Museums and Atlantic Slavery explores how slavery, the Atlantic slave trade, and enslaved people are represented through words, visual images, artifacts, and audiovisual materials in museums in Europe and the Americas. Divided into four chapters, the book addresses four recurrent themes: wealth and luxury; victimhood and victimization; resistance and rebellion; and resilience and achievement. Considering the roles of various social actors who have contributed to the introduction of slavery in the museum in the last thirty years, the analysis draws on selected exhibitions, and institutions entirely dedicated to slavery, as well as national, community, plantation, and house museums in the United States, England, France, and Brazil. Engaging with literature from a range of disciplines, including history, anthropology, sociology, art history, tourism and museum studies, Araujo provides an overview of a topic that has not yet been adequately discussed and analysed within the museum studies field. Museums and Atlantic Slavery encourages scholars, students, and museum professionals to critically engage with representations of slavery in museums. The book will help readers to recognize how depictions of human bondage in museums and exhibitions often fail to challenge racism and white supremacy inherited from the period of slavery.

Museums and Atlantic Slavery explores how slavery, the Atlantic slave trade, and enslaved people are represented through words, visual images, artifacts, and audiovisual materials in museums in Europe and the Americas. Divided into four chapters, the book addresses four recurrent themes: wealth and luxury; victimhood and victimization; resistance and rebellion; and resilience and achievement. Considering the roles of various social actors who have contributed to the introduction of slavery in the museum in the last thirty years, the analysis draws on selected exhibitions, and institutions entirely dedicated to slavery, as well as national, community, plantation, and house museums in the United States, England, France, and Brazil. Engaging with literature from a range of disciplines, including history, anthropology, sociology, art history, tourism and museum studies, Araujo provides an overview of a topic that has not yet been adequately discussed and analysed within the museum studies field. Museums and Atlantic Slavery encourages scholars, students, and museum professionals to critically engage with representations of slavery in museums. The book will help readers to recognize how depictions of human bondage in museums and exhibitions often fail to challenge racism and white supremacy inherited from the period of slavery.

This book is a transnational and comparative study examining the processes that led to the memorialization of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade in the second half of the twentieth century. Araujo explores numerous kinds of initiatives such as monuments, memorials, and museums as well as heritage sites. By connecting different projects developed in various countries and urban centers in Europe, Africa, and the Americas during the last two decades, the author retraces the various stages of the Atlantic slave trade and slavery including the enslavement in Africa, the process of confinement in slave depots, the Middle Passage, the arrival in the Americas, the daily life of forced labor, until the fight for emancipation and the abolition of slavery. Relying on a multitude of examples from the United States, Brazil, and the Caribbean, the book discusses how different groups and social actors have competed to occupy the public arena by associating the slave past with other human atrocities, especially the Holocaust. Araujo explores how the populations of African descent, white elites, and national governments, very often carrying particular political agendas, appropriated the slave past by fighting to make it visible or conceal it in the public space of former slave societies.

The public memory of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade, which some years ago could be observed especially in North America, has slowly emerged into a transnational phenomenon now encompassing Europe, Africa, and Latin America, and even Asia - allowing the populations of African descent, organized groups, governments, non-governmental organizations and societies in these different regions to individually and collectively update and reconstruct the slave past. This edited volume examines the recent transnational emergence of the public memory of slavery, shedding light on the work of memory produced by groups of individuals who are descendants of slaves. The chapters in this book explore how the memory of the enslaved and slavers is shaped and displayed in the public space not only in the former slave societies but also in the regions that provided captives to the former American colonies and European metropoles. Through the analysis of exhibitions, museums, monuments, accounts, and public performances, the volume makes sense of the political stakes involved in the phenomenon of memorialization of slavery and the slave trade in the public sphere.

This book is a transnational and comparative study examining the processes that led to the memorialization of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade in the second half of the twentieth century. Araujo explores numerous kinds of initiatives such as monuments, memorials, and museums as well as heritage sites. By connecting different projects developed in various countries and urban centers in Europe, Africa, and the Americas during the last two decades, the author retraces the various stages of the Atlantic slave trade and slavery including the enslavement in Africa, the process of confinement in slave depots, the Middle Passage, the arrival in the Americas, the daily life of forced labor, until the fight for emancipation and the abolition of slavery. Relying on a multitude of examples from the United States, Brazil, and the Caribbean, the book discusses how different groups and social actors have competed to occupy the public arena by associating the slave past with other human atrocities, especially the Holocaust. Araujo explores how the populations of African descent, white elites, and national governments, very often carrying particular political agendas, appropriated the slave past by fighting to make it visible or conceal it in the public space of former slave societies.

The public memory of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade, which some years ago could be observed especially in North America, has slowly emerged into a transnational phenomenon now encompassing Europe, Africa, and Latin America, and even Asia - allowing the populations of African descent, organized groups, governments, non-governmental organizations and societies in these different regions to individually and collectively update and reconstruct the slave past.

This edited volume examines the recent transnational emergence of the public memory of slavery, shedding light on the work of memory produced by groups of individuals who are descendants of slaves. The chapters in this book explore how the memory of the enslaved and slavers is shaped and displayed in the public space not only in the former slave societies but also in the regions that provided captives to the former American colonies and European metropoles. Through the analysis of exhibitions, museums, monuments, accounts, and public performances, the volume makes sense of the political stakes involved in the phenomenon of memorialization of slavery and the slave trade in the public sphere.

In 1858 François-Auguste Biard, a well-known sixty-year-old French artist, arrived in Brazil to explore and depict its jungles and the people who lived there. What did he see and how did he see it? In this book historian Ana Lucia Araujo examines Biard’s Brazil with special attention to what she calls his “tropical romanticism”: a vision of the country with an emphasis on the exotic. Biard was not only one of the first European artists to encounter and depict native Brazilians, but also one of the first travelers to photograph the rain forest and its inhabitants. His 1862 travelogue Deux années en Brésil includes 180 woodcuts that reveal Brazil’s reliance on slave labor as well as describe the landscape, flora, and fauna, with lively narratives of his adventures and misadventures in the rain forest. Thoroughly researched, Araujo places Biard’s work in the context of the European travel writing of the time and examines how representations of Brazil through French travelogues contributed and reinforced cultural stereotypes and ideas about race and race relations in Brazil. She further summarizes that similar representations continue and influence perspectives today.

Slavery and the Atlantic slave trade are among the most heinous crimes against humanity committed in the modern era. Yet, to this day no former slave society in the Americas has paid reparations to former slaves or their descendants. Ana Lucia Araujo shows that these calls for reparations have persevered over a long and difficult history. She traces the ways in which enslaved and freed individuals have conceptualized the idea of reparations since the 18th century in petitions, correspondence, pamphlets, public speeches, slave narratives, and judicial claims. Taking the reader through the era of slavery, emancipation, post-abolition, and the present day and drawing on the voices of various of enslaved peoples and their descendants, the book illuminates the multiple dimensions of the demands of reparations. This new edition boasts a new chapter on the global impact of the Black Lives Matter movement, the seismic effect of the killing of George Floyd, calls for university reparations and the dismantling of statues. Updated throughout, this edition includes primary sources, further readings, and many illustrations.

Slavery and the Atlantic slave trade are among the most heinous crimes against humanity committed in the modern era. Yet, to this day no former slave society in the Americas has paid reparations to former slaves or their descendants. Ana Lucia Araujo shows that these calls for reparations have persevered over a long and difficult history. She traces the ways in which enslaved and freed individuals have conceptualized the idea of reparations since the 18th century in petitions, correspondence, pamphlets, public speeches, slave narratives, and judicial claims. Taking the reader through the era of slavery, emancipation, post-abolition, and the present day and drawing on the voices of various of enslaved peoples and their descendants, the book illuminates the multiple dimensions of the demands of reparations. This new edition boasts a new chapter on the global impact of the Black Lives Matter movement, the seismic effect of the killing of George Floyd, calls for university reparations and the dismantling of statues. Updated throughout, this edition includes primary sources, further readings, and many illustrations.

The Gift explores how objects of prestige contributed to cross-cultural exchanges between Africans and Europeans during the Atlantic slave trade. An eighteenth-century silver ceremonial sword, commissioned in the port of La Rochelle by French traders, was offered as a gift to an African commercial agent in the port of Cabinda (Kingdom of Ngoyo), in present-day Angola. Slave traders carried this object from Cabinda to Abomey, the capital of the Kingdom of Dahomey in today's Republic of Benin, from where French officers looted the item in the late nineteenth-century. Drawing from a rich set of sources in French, English, and Portuguese, as well as artifacts housed in museums across Europe and the Americas, Ana Lucia Araujo illuminates how luxury objects impacted European-African relations, and how these economic, cultural, and social interactions paved the way for the European conquest and colonization of West Africa and West Central Africa.

Exploring notions of history, collective memory, cultural memory, public memory, official memory, and public history, Slavery in the Age of Memory: Engaging the Past explains how ordinary citizens, social groups, governments and institutions engage with the past of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade. It illuminates how and why over the last five decades the debates about slavery have become so relevant in the societies where slavery existed and which participated in the Atlantic slave trade. The book draws on a variety of case studies to investigate its central questions. How have social actors and groups in Europe, Africa and the Americas engaged with the slave past of their societies? Are there are any relations between the demands to rename streets of Liverpool in England and the protests to take down Confederate monuments in the United States? How have black and white social actors and scholars influenced the ways slavery is represented in George Washington's Mount Vernon and Thomas Jefferson's Monticello in the United States?How do slave cemeteries in Brazil and the United States and the walls of names of Whitney Plantation speak to other initiatives honoring enslaved people in England and South Africa? What shared problems and goals have led to the creation of the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool and the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC? Why have artists used their works to confront the debates about slavery and its legacies? The important debates addressed in this book resonate in the present day. Arguing that memory of slavery is racialized and gendered, the book shows that more than just attempts to come to terms with the past, debates about slavery are associated with the persistent racial inequalities, racism, and white supremacy which still shape societies where slavery existed. Slavery in the Age of Memory: Engaging the Past is thus a vital resource for students and scholars of the Atlantic world, the history of slavery and public history.

Exploring notions of history, collective memory, cultural memory, public memory, official memory, and public history, Slavery in the Age of Memory: Engaging the Past explains how ordinary citizens, social groups, governments and institutions engage with the past of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade. It illuminates how and why over the last five decades the debates about slavery have become so relevant in the societies where slavery existed and which participated in the Atlantic slave trade. The book draws on a variety of case studies to investigate its central questions. How have social actors and groups in Europe, Africa and the Americas engaged with the slave past of their societies? Are there are any relations between the demands to rename streets of Liverpool in England and the protests to take down Confederate monuments in the United States? How have black and white social actors and scholars influenced the ways slavery is represented in George Washington's Mount Vernon and Thomas Jefferson's Monticello in the United States?How do slave cemeteries in Brazil and the United States and the walls of names of Whitney Plantation speak to other initiatives honoring enslaved people in England and South Africa? What shared problems and goals have led to the creation of the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool and the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC? Why have artists used their works to confront the debates about slavery and its legacies? The important debates addressed in this book resonate in the present day. Arguing that memory of slavery is racialized and gendered, the book shows that more than just attempts to come to terms with the past, debates about slavery are associated with the persistent racial inequalities, racism, and white supremacy which still shape societies where slavery existed. Slavery in the Age of Memory: Engaging the Past is thus a vital resource for students and scholars of the Atlantic world, the history of slavery and public history.

Based on innovative and extensive research, this edited volume examines the complex and unique human, cultural, and religious exchanges that resulted from the enslavement and the trade of Africans in the North and the South Atlantic regions during the era of the transatlantic slave trade. The book shows the connections between multiple Atlantic worlds that contain unique and diverse characteristics. The Atlantic slave trade disrupted African societies, families, and kin groups. Along the paths of the slave trade, men, women and children were imprisoned, separated, raped, and killed by war, famine and disease. The authors investigate some of the different pathways, whether physical and geographical or intellectual and metaphorical, that arose over the centuries in different parts of the Atlantic world in response to the slave trade and slavery. Highlighting unique and similar aspects, this groundbreaking book follows the trajectories of individuals, groups, and images, rethinking their relations with the local, and the Atlantic contexts.Although not neglecting statistic data, the volume focuses on the movement of groups and individuals as well as the cultural, artistic and religious transfers deriving from the Atlantic slave trade. Privileging multidirectional and transnational approaches, the authors investigate regions and groups usually underrepresented in Atlantic scholarship. The various chapters reassess the results of the transatlantic slave trade interactions that gave birth to mixed groups, cultures, and artistic forms on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Some chapters examine the trajectories of North Americans who fought against slavery, as well as those historical actors who benefited from the trade by selling and buying enslaved people. Other chapters study the lives of enslaved Africans and people of African descent, in order to understand how these experiences are brought to the present and reinterpreted by the later generations through visual arts and film. As a number of contributors included in this volume argue, the exchanges that resulted from the movement of peoples, goods, ideas, mentalities, tastes, and images and their legacies did not stop with the end of the Atlantic slave trade and slavery, but remain the object of continuous transformation, adaptation, and reinvention.Challenging the prevailing Atlantic world scholarship that usually privileges economic exchanges and demographic data, the book illuminates the multiple experiences of African and African-descended male and female historical actors in the North and the South Atlantic spaces. The various paths of the slave trade explored in the different chapters of this book shed light on the trajectories and representations of African individuals and their descendants in the Atlantic basin and beyond. Although the victims are no longer alive to narrate their experiences, the various authors attempt, even when the sources are scarce, to retrace the slaving paths of the male and female victims, allowing us to figure out the development of multiple Atlantic individual and collective encounters and interactions. Eventually, some contributors show that these individuals and groups who were forced into different pathways, sometimes were able to negotiate, to make choices, and seal various sorts of alliances, facing the challenges imposed by the Atlantic slave trade brutal dynamics.This is an important book for collections in slavery studies, Atlantic history, history of the United States, Latin American and Caribbean history, African studies and African Diaspora.

In this book, Ana Lucia Araujo argues that despite the rupture provoked by the Atlantic slave trade, the Atlantic Ocean was never a physical barrier that prevented the exchanges between the two sides; it was instead a corridor that allowed the production of continuous relations. Araujo shows that the memorialization of slavery in Brazil and Benin was not only the result of survivals from the period of the Atlantic slave trade but also the outcome of a transnational movement that was accompanied by the continuous intervention of institutions and individuals who promoted the relations between Brazil and Benin. Araujo insists that the circulation of images was, and still is, crucial to the development of reciprocal cultural, religious, and economic exchanges and to defining what is African in Brazil and what is Brazilian in Africa. In this context, the South Atlantic is conceived as a large zone in which the populations of African descent undertake exchanges and modulate identities, a zone where the European and the Amerindian identities were also appropriated in order to build its own nature. This book shows that the public memory of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade in the South Atlantic is plural; it is conveyed not only by the descendants of the victims but also by the descendants of perpetrators. Although the slave past is a critical issue in societies that largely relied on slave labor and where the heritage of slavery is still present, the memories of this past remain very often restricted to the private space. This book shows how in Brazil and Benin social actors appropriated the slave past to build new identities, fight against social injustice, and in some cases obtain political prestige. The book illuminates how the public memory of slavery in Brazil and Benin contributes to the rise of the South Atlantic as an autonomous zone of claim for recognition for those peoples and cultures that were cruelly broken, dispersed, and depreciated by the Atlantic slave trade. Public Memory of Slavery is an important book for collections in slavery studies, memory studies, Brazilian and Latin American studies, ethnic studies, cultural anthropology, African studies and African Diaspora. Araujo sheds light on the paradoxical understandings of the slave trade in southern Benin and the unintended results of some international efforts to recognise the history of slavery and the slave trade. ...] makes a useful addition to the literature because the reader is only reminded how much Africans and descen- dants of Africans have shaped this vast Atlantic world territory through divergent processes of exchange and recreation, occurring both within and beyond the gaze of Western dis- course. (Itinerario, November 2011) The book is broad ranging and provides an introduction to numerous subjects (...) Recommended. (Choice, June 2011)

This book focusses on the several forms of reconstructing the slave past in the present. The recent emergence of the memory of slavery allows those who are or who claim to be descendents of slaves to legitimize their demand for recognition and for reparations for past wrongs. Some reparation claims encompass financial compensation, but very often they express the need for memorialization through public commemoration, museums, and monuments. In some contexts, presentification of the slave past has helped governments and the descendants of former masters and slave merchants to formulate public apologies. For some, expressing repentance is not only a means to erase guilt but also a way to gain political prestige. The authors analyse different aspects of the recent phenomenon of memorializing slavery, especially the practices employed to stage the slave past in both public and private spaces. The essays present memory and oblivion as part of the same process; they discuss reconstructions of the past in the present at different public and private levels through historiography, photography, exhibitions, monuments, memorials, collective and individual discourses, cyberspace, religion and performance. By offering a comparative perspective on the United States and West Africa, as well as on Western Europe, South America, and the Caribbean, the chapters offer new possibilities to explore the resurgence of the memory of slavery as a transnational movement in our contemporary world.