From Enslavement to Emancipation: Naming Practices in the Danish West Indies

AbstractIn most contexts, personal names function as identifiers and as a locus for identity. Therefore, names can be used to trace patterns of kinship, ancestry, and belonging. The social power of naming, however, and its capacity to shape the life course of the person named, becomes most evident when it has the opposite intent: to sever connections and injure. Naming in slave society was primarily practical, an essential first step in commodifying human beings so they could be removed from their roots and social networks, bought, sold, mortgaged, and adjudicated. Such practices have long been integral to processes of colonization and enslavement. This paper discusses the implications of naming practices in the context of slavery, focusing on the names given to enslaved Africans and their descendants through baptism in the Lutheran and Moravian churches in the Danish West Indies. Drawing on historiographical accounts and a detailed analysis of plantation and parish records from the island of St. Croix, we outline and contextualize these patterns and practices of naming. We examine the extent to which the adoption of European and Christian names can be read as an effort toward resistance and self-determination on the part of the enslaved. Our account is illuminated by details from the lives of three former slaves from the Danish West Indies.This paper is part of a project (CitiGen) which has received generous funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, under grant agreement No. 649307

Historical perspective on seismic hazard to Hispaniola and the northeast Caribbean region

This paper is not subject to U.S. copyright. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research 116 (2011): B12318, doi:10.1029/2011JB008497.We evaluate the long-term seismic activity of the North-American/Caribbean plate boundary from 500 years of historical earthquake damage reports. The 2010 Haiti earthquakes and other earthquakes were used to derive regional attenuation relationships between earthquake intensity, magnitude, and distance from the reported damage to the epicenter, for Hispaniola and for Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. The attenuation relationship for Hispaniola earthquakes and northern Lesser Antilles earthquakes is similar to that for California earthquakes, indicating a relatively rapid attenuation of damage intensity with distance. Intensities in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands decrease less rapidly with distance. We use the intensity-magnitude relationships to systematically search for the location and intensity magnitude MI which best fit all the reported damage for historical earthquakes. Many events occurred in the 20th-century along the plate-boundary segment from central Hispaniola to the NW tip of Puerto Rico, but earlier events from this segment were not identified. The remaining plate boundary to the east to Guadeloupe is probably not associated with M > 8 historical subduction-zone earthquakes. The May 2, 1787 earthquake, previously assigned an M 8–8.25, is probably only MI 6.9 and could be located north, west or SW of Puerto Rico. An MI 6.9 earthquake on July 11, 1785 was probably located north or east of the Virgin Islands. We located MI < 8 historical earthquakes on April 5, 1690, February 8, 1843, and October 8, 1974 in the northern Lesser Antilles within the arc. We speculate that the December 2, 1562 (MI 7.7) and May 7, 1842 (MI 7.6) earthquakes ruptured the Septentrional Fault in northern Hispaniola. If so, the recurrence interval on the central Septentrional Fault is ∼300 years, and only 170 years has elapsed since the last event. The recurrence interval of large earthquakes along the Hispaniola subduction segment is likely longer than the historical record. Intra-arc M ≥ 7.0 earthquakes may occur every 75–100 years in the 410-km-long segment between the Virgin Islands and Guadeloupe

Margarita de Sossa, Sixteenth-Century Puebla de los Ángeles, New Spain (Mexico)

Margarita de Sossa’s freedom journey was defiant and entrepreneurial. In her early twenties, still enslaved in Portugal, she took possession of her body; after refusing to endure her owner’s sexual demands, he sold her, and she was transported to Mexico. There, she purchased her freedom with money earned as a healer and then conducted an enviable business as an innkeeper. Sossa’s biography provides striking insights into how she conceptualized freedom in terms that included – but was not limited to – legal manumission. Her transatlantic biography offers a rare insight into the life of a free black woman (and former slave) in late sixteenth-century Puebla, who sought to establish various degrees of freedom for herself. Whether she was refusing to acquiesce to an abusive owner, embracing entrepreneurship, marrying, purchasing her own slave property, or later using the courts to petition for divorce. Sossa continued to advocate on her own behalf. Her biography shows that obtaining legal manumission was not always equivalent to independence and autonomy, particularly if married to an abusive husband, or if financial successes inspired the envy of neighbors

Compte-rendu par M. Moreau de Saint-Méry d'une pétition des forains de Beaucaire, lors de la séance du 27 juin 1790

Moreau de Saint-Méry Louis Elie. Compte-rendu par M. Moreau de Saint-Méry d'une pétition des forains de Beaucaire, lors de la séance du 27 juin 1790. In: Archives Parlementaires de 1787 à 1860 - Première série (1787-1799) Tome XVI - Du 31 mai au 8 juillet 1790. Paris : Librairie Administrative P. Dupont, 1883. p. 509

Rapport de M. Moreau-de-Saint-Méry, sur les dispositions de l'assemblée concernant les troubles dans la Martinique, lors de la séance du 29 mars 1791

Moreau de Saint-Méry Louis-Elie. Rapport de M. Moreau-de-Saint-Méry, sur les dispositions de l'assemblée concernant les troubles dans la Martinique, lors de la séance du 29 mars 1791. In: Archives Parlementaires de 1787 à 1860 - Première série (1787-1799) Tome XXIV - Du 10 mars 1791 au 12 avril 1791. Paris : Librairie Administrative P. Dupont, 1886. pp. 455-456

Rapport par M. Moreau de Saint-Méry, au nom du comité d'Agriculture et de Commerce, sur les foires et marchés, en annexe de la séance du 30 septembre 1791

Moreau de Saint-Méry Louis Elie. Rapport par M. Moreau de Saint-Méry, au nom du comité d'Agriculture et de Commerce, sur les foires et marchés, en annexe de la séance du 30 septembre 1791. In: Archives Parlementaires de 1787 à 1860 - Première série (1787-1799) Tome XXXII - 30 septembre 1791. Paris : Librairie Administrative P. Dupont, 1888. pp. 61-64

Don patriotique de M. Moreau de Saint-Méry, lors de la séance du 15 mai 1790 au soir

Moreau de Saint-Méry Louis Elie. Don patriotique de M. Moreau de Saint-Méry, lors de la séance du 15 mai 1790 au soir. In: Archives Parlementaires de 1787 à 1860 - Première série (1787-1799) Tome XV - Du 21 avril au 30 mai 1790. Paris : Librairie Administrative P. Dupont, 1883. p. 522

Lettres de l'assemblée coloniale de la Martinique adressée à la députation de cette île, lors de la séance du 25 mars 1791

Moreau de Saint-Méry Louis-Elie. Lettres de l'assemblée coloniale de la Martinique adressée à la députation de cette île, lors de la séance du 25 mars 1791. In: Archives Parlementaires de 1787 à 1860 - Première série (1787-1799) Tome XXIV - Du 10 mars 1791 au 12 avril 1791. Paris : Librairie Administrative P. Dupont, 1886. pp. 374-375

Ajournement du paragraphe VII de l'article 11 du décret sur l'enregistrement des actes, lors de la séance du 26 novembre 1790

Moreau de Saint-Méry Louis-Elie. Ajournement du paragraphe VII de l'article 11 du décret sur l'enregistrement des actes, lors de la séance du 26 novembre 1790. In: Archives Parlementaires de 1787 à 1860 - Première série (1787-1799) Tome XX - Du 23 octobre au 26 novembre 1790. Paris : Librairie Administrative P. Dupont, 1885. pp. 751-752