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The Black Atlantic World
Stephan Palmié
Comprising the western littorals of Africa and Europe and the eastern coastal rim lands of the Americas, the post-Columbian Atlantic world represents a major -- perhaps the most important -- geographical contexts of modern history. While generally recognized as the first theater of European overseas expansion, and often discussed as a backdrop to specific regional histories focusing on either the New World or Africa, it is rarely considered as a total historical configuration. This course not only aims to redress this balance, but offers a perspective that foregrounds the role of non-European, and especially African (or African-descended) historical actors in the making of the Atlantic world. Emphasis will be placed on the development of slave-based plantation agriculture in the New World, the transformations African societies underwent in the course of the slave trade, the development of New World creole societies, and the effects of trade, migration, and empire-building on the European center itself.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS:
Students will be expected to come to class regularly, and to be prepared
to discuss the assigned readings. Grades will be based on both in-class performance,
and outside class requirements. In-class requirements include regular attendance,
active participation in discussions, and a mid-term and final exam based
upon both assigned readings and class-discussion. Outside class requirements
consist in two reports on pertinent films and videos (to be announced in
class). In-class participation will count for 10% of the grade (i.e. a full
letter grade, so do take participation in discussions, or asking questions
seriously); the mid-term exam for 25%; the final take home exam for 35%;
and the outside class reports for 15% each. In addition you will be given
the opportunity of gaining an extra 10% by submitting an optional extra credit
assignment.
Grading System:
0 - 59% F
60 - 69% D
70 - 79% C
80 - 89% B
90 - 100% A
READINGS consist in articles and book-chapters on reserve at MacKeldin Library, second floor (as listed below week by week. PLEASE NOTE: due to the new copyright regulations, you will have to look for essays in edited volumes under the name of the editor(s). Articles available as xerox copies are marked on the syllabus as "copy on reserve". Some of the readings are designated as "optional". This means that specific information contained in these will not form subject of exam questions. BUT: reading them will enhance your understanding of the subject matter, and will thereby help you to succeed in the course.
SYLLABUS
Week 1 -- Introduction
8/30 Why "Black Atlantic World"?
Week 2 -- Beginnings
9/4 Africa and Europe in 1400
Readings: Eric Wolf Europe and the People Without History pp. 24-44;
9/6 Dom Affonso, Columbus, and the early Portuguese South Atlantic
Readings: Philip D. Curtin The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex chs.
1 and 2 (pp. 3-28), Ruth Pike "Sevillan Society in the Sixteenth Century:
Slaves and Freedmen" (copy on reserve);
Week 3 -- The South Atlantic System
9/11 Sugar, Slavery, Colonization
Readings: Philip D. Curtin The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex chs.
6 and 7 (pp. 73-97); Eric Williams Capitalism and Slavery ch. 1 ("The
Origin of Negro Slavery" -- copy on reserve)
9/13 Kinship, War, Commerce
Readings: Walter Rodney "African Slavery and Other Forms of Social Opporession
on the Upper Guinea Coast in the Context of the Atlantic Slave Trade" in:
Joseph Inikori (ed.) Forced Migration; J.D. Fage "Slavery in the Context
of History"in: Joseph Inikori (ed.) Forced Migration;
Optional: Paul Lovejoy Transformations in Slavery ch 1 ("Africa and Slavery").
Week 4 -- The Seventeenth Century
9/18 The Emergence of Racial Slavery: 20 Negroes to Jamestown, and the
world of Anthony Johnson
Readings: Raymond Starr "Historians and the Origins of British North American
Slavery" (copy on reserve); Eric Williams Capitalism and Slavery ch. 2
("The Development of the Slave Trade" -- copy on reserve);
9/20 Saints and Devils: Religious Transformations in the Early Atlantic World
Readings: Solange Alberro "Juan de Morga and Gertrudis de Escobar: Rebellious
Slaves" in: David Sweet and Gary Nash (eds.) Struggle and Survival
in Colonial America; Ruth Behar "Sex and Sin, Witchcraft and the Devil in
Late-Colonial Mexico" (copy on reserve); Wyatt MacGaffey "Dialogues
of the Deaf: Europeans on the Atlantic Coast of Africa" in: Sturt Schwartz
(ed.) Implicit Understandings;
Week 5 -- Predatory States and Merchant Elites
9/25 African Slavery and its Atlantic Transformations
Readings: Philip D. Curtin The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex ch.
3 and 9 (29-45, 113-128),
Optional: Donald Wright African-Americans in the Colonial Era ch. 1 ("Atlantic
Origins").
9/27 Case study: War, Witchcraft and the Production of Slaves
Readings: Philip D. Curtin The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex ch.
10 (129-143); Rosalind Shaw "The Production of Witchcraft/Witchcraft as
Production: Memory, Modernity, and the Slave Trade in Sierra Leone" (copy
on reserve); William Pierson "White Cannibals, Black Martyrs: Fear, Depression
and Religious Faith as Causes of Suicide Among Slaves" (copy on reserve).
Week 6 -- Africa in the Americas
10/2 African States in the Americas?
Readings: Stuart Schwartz Slaves, Peasants, and Rebels ch. 4 ("Rethinking
Palmares: Slave Resistance in Colonial Brazil")
Optional: R.K. Kent "Palmares: An African State in Brazil" in: Richard
Price (ed.) Maroon Societies;
10/4 A Jihad in Bahia?
Readings: Joao Jose Reis and Paulo Moraes Farias "Islam and Slave Resistance
in Bahia, Brazil" (copy on reserve).
Week 7 -- Midterm
10/9 Review
10/11 MIDTERM EXAM
Week 8 -- Careers I
10/16 Ibrahim Hannibal, Jacobus Capitein, Anton Amo, and Angelo Soliman
Readings: Albert Parry "Abram Hannibal, the Favorite of Peter the Great" (copy
on reserve);
10/22 John Kabes, Antera Duke, Anna Kingsely and Ayuba Suleiman
Readings: David Henige "John Kabes of Komenda: An early African Entrepreneur
and State Builder" (copy on reserve); A.J.H. Latham Old Calabar ch. 2
("The Slave Trade at Old Calabar"); Daniel Schafer "Shades of
Freedom: Anna Kingsley in Senegal, Florida, and Haiti" (copy in reserve)
Week 9 -- Careers II
10/23 Signares, Lancados, and Curros: People in Between
Readings: Ira Berlin "From Creole to African: Atlantic Creoles and the
Origin of African-American Society" in Mainland North America (copy
on reserve);
Optional: George E. Brooks, Jr. "The Signares of Saint-Louis and Gorée:
Women Entrepreneurs in Eighteenth Century Senegal" in:Nancy Hafkin and
Edna Bay (eds.) Women in Africa;
10/25 Olaudah Equiano, Thomas Peters, and Robert Wedderburn
Readings: G.I. Jones "Olaudah Equiano of the Niger Ibo" in: Philip
D. Curtin (ed.) Africa Remembered; Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Redicker "The
Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves and the Atlantic Working Class in the Eighteenth
Century" in Daniel Segal (ed.) Crossing Cultures; Iain McCalman "Anti-Slavery
and Ultra-Radicalism in Early 19th Century England: The Case of Robert Wedderburn" (copy
on reserve); Gary B.Nash "Thomas Peters: Millwright and Deliverer" in:
David Sweet and Gary Nash (eds.) Struggle and Survival in Colonial America;
Week 10 -- Christianity, Abolition and Emancipation
10/30 96 Degrees in the Shade: From Sam Sharpe to Paul Bogle
Readings: Mary Reckord "The Jamaica Slave Rebellion of 1831" (copy
on reserve); Monica Schuler "Afro-American Slave Cultures" in Michael
Craton (ed.) Roots and Branches.
11/1 Eyo Honesty II and Philip Meffre
Readings: Nair, Kannan K. "King and Missionary in Efik Politics, 1846-1858" (copy
on reserve);
Week 11 -- Racism and Imperialism
11/6 Haiti and the Vicissitudes of History
Readings: Michel-Rolph Trouillot Silencing the Past (ch. 3 "An Unthinkable
History"); Sidney Mintz "Can Haiti Change?" (copy on reserve);
11/8 Morton, Gobineau, the American Civil War, and the Berlin Conference
Readings: Patrick Brantlinger "Victorians and Africans: The Genealogy
of the Myth of the Dark Continent" in: Henry Louis Gates (ed.) Race, Writing,
and Difference;
Optional: Robert Young Colonial Desire chs. 4 and 5 ("Sex and Inequality" and "Egypt
in America, the Confederacy in London");
Week 12 -- Panafricanisms
11/13 Blyden, DuBois, Padmore, Garvey and the Re-Invention of Africa
Readings: George Shepperson "Ethiopianism: Past and Present" in:
C.G. Baeta (ed.) Christianity in Tropical Africa; Robert G. Weisbord Ebony
Kinship ch.2 ("Marcus Garvey, Pan-Negroist Nonpareil")
Optional: Christopher Miller Blank Darkness (pp.3-32)
11/15 Revival and Ethiopianism: From Bedward to Howell
Readings: Ken Post "The Bible as Ideology: Ethiopianism in Jamaica, 1930-38" in:
Christopher Allen and C. W. Johnson (eds.) African Perspectives; Robert Hill "Leonard
P. Howell and Millennarian Visions in Early Rastafari" (copy on reserve);
Week 13 -- Indirect Rule and its Discontents
11/20 John Chilembwe´s New Jerusalem
Readings: George Shepperson "External Factors in the Development of African
Nationalism, with particular Reference to British Central Africa" (copy
on reserve);
Week 14 -- The Struggle over Tradition and Identity
11/27 Yoruba Crowns, Colonial Witchcraft, and the Zimbabwean Liberation War
Readings: A. I. Asiwaju "Political Motivation and Oral Historical Tradition
in Africa: The case of Yoruba Crowns, 1900-1960" (copy on reserve) Karen
E. Fields "Political Contingencies of Witchcraft in Colonial Central Africa:
Culture and the State in Marxist Theory" (copy on reserve); Terence O.
Ranger "The Death of Chaminuka: Spirit Mediums, Nationalism, and the Guerrilla
War In Zimbabwe" (copy on reserve);
11/29 The Frazier-Herskovits Debate
Readings: Walter Jackson "Melville J. Herskovits and the Search for African-American
Culture" in: George Stocking (ed.) Malinwoski, Rivers, and Others; Sidney
Mintz "Foreword" in: Norman E. Whitten and John F. Szwed (eds.) Afro-American
Anthropology;
Week 15 -- Permutations
12/4 Discoveries of Africa in Cuba, Brazil, and the USA
Readings: Robert Weisbord Ebony Kinship ch. 6 (pp. 181-226);
12/6 Politics, Afros, Counter-Culture, and Commerce
Readings: Paul Gilroy The Black Atlantic ch. 3 (72-110), Angela Davis "Afro-Images:
Politics, Fashion and Nostalgia" in: Deborah Willis (ed.) Picturing
Us (pp. 170-179)
Postcoloniality, the West Atlantic System and the Origins of AIDS
Readings: Paul Farmer "AIDS and Accusation: Haiti, Haitians, and the Geography
of Blame" in: Feldman, Douglas A. (ed.) Culture and AIDS; Julia O´Connel
Davidson "Sex Tourism in Cuba" (copy on reserve);
Optional: Orlando Patterson "The Emerging West Atlantic System: Migration,
Culture, and Underdevelopment in the United States and the Circum-Caribbean
Region" in: William D. Alonso (ed.) Population in a Changing World;
FINAL TAKE HOME EXAM due on 12/18, no later than noon.
© 2004 by The President and Fellows of Harvard College.
Created April 2004.