Origins of the Black Atlantic: New Histories » (1st Edition)

Laurent Dubois is Professor of History at Duke University. He is the author of A Colony of Citizens: Revolution & Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787-1804.

Julius Scott is a Lecturer in the History department at the University of Michigan. He is also part of their Center for Afroamerican and African Studies.

Between 1492 and 1820, about two-thirds of the people who crossed the Atlantic to the Americas were Africans. With the exception of the Spanish, all the European empires settled more Africans in the New World than they did Europeans. The vast majority of these enslaved men and women worked on plantations, and their labor was the foundation for the expansion of the Atlantic economy during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Until relatively recently, comparatively little attention was paid to the perspectives, daily experiences, hopes, and especially the political ideas of the enslaved who played such a central role in the making of the Atlantic world. Over the past decades, however, huge strides have been made in the study of the history of slavery and emancipation in the Atlantic world. This collection brings together some of the key contributions to this growing body of scholarship, showing a range of methodological approaches, that can be used to understand and reconstruct the lives of these enslaved people.

Series Editor's Preface ix

Introduction Laurent Dubois and Julius S. Scott 1

Part I People and Ideas in Circulation 7

1 A Dangerous Spirit of Liberty: Slave Rebellion in the West Indies in the 1730s David Barry Gaspar 11

2 The Jamaican Slave Insurrection Scare of 1776 and the American Revolution Richard Sheridan 26

3 Maritime Maroons: Grand Marronage from the Danish West Indies Neville A.T. Hall 47

4 "Negroes in Foreign Bottoms": Sailors, Slaves, and Communication (selection) Julius S. Scott 69

Part II Atlantic Generations 99

5 The Papacy and the Atlantic Slave Trade: Lourenço da Silva, the Capuchins, and the Decisions of the Holy Office Richard Gray 101

6 From Creole to African: Atlantic Creoles and the Origins of African-American Society in Mainland North America Ira Berlin 116

7 The Feminine Face of Afro-Catholicism in New Orleans, 1727-1852 Emily Clark Virginia Meacham Gould 159

Part III Africa in the Americas 193

8 African Soldiers in the Haitian Revolution John K. Thornton 195

9 Slave Rebellion in Brazil: The Muslim Uprising of 1835 in Bahia (selections) João José Reis 214

10 Swearing by the Past, Swearing to the Future: Sacred Oaths, Alliances, and Treaties Among the Guianese and Jamaican Maroons Kenneth Bilby 236

Part IV Insurrection and Emancipation in the Atlantic 267

11 The 1812 Aponte Rebellion and the Struggle Against Slavery in Cuba (selection) Matt D. Childs 269

12 The Slaves and Slavery Eric Williams 323

13 "Extravagant Expectations" of Freedom: Rumour, Political Struggle, and the Christmas Insurrection Scare of 1865 in the American South Steven Hahn 334

14 Reclaiming Gregoria'sMule: The Meanings of Freedom in the Arimao and Caunao Valleys, Cienfuegos, Cuba, 1880-1899 Rebecca J. Scott 365

Permission Acknowledgments 397

Index 399