The Social Impact of Slavery on the Caribbean Society
In order for us to understand the Caribbean, we must acknowledge the tremendous social impact slavery placed upon the islands. We must not only consider the practice of slavery dating back to the indigenous peoples, but from what the introduction of the African slave trade did to the islands economically as well as culturally. In this paper let me reflect on slavery in the Caribbean not from an economical standpoint but, from the racial or what Knight calls ‘complextional mutations’ its social impact on society.
Let us discuss historian Benitez-Rojo’s approach to the Caribbean, he tends to reject a single cultural definition of the Caribbean, believing that all the islands have a differing cultural structure referring to its original colonizer. However, he subliminally states in his book The Repeating Island that all the islands hold more in common than the plantation system. He says ..."the multiplication of the Plantation-each case a different one-brought to the Caribbean was such that the Caribbean peoples themselves, in referring to the ethnological process that derived from the extraordinary collision of the races and cultures, produced, speak of syncretism, acculturation, transculturation, assimilation, deculturation, indigenization, creolization, cultural mestizaje, cultural cimarronaje, cultural miscegenation, cultural resistance etc." This idea falls in line with Knight; Knight introduces the Spanish to the history of the Caribbean, as the Caribbean being their conquest. The Spanish, in the name of Christianity, under Queen Isabella and King Ferninad attempt to colonize the Caribbean. They force assimilation trying to re-create the social and political pattern...
... middle of paper ...
...tresses the Jamaican’s separation from the outside world. Yet, he a Jamaican man is in a field of his own within his culture. He tends to separate himself from the African, African-American, all that seems to be ‘barbarian’, and ‘ignorant’. He separates himself from what he has been ‘educated’ or rather ‘mis-educated’ about. His own History. He separates himself unknowingly, for he is a black colonized person living within certain parameters that tend to cloud his judgement. This is the legacy left to us by the institution of slavery in the Caribbean.
Bibilography
Benitez-Rojo, Antonio: "The Repeating Island" Duke University Press
Knight, Franklin W., : "The Caribbean The Genesis of a Fragmented Nationalism" Oxford University Press
Cliff, Michelle: "Abeng" Plume Books
Beckles and Shepherd: "Caribbean Slave Society ad Economy" The New Press, New York
COL Prescott’s role in the Battle of Bunker Hill, or more correctly know as the Battle of Breed’s Hill, is a great example of how to properly execute mission command. An overview from The Cowpens Staff Ride and Battlefield Tour (Moncure) reveals a number of operation and strategic objectives that the American militia had to consider. In this instance, COL Prescott takes charge of 1200 men with instructions to defend against incoming British forces that were seeking to occupy the surrounding hills during the Siege of Boston campaign. COL Prescott utilized a variety of steps in the operations process that contributed to his expert utilization of mission command over his forces. Through various sources from published works by experts on the subject, COL Prescott’s mission command demonstrates its effectiveness in his understanding of the situation against the British, his visualization to create an end state for t...
Fluorescent turquoise waters, a vibrant city culture, as well as an unending supply of mimosas and sunburns within a resort, benefits the common wealthy couple looking for a swell time. When people imagine the Caribbean, they probably visualize the soft sands of the Spice Island Beach Resort. Many people see the Caribbean as relaxing paradise. What people don’t understand, are the years of history hidden behind the mask of many resorts. In the book entitled “Empire’s Crossroads: A History of the Caribbean from Columbus to the Present Day”, Author Carrie Gibson differentiates how people view the Caribbean nowadays, by altering their visualization with four-hundred pages of rich history and culture, that argues the ideology about the Caribbean
societies to reexamine their view of the Caribbean. In this paper the following topics in The
Sunni’s comprise the modern Ba’ath party in Iraq, which came to power in the 1960’s after Arabs losing the six day war to Israel. The Ba’ath Party is a highly centralized, authoritarian, socialist reform party with strong communist ties opposing imperialism and colonialism. During Saddam’s rule, Ba’athists received preferential treatment. Fallujah, with cities like Tikrit (Saddam’s home town), formed the power base for the Ba’ath party.
Today I bring to your forefront of thought, the island of Hispaniola. This island is the namesake for the two countries who run the land, the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Both nations hail from a joint introduction into the world market and post-European colonization, but as time progressed, each one had a different outlook to the world stage. The present day Dominican Republic and Haiti are worlds apart on an island which keeps them together. Their culture is separated by the colonial residuals that lay imbedded into their communities. They are on different sides of the spectrum of structural growth due to the resulting outcomes from decades of political ruling and policy making. On one side we have the second independent state of the Americas,
In the Dominican Republic, I would not place an emphasis on slave heritage as slavery is associated with blackness, blackness with being Haitian, and being Haitian with being savage and backwards. This conflation of Haiti, blackness, and savagery is the handiwork of numerous 19th century travel narratives that claimed to provide “unbiased” accounts of the island of Hispaniola. In fact, Candelario includes an account that consistently contrasted the two countries and their inhabitants, “One was white, Spanish, and Catholic; the other was black, French, and irreligious. One was “civilized” because it courted the United States and Americans; the other was barbaric because it jealously defended its political and economic sovereignty” (Candelario 47). Travel narratives such as this one that positioned the Dominicans as “the whites of the land” were adopted by Dominicans and used as part of the foundation in the nation’s construction of race, and can be used to explain its affinity for
Cruelty, blood, and gore are all accurate descriptions of the French Revolution. This horrific time is correctly represented by the twisted and elaborate plot of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. During this time, pity and sympathy leave the hearts of both the revolutionaries and the aristocrats. The hatred felt by the revolutionaries towards their oppressors seizes control of their hearts and results in more ruthless and savage behavior towards their old persecutors. Man, himself, becomes a more brutal race in this time of animosity. He has no compassion towards his fellow man, resulting in extraordinary bloodshed. Throughout A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens conveys the theme of inhumanity by using symbols, especially scarecrows, blue-flies, and dogs.
Green, Cencilia. (1997). Historical Roots of Modern Caribbean Politics. Against the Current. Vol. 12, (4), 34-38.
Rouse. "Hispaniola: Caribbean Chiefdoms in the Age of Columbus." Google Books. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Feb. 2014.
The era of Spanish colonial rule in Cuba can be characterized by many institutions, such as slavery and the plantation system, which presupposed a notion of ra...
Emilio Pantojas-García. “The Puerto Rican Paradox: Colonialism Revisited, 2005.” University of Texas Press Latin American Research Review 40.3 (2005) 163-176
The 1600’s were a time of expansion in the new world. Unfortunately the development of this area led slavery to be the main source of labor. As history teaches us slavery was used extensively in the new world. The main areas of concern of this paper are how slavery in the Caribbean carried over its practice in the American South. The slave system was implemented in the Caribbean on a larger scale before the South implemented their system. The slave plantations of the Caribbean served as a learning platform for the slavery system in the south. The development of Caribbean slave laws, slave revolts, transfer of information on this practice to the South and the South’s implementation of these slave laws, and the slave issues in check.
The recorded history of Jamaica begins in May 1494 when Christopher Columbus arrived on the island during his second voyage to the New World. At that point Jamaica was inhabited by the Tainos, a calm and peaceful people who lived simple lives. From as early as our primary school education, Jamaicans are taught that the arrival of the Spanish totally disrupted the tranquillity the Tinos enjoyed; bringing unknown communicable diseases to the island and forcing the Tainos to perform difficult tasks. The marks the beginning of violence and trauma on the island Christopher Columbus described as the “fairest isle mine eyes ever beheld”. Within fifty years the Taino population on the island was wiped out however the transition of the island from a peaceful idyllic paradise to a violent society did not end with the extinction of the Tainos. Rather it was merely the beginning, as by 1513 the Spaniards had begun the transhipment of Africans to the island as slaves. Like the Tainos, the Africans who came to Jamaica, were subjected to slavery and its well documented dehumanizing and traumatic experiences.
Sindney W. Mintz, “The Caribbean as a Socio-Cultural Area,” in M. Horowitz, Peoples & Cultures of the Caribbean (Garden City, N.J., 1971).
Throughout history an even today, Caribbean scholars contend that Caribbean relations are characterized by an interplay of race, class and gender. Clarke agree with this statement and said that, “The social structure of the Caribbean region is based on differences associated with class, race or colour, ethnicity and culture (Clarke, 2013). These three (3) components of race, class and gender affect each other in one way or the other. In other word, one’s class position may be dependent on his or her race or gender or one’s gender may determine his or her class position in society. It is important to note that the interplay of race, class and gender in the Caribbean differs from island to island. This essay will discuss the extent to which