Slave labour was integral to the plantation culture of the Caribbean; vast numbers of African slaves were transported across the Atlantic to labour in the cultivation of cash crops such as indigo, coffee, and sugar. Enslaved people lived in dire conditions and were subject to often brutal proprietary regimes, leaving them on the margins of colonial societies. Numerous social, legal, and cultural factors have combined to make learning about the day-to-day lives of slaves notoriously challenging for us in the present. However, isolated accounts remain, scattered in European archives, which instruct us in unexpected ways about how slaves and planters coexisted, and how slaves worshipped, treated illness, and even practiced magic. In this lecture we will be discussing how we can understand such dispersed testimony, and what it can teach us about the slave societies of the Caribbean.
Meeting ID: 860 5407 1466
Passcode: 688319
