The Many Faces of Slavery: New Perspectives on Slave Ownership and Experiences in the Americas

Description

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. Cover page Halftitle page Title page Copyright page Contents List of Figures List of Tables List of Contributors Introduction Notes Part One Documenting Non-traditional Slavery and Slaveholding 1 Many Faces of Slaveholding Sephardim East of the Atlantic Confessing Conversos and practising Jews: navigating the world of Atlantic slavery The Dutch Caribbean Transatlantic Jewish abolitionism Notes 2 Something Close to Freedom: The Case of the Black Seminoles in Florida Rethinking conventional ideas about American slavery The cultural construction of ownership Specific context of the Black Seminoles The Black Seminoles define and control their own labour How did the Black Seminoles and Seminoles co-evolve in response to increasing contact with capitalist economy? What new perspectives on slavery do we gain from research into the Black Seminoles? Notes 3 ‘Adventure in a Wigwam’: Henry Bibb’s Account of Slavery among the Cherokees in Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An American Slave (1849) Introduction Slave agency: empowerment through ‘trickster tactics’ Indian slavery: non-traditional? Conclusion: black over red or, challenging the South’s racial hierarchy Notes 4 To ‘make a good Mistress to my servants’: Unmasking the Meaning of Maternalism in Colonial South Carolina Notes 5 Resident Female Slaveholders in Jamaica at the End of Emancipation: Evidence from the Compensation Claims Jamaica’s plantation economy Compensation claims Resident female slaveholders in Jamaica’s plantation economy Conclusion Notes Part Two The Politics and Economics of Atypical Forms of Slavery and Slaveholding 6 Corporate Slavery in Seventeenth-Century New York The Dutch West Indian Company, privateers and captives The peculiarity of corporate slavery A greater benevolence towards black people? Conclusion Notes 7 Militarized Slavery: The Creation of the West India Regiments Notes 8 ‘A question between hiring and selling’: Slave Leasing at Thomas Jeff erson’s Monticello, 1780–1830 The problem of debt Slave leasing and patriarchy The hiring network Conclusion Notes 9 Turmoil in the Cocoa Groves: Slave Revolts in Ocumare de la Costa,Venezuela, 1837 and 1845 The setting The 1837 revolt The 1845 uprising Consequences Notes Part Three Social Mobility on the Margins of Slavery, Freedom and Slave Ownership 10 Keeper of the Keys: Creole Management of a Nineteenth-Century French Plantation in New Orleans The Gentilly plantation Ste-G ême, absentee slaveholder Slaveholder by proxy Notes 11 João de Oliveira’s Atlantic World: Mobility and Dislocation in Eighteenth-Century Brazil and the Bight of Benin West African politics and a fractious trade João de Oliveira’s West African diplomacy Oliveira’s return to Bahia and incarceration Notes 12 Gilbert Hunt, the City Blacksmith: Slavery, Freedom and Fame in Antebellum Richmond, Virginia Photography and pro-slavery rhetoric Good masters and the deserving slave Reducing a complicated life Notes 13 Nominal Slavery, Free People of Colour and Enslavement Requests: Slavery and Freedom at the ‘Edges’ of the Regime in the Antebellum South Conclusion Notes 14 The Transition from Plantation Slave Labour to Free Labour in the Americas Notes Index