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Kristen Block examines the entangled histories of Spain and England
in the Caribbean during the long seventeenth century, focusing on
colonialism's two main goals: the search for profit and the call to
Christian dominance.
Using the stories of ordinary people, Block illustrates how
engaging with the powerful rhetoric and rituals of Christianity was
central to survival. Isobel Criolla was a runaway slave in
Cartagena who successfully lobbied the Spanish governor not to
return her to an abusive mistress. Nicolas Burundel was a French
Calvinist who served as henchman to the Spanish governor of Jamaica
before his arrest by the Inquisition for heresy. Henry Whistler was
an English sailor sent to the Caribbean under Oliver Cromwell's
plan for holy war against Catholic Spain. Yaff and Nell were slaves
who served a Quaker plantation owner, Lewis Morris, in Barbados.
Seen from their on-the-ground perspective, the development of
modern capitalism, race, and Christianity emerges as a story of
negotiation, contingency, humanity, and the quest for community.
"Ordinary Lives in the Early Caribbean" works in both a comparative
and an integrative Atlantic world frame, drawing on archival
sources from Spain, England, Barbados, Colombia, and the United
States. It pushes the boundaries of how historians read silences in
the archive, asking difficult questions about how self-censorship,
anxiety, and shame have shaped the historical record. The book also
encourages readers to expand their concept of religious history
beyond a focus on theology, ideals, and pious exemplars to examine
the communal efforts of pirates, smugglers, slaves, and adventurers
who together shaped the Caribbean's emerging moral economy.
Kristen Block examines the entangled histories of Spain and England
in the Caribbean during the long seventeenth century, focusing on
colonialism's two main goals: the search for profit and the call to
Christian dominance.
Using the stories of ordinary people, Block illustrates how
engaging with the powerful rhetoric and rituals of Christianity was
central to survival. Isobel Criolla was a runaway slave in
Cartagena who successfully lobbied the Spanish governor not to
return her to an abusive mistress. Nicolas Burundel was a French
Calvinist who served as henchman to the Spanish governor of Jamaica
before his arrest by the Inquisition for heresy. Henry Whistler was
an English sailor sent to the Caribbean under Oliver Cromwell's
plan for holy war against Catholic Spain. Yaff and Nell were slaves
who served a Quaker plantation owner, Lewis Morris, in Barbados.
Seen from their on-the-ground perspective, the development of
modern capitalism, race, and Christianity emerges as a story of
negotiation, contingency, humanity, and the quest for community.
"Ordinary Lives in the Early Caribbean" works in both a comparative
and an integrative Atlantic world frame, drawing on archival
sources from Spain, England, Barbados, Colombia, and the United
States. It pushes the boundaries of how historians read silences in
the archive, asking difficult questions about how self-censorship,
anxiety, and shame have shaped the historical record. The book also
encourages readers to expand their concept of religious history
beyond a focus on theology, ideals, and pious exemplars to examine
the communal efforts of pirates, smugglers, slaves, and adventurers
who together shaped the Caribbean's emerging moral economy.
Featuring a variety of disciplinary perspectives and analytical
approaches, Celluloid Chains is the most comprehensive volume to
date on films about slavery. This collection examines works from
not only the United States but elsewhere in the Americas, and it
attests to slavery's continuing importance as a source of immense
fascination for filmmakers and their audiences. Each of the book's
fifteen original essays focuses on a particular film that directly
treats the enslavement of Africans and their descendants in the New
World. Beginning with an essay on the Cuban film El otro Francisco
(1975), Sergio Giral's reworking of a nineteenth-century
abolitionist novel, the book proceeds to examine such works as the
landmark miniseries Roots (1977), which sparked intense controversy
over its authenticity; Werner Herzog's Cobra Verde (1987), which
raises questions about what constitutes a slavery film; Guy
Deslauriers's Passage du milieu (1999), a documentary-style
reconstruction of what Africans experienced during the Middle
Passage; and Steve McQueen's Oscar-winning 12 Years a Slave (2013),
which embodies the tensions between faithfully adapting a
nineteenth-century slave narrative and bending it for modern
purposes. Films about slavery have shown a special power to portray
the worst and best of humanity, and Celluloid Chains is an
essential guide to this important genre.
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