The introduction of black slaves in the western world was the beginning of a new culture, more economic wealth and prosperity for whites and for blacks a life of poverty, enslavement and oppression. The life and times of the Jamaican Maroons is a story of an indomitable foe, a people whose survival depends on their wit and tenacity, form a part of this terrible saga in the history of blacks in the New World and where we are today. The struggle of the Maroons of Jamaica against the British colonial authorities, their subsequent collaboration with and betrayal by them. A story that took a circular voyage from West Africa to Jamaica, then to Canada and in the end returned to Africa. The Maroons of Jamaica originally came from West Africa. Some of them were IBO, a tribe from eastern Nigeria. The slave trade between 1590 and 1840 concerned three different cultures from three different continents involved in an elaborate system of barter in enslaved Africans. Europeans comb African countries looking for gold, ivory, spices and cheap labour for their plantations in the Americas; traveling routes first navigated in the 15th century. The Henrietta Marie was typical of the small merchant ships and traders that ply the Atlantic on their way to the Americas and the West Indies at the turn of the 18th century. In 1699, the ship left the port of London on her second slaving voyage, carrying cargo of European manufactured goods for trade in West Africa. She journeyed to the African coast where her cargo is exchanged for enslaved Africans and ivory, from there the ship sailed to Jamaica, where the captives is exchanged for sugar and logwood. Laden with new world goods, the Henrietta Marie! Began her long and ardours voyage home to London,... ... middle of paper ... ... Africans, but a life born of necessity. Indeed, the early Maroons were "thorns and pricks" in the side of the British, they plunder and burn plantations, captured slaves and killed British soldiers who ventured out too far into the woods. The Maroons victories against the British were so numerous that in April, 1656, the British Governor D'Oyley reported "it hath pleased God to give us some success against the Negroes. A plantation of theirs beeinge (sic) found out, wee (sic) fell on them, slew some, and spoiled one of their chief quarters." In another skirmish the British soldiers killed "seven or eight “negroes" but the Maroons retaliated by ambushing and killing forty soldiers. In a letter to John Thurloe, Major Sedgwick said, "In two daies (sic) more than forty of our soldiers, were cut off by the negroes as they were carelessly going about their quarters."
Because the trans-Atlantic slave trade was profitable for African elites and brought western many valuable goods to West Africa, when it was effectively shut down after 1808 by British patrols, people along this coast were eager to keep the European trade lines alive. The imposition of this “legitimate trade” (any non-slave trade) saw a huge rise of African export of gold and palm oil. For these the British traded guns and technologies of the Industrial Revolution, some that interested Africans and some that did not. With the help of the new, swift, sturdy clipper ship, the British were able to transport these goods faster than ever before.
The English captured Jamaica from Spain in 1655. With the indigenous people gone, and Spain being overthrown, all the imported African slaves revolted. Renegade slaves were called “Maroons.” The Maroons waged war against there new governing country for nearly 100 years until a peace tr...
The majority of the nearly 500,000 slaves on the island, at the end of the eighteenth century endured some of the worst slave conditions in the Caribbean. These people were seen as disposable economic inputs in a colony driven by greed. Thus, they receive...
Throughout Rastafari: Roots and Ideology, Barry Chevannes traces the beginnings of the Rastafari movements and the movements that gave birth to Rastafarian ideology, through both historical perspectives and through the narratives of those people closely associated with these movements. He begins laying out the groundwork of the Rastafarian movement at the slave trade, which gave rise to the institutionalization of racism and the subordination of black people in the “New World.” This racism, and its lasting effects on the social, political, and economic positions of black people in Jamaica led to a realization of the need to create a life, or a belief system, that would actually serve black people and their needs.
Though the Atlantic Slave Trade began in 1441, it wasn’t until nearly a century later that Europeans actually became interested in slave trading on the West African coast. “With no interest in conquering the interior, they concentrated their efforts to obtain human cargo along the West African coast. During the 1590s, the Dutch challenged the Portuguese monopoly to become the main slave trading nation (“Africa and the Atlantic Slave Trade”, NA). Besides the trading of slaves, it was also during this time that political changes were being made. The Europe...
Jamaica’s history is full of social unrest. The island was originally inhabited by the Arawaks. The Arawaks were a peaceful, pleasant race. In his History of the British West Indies, Sir Alan Burns says, "all accounts credit them with being generous-minded, affectionate and good-humoured" (37). Once Jamaica was "discovered" by Spain in 1494, however, the Arawaks, who had inhabited the island for centuries, quickly died off due to the harsh treatment of the Spaniards. Spain never really developed the land, however, and thus when British forces invaded in 1655, Spain chose not to focus much energy on defending the island.
...ngs that created Reggae music. This music came out of a struggle between black and white, and the return to Africa reinforces the black nature of the music, almost subjecting the European tradition to a submissive role. In this respect Reggae music is a response to the European traditions that were inflicted onto black slaves in Colonial times in an unjust manner.
Plantation owners in the New World needed slaves for agricultural labor of their plantations. The slaves became disciplined and were forced to work in bad conditions for long hours at young ages in harsh temperatures.
In his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Equiano describes his early life in Africa and the shattering effects of the slave trade. From growing up and learning to be a man under the watchful and loving eye of his mother, to being torn from his family and home and being forced to travel throughout Africa before ultimately finding himself aboard a slave ship headed for America, He gives readers a unique view of life as an African during the 1700s. Many themes are explored in Equiano’s tale, but one cannot ignore the most prominent theme of the evil of slavery and the destruction that ensues.
This week’s articles carry a couple related, if not common, themes of imagined, if not artificial, constructs of race and identity. Martha Hodes’ article, “The mercurial Nature and Abiding Power of Race: A Transnational Family Story,” offers a narrative based examination of the malleable terms on which race was defined. To accomplish this she examines the story of Eunice Connolly and her family and social life as a window into understanding the changing dimensions of race in nineteenth-century America and the Caribbean, specifically New England and Grand Cayman. While Hodes’ article examines the construction of race in the Americas, Ali A. Mazrui’s piece, “The Re-Invention of Africa: Edward Sai, V. Y. Mudimbe, and Beyond,” looks at the construction of African identity. Although different in geographic loci, the two articles similarly examine the shaping influences of race and identity and the power held in ‘the Other’ to those ends.
“For the island colony was divided into three main groups in a political and social way. The descendants of the slaves were three-fourths of the population and classified as black or dark brown. The descendants of Europeans and slaves were about one-fifth of the population and classified as coloured or light brown. The rest were a few thousand East Indians and Chinese and perhaps the same number of pure European decent.” (Pg. 4) Claude Mckay blatantly describes the historical reality here in his novel, Banana Bottom. The reality that McKay is describing in Jamaica, directly relates to the history of the Caribbean and Jamaica specifically in the 19th Century.
Since it was becoming a profitable crop in the Americas. The rise of the “demand for African slaves” (Hine 36) grew. Growth of the Atlantic Slave Trade caused for the transformation of a “harsher form of slavery” (Hine 36) were race was the basis of enslavement of people. The ones who suffered out of this form of slavery was the “Africans and American Indians” (Hine 36). Due to their color of skin and culture they were discriminated and seen as chattel to their masters. Losing their rights as human beings and becoming property of
Slavery became of fundamental importance in the early modern Atlantic world when Europeans decided to transport thousands of Africans to the Western Hemisphere to provide labor in place of indentured servants and with the rapid expansion of new lands in the mid-west there was increasing need for more laborers. The first Africans to have been imported as laborers to the first thirteen colonies were purchased by English settlers in Jamestown, Virginia in 1619 from a Dutch warship. Later in 1624, the Dutch East India Company brought the first enslaved Africans in Dutch New Amsterdam.
To fully understand the racism that existed in this time period, there needs to be an explanation of the historic events that had passed before the novel’s time period. According to an article concerning the emancipation of Jamaica in the 1800s on jamica-guide.info, England attempted to abolish slavery but was met with fierce objections by the government in Jamaica. Jamaican parliament believed that the slaves were happy and did not crave change which led to an immense conflict which resulted in numerous revolts, one by Sharpe and one by the Creole population led by 21-year old Jordan. There was an immense racism towards whites and the
The first leg of the journey was from Europe, mainly Portugal to Africa. Many of the goods produced in Europe were not available in Africa or America. The Europeans traded manufactured goods, including weapons, guns, beads, cowrie shells (used as money), cloth, horses, and rum to the African kings and merchants in return for gold, silver and slaves. Africans were seen as very hard workers who were skilled in the area of agriculture and cattle farming. They were also used to the extreme temperatures that people of lighter complexions could not bear. There had always been slavery in Africa amongst her own people, where men from different tribes/villages would raid other villages to kidnap the women for their pleasures, and the men to use as slaves. To learn that they could actually profit from this activity made the job of getting slaves very easy for the Europeans. Slaves acquired through raids, were transported to the seaports were they were help prisoner in forts until traded.