Atlantic Trade Research Articles

Ellen Craft's “Spanish” Masquerade: Racially (Mis)Reading Hispanicism in Her Cross-Dressing, Feigning Disability, and Running to Sea

An overlooked advertisement, entitled “An Incident at the South” (1849), calls attention to Ellen Craft's Spanish masquerade during her 1848 escape from American slavery. The author underscores her masculine costume, feigning disability, running to sea, and “a darkness of complexion that betokened Spanish extraction.” Despite contemporary criticism, the advertisement asserts Spanish-ness in the production history of Ellen's escape; thus the essay considers a reinterpretation of Ellen's transnational masquerades by reexamining the advertisement (1849) and in relation to her portrait (1850) and slave narrative (1860). Of emphasis is a history of hemisphere conflict – over land, at the borderlands, and at sea – during Anglo-American expansion, Spanish/Mexican displacement, and antebellum enslavement. Ellen's story is also contextualized with rising literary traditions of the mid-nineteenth century.

‘Wider than the realm of England’: the Hosack family heritage, Atlantic slavery and casting Mary, Queen of Scots for the nation

In 1871 the Scottish-born magistrate John Hosack (1809–87) was described as ‘the chivalrous and most recent defender’ of Mary, Queen of Scots. After writing a popular historical account of her life, he had presented a plaster cast bust of her Westminster effigy to London’s National Portrait Gallery, which it then used to create an electrotype sculpture with the help of Elkington & Co. This article interrogates the ‘value’ of this sculpture as a cultural heritage object by retracing its history. It places Hosack’s desire to replicate and commemorate Scottish heritage alongside his family ties to Jamaica, including the parallel life of his half-brother William and the wealth John derived from his father’s sugar profits, which relied on African enslavement. It argues the importance of understanding how such legacies enabled individuals to participate in cultural philanthropy in the Victorian period, which simultaneously distanced them from their Atlantic pasts. It also considers how, in its transformation into an electrotype, Hosack’s cast became part of a wider effort by museums and galleries to replicate national heritage using manufacturing methods indebted to the industrial economy intertwined with the British Empire. Sculpture offered a powerful medium through which to fortify national history, but its commemorative capacity can, and should, be unpicked to better understand British legacies of enslavement and colonialism.

Abstract A091: County-level analysis of the link between historical slavery and prostate cancer incidence

Abstract Background: Black individuals with prostate cancer in the US experience the widest racial disparity in both cancer incidence and mortality when compared to the average population. These differences are driven by the intersection of race and a wide range of structural and social determinants of health and equity. Structural and social inequities can drive disproportionate and adverse exposure to violence, poverty, and physical and emotional stress—among other exposures—which may impact biologic risk, health behaviors, and healthcare access. We hypothesize that the impacts of these structural and social determinants are rooted in historical events that continue to inform present day prostate cancer events and outcomes. Methods: This is an ecological study assessing county-level data from 13 states in the Southeastern US. Data on prostate cancer incidence and mortality (NCI: 2018), population estimates (CDC: 2015-2019), structural and social determinants (AHRQ: 2018), and the percentage enslaved individuals (NHGIS: 1860) were obtained. County data were linked across datasets using federal identifiers. Our primary exposure was the legacy of US slavery represented by the percentage of enslaved individuals by county. Random variables such as water access and rail transport (NHGIS: 1860) were used as controls. Variable selection for our multivariable model was informed by a directed acyclical graph that defined the causal relationship between historical slavery and present-day prostate cancer outcomes. Our primary dependent variable was prostate cancer counts per 100,000. We utilized Poisson log-linear regression models to estimate the difference in cancer counts by 10% increase of slave population by county (NHGIS: 1860). Results: Our data included over 3000 counties. In our fully adjusted model, a 10% increase in county slave population was associated with a 1.5% increase in prostate cancer incidence (p<0.001). In this same model, Black race, and age (> 50 years) were associated with a 77% and over 300% increase in cancer incidence (p<0.001). Among Black men, every 10% increase in county slave population was associated with a 1.1% increase in cancer incidence (p < 0.05). Among White men, every 10% increase in county slave population was associated with a 1.5% increase in cancer incidence (p<0.0001). Our adjusted models demonstrated significant increased associations between prostate cancer incidence and education, access to food, segregation index, and social vulnerability index. Conclusions: Our results indicate that a history of slavery is significantly associated with increased county-level prostate cancer incidence for all men in the US, irrespective of their race/ethnicity. The effect of historic slavery persists even after adjusting for present day structural/social determinants of equity and health. These findings demonstrate the importance in acknowledging and incorporating historical inequities and context in evaluating present days inequities in prostate cancer risk, care, and outcomes. Citation Format: Maheetha C. Bharadwaj, Sarah C. Holt, Hari Iyer, John Gore, Tim Rebbeck, Yaw Nyame. County-level analysis of the link between historical slavery and prostate cancer incidence [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 16th AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; 2023 Sep 29-Oct 2;Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2023;32(12 Suppl):Abstract nr A091.

"I had resolved that I would be virtuous, though I was a slave": Enslaved Women, Feminine Virtue and the Sexual Economy of US Slavery

Abstract: This article traces the powerful currency of notions of feminine virtue among enslaved women in the antebellum US South. Early nineteenth-century white American ideas of "female virtue" were limited to white womanhood and legitimized US white supremacist and patriarchal imperialism. Exploited for their reproductive and productive labor, enslaved women were denied the assumption of feminine virtue. Rather, they were positioned at the center of slavery's sexual economy. Yet, enslaved women developed a transnational and multifaceted understanding of feminine virtue that they enlisted and passed on to their daughters as a form of subversion. This article argues that enslaved women's concerns with and actions around virtue reveals a strategy through which they struggled for sexual autonomy.

Exploring human rights, racial identity, and racial solidarity with Ghanaian college students: critical role of the transatlantic slave trade and slavery

Exploring human rights, racial identity, and racial solidarity with Ghanaian college students: critical role of the transatlantic slave trade and slavery

The genomic footprint of social stratification in admixing American populations.

Cultural and socioeconomic differences stratify human societies and shape their genetic structure beyond the sole effect of geography. Despite mating being limited by sociocultural stratification, most demographic models in population genetics often assume random mating. Taking advantage of the correlation between sociocultural stratification and the proportion of genetic ancestry in admixed populations, we sought to infer the former process in the Americas. To this aim, we define a mating model where the individual proportions of the genome inherited from Native American, European, and sub-Saharan African ancestral populations constrain the mating probabilities through ancestry-related assortative mating and sex bias parameters. We simulate a wide range of admixture scenarios under this model. Then, we train a deep neural network and retrieve good performance in predicting mating parameters from genomic data. Our results show how population stratification, shaped by socially constructed racial and gender hierarchies, has constrained the admixture processes in the Americas since the European colonization and the subsequent Atlantic slave trade.

"An Excellent Hunter": Environmental Creolization and the Paths to Freedom in Nineteenth-Century Amazonia

Abstract: If slave societies in the Atlantic world were based on "creole ecologies," that is, on bringing enslaved African workers to the Americas to cultivate an Asian crop (sugar), then how would those workers' acquisition of environmental knowledge alter such a project? In this article I argue that a fruitful response to that question lies in the concept of environmental creolization: the process of familiarization with New World environments that enslaved people from Africa developed upon arriving in the Americas. After tracing its origins in the convergence between the historiographies of transatlantic slavery and environmental history, I discuss the trajectories of three Black individuals living in nineteenth-century Amazonia who used their knowledge of local environments to carve better working conditions inside the institution, and to slowly exit it. Their cases not only illustrate the centrality of environmental knowledge in the tropical and forested areas of the Americas, but also illuminate how a successful environmental creolization greatly impacted contests over autonomy and freedom throughout the Atlantic world.

The African Presence in Iberian Art*

The African presence in early modern Iberia increased with the emergence of the transatlantic slave trade following the discoveries of the Americas from the middle of the fifteenth century. This article focuses on the visual representation of Africans in the Kingdom of Portugal and the Spanish Kingdoms of Aragon and Castile until the seventeenth century. It focuses on the depiction of urban enslaved and liberated Africans in the main cities of Lisbon and Seville, in religious compositions, as the most popular Adoration of the Magi and the violent Castilian iconography of The Miracle of the Black Leg and in portraiture.

From Syncretism to Hybridity: Transformations in African-derived American Religions: An Introduction

Abstract In this volume, we bring together research on African derived Religions in Latin America and African American Religions in the USA. Theoretically, the concepts of hybridity and syncretism are discussed, in the introduction as well as in the papers included. The papers featured deal with Brazilian Umbanda, Cuban Santería, US African Black Hebrew Israelites, the Five Percenter movement (an offspring of the Nation of Islam), and one single person, Robert T. Browne, an activist in the Black Nationalist movement. In the religions covered – that are an outcome of the historical circumstances of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade – elements taken from West and Central African traditions, European Christianity, and Kardecian Spiritism blend to new forms of religious movements. This being the “fundamental” transformation of religion addressed here, some essays in the volume also look at the further transformation of those traditions in a “glocalized” world.

Power and Prestige in Black Diplomacy

This article builds on the prevalent discussions of Western and Asian prestigious states to provide a distinct account of power and prestige in black diplomacy through the lens of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (T-AST), colonization, and neocolonialism. The principal argument is twofold namely; that T-AST and colonization have contributed significantly to prestige deficit of African states and contemporary forms of racism and discrimination targeted at blacks in the diaspora. Second, the paper argues that the pursuit of prestige recovery by African states, notably through attainment of political independence, has been undermined by neocolonialism. The analysis helps to fill a major gap in the literature with respect to the limited attention paid to African states and black communities in the rejuvenated discussion of prestige in International Relations. The policy recommendation is that power and prestige need to be redefined along the lines of genuine respect and cooperation between African societies and foreign powers.

When stories are not the same: power and powerlessness in a Nigerian Museum

ABSTRACT In this paper, we provide an alternative reading to one of the most fundamental claims of the exhibitionary complex, which argues that museums are symbols of power, greatness, wealth, and progress. On the contrary, we adopt Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann's (1996) concept of social constructionism and Star & Griesemer's concept of the border object and infrastructure to deconstruct the possibility of the fixity of meaning in Bennett's argument about the exhibitionary complex. We therefore argue that the many museums in Africa are slightly different. Rather than being a symbol of the people's power, wealth, and greatness, they reflect powerlessness and pain, which characterise their history. With histories such as the Transatlantic slave trade and British imperialism, which lasted through the 17th and 19th centuries, we discuss the Badagry Black Heritage Museum as a site not exclusively about power and greatness. The paper concludes that the defining characteristic of museums is their diversity, which offers multiple perspectives on their functionality, significance, and theoretical underpinnings. While Bennett's idea is laudable, there is a need to open up the concept of accommodating the specific features of museums across the world and develop new concepts or ideologies that reflect them.

‘Slaves’ and ‘Slave Owners’ or ‘Enslaved People’ and ‘Enslavers’?

Abstract Studies of slavery increasingly refer to ‘enslaved people’ rather than ‘slaves’, and, to a lesser extent, to ‘enslavers’ rather than ‘slave owners’. This trend began with scholarship in the United States on plantation slavery but has spread to other academic publications. Yet ‘slave’ continues to be widely used, indicating not everyone is aware of the change or agrees with it. Despite this, few historians have justified their terminology. After surveying the extent of the preference for ‘enslaved person’, I discuss arguments for and against it. Supporters of using ‘enslaved person’ argue that this term emphasises that a person was forced into slavery – but this emphasis means it is less able to accommodate early medieval cases where people sold themselves into slavery. The accompanying preference for ‘enslaver’ over ‘master’ obscures dynamics of ownership and manumission. In addition, ‘enslaved people’ and ‘enslaver’ do not necessarily bring us away from the perspective of slaveholders to the perspective of slaves. Nor are they essential for readers to appreciate the humanity of slaves. Overall, historians should use this issue as an opportunity to reflect on the extent to which scholarship of transatlantic slavery should set the terms of debate for slavery studies in general.

An Atlantic Slave Trade Stretching from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean and Beyond

Abstract The study of the trans-Atlantic slave trade is becoming increasingly sophisticated, diverse, and international. Challenging prevailing stereotypes about the dominance of northern European business interests, García Montón’s study shows the persistent vigor of Genoa’s merchant community in this examination of the asiento system that emerged in the mid-seventeenth century and continued into the mid-eighteenth century. Along the way, he also illuminates the slave trade’s connections to many other forms of trade, legitimate and illegitimate, on both sides of the Atlantic. Impressed with his research and approach, these six reviewers discuss its implications for a variety of international contexts, from Central Europe to Italy, Iberia, England, and the Caribbean, including the profitability of the asiento trade and the many different people who participated in and benefitted from it on both sides of the Atlantic. It emerges that the asiento was about much more than just the slave trade. Its profits and trading networks helped integrate the different imperial economies with footholds in the Caribbean. Drawing on the wealth of new scholarship from these different historiographies, they raise some questions about elements that García Montón did not pursue fully in the book. He responds with additional research to address some of those issues, while also calling for more research on the interconnected “asiento worlds” that are one of the most fascinating and unanticipated results of his research.

Tensions on the Railway: West Indians, Colonial Hierarchies, and the Language of Racial Unity in West Africa

AbstractBeginning in 1900, colonial railway departments in Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, and Nigeria began turning to the Caribbean for skilled labor instead of hiring African workers. When West Indian railway workers began to arrive in West Africa, Africans were indignant, and they voiced their objections in newspapers. West Indians sometimes responded to these grievances with calls for racial unity, yet their appeals were inflected with colonial hierarchies. Such exchanges were centered on railway jobs, but they were also embedded in larger discussions about empire, race, and the legacies of the transatlantic slave trade. I argue that these exchanges reveal the significance of colonial hierarchies and diasporic tensions in the intellectual history of pan-Africanism in early twentieth-century West Africa. The article draws on newspapers and archival research from West Africa, the Caribbean, and the UK.

The Special Tribunal in Martinique: from the history of French colonial justice in the early 19th century

The focus of this article is on the special tribunal, a special judicial body established in the French colony of Martinique in 1803. It was created to carry out criminal repression against black slaves accused of poisoning, arson, stealing boats and pirogues to escape. The main purpose of the study is to determine the legal basis for the organization of a special tribunal in Martinique and to identify its features in relation to the special tribunals that existed in the metropolis from 1801 and 1802. The question of the correlation of these tribunals in the colony and in the metropolis seems to be little studied in historiography. The subject of research in the work is the evolution of the special tribunal during the period of French rule on the island – from the establishment of the court to the loss of control over Martinique by the French in 1809. To work on the topic, documentary materials from the National Archives of overseas France, published legislative acts and acts of ministers of the Napoleonic era, acts of the island administration from the "Code of Martinique" were involved. The study used the method of concrete historical analysis, comparative legal analysis of legal documents and structural and functional analysis of judicial bodies. As a result of the study, it can be concluded that the competence of the Martinique Special Tribunal has changed towards its expansion over three stages in 1803-1809. From an organ of repression exclusively for slaves, it gradually turned into an extraordinary court for slaves and for free people of color, and then for any vagabonds without a place of residence and recognition. Dangerous crimes of a state nature began to belong to his jurisdiction. The comparison of the tribunal with the special tribunals established in the metropolis in 1801 and 1802 does not confirm the full borrowing of judicial law from the metropolis in the organization of the colonial court and testifies in favor of the originality of colonial justice. However, similar features in the composition of these bodies and in the order of judicial procedure allow us to speak about general trends in the development of judicial systems throughout the French Empire, in the metropolis and in the colonies, expressed in the creation of bodies of emergency justice, alternative to courts of general jurisdiction.

Differences between Black and Whites Perspective on the Stono Rebellion

The Stono Rebellion, an early act of rebellion against slavery in America, holds significant historical and cultural importance. This research explores the differing perspectives on the rebellion from Black and white observers, highlighting the diverse interpretations of the event and its implications. The white view portrays the rebellion as an irrational outburst, while the Black perspective emphasizes the rebels political justice and human rights aspirations. By examining contrasting narratives, we gain a nuanced understanding of the complexities of interpreting historical events within systems of inequality and oppression. This analysis sheds light on the resilience and agency of the enslaved Africans, challenging dehumanizing narratives of slavery. The Stono Rebellion serves as a reminder of the universal human desire for freedom and dignity, emphasizing the importance of resistance in the face of oppressive systems. Understanding diverse perspectives on historical events fosters a more comprehensive understanding of the past and its implications for the present and future.

A decolonial look at the past, present and future based on the rescue of memories of visitors to the National History Museum (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

History museums can foster discussions about historical contexts and encourage critical reflections on power relations and values that permeate society, helping to overcome historically constructed prejudices. Knowing the audiences, their perceptions, readings and interpretations, allows the adoption of more efficient communication actions between museums and visitors. Thus, in this qualitative research, we aimed to investigate the memories of the experience of five adult visitors at the National Historical Museum, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, eight months after the visit with their families. The methodology involved the use of a semi-structured interview, with the adoption of the stimulated memory method. The results showed that the exhibition was able to promote long-term impacts, enabling the formation of memorable experiences that favored critical reflections on the part of visitors, mainly on the enslavement of black African populations, slave trade and themes related to the period of the Empire, which still reflect its problems today. It is important for museums to approach historical processes, carrying out adequate contextualization, from a decolonial perspective, which serve to raise awareness, educate and promote a movement to repair and correct the hegemonic narratives perpetuated in society.

Maria Weston Chapman, French Salons, and Transatlantic Abolitionism in the Mid-Nineteenth Century

AbstractThis article examines the idea of anti-slavery sociability as part of a wider analysis of the informal elements of the transatlantic anti-slavery movement. It considers how American abolitionist Maria Weston Chapman drew support for the American anti-slavery cause from French salons during her time spent living in Paris from 1848 to 1855. This case-study highlights how a focus on the informal dimensions of anti-slavery activism illuminates the often underappreciated work of female abolitionists in the transatlantic reform sphere. Through the connections she established with the likes of French writer Victor Hugo and Russian exile Nicholas Tourgueneff at salons in Paris, most notably that of Mary Clarke Mohl on the Rue de Bac, Chapman was able to cultivate European support for abolitionism in myriad ways. This included financial donations, goods to be sold at anti-slavery bazaars, and, perhaps most importantly, testimonies against American slavery from renowned Europeans like Hugo that could be republished in the United States.

Introduction

Abstract In recent years, research on the concept of the European hinterland of the transatlantic slave trade has intensified considerably. We are now much more aware of the general contours of the reciprocal intricacies, interdependencies, and entanglements of most parts of Europe with the colonial world across the Atlantic and the slave trade it entailed. However, we still lack more detailed knowledge of the practices that created, stabilized, and reproduced these connections—or discontinued them. Recent developments in the social sciences have resulted in substantial elaboration of a “theory of practices”, often called “Praxistheorie” in German. By focusing on the microhistorical practices that formed the base of reciprocal connections between the phenomenon of global slavery and central Europe in the eighteenth century, we aim to arrive at insights regarding the structurations of the big picture. We assume that such structurations and their effects amounted in turn to a framework of German entanglements with Atlantic and global slavery during the eighteenth century that shall be illuminated here from different perspectives and in diverse connotations.

The Hinterland of the Holy Roman Empire and the Slave Trade in the Late Eighteenth Century

Abstract Residing in Brussels from 1755, Friedrich Romberg, a native of Hemer near Iserlohn in Westphalia and a friend of Emperor Joseph II, may be an exceptional figure in the line of German slave traders with his intensive involvement in the French colonial empire of the 1770s/80s. However, he can also be seen as an emblematic exponent of a profitable niche in the overall panorama of the Atlantic slave trade—namely, the connection of the German and even Italian textile industries with the Caribbean plantation economies. By examining the trading circuits within Romberg’s freight forwarding company and his textile trade and production, we can extend and praxeologically nuance the concept of the central European “slavery hinterland.”