Genocide, Narrative, and Indigenous Exile from the Caribbean Archipelago

Newton On the importance of The Carib-Garifuna survival

CLACS @ NYU

This spring’s colloquium series Whither the Caribbean? Critical Perspectives on History, Politics, and Culture opened with a talk by Melanie Newton, Associate Professor of History at the University of Toronto.  Newton specializes in the social and cultural history of the Caribbean and the history of slavery, gender, and emancipation in the Atlantic World.

Newton presented her paper “The Race Leapt at Sauteurs”: Genocide, Narrative, and Indigenous Exile from the Caribbean Archipelago, which explores the history of Garifuna people (Afro-indigenous descendants of the people of the ‘Caribbee’ islands) between 1492 and the eighteenth century. Her objective was to demonstrate that the Lesser Antilles’s histories of enslavement and colonization fit the 1951 United Nations definition of genocide as an attempt to “destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.” To do so, she took into account three acts of annihilationist violence committed by the Spanish in…

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The Great African Slave Revolt of 1825: Cuba and the Fight for Freedom in Matanzas – by Barcia, Manuel – Heuman – 2015 – Bulletin of Latin American Research – Wiley Online Library

Allow me to bring your attention to Gad Heuman’s review of Manuel Barcia’s book. He writes: “Barcia’s argument about the role of Africans who in 1825 were seeking an end to their own enslavement rather than abolishing the slave system, provides an important critique of Eugene Genovese’s thesis. More importantly, Barcia has provided a fascinating and richly documented account of a rebellion that, in his view, was an extension of West African warfare in a Cuban setting.”

The Great African Slave Revolt of 1825: Cuba and the Fight for Freedom in Matanzas – by Barcia, Manuel – Heuman – 2015 – Bulletin of Latin American Research – Wiley Online Library.

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Review of Évelyne Trouillot’s “The Infamous Rosalie”

Sepinwall makes me want to read “Rosalie.” I appreciate how she relates it to the Holocaust survival accounts. “Rosalie” should accompany me to the classroom.

Another work that is also a scholarly incursion outside of academic writing is Rafe Blaufarb’s Inhuman traffick: the international struggle against the transatlantic slave trade: a graphic history.

Repeating Islands

“If This is a Woman: Evelyne Trouillot’s The Infamous Rosalie and the Lost Stories of New-World Slavery,” a review by Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall of Évelyne Trouillot, The Infamous Rosalie (trans. by M.A. Salvodon, foreword by Edwidge Danticat, Lincoln: The University of Nebraska Press, 2013, 132 pp.) appeared in Fiction and Film for French Historians.

You can access the review at

http://h-france.net/fffh/classics/if-this-is-a-woman-evelyne-trouillots-the-infamous-rosalie-and-the-lost-stories-of-new-world-slavery (Fiction and Film for French Historians,Volume 5, Issue 4, February 2015)

Original French edition: Rosalie l’Infâme, Paris: Dapper, 2003 and Port-au-Prince: Éditions Presses Nationales d’Haïti, 2007

Our thanks to Peter Jordens for bringing this item to our attention.

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Fischer and Blackburn on French abolitionism

Sybille Fischer’s contention with Robin Blackburn in two block quotes:

Before considering two recent alternative proposals to this view, it is worth pointing out that from a political perspective decidedly different from that of Ozouf, we come across a similar phenomenon. In his monumental study of antislavery between 1776 and 1848, Blackburn comments on Brissot a number of times, usually linking Brissot’s stance on slavery to his “new forward policy which would take France to war in Europe and would reassert metropolitan authority in the Antilles.” 16 Never mind that Brissot had written pamphlets like “Réflexions sur l’admission aux États généraux des députés de Saint-Domingue” (Reflections about the admission of deputies from Saint Domingue to the General Estates) where he advocates a strong autonomy for the possessions outre-mer and says, among other things: “It is impossible that in the whirlwind that sweeps everything toward liberty, the substantial colonies alone remain attached to bodies that are two thousand leagues away from them, and that they should consent to be governed by those.” This proposition raises for Brissot the problem of slavery, since immediate autonomy would have given all the power to the planters. Unsurprisingly, Brissot could not figure out a solution that would have guaranteed both abolition of slavery and autonomy, and he appears to have contradicted himself at various points. Whatever his insights or failings may have been, however, it is somewhat surprising that Blackburn presents Brissot’s view on slavery as unequivocally linked to French colonialism, while also diminishing his import for the slavery question as a whole. At one point we even read the following: Paradoxically by the time the Convention decreed the abolition of colonial slavery in 1794 the Amis des Noirs no longer functioned and most of its members no longer played a role. It is almost as if enlightened abolitionism was as much part of the old order as the exclusif and the acquis de Guinée. Only once this whole superstructure was in ruins could slave emancipation be adopted in the metropolis. 18 No mention here of the fact that one of the leading proponents of abolition, Brissot, did not play a role because he had found his end on the guillotine. No mention either of the fact that the Amis des Noirs and their Girondin supporters had been involved in a publicity war with the representatives of the planters, who, out of hatred of Brissot, had thrown their support behind Robespierre (with whom they shared nothing, of course, except hatred of Brissot), and that the demise of the Girondins has to be counted at least in part as a victory for the planters.

Fischer, Sibylle (2004-04-09). Modernity Disavowed: Haiti and the Cultures of Slavery in the Age of Revolution (John Hope Franklin Center Book) (Kindle Locations 4183-4203). Duke University Press. Kindle Edition.

For some reason, Brissot appears to be an extremely uncomfortable figure in the story. Whatever Blackburn might have in mind in this somewhat obscure paragraph— the vague “as if “ clearly signals an element of speculation and hesitance here— the upshot seems to be that slavery is a premodern phenomenon that vanishes only when feudalism has dissolved. Although this suggestion is quite inconsistent with the overall argument Blackburn pursues in The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, the issue of the Girondins appears to push him to retreat to an economic determinism that is otherwise absent from the book. For the Girondins, antislavery was by and large a strategic matter in the attempt to expand and consolidate the French Empire. In other words, Blackburn locates in the Girondin faction a universalism of liberty that turns into imperialism— an argument we are familiar with from those who, unlike Blackburn, want to discard the whole project of an emancipatory modernity as an imperialism in disguise. Instead of confronting the underlying problem of how to resolve the potential contradictions between a universalist ideal of individual liberty, popular sovereignty, and national sovereignty head-on, Blackburn seems to run away from the problem by giving a one-sided account of the Girondin position in which antislavery becomes a mere posture.

Fischer, Sibylle (2004-04-09). Modernity Disavowed: Haiti and the Cultures of Slavery in the Age of Revolution (John Hope Franklin Center Book) (Kindle Locations 4203-4213). Duke University Press. Kindle Edition.

Modernity Disavowed: Haiti and the Cultures of Slavery in the Age of Revolution

Fischer, Sibylle. 2004. Modernity disavowed: Haiti and the cultures of slavery in the age of revolution. Durham: Duke University Press.

Look at the sister post.

Sibylle Fischer’s book, Modernity Disavowed, is for the long distances. At eleven years after its publication in 2004, it is still a force in the field, shaping discussions, and inspiring articles, books and dissertations. It is not a historical monograph per se. Instead, it is an intellectual work that draws from literature, history, philosophy and psychoanalysis (some reviewers have pointed out that it relies on history more than on other disciplines).  It also uses a transnational approach to tackling hard questions about the post-revolutionary period in three major Caribbean nations: Haiti, Cuba and the Dominican Republic. Emancipation and nation-building are the book’s major concerns.  A scholarly exchange (in Spanish) over the book, which was published in the Caribbean Studies, 33:2 (Jul. – Dec., 2005), had Clevis Headley and Neil Roberts raising questions about the issues of “Modernity” and “Disavowed,” and then Fischer was invited to respond.

Read an interview that Gina Ulysse gave to Fischer.

Le 1er. Juillet 1801, Toussaint-L’Ouverture, chargés des pouvoirs du peuple d’Haïty et auspices du Tout-puissante, proclame la Gouverneur général, assisté des mandataires légalement convoqués, en présence et sous les Constitution de la république d’Haïty / lith. de Villain, r. de Sèvres No. 11.

Bibliography:

Fischer, Sibylle. 2004. Modernity Disavowed: Haiti and the cultures of slavery in the age of revolution. Durham: Duke University Press.

Two chapters available online:

Chapter 11

Chapter 13

Other reviews

David Geggus

Ashli White

Robert Lawless

Kenneth Maxwell

Kaiama L. Glover

Sarah Franklin

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The Tupac Amaru Rebellion

Charles F. Walker has written the latest book on the Tupac Amaru’s Rebellion, and it is relevant to the history of the Atlantic World and the Caribbean because it explains well the complex colonial world of the Americas and situates the event within the broader context of hemispheric relations (The Americas to Africa and Europe). Additionally, it serves as an example of a powerful synthesis, modern use of archival material and of a lucid prose that has adopted terms and imagines from current cyber culture and global popular culture (i.e., reference to Hollywood and terms like “out-of-sync”).

The link for the Zotero reference (an account is required; it is free)

The link for the Mendeley reference (an account and Mendeley Desktop installed on your computer are required; both are free)

Walker, Charles F. The Tupac Amaru Rebellion.Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014.

See Elliot’s full and helpful review in the New York Review of Books

Below is Feinberg’s short review:

The Tupac Amaru Rebellion by Charles F. Walker. Belknap Press, 2014, 376 pp. $29.95.

Empires that try to coerce their colonial subjects into financing their overseas ambitions do so at their own peril, as both George III of the United Kingdom and Charles III of Spain learned. In Peru in 1780, anger over rising Spanish taxes and the many abuses of the Spanish colonial authorities spurred a Jesuit-educated, middle-class, indigenous merchant who called himself Tupac Amaru–claiming to descend from the last ruler of the Incan Empire–to organize an armed rebellion with the assistance of his wife, Micaela Bastidas. But as Walker explains, the Spanish authorities quickly and ruthlessly quelled the indigenous uprising: Tupac Amaru lacked organizational skills and a clear vision and made major tactical errors, including failing to seize the strategically vital city of Cuzco. During the course of the ethnically polarized struggle, the rebels were unable to win enough public support to survive, and the powerful Catholic Church sided with the colonial authorities. Superior Spanish firepower and brutality proved decisive, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 100,000 people. To succeed, anticolonial rebellions typically require assistance from geopolitical rivals. But for reasons that Walker does not fully explore, the British showed no interest in aiding Tupac Amaru’s challenge to the United Kingdom’s rivals in Spain.

Feinberg, Richard

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2014 Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.
http://www.cfr.org/
Source Citation
Feinberg, Richard. “The Tupac Amaru Rebellion.” Foreign Affairs Sept.-Oct. 2014. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 28 Nov. 2014.