ABSTRACT An independent princely state (1621-1948), Janjira Fort and extended territories on the West Coast of India were governed by African Muslim rulers called Nawabs. This paper explores Janjira as a centre of trade and heritage tourism. We discuss protecting the Fort's cultural heritage and legacy of cosmopolitan communities who lived and worked in Janjira for generations. Our research is based on oral narratives and vivid memories of Indians of diverse backgrounds who served the Nawabs. History lives in their reflections of Janjira, as a unique place of the cultural formation of a microworld, arising from global processes of trade and commerce which defined its diverse racial and ethnic composition. We also offer the perspectives of descendants of the last Nawab of Janjira State. We conclude that Janjira Fort and the tombs of the Nawabs are heritage structures, an integral part of African History in India and need urgent attention for their preservation.

ABSTRACT Colonial Florida was a legal and jurisdictional borderland, within which many Afro-diasporic peoples negotiated to best protect their freedoms. However, they also found that emergent ideas about race were shaping the negotiation, circumscribing their options, and working to define a marginalized position for them within Florida society. The site of Fort Mose exemplifies this history and the challenges confronted by Afro-diasporic people within it. Furthermore, the threats to heritage preservation currently faced at the site highlight the ways which anti-Black ideology and action have had a persistent effect on the site, from its inception through the present day. Fort Mose was vulnerable by design. While it is today recognized for its symbolic role in the colonial era, as a site of Black heritage it is threatened not only by rising sea levels and increased storm activity, but also a historical legacy of marginalization.

ABSTRACT Enslaved and post-emancipation communities claimed and created a set of communal resources within the interstices of plantation ecologies, constituting the Black Commons, a space to envision and enact liberated Black futures. Around 1877, Gullah Geechee fishermen, carpenters, milliners, and schooner captains acquired land on South Island in Georgetown County, South Carolina where they used the commons and their mastery to practice self-sufficiency and enter market activities. Meanwhile, wealthy White sportsmen traveled to the former plantations of the Lowcountry to hunt and fish. They depended upon local Black guides who knew the land and water to ensure successful outings, while rice planters increasingly viewed Black hunting and fishing as threats to the South's labor system. Archaeological research on this former fishing village uncovered patterns of dwelling activities, while generating moments to (re)imagine and redefine Black lives by making visible both the hegemonic frames working to dehumanize and the acts of liberation.

ABSTRACT This article focuses on how the Chief Harem Eunuch of the Ottoman Empire was perceived by contemporary foreign and domestic observers from the late sixteenth to the early eighteenth centuries. The aim is to determine not only the extent of the power that the Chief Harem Eunuch wielded but also whether these observations had any bearing on race, since the Chief Harem Eunuch was black with their origins in East Africa for the most part. The article also discusses the difference between the white and black eunuchs in the Ottoman Empire and their respective duties and responsibilities. To this end, the main body of the article closely examines various contemporary foreign and domestic accounts which allude specifically to the role and power of the black eunuchs in general and the Chief Harem Eunuch in particular.

ABSTRACT Sri Lanka's position in the Indian Ocean trade led to the development of port cities. Galle fortress is a paradigm of coloniality, testifying to the interactions of the local and the global. While drawing attention to the Portuguese heritage, overshadowed by the Dutch and the British imprints, this paper also highlights the significance of Galle as an entrêpot for enslaved Africans. An early nineteenth-century manuscript in the British archives lists the names of enslaved Africans running away from the French in Diego Garcia. I argue that the heterogeneous names of the enslaved reveal multiple ethnicities of their owners and the complex world of plantations on which they laboured. Change in status from labourers to soldiers in the Ceylon Regiments typifies a wider demand for African military skills in the Indian subcontinent. The timing of the purchase of enslaved Africans, however, raises questions about the abolition of slavery in the Indian Ocean World.

ABSTRACT In August 1831 in Southampton, Virginia, an enslaved man named Nathaniel “Nat” Turner led one of the largest slave revolts in U.S. history. Turner believed God summoned him to end slavery and he assembled a small group of co-conspirators to plan the rebellion. Over the course of 36 h the rebels visited 23 farms, recruited several dozen followers, and killed 55 whites. Eventually a local militia unit dispersed them, and they never regained momentum. Few scholars have attempted to formally plot the farms the rebels targeted. To address this deficiency, 23 sites directly involved in the uprising, and 126 neighboring parcels have been comprehensively mapped using primary sources. Approximately 108 white men and 380 enslaved men and boys resided in the 80 square mile battlefield. The mapping significantly altered the known contours of the battlefield, prompting a reanalysis of the rebels’ movements, revealing new understandings of their tactics and objectives.

ABSTRACT In the interior of Karnataka state, in the region’s small villages or dense forests, live several thousand Afro-descendants. These Siddis, as they are called, have generally been treated with contempt by non-Siddi Indians living in the surrounding area. The population is divided into three religious groups: Christian, Hindu and Muslim. It was only as part of the struggle against discrimination that formerly entrenched boundaries and senses of belonging started to be challenged and redefined and new perspectives of identification emerged, including the connection with African diasporic networks. This article seeks to analyse the role played by religious factors in Siddi lives, how they have helped or hindered the struggle to obtain specific rights, and how the population has been affected in this process. Hence, the relationship between religion and caste and between religion and “race” will also be explored.

ABSTRACT Throughout the southern United States, enslavers issued weekly rations to the people they enslaved. While the types and amount of food varied across time and from region to region, there has not yet been a detailed study of rationing practices across the South. This article presents the first such study, exploring differences in the food Southern enslavers issued from the 1720s to the 1860s. It does so using a dataset of 596 quotes from 568 accounts by 533 formerly enslaved people, enslavers, travelers, and white abolitionists. Trends in these accounts show that weekly rations became larger and increasingly diverse throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and that important regional differences gave way to more uniform rationing practices throughout most of the South during the 1850s–1860s.

ABSTRACT Since the nineteenth century, the construction of a white identity linked to Europe in Argentina has invisibilized Indigenous and African ancestry, denying and silencing non-European memories and ethnicities. In the province of Entre Ríos in the Rio de la Plata littoral, a border region since the colonial times, the discourse aimed at Europeanisation promoted the idea of a whitening process. This idea ignored the importance of the cultural constructs of Afro-descendant, Indigenous, and mestizo populations. The interdisciplinary research carried out in this territory contributes to the knowledge of the regional Afro-descendant past and present. I present the results of surveys and excavations around a cemetery and rural Afro-descendant dwellings. When put in dialogue with current memories and oralities, these results contribute to reinterpret and make visible the ontologies of African roots present in the mid-twentieth century. This revitalizes and provides tools for current processes of identity re-emergence.

ABSTRACT Few enslaved burial grounds have been identified throughout the Caribbean, notably on the southeasterly island of Barbados, which was home to one of the densest populations of enslaved peoples from its official settlement in 1627 to Emancipation in 1834. In this paper, we present archival, oral historical, and geophysical data evidencing a burial ground for enslaved and free Barbadians at Holy Cross Church, located on Society Plantation. Situated on the grounds of Christopher Codrington’s seventeenth-century estate, which was later gifted to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, this burial ground, and its associated archival record, sheds light on proselytization efforts and burial practices on the island shortly before and after Emancipation. We present evidence of the location of burial grounds for Afro-Barbadians who chose the Christian rite of burial. We then offer alternatives to excavation that can properly honor and respect the individuals interred at the site.