Home-grown slaves: women, reproduction, and the abolition of the slave trade, Jamaica 1788-1807

Once the British transatlantic slave trade came under abolitionists' scrutiny in 1788, West Indian slaveholders had to consider alternative methods of obtaining well-needed laborers. This article examines changes in enslaved women's working lives as planters sought to increase birth rates to replenish declining laboring populations. By focusing more on variances in work assignment and degrees of punishment rather than their absence, this article establishes that enslaved women in Jamaica experienced a considerable shift in their work responsibilities and their subjection to discipline as slaveholders sought to capitalize on their abilities to reproduce. Enslaved women's reproductive capabilities were pivotal for slavery and the plantation economy's survival once legal supplies from Africa were discontinued.     

African metallurgy in the Atlantic world

This paper examines the history of African metallurgy in the era of Atlantic trade. It reports on excavations at the John Reeder foundry site in St Thomas, Jamaica. The transfer of African technologies to the Caribbean reveals the plantation economy's dependence on African technical expertise, not merely slave labour. The comprehensive focus on the Atlantic world also informs archaeological investigations of African-European interaction in West Central Africa. The complexity of Atlantic technological history is characterized by a diverse range of dynamic interactions, rather than the inevitable decline of Africanderived systems. Only by identifying processes as well as products of African technological interaction will it be possible fully to reconstruct the forging of the African past.

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Résumé Cet article examine l'histoire de la métallurgie africaine à l'ère du commerce atlantique. Il rend compte des excavations au site de la fonderie John Reeder, à St Thomas, en Jamaïque. Le transfert des technologies africaines aux Antilles révèle à quel point l'économie de plantation dépendait de l'expertise technique africaine, et pas seulement de l'esclavage. L'accent placé sur le monde atlantique inspire aussi les recherches archéologiques sur l'interaction afro-européenne à l'ouest de l'Afrique centrale. La complexité de l'histoire technologique atlantique est caractérisée par une gamme diverse d'interactions dynamiques, plutôt que par l'inévitable déclin des systèmes africains dérivés. Ce n'est qu'en identifiant les processus aussi bien que les produits de l'interaction technologique africaine qu'il sera possible de reconstruire complètement l'élaboration du passé africain.

     

Cleaning up down South: Supermarkets,ethical trade and African horticulture

Supermarkets in Great Britain have joined the country's Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) in order to demonstrate their commitment to social welfare and environmental standards in their supply chains. They have been particularly concerned to enforce ethical as well as food safety standards in the African horticultural industry, which has historically depended on cheap labour to produce high-value vegetables. The supermarkets' 'ethical turn' appears to signal an important change from forms of commodity fetishism that obscured exploitative relations of food production in the South. This paper, however, argues that in an era of high food anxiety for both retailers and consumers, ethical standards are themselves fetishized. It also shows how the effort to impose such standards on Zambia's horticultural export industry resembles the colonial 'hygienic mission', and faces a similar contradiction.     

Southern African glass beads: chemistry,glass sources and patterns of trade

Three-hundred-and-sixty glass beads from 19 archaeological sites in southern Africa dating between about the 8th and 16th centuries AD were analyzed using LA-ICP-MS, determining 47 chemical elements. The eight different bead series, previously defined on morphological characteristics, possess different glass chemistries. Some bead series were made from plant-ash glasses, others from soda-alumina glasses. Zhizo series beads of the late 1st millennium AD were probably made from Iranian glass. Later bead series were made of glass probably manufactured in South Asia, though there are changes through time in both South Asian glass recipes and bead morphologies.     

Heat, sex, and sugar: pregnancy and childbearing in the slave quarters

This article examines the dynamics of slave fecundity in the antebellum South and analyzes the relationship between the planters' labor requirements and pregnancy on large sugar estates in nineteenth-century Louisiana. In contrast to the cotton states, where the slave population grew, bondspeople in Louisiana's sugar world experienced natural population decrease. This derived in part from imbalanced sex ratios, but as this article explores, it also occurred because of the punishing nature of sugar production that taxed slave women in distinct ways over the entire year. As this article shows, conceptions peaked during the annual harvest season but collapsed at other times because of nutritional stress, overwork, heat, and exhaustion. Addressing the seasonality of slave childbirths, the article posits that workload combined with climatic, ecological, hormonal, nutritional, and lactation factors ultimately shaped the reproductive ecology of American slavery.     

Celestine V,Boniface VIII and the authority of parliament

During the troubled pontificates of Celestine V and Boniface VIII, publicists argued that because general councils of the Church represented the whole congregation of the faithful, they had the power to remove a pope found guilty of crimes ranging from obdurate heresy to personal insufficiency. In 1327, Isabella and Mortimer based much of the justification for their deposition of Edward II on these newly popularized ideas. Nevertheless, since these theories were for them very much rationalizations of the moment, they were quickly abandoned, with the result that Edward III's parliaments look little different from Edward I's, though in more mature form. In 1399, however, Henry IV was forced to rely on the precedent of 1327 when supplanting Richard II. Because the then-prevalent conciliar theories generated by the great schism gave even greater immediacy to the ones which had explained that first deposition, and because Henry's approach was many times to be imitated in the depositions of the fifteenth century, parliament began to take on the character of a corpus mysticum, one which could speak with the authority not just of the king, but of God and the realm. This background may shed light on some of the reasons for Henry VIII's success in using parliamentary statute to break with Rome, and it may even have contributed to some of the parliamentary positions expressed during the seventeenth-century struggles with the crown.     

Celestine V,Boniface VIII and the authority of parliament

During the troubled pontificates of Celestine V and Boniface VIII, publicists argued that because general councils of the Church represented the whole congregation of the faithful, they had the power to remove a pope found guilty of crimes ranging from obdurate heresy to personal insufficiency. In 1327, Isabella and Mortimer based much of the justification for their deposition of Edward II on these newly popularized ideas. Nevertheless, since these theories were for them very much rationalizations of the moment, they were quickly abandoned, with the result that Edward III's parliaments look little different from Edward I's, though in more mature form. In 1399, however, Henry IV was forced to rely on the precedent of 1327 when supplanting Richard II. Because the then-prevalent conciliar theories generated by the great schism gave even greater immediacy to the ones which had explained that first deposition, and because Henry's approach was many times to be imitated in the depositions of the fifteenth century, parliament began to take on the character of a corpus mysticum, one which could speak with the authority not just of the king, but of God and the realm. This background may shed light on some of the reasons for Henry VIII's success in using parliamentary statute to break with Rome, and it may even have contributed to some of the parliamentary positions expressed during the seventeenth-century struggles with the crown.