Atlantic Slave Trade: Cultural Continuity and Hybridity

Cultural Continuity and Hybridity

Required:
 Michael A. Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South (1998), Ch. 8.
 John Thornton, Africans and Afro-Americans in the Atlantic World, Ch. 8.
 Judith Carney, “Out of Africa: Colonial Rice History in the Black Atlantic.” BB
> “AHR Exchange: The Question of Black Rice,” AHR 115, no. 1 (Feb. 2010).
Recommended:
 Sidney Mintz and Richard Price, The Birth of African-American Culture (1976).
 Peter Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina.
 Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of African Creole Culture in the 18th Century.

To Think About ~ How did these regions differ in their demographic composition and cultural character from other regions we’ve studied thus far? How convincing is Carney’s interpretation of how slaves’ knowledge of African rice cultivation transferred to the Low Country?



Slaves and Free Blacks in the North

Required:
 Ira Berlin and Leslie M. Harris, Slavery in New York, (2005), Ch. 1-3.
 Susan Klepp, “Seasoning and Society: Racial Differences in Mortality in Eighteenth Century Philadelphia,” pp. 473-502. BB
Recommended:
 Leslie M. Harris, In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863 (2003).
 Gary B. Nash, Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia’s Black Community, 1720-1840 (1988).
 Shane White, Somewhat More Independent: The End of Slavery in New York City, 1770-1810 (1991).

To Think About ~ How do these historians broaden your understanding of slavery’s role in the North? How do they counter popular conceptions of slavery as a predominately Southern and rural institution? What factors contributed to the gradual demise of Northern slavery?