SEMESTER TWO

HIS 353/354: Slave Emancipation in the British Empire, Second Semester

We will meet on Tuesdays, 3-5pm.

In the second semester, we will focus on developments that took place after ‘full’ emancipation in August 1838. As last semester, you will write an extended essay on a topic of your choice. In order to help you prepare for the examination in the assessment period, I will also ask you to do three tasks: two sets of ‘gobbets’ and a short essay.

The first set of gobbets will be placed on the website on January 16^th, the day after your first essay is due. They will be due in at the first seminar of the semester. Questions for the short (1,500 words) essay will be placed on the website on May 1st; the essay will be due on May 8th. The second set of gobbets will be placed on the website on May 9; your answers will be due on May 15^th. None of these three pieces of work will contribute to your final mark for the course, but I will provide you with feedback on all of them.

Discussion Topics and Reading List

Go straight to reading lists for: Jan 30 | Feb 6 | 13 | 20 | 27 | March 6 | 13 | 20 | May 1 | 8

PART 3: THE POST-EMANCIPATION COLONIES

30 January: Comparing Emancipations

No primary sources this week. The purpose of this week’s seminar is to orient you to the major developments and debates in the study of the emancipation, focusing on the post-1838 period. Question for discussion: What are the key problems about which historians of emancipation disagree?

Suggested Secondary Reading:

Review essays:

Scott, Rebecca. "Comparing Emancipations: A Review Essay." Journal of Social History 20 (1986-87): 565-583.

Smith, Kevin D. "A Fragmented Freedom: The Historiography of Emancipation and its Aftermath in the British West Indies." Slavery and Abolition 16, no. 1 (1995): 101-130.

Craton, Michael. "The Transition from Slavery to Free Wage Labour in the Caribbean, 1780-1890: A Survey with Particular Reference to Recent Scholarship." Slavery and Abolition 13, no. 2 (1992): 37-67.

Other useful work
McGlynn, Frank, and Seymour Drescher, eds. The Meaning of Freedom: Economics, Politics, and Culture after Slavery. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992. (Introduction and articles by Emmer, Engerman, Bolland, Mintz and Smith.)

Bolland, O. Nigel. "Systems of Domination after Slavery: The Control of Land and Labor in the West Indies after 1838." Comparative Studies in Society and History 23 (1981).

Green, William A. "The Perils of Comparative History: Belize and the Sugar Colonies after Slavery." Comparative Studies in Society and History 26, 1 (1984).

Bolland, O. Nigel. "Reply to William Green’s The Perils of Comparative History." Comparative Studies in Society and History 26, 1 (1984).

Holt, Problem of Freedom, chapter 4.

Foner, Eric. Nothing But Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1983.

Engerman, Stanley. "Economic Adjustments to Emancipation in the United States and the British West Indies." Journal of Interdisciplinary History 13, no. 2 (1982): 191-220. Available from me.

Scott, Rebecca. "Exploring the Meaning of Freedom: Postemancipation Societies in Comparative Perspective." Hispanic American Historical Review 68 (1988).

"Introduction" to Cooper, Frederick, Thomas C. Holt, and Rebecca J. Scott, eds. Beyond Slavery: Explorations in Citizenship, Labor, and Race. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000

Twaddle, Michael, ed. The Wages of Slavery: From Chattel Slavery to Wage Labour in Africa, the Caribbean, and England. London: Frank Cass, 1993. Articles by Eltis and Sheridan.

6 February: Indentured labour

Seminar Questions: Why did some colonies import indentured labourers from India? To what extent was indentured labour ‘a new system of slavery’? Is the comparison with slavery a helpful way of examining indenture?

Primary Sources

Examinations of Bibee Zuhoorun, Sheik Manick, Boodoo Khan, Karoo, Suboo, and Ramdeem. PP 1841 (45) XVI pp 45-50 (331-336), 72-74 (358-360)

Patrick Beaton, Creoles and Coolies, or Five Years in Mauritius (1859) pp. 165-180.

Suggested Secondary Reading:

Adamson, Alan H. Sugar Without Slaves: The Political Economy of British Guiana, 1838-1904. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972.

Tinker, Hugh. A New System of Slavery: The Export of Indian Labour Overseas, 1830-1860. London: Oxford University Press for the Institute of Race Relations, 1974.

Beckles and Shepherd, Caribbean Freedom, section 4, article by Haraksingh in section 5, articles by Reddock and Shepherd in section 6.

Rodney, Walter. A History of the Guyanese Working People, 1881-1905. (Available from me.)

Kale, Madhavi. Fragments of Empire: Capital, Slavery, and Indian Indentured Labor Migration in the British Caribbean. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998.

Mohapatra, Prabhu P. "'Restoring the Family': Wife Murders and the Making of a Sexual Contract for Indian Immigrant Labour in the British Caribbean Colonies, 1860-1920." Studies in History 11, no. 2 (1995): 227-260. (Available from me.)

Carter, Marina. Servants, sirdars and settlers : Indians in Mauritius, 1834-1874. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Carter, Marina. Voices from Indenture: Experiences of Indian Migrants in the British Empire. London: Leicester University Press, 1996.

Carter, Marina. "The Transition from Slave to Indentured Labour in Mauritius." In Twaddle, ed, Wages of Slavery.

Adderley, Rosanne Marion. "'A Most Useful and Valuable People?' Cultural, Moral, and Practical Dilemmas in the Use of Liberated African Labour in the Nineteenth-Century Caribbean." Slavery and Abolition 20, no. 1 (1999): 59-78.

13 February: Peasant Production and Free Villages

Seminar Questions: Why did freed people establish free villages in some places but not others?

Did the establishment of free villages lead to a complete separation of their residents from the world of the plantation?

Primary sources:

Light to Russell, 4 December 1839 + enclosure, PP 1841 [321] XVI pp 63-65

Light to Russell, 7 May 1840 + enclosure 2, PP 1841 [321] XVI pp 117, 119-121

Hope Waddell, Twenty Nine Years in the West Indies and Central Africa (1863), pp. 152-159.

Suggested Secondary Reading:

Holt, Problem of Freedom, chapter 5.

Hall, Douglas. Free Jamaica 1838-1865: An Economic History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959.

Beckles and Shepherd, Caribbean Freedom. All of Section 3, plus article by Hall in section 2.

McGlynn and Drescher, Meaning of Freedom, articles by Besson and Trouillot.

Hall, Catherine. "White Visions, Black Lives: The Free Villages of Jamaica." History Workshop Journal 36 (1993): 100-132.

Mintz, Sidney W. Caribbean Transformations. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974, chs 5-8 (esp. ch. 6).

Besson, Jean. "Land Tenure in the Free Villages of Trelawny, Jamaica: A Case Study in the Caribbean Peasant Response to Emancipation." Slavery and Abolition 5, no. 1 (1984): 3-23. Available from me.

Paget, Hugh. "The Growth of Villages in Jamaica and British Guiana." Caribbean Quarterly 10, no. 1 (1964): 38-51.

Farley, Rawle. "The Rise of Village Settlements in British Guiana." Caribbean Quarterly 10, no. 1 (1964): 52-61.

Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. "Labour and Emancipation in Dominica: Contribution to a Debate." Caribbean Quarterly 30, no. 3 & 4 (1984): 73-84. (Available from me.)

Curtin, Two Jamaicas, ch. 6-7.

Frucht, Richard. "A Caribbean Social Type: Neither ‘Peasant’ Nor ‘Proletarian’" Social and Economic Studies 16, no. 3 (1967): 295-300.

20 February: Wage Labour and the Share System

Seminar Question: To what extent were wage labourers able to exert control over the conditions under which they worked?

Primary Sources:

Light to Normanby, 21 September 1839, PP 1841 [321] XVI pp 43-47 (British Guiana)

Fitzroy to Stanley, 12 May 1845. PP 1845 (642) XXXI, pp. 206-217 (578-589) (Virgin Islands).

Evidence of Nicholas Nugent to the Select Cttee on WI Colonies, PP 1842 (479) XIII: 209-227 (225-243).

Suggested Secondary Reading:

Beckles and Shepherd, Caribbean Freedom, articles by Wilmot and Marshall (section 2), Lobdell (section 8).

Turner, From Chattel Slaves, Introduction and chapters by Turner, Haraksingh and Richards.

Scully, Liberating the Family, part 2.

Ward, J. R. "Emancipation and the Planters." Journal of Caribbean History 22, no. 1 and 2 (1990): 116-137 (available from me).

Shepherd, Verene A. "The Effect of the Abolition of Slavery on Jamaican Livestock Farms (Pens), 1834-1845." Slavery and Abolition 10, no. 2 (1989): 187-211.

Ross, Robert. "Emancipation and the Economy of the Cape Colony." Slavery and Abolition 14, no. 1 (1993), in Twaddle, ed., Wages of Slavery.

Bolland, O. Nigel. "Labour Control and Resistance in Belize in the Century after 1838." Slavery and Abolition 7, no. 2 (1986): 175-187.

27 February: Post-emancipation social and political protest

Seminar Question: What circumstances were likely to lead to violent disturbances in the post-emancipation colonies? Why?

Do events like the ‘Guerre Negre’ and the Morant Bay Rebellion demonstrate the real views of former slaves in ways that more day-to-day events do not?

Primary source:

*Copies or Extracts of Despatches relating to the Disturbances in the Island of Dominica, PP 1845 (146) XXXI.

Suggested Secondary Reading:

Chace, Jr., Russell E. "Protest in Post-Emancipation Dominica: The 'Guerre Negre' of 1844." Journal of Caribbean History 23 (1989): 118-41. (Available from me.)

Beckles and Shepherd, Caribbean Freedom, section 5 articles by Augier, Belle, Craton.

Holt, Problem of Freedom, chapter 8.

Turner, From Chattel Slaves, chapter by Heuman.

Heuman, Gad. ‘The Killing Time’: The Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica. London: MacMillan Caribbean, 1994.

Sheller, Mimi. "Quasheba, Mother, Queen: Black Women's Public Leadership and Political Protest in Post-emancipation Jamaica, 1834-65." Slavery and Abolition 19, no. 3 (1998): 90-117.

Wilmot, Swithin. "'Females of Abandoned Character?': Women and Protest in Jamaica, 1838-65." In Engendering History: Caribbean Women in Historical Perspective, edited by Verene Shepherd, Bridget Brereton and Barbara Bailey, 279-95. New York: St Martin's Press, 1995.

Wilmot, Swithin. "Race, Electoral Violence and Constitutional Reform in Jamaica, 1830-1854." Journal of Caribbean History 17 (1982): 1-13.

Heuman, Gad. "Riots and Resistance at the Moment of Full Freedom in the Anglophone Caribbean." Paper presented at the 31st Annual Conference of the Association of Caribbean Historians, Havana, Cuba 1999. (copy available from me).

Chan, V. O. "The Riots of 1856 in British Guiana." Caribbean Quarterly 16, no. 1 (1970): 39-50. (Available from me.)

Marshall, Woodville K. "'Vox Populi': The St. Vincent Riots and Disturbances of 1862." In Trade, Government and Society in Caribbean History, 1700-1920, edited by B. W. Higman, 84-115. Kingston: Heinemann Education Books, 1983. (Available from me.)

Brereton, Bridget. "Post-Emancipation Protest in the Caribbean: The 'Belmanna Riots' in Tobago, 1876." Caribbean Quarterly 30, no. 3 & 4 (1984): 110-123. (Available from me.)

6 March: Reconstructing religion

Seminar Question: What was the significance of ‘Revival’ or ‘Myalism’ in the post-emancipation Caribbean?

Primary Source:

Hope Waddell, Twenty Nine Years in the West Indies and Central Africa (1863), pp. 187-195.

Suggested Secondary Reading:

McGlynn and Drescher, Meaning of Freedom: articles by Austin-Broos and Jean Besson.

Schuler, Monica. "Alas, Alas, Kongo": A Social History of Indentured African Immigration into Jamaica, 1841-1865. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1980. (Available from me; ch. 2 especially useful.)

Burton, Richard D. E. Afro-Creole: Power, Opposition, and Play in the Caribbean. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997, ch. 3.

Stewart, Robert J. Religion and Society in Post-Emancipation Jamaica. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992.

Austin-Broos, Diane J. Jamaica Genesis: Religion and the Politics of Moral Order. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997, chs. 1-5.

Russell, Horace O. "The Emergence of the Christian Black: The Making of a Stereotype." Jamaica Journal 16, no. 1 (1983): 51-58. (Available from me.)

Holt, Problem of Freedom, chapter 6.

13 March: Reconstructing Gender and Family

Seminar Question: How did gender relations change after emancipation? How did missionaries influence the changes that occurred?

Primary Sources

James Mursell Phillippo, Jamaica, Its Past and Present State (1843), pp. 220-238.

Various despatches on Courts of Reconciliation, Barbados. PP 1840 [282] XXXV pp. 145-147; 152-153; 155-160; 162-169; 172-176.

Selected Secondary Sources

Beckles and Shepherd, Caribbean Freedom, all of section 7, and article by Mintz in section 6.

Scully, Liberating the Family, part 3.

Richardson, Bonham C. "Freedom and Migration in the Leeward Caribbean, 1838-1848." Journal of Historical Geography 6 (1980): 391-408. (Available online.)

Brereton, Bridget. "Family Strategies, Gender, and the Shift to Wage Labour in the British Caribbean." In The Colonial Caribbean in Transition: Essays on Postemancipation Social and Cultural History, edited by Bridget Brereton and Kevin A. Yelvington, 77-107. Kingston, Jamaica: The Press University of the West Indies, 1999.

Charles, Persis. "The Name of the Father: Women, Paternity, and British Rule in Nineteenth-Century Jamaica." International Labor and Working-Class History 41, no. Spring (1992): 4-22, plus commentaries by Catherine Hall, Thomas Holt, and Dale Tomich, immediately following. (Available from me.)

Paton, Diana. "The Flight from the Fields Reconsidered: Gender Ideologies and Women’s Labor after Slavery in Jamaica" in Reclaiming "the Political" in Latin American History: Views from the North, ed. Gilbert Joseph. (Durham: Duke University Press, forthcoming 2001—available from me in typescript).

PART 4: POST-EMANCIPATION BRITAIN

20 March: Slavery, apprenticeship and abolition as tropes in other controversies

Seminar Question: How was the metaphor of slavery used in Britain in the emancipation period? Why was it so powerful?

Primary Sources:

Sir William Molesworth, Report from the Committee of the House of Commons on Transportation, pp. 7-42

Richard Oastler, speeches on "Yorkshire Slavery," pp. 73-79 in J. T. Ward, ed., The Factory System, Vol 2.

Frederick Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, extract from ch 6: Factory Hands, pp. 177-187

Secondary Sources:

Rose, Sonya O. "Protective Labor Legislation in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Gender, Class, and the Liberal State." In Gender and Class in Modern Europe, edited by Laura L. Frader and Sonya O. Rose, 193-210. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996.

Gray, Robert. "The Languages of Factory Reform, 1830-1850." In The Historical Meanings of Work, edited by Patrick Joyce, 143-79. Cambridge, 1989.

Drescher, Seymour. "Cart Whip and Billy Roller: Antislavery and Reform Symbolism in Industrializing Britain." Journal of Social History 15, no. 1 (1981): 3-24.

Fladeland, Betty. "'Our Cause Being One and the Same': Abolitionists and Chartism." In Slavery and British Society 1776-1846, edited by James Walvin, 69-99. London: Macmillan, 1982. (Available from me.)

Bolt, Christine, and Seymour Drescher, eds. Anti-Slavery, Religion, and Reform: Essays in Memory of Roger Anstey. Folkestone, Kent: Dawson Archon, 1980. Articles by Harrison and Hollis.

Ward, J. T. The Factory Movement.

Drescher, Seymour. Capitalism and Antislavery: British Mobilization in Comparative Perspective. London: Macmillan, 1986.

Turley, Culture of English Antislavery, ch. 6.

NEW: Sources on Penal Transportation

Unfortunately the libraries holdings on penal transportation are very limited. The only printed sources available that I could locate (maybe you will find more!) are :

John Hirst, "The Australian Experience: The Convict Colony" in The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society, ed. Norval Morris and David J. Rothman. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. (PLEASE don't check this out--use it in the library or copy it, so that others can use it too.)

Nichols, Stephen. "Australia: An Economic Prison?" Economic History Review 43 (1990).

There are also some very useful websites:

Clare Anderson's course on Convicts and the Colonies, at the University of Leicester, includes primary materials (under Source Material), and the topics she includes should give you a sense of the important issues in Convict Studies.

A student-created website from Edinburgh: Banished to Botany Bay: Convict Transportation to Australia 1788-1852.

EASTER BREAK

24 April: Co-critique of student work in progress: you must have completed a penultimate draft of your second extended essay by now.

No separate reading.

1 May: Abolitionism and its Opponents after British Abolition

Seminar Questions: How did the abolitionist movement developer after emancipation in the British Empire?

How and why did ideas about ‘race’ change in this period?

Primary Sources:

Speech by Hon. Frederick Douglass, London Tavern, March 30 1847 (Farewell speech to the British people).

Thomas Carlyle, "Occasional Discourse on the Nigger Question" (1849)

NEW: Electronic Resources on Carlyle and Douglass (plenty more are available if you use a web-browser):

The Carlyle-Mill 'Negro Question' Debate: Very useful set of pages at the New School for Social Research's History of Economic Thought website. Includes several other important primary sources from this period and a 'background' page. (Some of the factual information in the 'background' is slightly inaccurate, so be careful.)

The "Victorian Web's" page on Carlyle: useful biographic and bibliographic material.

Spartacus schoolnet on Carlyle: brief biography with links to other significant figures and topics.

Douglass's first version of his autobiography: The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Douglass, "My Escape From Slavery" (1881).

Homepage of the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site in Washington, D.C.

The Frederick Douglass Museum and Cultural Center, Rochester, New York.

Frederick Douglass Papers project; this site also contains a useful chronology of Douglass's life under About Frederick Douglass.

Secondary sources:

Blackett, R. J. M. Building an Antislavery Wall: Black Americans in the Atlantic Abolitionist Movement, 1830-1860. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1983.

Maynard, Douglas. "The World’s Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840" Mississippi Valley Historical Review 47 (1960-61). (Available online.)

Kennon, Donald R. "'An Apple of Discord': The Woman Question at the World's Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840." Slavery and Abolition 5, no. 3 (1984): 244-266.

Ware, Vron. Beyond the Pale: White Women, Racism and History. London: Verso, 1992, ch. 2.

Temperley, British Antislavery 1833-1870.

Hall, Catherine. "Competing Masculinities: Thomas Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, and the Case of Governor Eyre." In White, Male and Middle Class: Explorations in Feminism and History, 255-295. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992.

Midgley, Clare, ed. Gender and Imperialism. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998, article by Hall.

Midgley, Women Against Slavery. Part III.

Kale, Fragments of Empire, ch. 5.

Turley, Culture of English Antislavery, ch. 7.

Bolt, Christine. Victorian Attitudes to Race.

Part 5: COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES

8 May: Emancipation in Haiti, the US South, and Cuba.

Seminar Questions: How did British Emancipation differ from emancipation processes elsewhere?

Did the differences in process lead to different outcomes for former slaves?

No primary sources this week

Secondary Sources:

Haiti:

Knight, Franklin W. "The Haitian Revolution." American Historical Review 105, no. 1 (2000): 103-115.

James, C. L. R. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. Second Revised ed. New York: Vintage Books, 1963.

Fick, Carolyn E. The Making of Haiti: The Saint Domingue Revolution from Below. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990.

Beckles and Shepherd, Caribbean Freedom, articles by Lundahl in section 1, and by LaCerte in section 2

Nicholls, David. From Dessalines to Duvalier. 2nd ed. London, 1988.

Ott, Thomas O. The Haitian Revolution, 1789-1804. Knoxville, 1973.

Sheller, Mimi B. Democracy After Slavery: Black Publics and Peasant Rebellion in Postemancipation Haiti and Jamaica. London: Macmillan Caribbean, 2000.

McGlynn and Drescher, Meaning of Freedom, article by Trouillot.

The US South:

Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877. New York: Harper & Row, 1988.

Litwack, Leon F. Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery. New York: Knopf, 1979.

Lichtenstein, Alex. "Was the Emancipated Slave a Proletarian?" Reviews in American History 26 (1998): 124-145.

Jones, Jacqueline. Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present. New York: Basic Books, 1985.

Saville, Julie. The Work of Reconstruction: From Slave to Wage Laborer in South Carolina, 1860-1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

McGlynn and Drescher, The Meaning of Freedom, articles by Mandle, Wright, and Kolchin.

Hahn, Steven. "Class and State in Postemancipation Societies: Southern Planters in Comparative Perspective." American Historical Review 95, no. 1 (1990): 75-98.

Scott, Rebecca J. "Defining the Boundaries of Freedom in the World of Cane: Cuba, Brazil, and Louisiana after Emancipation." American Historical Review 99 (1994): 70-102.

Schwalm, Leslie A. 'A Hard Fight for We': Women's Transition from Slavery to Freedom in South Carolina. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997.

Saville, Julie. "Grassroots Reconstruction: Agricultural Labour and Collective Action in South Carolina, 1860-1868." Slavery and Abolition 12, no. 3 (1991): 173-182.

Cuba:

Scott, Rebecca J. Slave Emancipation in Cuba: The Transition to Free Labor, 1860-1899. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985.

Ferrer, Ada. Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868-1898. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999.

Helg, Aline. Our Rightful Share: the Afro-Cuban Struggle for Equality, 1886-1912. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.

Schmidt-Nowara, Christopher. Empire and Antislavery : Spain, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, 1833-1874. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999.

Hu-Dehart, Evelyn. "Chinese Coolie Labour in Cuba in the Nineteenth Century: Free Labour or Neo-Slavery." Slavery and Abolition 14, no. 1 (1993): 67-86, in Twaddle, ed., Wages of Slavery.

Knight, Franklin W. Slave Society in Cuba During the Nineteenth Century. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1970.

Lamounier, Lucia. "Between Slavery and Free Labour: Early Experiments with Free Labour and Patterns of Slave Emancipation in Brazil and Cuba" in Turner, ed., From Chattel Slaves to Wage Slaves.

15 May: Optional final meeting to review the year’s work.

18 May, 4pm: Second extended essay due.