Bøger i Carolina Lowcountry and the Atlantic World serien

This collection of essays shed new light on how the various peoples of the Carolinas responded to the tumultuous changes shaping the geographic space that the British called Carolina during the Proprietary period (1663-1719). In doing so, the essays focus attention on some of the most important and dramatic watersheds in the history of British colonisation in the New World.

Working on the Dock of the Bay explores the history of waterfront labor and laborers-black and white, enslaved and free, native and immigrant-in Charleston, South Carolina, between the American Revolution and Civil War. Michael D. Thompson explains how a predominantly enslaved workforce laid the groundwork for the creation of a robust and effectual association of dockworkers, most of whom were black, shortly after emancipation. In revealing these wharf laborers' experiences, Thompson's book contextualizes the struggles of contemporary southern working people. Like their postbellum and present-day counterparts, stevedores and draymen laboring on the wharves and levees of antebellum cities-whether in Charleston or New Orleans, New York or Boston, or elsewhere in the Atlantic World-were indispensable to the flow of commodities into and out of these ports. Despite their large numbers and the key role that waterfront workers played in these cities' premechanized, labor-intensive commercial economies, too little is known about who these laborers were and the work they performed. Though scholars have explored the history of dockworkers in ports throughout the world, they have given little attention to waterfront laborers and dock work in the pre-Civil War American South or in any slave society. Aiming to remedy that deficiency, Thompson examines the complicated dynamics of race, class, and labor relations through the street-level experiences and perspectives of workingmen and sometimes workingwomen. Using this workers'-eye view of crucial events and developments, Working on the Dock of the Bay relocates waterfront workers and their activities from the margins of the past to the center of a new narrative, reframing their role from observers to critical actors in nineteenth-century American history. Organized topically, this study is rooted in primary source evidence including census, tax, court, and death records; city directories and ordinances; state statutes; wills; account books; newspapers; diaries; letters; and medical journals.

Examines development of Black Radical antislavery movements in the Atlantic World. Essays focus on Denmark Vesey and several other rebellion events, including the forcible rescue of African Americans being trafficked within the United States.

The presence of African influence and tradition in the Americas has long been recognized in art, music, language, agriculture, and religion. T. J. Desch-Obi explores another cultural continuity that is as old as eighteenth-century slave settlements in South America and as contemporary as hip-hop culture. In this thorough survey of the history of African martial arts techniques, Desch-Obi maps the translation of numerous physical combat techniques across three continents and several centuries to illustrate how these practices evolved over time and are still recognizable in American culture today. Some of these art traditions were part of African military training while others were for self-defense and spiritual discipline.Grounded in historical and cultural anthropological methodologies, Desch-Obi's investigation traces the influence of well-delineated African traditions on long-observed but misunderstood African and African American cultural activities in North America, Brazil, and the Caribbean. He links the Brazilian martial art capoeira to reports of slave activities recorded in colonial and antebellum North America. Likewise Desch-Obi connects images of the kalenda African stick-fighting techniques to the Haitian Revolution. Throughout the study Desch-Obi examines the ties between physical mastery of these arts and changing perceptions of honor.Including forty-five illustrations, this rich history of the arrival and dissemination of African martial arts in the Atlantic world offers a new vantage for furthering our understanding of the powerful influence of enslaved populations on our collective social history.