Orte des Erinnerns und Vergessens:: Denkmäler, Museen und historische Schauplätze von Sklaverei und Sklavenhandel

This paper refers to the „lieux de mémoire”, places of memory, of slave trade and slavery in some former colonial states which possessed plantations colonies in the Caribbean, England, France and Spain, and some former slavery societies, the U.S.A., the French and British West Indies, Cuba, and Brazil. It examines the development of the historiography on the topic, the development of memory practices from the honouring of white abolitionists to museums and monuments representing the slave´ s experience and resistance of slaves and maroons. Historical places where slavery took place (plantations, slave trade ports) or where it should be remembered in the context of colonial history (i. g. the Museo de América in Madrid), but where the memory is silenced because of political or commercial reasons, are also treated. The text tries to find out which social and political conditions lead to which forms of remembering or forgetting the history of slavery

"On the Spot": travelling artists and Abolitionism, 1770-1830

Until recently the visual culture of Atlantic slavery has rarely been critically scrutinised. Yet in the first decades of the nineteenth century slavery was frequently represented by European travelling artists, often in the most graphic, sometimes voyeuristic, detail. This paper examines the work of several itinerant artists, in particular Augustus Earle (1793-1838) and Agostino Brunias (1730–1796), whose very mobility along the edges of empire was part of a much larger circulatory system of exchange (people, goods and ideas) and diplomacy that characterised Europe’s Age of Expansion. It focuses on the role of the travelling artist, and visual culture more generally, in the development of British abolitionism between 1770 and 1830. It discusses the broad circulation of slave imagery within European culture and argues for greater recognition of the role of such imagery in the abolitionist debates that divided Britain. Furthermore, it suggests that the epistemological authority conferred on the travelling artist—the quintessential eyewitness—was key to the rhetorical power of his (rarely her) images. Artists such as Earle viewed the New World as a boundless source of fresh material that could potentially propel them to fame and fortune. Johann Moritz Rugendas (1802-1858), on the other hand, was conscious of contributing to a global scientific mission, a Humboldtian imperative that by the 1820s propelled him and others to travel beyond the traditional itinerary of the Grand Tour. Some artists were implicated in the very fabric of slavery itself, particularly those in the British West Indies such as William Clark (working 1820s) and Richard Bridgens (1785-1846); others, particularly those in Brazil, expressed strong abolitionist sentiments. Fuelled by evangelical zeal to record all aspects of the New World, these artists recognised the importance of representing the harsh realities of slave life. Unlike those in the metropole who depicted slavery (most often in caustic satirical drawings), many travelling artists believed strongly in the evidential value of their images, a value attributed to their global mobility. The paper examines the varied and complex means by which visual culture played a significant and often overlooked role in the political struggles that beset the period

'Uteis a si e a sociedade': creolisation and states of belonging among urban women in nineteenth-century Salvador da Bahia.

Recent scholarship from across the Americas has emphasized two general principles for framing interpretations about creolisation in the New World. First, is to understand creolisation as an uneven process of adaptation and change as opposed to a linear route to absorption and acceptance of Christian-European cultural hegemony. Second is the view that Africa was 'rediscovered' or 'recovered' by Africans (and their descendants) in the New World, as they inscribed (and then reinscribed) their own world view on a new and alienating environment. Within these frameworks analysis has addressed a range of issues about the mechanisms of creolisation (demographic, cultural and structural) as well as the pace and extent of creolisation.

Slavery, Subversion and Subalternity: Gender and Violent Resistance in Nineteenth-Century Bahia

1999-01-01

Behind Brazilian "racial democracy" racism, culture and black identity in Brazil

Paper : Democracy: Popular Precedents, Popular Practice and Popular Culture. Johannesburg, 1994 : History Workshop / University of the WitwatersrandIn this paper, we tried to understand the recent transformations of racial and cultural fields in Brazil, specially in Bahia, the most black city in Brazil. Firstly, the historical formation of racism is examined, through relations and values issued from slavery, scientist theories, whitening policy and the myth of racial democracy. Then, the usages of cultural african heritage are discussed to understand the current formation of new identity models among Afro-Brazilian people

Myths and lessons of liberal intervention: The British campaign for the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade to Brazil

This is the Pre-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2012 Martinus NijhoffThis article takes issue with recent references to the British nineteenth century campaign for the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade to Brazil that serve to bolster interventionist or imperialist agendas. In particular, such accounts reproduce two and a half myths about the campaign: that it can serve as a model for the present age; that the success of the campaign can be explained through the actions of the intervening party alone (with a corresponding neglect of those of the ‘target’ state); and the half-myth that the campaign’s success was due to military action (at the expense of institutional (legal) and normative factors and the capacity of the target state). I argue instead that this case – and interventions more generally – would benefit from an analysis that considers the role of force in relation to a series of residual institutional and cultural constraints within the liberal state and to political conditions in the target state. In light of the complexities and contingencies that these factors present the underlying lesson is that military force should be used sparingly, if at all

Myths and lessons of liberal intervention: The British campaign for the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade to Brazil

This is the Pre-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2012 Martinus NijhoffThis article takes issue with recent references to the British nineteenth century campaign for the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade to Brazil that serve to bolster interventionist or imperialist agendas. In particular, such accounts reproduce two and a half myths about the campaign: that it can serve as a model for the present age; that the success of the campaign can be explained through the actions of the intervening party alone (with a corresponding neglect of those of the ‘target’ state); and the half-myth that the campaign’s success was due to military action (at the expense of institutional (legal) and normative factors and the capacity of the target state). I argue instead that this case – and interventions more generally – would benefit from an analysis that considers the role of force in relation to a series of residual institutional and cultural constraints within the liberal state and to political conditions in the target state. In light of the complexities and contingencies that these factors present the underlying lesson is that military force should be used sparingly, if at all

Enlightenment, Latin America, Age of Revolutions, Spanish America, Brazil

An essay analyzing the effect of Enlightenment thinking on the political and societal elite of the colonial Spanish and Portuguese Americas, and the subsequent colonial revolutions

The Vitality of Yoruba Culture in the Americas

How did Africans create homes for themselves and maintain ancestral practices after being forcefully taken across the Middle Passage as enslaved people into various regions of the New and Old Worlds? In the Americas, they found themselves in a place clearly distinct from African cultural and geographical landscapes and were forced to adapt to strange climates and contend with alien cultures unfamiliar to those of their homeland. Rather than being completely steamrolled by colonial pressure, however, Africans of various ethnicities actively contended with the diverse influences of the colonial context. Such practices have, in turn, shaped the continued cultural diversity of the Americas to this day. This paper explores the diffusion and vitality of Yoruba culture, in particular throughout the nineteenth century in Brazil, Haiti, Cuba, and Trinidad and Tobago, where Yoruba forms of religion, Roman Catholic sensibilities, and indigenous cosmographies formed hybridized spiritualties and worldviews. This paper interprets historical evidence alongside secondary sources and contemporary cases in order to evaluate how the conjunctural forces brought about by slavery, colonialism, and inter-culturation occasioned the formation of Yoruba Atlantic and Afro-Latinx religions such as Candomble, Santeria, and Voodoo, as well as Orisha practices. This paper also examines how such spiritualties and worldviews have contributed to the complex social and cultural composition of the Americas in the modern world. It pays special attention to the conflictual and creative energies surrounding cultural diffusion and cross-cultural migration. Although various African ethnicities were brought across the Atlantic, Yoruba cultural practices have survived with a sustained intensity

Why Joanna Baptista Sold Herself into Slavery: Indian Women in Portuguese Amazonia, 1755-1798

In 1780, in Belem, Brazil, Joanna Baptista sold herself into slavery. This article probes Joanna’s motives and situates her actions not only in the milieu of slaveholding Brazil, but also in the more specific context of Portuguese Amazonia during the Directorate (1758–1798). Indians, especially former slaves and their descendants, faced forced resettlement and increased labor demands. Joanna’s case and contemporary petitions demonstrate how women of Indian and mixed descent, especially single women, widows and orphans, used legal means to defend their autonomy