Final Essay Link

Hi guys,

I know a few of us expressed an interest in seeing each other’s final thoughts on Atlantic History, so here is the link to mine.

I had a great time in class! See y’all in January!

Dubois Review

Dubois, Laurent. Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004, 357 pp.

Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution is Laurent Dubois’s re-telling of the story of the only successful slave revolt in history. The Haitian Revolution is unique in that the slaves rebelled and were successful in not only getting their own freedom, but winning independence for the nation of Haiti as well. In this work Dubois tells “their dramatic struggle for freedom” using a wide variety of sources (2). His goal is not just to retell the story, but to look at the revolution not through the traditional lens of violence, but from the political and economic sides as well. Building upon the work of David Geggus and others historians, Dubois’s monograph weaves together a story with contemporary accounts from Saint-Domingue historian Moreau de St. Mery, letters from slaves and masters, archival records, government documents, and other primary source materials. Dubois includes many pieces of contemporary art and engravings as well as maps of Haiti to help his story along and keep the reader engaged.

Organized chronologically, the narrative moves along at a quick pace and Dubois keeps the reader turning pages with delightful prose mixed with alarmingly cruel situations described in graphic detail. Dubois makes this story a compelling read for the academic and the layman alike. The story of this revolution in the Americas encompasses all sides of the Atlantic making it a very transatlantic subject. Dubois is able to skillfully incorporate the ideals of the Age of Enlightenment, the story (and political struggles) of the French Revolution, transatlantic slavery, African religious practices, the status of gens de couleur on Saint-Domingue, Spanish and British interlopers, colonialism, imperialism, sugar and coffee production, African tribal fighting styles, and interracial politics all in one event. This is a very broad-sweeping, topic-intensive book which manages to not get bogged down in the details, nor to get lost in the size of it all.

Limiting his scope (somewhat) to the dozen years Saint-Domingue was in rebellion, Dubois is able to focus on the build-up to and the execution of this revolution. The opening chapters set up life on the French colony of Saint-Domingue, one half of the island formerly known as Hispaniola. In these first three chapters the reader “gets to know” life in the colony, the brutal treatment of the slaves, the marginalization of the free-colored peoples (gens de couleur), the stratified society the colony had become, and the wealth it had obtained for white plantation owners and land owning gens de couleur. Dubois focuses on the differences among the various groups living together on the island and uses it as a starting point for the rebellion.

The subsequent chapters document both the slave revolt on the French portion of the island and the political maneuvering in the National Assemblies of both France and Saint-Domingue. While the slaves and gens de couleur were waging a battle on land, the politicians (representatives both black and white) were battling each other over the ideas of freedom, liberty, racial equality, and the meaning of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen for France, its colonies, and its citizenry. The abolition of slavery, according to planters, would threaten the economic success of the colonies and therefore of France. The Haitian Revolution places into context the struggle the French Republic had to promote the ideals of their Revolution and at the same time protect and grow colonial investments.

Dubois, a historian on the cutting edge of transatlantic history, also uses this story to shed light onto other topics in transatlantic history. In his set up for the revolt, he incorporates details about the lives of women, both slave and free-colored, and their active roles in colony life. Their roles, though not as documented as those of men, serve a larger purpose in colonial (and imperial) economics, especially the mulâtresses who were seen as worthy marriage partners for whites because of their connections and potential dowries of land. Dubois also takes the opportunity to show African-born slaves in a different light. By focusing on their African religious practices and fighting styles, one sees slaves portrayed as smart, strong, cunning, and organized, something that is not always shown in more traditional histories.

The strength of Dubois’s book is his ability to incorporate so much into one volume and keep it coherent and readable. This work is an excellent introduction to the French colony of Saint-Domingue and to a crucial time in the histories of both the Caribbean and France. It is well researched and utilizes the source material well. It is of great value as a work in transatlantic history because it, more than some of our other readings, truly encompasses the Atlantic as a whole. Although Africa is only included by way of the slaves, Dubois does a nice job of showing how this story was only possible because of the transcultural and transnational associations of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The transfer of religions, Age of Enlightenment ideals, the idea of universal suffrage (for men), and the interconnected economics of colony and mother country all serve as ingredients for rebellion and independence in a transatlantic context.

Filed under Uncategorized | Comment (1)

Sensbach review

Sensbach, Jon F. Rebecca’s Revival: Creating Black Christianity in the Atlantic World. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005, 302pp.

Rebecca’s Revival is the tracing of the emergence of Black Protestant Christianity in the Atlantic world. Sensbach uses one woman’s story as a loose guideline to the early history of the black church in North America, specifically in the Caribbean. Rebecca is not the start of the Black Church, but an inspiration. Sensbach states that she “occupied a pivotal place…for she and her cohort of preachers ushered in a radical new stage” for Christian conversions by Africans held in bondage (239). Sensbach chooses this woman because, as he puts it, “Rebecca’s story is the unique record of one person steering her way through the worlds of slavery and religious faith in the eighteenth century…. But her own fortunes are also a mirror on a larger narrative – the origins of the black church itself” (7). Using a variety of primary sources from Dutch, German, and Danish records, as well as letters written by Rebecca, her husband Christian Protten, and journals kept by various Moravian Church diarists and missionaries, Sensbach pieces together not only the life of Rebecca Protten, but a short history of the international evangelism of the Moravian Brothers.

The book begins not with Rebecca, but with the 1734 slave revolts on the Caribbean island of St. John, a close neighbor to St. Thomas. Beginning here, Sensbach sets up the atmospheres on the islands, the relationships of slaves (the island’s majority) and masters (the minority), and of the brutality rampant on the islands which left slaves open to embrace the tenets of Christianity when it was offered to them. The early chapters of this work are all set upon this backdrop. Sensbach then proceeds with the life of Rebecca, née Shelly, a mulatto girl born into slavery in Antigua and then brought (or kidnapped) as a young child to St. Thomas. She was able to obtain her freedom as a teen, whether she was manumitted, or bought her freedom is not clear. Rebecca held a special position as a free mulatto woman in a slave society, as such she was able to take on the evangelical mission she did.

Rebecca may just have been in the right place at the right time to set her life on the course it took. Her interest in Christianity, her literacy, her ability to navigate several cultures and languages, and her position as a free person made her in unusual in her society and perfect for evangelizing for the Moravians. Moravians, as Sensbach notes, considered women “spiritually equal to men” and allowed for female leadership in the church, although female leaders ministered only to other females, and not to males (47). Rebecca proved to be a driving force in leading the slaves of St. Thomas to Christianity and was at the forefront of the islands religious movement, even preparing to become a martyr when imprisoned for her beliefs.

Sensbach uses Rebecca and St. Thomas, to examine the difficulty in obtaining religious syncretism between Protestantism and African, or Afro-Caribbean, religious traditions. Unlike areas in the Americas that were settled by Spain and France which had strong Catholic traditions which could easily equate “African spirit gods with Catholic saints, African rituals and icons with Christian counterparts” the Protestants had no such structure and had to find “cognates” between Protestantism and African religions. This was accomplished by the emphasis on Jesus’ blood, the revelation of divine word through visions, and baptism by water (85-89).

For the African and Creole slaves a conversion to following Christ did not allow them to retain their own (African) customs, culture, and rituals. It required them to become something new all together. They were not white Christians, they were not Africans; they were a new entity: Black Christians. This is the crux of Sensbach’s larger narrative. This transatlantic community was just that. The Black Christians of St. Thomas were not of their old world and not native to the New World, but something new created out of necessity and out of their situation. Sensbach is suggesting here is that transatlantic history is about these contacts and changes. It is about the Africans brought to the Americas and interacting with the Europeans who brought them, creating new languages (Creole Dutch, for example) and religions, like Black Christianity. It is also about the changes wrought within Europe and Africa as the ships moved back and forth across the Atlantic. Sensbach uses Rebecca’s life again to tie Europe once more to Africa and the Americas by looking at her experiences as a Black Christian in the Moravian enclaves in Germany and then as a missionary with her husband in Africa’s Gold Coast. Rebecca represents a kind of transatlantic everywoman. She is the product of a transatlantic union, a vibrant force in a new religious movement born in the Atlantic world, and dies in an ancestral continent over four-thousand miles from where she began.

The strengths of Sensbach’s work here is the meticulous piecing together of this forgotten woman’s life and using this one woman to illustrate the larger narrative. His writing style is easily read by the scholar and layman alike. The story moves along in a mix of chronology and theme, often skipping back and forth in time as new characters are introduced and explored. This book is a good introduction to the brutal Danish Caribbean slave holding system in the eighteenth century and to the Moravian Church. It is also a good example of the rise of Christianity among slaves in this same time period.

The weaknesses come from the omission of the religious roles of women in the slave societies. Sensbach could have elaborated on them and the correlation between them and the roles women play in religion in African society. He also could have elaborated more on African society and religion in general. It would have provided a nice contrast to the Protestant example given.

Update

Hi y’all!

The link for Reinhardt’s article is not pulling the entire preface up.    The Reinhardt edited book is in our library if you want to copy the preface for yourselves.

Mylynka

Transatlantic History Forum Readings

Hi guys,

Our participants each suggested a short reading for attendees to read before the forum on April 10th. These selections serve as an excellent introduction to the topic.

Dr. Stanley Palmer:
Canny, Nicholas. “Writing Atlantic History: or, Reconfiguring the History of Colonial British America.” The Journal of American History 86, no. 3 (December 1999): 1093-1114.
Available from History Cooperative

Dr. John Garrigus:
Games, Alison. “Atlantic History: Definitions, Challenges, and Opportunities.” The American Historical Review 111, no. 3 (June 2006): 741-757.
Available from History Cooperative

Dr. Thomas Adam:
Rodgers, Daniel T. “Prologue.” In Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age, 1-7. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998.
Available here

Dr. Steven Reinhardt:
Reinhardt, Steven G., and Dennis Reinhartz, ed. “Preface.” In Transatlantic History, ix-xi. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2006.
Available from Google Books

Link to descriptions of each book listed below.

https://mavspace.uta.edu/xythoswfs/webview/_xy-612911_1

Imperial & Comparative History Books

• Burkholder, Mark A., and Lyman L. Johnson. Colonial Latin America. 5th ed. Oxford University Press, USA, 2003.
• *Cañizares-Esguerra, Jorge. Puritan Conquistadors: Iberianizing the Atlantic, 1550-1700. 1st ed. Stanford University Press 2006.
• Cooper, Frederick, and Ann Laura Stoler. Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World. 1st ed. University of California Press, 1997.
• Daunton, Martin, and Rick Halpern.  Empire and Others: British Encounters with Indigenous Peoples, 1600-1850. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.
• Darwin, John. After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire Since 1405. Bloomsbury Press, 2008.
• Elliott, J. H. Imperial Spain: 1469-1716. 2nd ed. Penguin (Non-Classics), 2002.
• Ferguson, Niall. Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power. Basic Books, 2004.
• James, Lawrence. The Rise and Fall of the British Empire. St. Martin’s Griffin, 1997.
• *Hart, Jonathan. Comparing Empires: European Colonialism from Portuguese Expansion to the Spanish-American War. Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
• Kamen, Henry. Empire : How Spain Became a World Power, 1492-1763. HarperCollins, 2003.
• *Pagden, Anthony. Lords of all the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France c.1500-c.1800. Yale University Press, 1998.
• —. Spanish Imperialism and the Political Imagination: Studies in European and Spanish-American Social and Political Theory 1513-1830. Yale University Press, 1998.
• Russell-Wood, A. J. R. The Portuguese Empire, 1415-1808: A World on the Move. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.
• Wilson, Kathleen. Island Race: Englishness, Empire and Gender in the Eighteenth Century. 1st ed. Routledge, 2002.

*Indicates Comparative History as well as Imperial History

Restall Draft

Restall, Matthew. Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, 218pp.

Restall’s intent in writing Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest is to “compare two forms of what is said to have happened [during the Conquest]. One form is created at the time of the historical moment itself. The other form is germinated in archives and libraries, when historians write historical accounts that strive to achieve objectivity….” Restall’s plan is to “juxtapose false and accurate descriptions of the Conquest” (xvi).

Restall uses both primary and secondary sources to flesh out the seven myths and their realities. He uses archives and libraries on both sides of the Atlantic to locate a multitude of primary sources. Restall’s secondary sources are interdisciplinary in nature calling on works by anthropologists, semioticians, and historians, as well as referencing other media sources such as film, television, recordings, illustrated novels, and the world wide web.

Restall divides the book into seven main parts followed by an epilogue. Each of the seven chapters is one of the “myths” of the Conquest. The epilogue is a story with all seven myths within it. Restall chose the number seven for a reason. According to Restall, “The number seven, has deep roots and symbolic significance in the history of the Americas, both Native American and Spanish” (ix). Throughout the work there is a pattern of sevens; seven chapters constituting Restall’s seven-part argument, seven aspects of conquistador procedure, seven dimensions of the incompleteness of the conquest, and the seven indicators of Conquest-era and post Conquest native vitality. Restall’s seven-part system is in place to prove his point that we have all become too complacent in believing the myths of the Spanish Conquest of the Americas and have failed to look at the more accurate picture which he shows us.

Chapter one focuses on the Myth of Exceptional Men. In this chapter Restall takes to task the perpetual myth that the Americas were discovered and conquered by “a handful of adventurers,” namely three men, Columbus, Cortés, and Pizarro. He shows that these men were not exceptional and that their myths were perpetuated by the documents left behind and the biographies written about them. Restall concludes that the myth was built up based on a genre of writing known as the probanza de mérito. The probanza is a standard Spanish document of the Conquest. In it the conquistador justifies his doings in America to the Spanish crown. The documents were full of great deeds, documented in the hope of reaching the King and courting his favor. Restall argues that historical discourse on the Conquest in the last three centuries has been largely influenced by the probanzas. With his seven aspects of conquistador procedure he shows that during the Conquest, the conquistadors were just following a standard operating procedure that was “practiced by many” (19). The seven aspects of conquistador procedure Restall mentions are: the use of legalistic measures to lend a veneer of legality to an expedition; the appeal to a higher authority (ideally the King) for direct approval of action; the search for precious metals such as gold and silver; the acquisition of native allies; the acquisition of an interpreter (preferably native to the area of conquest); the use of display and/or theatrical violence; and the public seizure of a native ruler. By laying out these common operations for all conquistadors, Restall takes away the uniqueness of the likes of Columbus, Cortés, and Pizarro and makes the Conquest more of a “collective achievement” than one of exceptional men (26).

Chapter two takes on the Myth of the King’s Army in which Restall sets out to disprove the idea that all of those involved in the conquest were foot soldiers of the Spanish crown. In this rather short chapter he identifies that most conquistadors were “neither paid nor forced” to go to the Americas. Restall notes that, “Spaniards…joined conquest expeditions not in return for specified payments, but in the hope of acquiring wealth and status” (35). Restall describes the average Spanish conquistador as in his mid-to-late twenties or early-thirties, literate, and semi-educated, or at least skilled in a trade. The system of recruitment was patron-based and, according to Restall, perpetuated the chain of conquest. Restall shows that conquistadors were not motivated to conquer the Americas for the glory of Spain and their King, but for their own material wealth and status.

Tied closely to the Myth of the King’s Army is the Myth of the White Conquistador. Under the heading Invisible Warriors, Restall corrects the notion that the Spanish Conquest was carried out by whites only. This chapter challenges the idea that the Spanish did the conquering alone; they had help and lots of it. Restall does an excellent job in dispelling this myth, shedding light onto the amount of local tribes involved in the Conquest (one of the Spanish operating procedures – the acquisition of native allies) and also highlights the extensive involvement of Africans brought with the conquistadors. By exposing the involvement of these two groups Restall points out the glaring omission of the non-white, non-Spanish people in the writings about the Conquest.

Restall’s fourth myth to challenge is the Myth of Completion. Here he identifies the myth as originating with the conquerors because of two things: the system of patronage and reward, and the “ideology of imperial justification…to portray the Conquest as divine intervention and Spaniards as agents of providence.” Restall asserts “Vital to the success of all conquistadors was their ability to portray their endeavors as anything but a disaster” (65). In other words, conquistadors could not fail because to do so would cause not only personal shame and financial downfall, but potentially a crisis of faith. Restall counters this myth with seven dimensions of the incompleteness of the conquest: the rapidity of the Conquest in core areas of native settlement; the protracted nature of the military conquest in marginal areas; the incompleteness of the pax colonial, or peace between native and Spaniard; the degree of native autonomy within conquered areas; the incompleteness of spiritual conquest; and the persistence of native cultures.

Chapter five, the Myth of (Mis)Communication reassesses the lines of understanding and misunderstanding between the Spanish and the various groups they encountered. The focus is on the interpreters used by the Spanish, most notably La Malinche, Cortés’s interpreter and later lover. Restall examines the role of the interpreter and contemplates how much was truly understood by all parties involved in various interactions and what impact, if any, the interpretations made. Of course, with no direct records written by the interpreters, most of what we can know of their translations is speculation.

Restall’s sixth myth, the Myth of Native Desolation calls into question the notions of the “lament for native peoples” and the native civilizations as a kind of Utopia which was reduced, post-Conquest, “to a state of anomie” (101-2). Restall disproves this common misperception with seven indicators of Conquest-era and post Conquest native vitality: the native staging of festivals of reconquest; expressions of native denial or inversion of defeat; native roles as allies in post-Conquest campaigns; collaborative roles of native elites in Colonial agendas; the flourishing of native municipalities; the incorporation of Spanish culture into local cultures; and increased opportunities for natives who survived the conquest.

Restall’s seventh myth, the Myth of Superiority, encompasses all of the previous six. Here he examines the “mythic and antimythic explanations for the Conquest” (132). He sums up the Myth of Superiority with five well known reasons for Spanish success in the Americas: it was God’s will; natives were to blame for their own defeat; the natives’ culture was inadequate to fend off attack; the conquistadors were more literate and/or educated than the indigenous peoples; and the Spanish had technologically advanced weaponry. All are signs of the superiority of the Spaniards, but Restall provides a set of five factors that “better explain” the outcome in the Americas: disease; native disunity; initial weaponry superiority; the culture of war; and the larger historical context of the age of expansion. It is here that Restall comes closest to other transatlantic histories. Insert any of the major European powers in the place of Spain in either of the above lists and you have the recipe for most of the transatlantic conquest experiences. This chapter places this work most firmly in the greater realm of transatlantic history.

The strength of this book is the universality of it. The myths and antimyths presented here can be applied to any of the various encounters between Europeans and “natives” all around the Atlantic basin. In second part of the seventh chapter Restall leaves revisionist history and joins transatlantic history firmly planting himself (no pun intended) in the works of both Alfred Crosby and Jared Diamond, among others, with the notions of guns, germs, and steel. He also places the Spanish Conquest of the Americas into a more global history citing the international results of the Columbian exchange.

Mylynka Kilgore

HIST 6337

Fall 2008

From the Slavery Voyage Database

Here is a voyage I found:  http://slavevoyages.org/tast/database/search.faces

This is NOT School related, but I am trying to get the word out!