding of its multifarious forms and complex dynamics in the
region. The Many Faces of Slavery explores non-traditional forms of
slavery that existed outside the plantation system to illustrate
the pluralities of slave ownership and experiences in the Americas,
from the 17th to the 19th century. Through a wide range of
innovative and multi-disciplined approaches, the book's chapters
explore the existence of urban slavery, slave self-hiring,
quasi-free or nominal slaves, domestic slave concubines, slave
vendors, slave soldiers and sailors, slave preachers, slave
overseers, and many other types of "societies with slaves."
Moreover, it documents unconventional forms of slave ownership like
slave-holding by poor whites, women, free blacks, Native Americans,
Jewish Americans, corporations and the state. The Many Faces of
Slavery broadens our traditional conception of slavery by
complicating our understanding of slave experience and ownership in
slavery-practising societies throughout Atlantic history.
Five months after the election of Abraham Lincoln, which had
revealed the fracturing state of the nation, Confederates fired on
Fort Sumter and the fight for the Union began in earnest. This
documentary reader offers a firsthand look at the constitutional
debates that consumed the country in those fraught five months. Day
by day, week by week, these documents chart the political path, and
the insurmountable differences, that led directly-but not
inevitably-to the American Civil War. At issue in these debates is
the nature of the U.S. Constitution with regard to slavery. Editor
Dwight Pitcaithley provides expert guidance through the speeches
and discussions that took place over Secession Winter (1860-1861)
in Congress, eleven state conventions, legislatures in Tennessee
and Kentucky, and the Washington Peace Conference of February,
1861. The anthology brings to light dozens of solutions to the
secession crisis proposed in the form of constitutional amendments
90 percent of them carefully designed to protect the institution of
slavery in different ways throughout the country. And yet, the book
suggests, secession solved neither of the South's primary concerns:
the expansion of slavery into the western territories and the
return of fugitive slaves. What emerges clearly from these
documents, and from Pitcaithley's incisive analysis, is the
centrality of white supremacy and slavery-specifically the fear of
abolition-to the South's decision to secede. Also evident in the
words of these politicians and statesmen is how thoroughly passion
and fear, rather than reason and reflection, drove the decision
making process.
"Whilst others scarcely put a toe in the water, in The Black
Atlantic Gilroy goes in deep and returns with riches." Guardian
Afrocentrism, Eurocentrism, Caribbean Studies. To the forces of
cultural nationalism trapped in their respective camps, this bold
book sounds like a liberating call. There is, Paul Gilroy tells us,
a culture that is not specifically African, American, Caribbean, or
British, but all of these at once; a black Atlantic culture whose
themes and techniques transcend ethnicity and nationality to
produce something new and, until now, unremarked. Challenging the
practices and assumptions of cultural studies, The Black Atlantic
also enriches our understanding of modernism.
Argentina has spectacular natural wonders, exceptional landscapes
and is a unique country but it is known as "The Whitest Nation in
South America". Why is this? What is the truth of the popular
phrase of "There Are No Black People Here"? What is the
"Blanqueamiento" of Black people and why do Argentine officials say
Black people have "disappeared"? When, why and how many Africans
were taken to Argentina? How did the enslave contribute towards
Argentina's nation-building and why have they been "forgotten"?
Focussing on the era between 16th and 19th century, this
fascinating fact-filled introductory book answers all these
questions plus lots more in an easy-to-read style. The Black
History Truth aims to promote knowledge, understanding and the
truth of Black History in an important but often overlooked former
Spanish colony of Argentina. With over 200 activity ideas and over
80 illustrations to bring Black History Truth events to life, be on
the voyage of self-discovery because Black History is an essential
element of World History.
From its founding, Martinique played an integral role in
France's Atlantic empire. Established in the mid-seventeenth
century as a colonial outpost against Spanish and English dominance
in the Caribbean, the island was transformed by the increase in
European demand for sugar, coffee, and indigo. Like other colonial
subjects, Martinicans met the labor needs of cash-crop cultivation
by establishing plantations worked by enslaved Africans and by
adopting the rigidly hierarchical social structure that accompanied
chattel slavery. After Haiti gained its independence in 1804,
Martinique's economic importance to the French empire increased. At
the same time, questions arose, both in France and on the island,
about the long-term viability of the plantation system, including
debates about the ways colonists--especially enslaved Africans and
free mixed-race individuals--fit into the French nation."Sweet
Liberty" chronicles the history of Martinique from France's
reacquisition of the island from the British in 1802 to the
abolition of slavery in 1848. Focusing on the relationship between
the island's widely diverse society and the various waves of French
and British colonial administrations, Rebecca Hartkopf Schloss
provides a compelling account of Martinique's social, political,
and cultural dynamics during the final years of slavery in the
French empire. Schloss explores how various groups--Creole and
metropolitan elites, "petits blancs," "gens de couleur," and
enslaved Africans--interacted with one another in a constantly
shifting political environment and traces how these interactions
influenced the colony's debates around identity, citizenship, and
the boundaries of the French nation.Based on extensive archival
research in Europe and the Americas, "Sweet Liberty" is a
groundbreaking study of a neglected region that traces how race,
slavery, class, and gender shaped what it meant to be French on
both sides of the Atlantic.
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