Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Winner of the Frederick Douglass Book Prize Winner of the Elsa Goveia Book Prize Winner of the James A. Rawley Prize in the History of Race Relations Winner of the P. Sterling Stuckey Book Prize Winner of the Harriet Tubman Prize Winner of the Phillis Wheatley Book Award Finalist for the Cundill Prize A gripping account of the largest slave revolt in the eighteenth-century British Atlantic world, an uprising that laid bare the interconnectedness of Europe, Africa, and America, shook the foundations of empire, and reshaped ideas of race and popular belonging. In the second half of the eighteenth century, as European imperial conflicts extended the domain of capitalist agriculture, warring African factions fed their captives to the transatlantic slave trade while masters struggled continuously to keep their restive slaves under the yoke. In this contentious atmosphere, a movement of enslaved West Africans in Jamaica (then called Coromantees) organized to throw off that yoke by violence. Their uprising-which became known as Tacky's Revolt-featured a style of fighting increasingly familiar today: scattered militias opposing great powers, with fighters hard to distinguish from noncombatants. It was also part of a more extended borderless conflict that spread from Africa to the Americas and across the island. Even after it was put down, the insurgency rumbled throughout the British Empire at a time when slavery seemed the dependable bedrock of its dominion. That certitude would never be the same, nor would the views of black lives, which came to inspire both more fear and more sympathy than before. Tracing the roots, routes, and reverberations of this event across disparate parts of the Atlantic world, Vincent Brown offers us a superb geopolitical thriller. Tacky's Revolt expands our understanding of the relationship between European, African, and American history, as it speaks to our understanding of wars of terror today.

Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Winner of the Frederick Douglass Book Prize Winner of the Elsa Goveia Book Prize Winner of the James A. Rawley Prize in the History of Race Relations Winner of the P. Sterling Stuckey Book Prize Winner of the Harriet Tubman Prize Winner of the Phillis Wheatley Book Award Finalist for the Cundill Prize "Brilliant...groundbreaking...Brown's profound analysis and revolutionary vision of the Age of Slave War-from the too-often overlooked Tacky's Revolt to the better-known Haitian Revolution-gives us an original view of the birth of modern freedom in the New World." -Cornel West "Not only a story of the insurrection, but 'a martial geography of Atlantic slavery,' vividly demonstrating how warfare shaped every aspect of bondage...Forty years after Tacky's defeat, new arrivals from Africa were still hearing about the daring rebels who upended the island." -Harper's "A sobering read for contemporary audiences in countries engaged in forever wars...It is also a useful reminder that the distinction between victory and defeat, when it comes to insurgencies, is often fleeting: Tacky may have lost his battle, but the enslaved did eventually win the war." -New Yorker In the second half of the eighteenth century, as European imperial conflicts extended their domain, warring African factions fed their captives to the transatlantic slave trade while masters struggled to keep their restive slaves under the yoke. In this contentious atmosphere, a movement of enslaved West Africans in Jamaica organized to throw off that yoke by violence. Their uprising-which became known as Tacky's Revolt-featured a style of fighting increasingly familiar today: scattered militias opposing great powers, with fighters hard to distinguish from noncombatants. Even after it was put down, the insurgency rumbled throughout the British Empire at a time when slavery seemed the dependable bedrock of its dominion. That certitude would never be the same, nor would the views of black lives, which came to inspire both more fear and more sympathy than before. Tracing the roots, routes, and reverberations of this event, Tacky's Revolt expands our understanding of the relationship between European, African, and American history as it speaks to our understanding of wars of terror today.

Nineteenth-century stoneware by enslaved and free potters living in Edgefield, South Carolina, highlights the central role of Black artists in the region's long-standing pottery traditions Recentering the development of industrially scaled Southern pottery traditions around enslaved and free Black potters working in the mid-nineteenth century, this catalogue presents groundbreaking scholarship and new perspectives on stoneware made in and around Edgefield, South Carolina. Among the remarkable works included are a selection of regional face vessels as well as masterpieces by enslaved potter and poet David Drake, who signed, dated, and incised verses on many of his jars, even though literacy among enslaved people was criminalized at the time. Essays on the production, collection, dispersal, and reception of stoneware from Edgefield offer a critical look at what it means to collect, exhibit, and interpret objects made by enslaved artisans. Several featured contemporary works inspired by or related to Edgefield stoneware attest to the cultural and historical significance of this body of work, and an interview with acclaimed contemporary artist Simone Leigh illuminates its continued relevance. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press Exhibition Schedule: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (September 9, 2022-February 5, 2023) Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (March 6-July 9, 2023) University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor (August 26, 2023-January 7, 2024) High Museum of Art, Atlanta (February 16-May 12, 2024)

Winner of the Merle Curti Award Winner of the James A. Rawley Prize Winner of the Louis Gottschalk Prize Longlisted for the Cundill Prize "Vincent Brown makes the dead talk. With his deep learning and powerful historical imagination, he calls upon the departed to explain the living. The Reaper's Garden stretches the historical canvas and forces readers to think afresh. It is a major contribution to the history of Atlantic slavery."-Ira Berlin From the author of Tacky's Revolt, a landmark study of life and death in colonial Jamaica at the zenith of the British slave empire. What did people make of death in the world of Atlantic slavery? In The Reaper's Garden, Vincent Brown asks this question about Jamaica, the staggeringly profitable hub of the British Empire in America-and a human catastrophe. Popularly known as the grave of the Europeans, it was just as deadly for Africans and their descendants. Yet among the survivors, the dead remained both a vital presence and a social force. In this compelling and evocative story of a world in flux, Brown shows that death was as generative as it was destructive. From the eighteenth-century zenith of British colonial slavery to its demise in the 1830s, the Grim Reaper cultivated essential aspects of social life in Jamaica-belonging and status, dreams for the future, and commemorations of the past. Surveying a haunted landscape, Brown unfolds the letters of anxious colonists; listens in on wakes, eulogies, and solemn incantations; peers into crypts and coffins, and finds the very spirit of human struggle in slavery. Masters and enslaved, fortune seekers and spiritual healers, rebels and rulers, all summoned the dead to further their desires and ambitions. In this turbulent transatlantic world, Brown argues, "mortuary politics" played a consequential role in determining the course of history. Insightful and powerfully affecting, The Reaper's Garden promises to enrich our understanding of the ways that death shaped political life in the world of Atlantic slavery and beyond.

Between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, the connections among Africa, the Americas, and Europe transformed world history--through maritime exploration, commercial engagements, human migrations and settlements, political realignments and upheavals, cultural exchanges, and more. This book, the first encyclopedic reference work on Atlantic history, takes an integrated, multicontinental approach that emphasizes the dynamics of change and the perspectives and motivations of the peoples who made it happen. The entries--all specially commissioned for this volume from an international team of leading scholars--synthesize the latest scholarship on central themes, including economics, migration, politics, war, technologies and science, the physical environment, and culture.

Part one features five major essays that trace the changes distinctive to each chronological phase of Atlantic history. Part two includes more than 125 entries on key topics, from the seemingly familiar viewed in unfamiliar and provocative ways (the Seven Years' War, trading companies), to less conventional subjects (family networks, canon law, utopias).

This is an indispensable resource for students, researchers, and scholars in a range of fields, from early American, African, Latin American, and European history to the histories of economics, religion, and science.The first encyclopedic reference on Atlantic historyFeatures five major essays and more than 125 alphabetical entriesProvides essential context on major areas of change: Economies (for example, the slave trade, marine resources, commodities, specie, trading companies)Populations (emigrations, Native American removals, blended communities)Politics and law (the Law of Nations, royal liberties, paramount chiefdoms, independence struggles in Haiti, the Hispanic Americas, the United States, and France)Military actions (the African and Napoleonic wars, the Seven Years' War, wars of conquest)Technologies and science (cartography, nautical science, geography, healing practices)The physical environment (climate and weather, forest resources, agricultural production, food and diets, disease)Cultures and communities (captivity narratives, religions and religious practices)Includes original contributions from Sven Beckert, Holly Brewer, Peter Coclanis, Seymour Drescher, Eliga Gould, David S. Jones, Willem Klooster, Mark Peterson, Steven Pincus, Richard Price, Sophia Rosenfeld, and many moreContains illustrations, maps, and bibliographies

Contributors include: Sven Beckert, Holly Brewer, Peter Coclanis, Seymour Drescher, Eliga Gould, David S. Jones, Willem Klooster, Mark Peterson, Steven Pincus, Richard Price and Sophia Rosenfeld.