Captives and Voyagers
Black Migrants across the Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic World
Alexander X. Byrd
Antislavery, Abolition, and the Atlantic World
R.J.M. Blackett and James Brewer Stewart, Series Editors
Jamestown and Plymouth serve as iconic images of British migration to the New World. A century later, however, when British migration was at its peak, the vast majority of men, women, and children crisscrossing the Atlantic on English ships were of African, not English, descent. Captives and Voyagers, a compelling study from Alexander X. Byrd, traces the departures, voyages, and landings of enslaved and free blacks who left their homelands in the eighteenth century for British colonies and examines how displacement and resettlement shaped migrant society and, in turn, Britain's Atlantic empire.
Captives and Voyagers breaks away from the conventional image of transatlantic migration and illustrates how black men and women, enslaved and free, came to populate the edges of an Anglo-Atlantic world. Whether as settlers in Sierra Leone or as slaves in Jamaica, these migrants brought a deep and affecting experience of being in motion to their new homelands, and as they became firmly ensconced in the particulars of their new local circumstances they both shaped and were themselves molded by the demands of the British Atlantic world, of which they were an essential part.
Byrd focuses on the two largest and most significant streams of black dislocation: the forced immigration of Africans from the Biafran interior of present-day southeastern Nigeria to Jamaica as part of the British slave trade and the emigration of free blacks from Great Britain and British North America to Sierra Leone in West Africa. By paying particular attention to the social and cultural effects of transatlantic migration on the groups themselves and focusing as well on their place in the British Empire, Byrd illuminates the meaning and experience of slavery and liberty for people whose journeys were similarly beset by extreme violence and catastrophe.
By following the movement of this representative population, Captives and Voyagers provides a vitally important view of the British colonial world—its intersection with the African diaspora.
Alexander X. Byrd is an assistant professor of history at Rice University, where he teaches African American history and the history of the African Diaspora.
ISBN-13:978-0-8071-3359-0 cloth
Page count:
408
Trim:
6 x 9
Illustrations:
3 Halftones, 3 Figures, 4 Maps
Published:
December 2008
$49.95
The Saint-Domingue Plantation; or, The Insurrection
A Drama in Five Acts
Charles de Rémusat
Translated by Norman R. Shapiro With an Introduction and Notes by Doris Y. Kadish
A paperback original
Based on events that began in Saint-Domingue on August 21, 1791, The Saint-Domingue Plantation; or, The Insurrection vividly dramatizes the genesis and outbreak of a slave revolt. When a representative of the French Assemblée nationale, Monsieur de Tendale, arrives at the Valombre family plantation to examine the condition of slaves in Saint-Domingue and to preach their liberation, he sparks a debate among the local curé and the Valombres—Monsieur, Madame, son Léon, and daughter Célestine—who disagree about how slaves should be treated and whether they should be freed. Meanwhile, rebellion brews on the plantation. As the slave revolt unfolds, the play's white hero, Léon, realizes the discrepancy between his liberal political and philosophical ideas and the reality of his family's economic interests. The black hero, Timur, confronts the slaves' bloodthirsty desire to kill the masters, their resistance to his leadership, and the realization that freedom places heavy demands on him and the other insurgents.
Translated into English by Norman R. Shapiro for the first time since its publication in 1825, The Saint-Domingue Plantation addresses a wide range of topics that antislavery activists raised during Charles de Rémusat's time, including antitorture measures, slaves' access to the sacrament of marriage, and religious education. An informative introduction by Doris Y. Kadish places the play in its historic and literary contexts, inviting further discussion and interpretation of this important work.
Charles de Rémusat (1797–1875) was a leading force in the opposition to the Restoration government in the 1820s and to the Second Empire in 1851. He served as an elected member of the Chambre des députés from 1830 to 1848 and again in 1873, as minister of foreign affairs in 1871, and was inducted into the Académie française in 1846.
Norman R. Shapiro is professor of romance languages and literatures at Wesleyan University. He has published over two dozen translations from the French, including Creole Echoes: The Francophone Poetry of Nineteenth-Century Louisiana and The Complete Fables of Jean de la Fontaine.
Doris Y. Kadish is Distinguished Research Professor of French and Women's Studies at the University of Georgia. Her books include Politicizing Gender: Narrative Strategies in the Aftermath of the French Revolution and Slavery in the Caribbean Francophone World: Distant Voices, Forgotten Acts, and Forged Identities.ISBN-13:
978-0-8071-3357-6 PAPER
Page count:
224
Trim:
5.5 x 8.5
Illustrations:
2 Maps
Published:
December 2008
$22.95
Emancipating New York
The Politics of Slavery and Freedom, 1777–1827
David N. Gellman
Antislavery, Abolition, and the Atlantic World
R.J.M. Blackett and James Brewer Stewart, Series Editors
An innovative blend of cultural and political history, Emancipating New York is the most complete study to date of the abolition of slavery in New York state. Focusing on public opinion, David N. Gellman shows New Yorkers engaged in vigorous debates and determined activism during the final decades of the eighteenth century as they grappled with the possibility of freeing the state's black population. The gradual emancipation that began in New York in 1799 helped move an entire region of the country toward a historically rare slaveless democracy, creating a wedge in the United States that would ultimately lead to the Civil War. Gellman's comprehensive examination of the reasons for and timing of New York's dismantling of slavery provides a fascinating narrative of a citizenry addressing longstanding injustices central to some of the greatest traumas of American history.
David N. Gellman is coeditor of Jim Crow New York: A Documentary History of Race and Citizenship, 1777–1877 and associate professor of history at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana.
ISBN-13:978-0-8071-3368-2 PAPER
978-0-8071-3174-9 cloth
Page count:
312
Trim:
6 x 9
Illustrations:
Published:
August 2008
$22.95
Louisiana Culture from the Colonial Era to Katrina
Edited by John Lowe
Southern Literary Studies
Fred Hobson, Series Editor
Though relatively small in area and population, Louisiana embraces a larger-than-life history and a cultural blend unlike any other in the nation. Louisiana Culture from the Colonial Era to Katrina, a collection of fourteen essays compiles and edited by John Lowe, captures all of the flavor and richness of the state's heritage, illuminating how Louisiana, despite its differences from the rest of the United States, is a microcosm of key national concerns—including regionalism, race, politics, immigration, global connections, folklore, musical traditions, ethnicity, and hybridity.
Divided into five parts, the volume opens with an examination of Louisiana's origins, with pieces on Native Americans, French and German explorers, and slavery. Two very different but complementary essays follow, investigating ongoing attempts to define Creoles and creolization. No collection on Louisiana would be complete without attention to its remarkable literary traditions, and several contributors offer tantalizing readings of some of the Pelican State's most distinguished writers—a dazzling array any state would be proud to claim. The volume also includes pieces on a couple of eccentric mythologies distinct to Louisiana and explorations of Louisiana's unique musical heritage.
Throughout, the international slate of contributors explores the idea of place, particularly the concept of Louisiana as the center of the Caribbean wheel, where Cajuns, Creoles, Cubans, Haitians, Jamaicans, and others are part of a New World configuration, connected by their linguistic identity, landscape and climate, religion, and French and Spanish heritage. A poignant conclusion considers the devastating impact of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and what the storms mean for Louisiana's cultural future.
A rich portrait of Louisiana culture, this volume stands as a reminder of why that culture must be preserved.
John Lowe is professor of English and comparative literature and director of the Program in Louisiana and Caribbean Studies at Louisiana State University. He is the author or editor of several books, including the forthcoming Faulkner's Fraternal Fury.
ISBN-13:978-0-8071-3337-8 cloth
Page count:
368
Trim:
6 x 9
Illustrations:
None
Published:
December 2008
$49.95
The Children of Africa in the Colonies
Free People of Color in Barbados in the Age of Emancipation
Melanie J. Newton
Antislavery, Abolition, and the Atlantic World
R.J.M. Blackett and James Brewer Stewart, Series Editors
How emancipation transformed social and political relations in Barbados
When a small group of free men of color gathered in 1838 to celebrate the end of apprenticeship in Barbados, they spoke of emancipation as the moment of freedom for all colored people, not just the former slaves. The fact that many of these men were former slave owners themselves gives a hollow ring to their lofty pronouncements. Yet in The Children of Africa in the Colonies, Melanie J. Newton demonstrates that simply dismissing these men as hypocrites ignores the complexity of their relationship to slavery. Exploring the role of free blacks in Barbados from 1790 to 1860, Newton demonstrates that the emancipation process transformed social relations between Afro-Barbadians and slaves and ex-slaves.
Free people of color in Barbados genuinely wanted slavery to end, Newton explains, a desire motivated in part by the realization that emancipation offered them significant political advantages. As a result, free people's goals for the civil rights struggle that began in Barbados in the 1790s often diverged from those of the slaves, and the tensions that formed along class, education, and gender lines severely weakened the movement. While the populist masses viewed emancipation as an opportunity to form a united community among all people of color, wealthy free people viewed it as a chance to better their position relative to white Europeans.
To this end, free people of color refashioned their identities in relationship to Africa. Prior to the 1820s, Newton reveals, they downplayed their African descent, emphasizing instead their legal status as free people and their position as owners of property, including slaves. As the emancipation debate in the Atlantic world reached its zenith in the 1820s and 1830s, and whites grew increasingly hostile and inflexible, elite free people allied themselves with the politics of the working class and the slaves, relying for the first time on their African heritage and the association of their skin color with slavery to openly challenge white supremacy.
After emancipation, free people of color again redefined themselves, now as loyal British imperial subjects, casting themselves in the role of political protectors of their ex-slave brethren in an attempt to escape social and political disenfranchisement. While some wealthy men of color gained political influence as a result of emancipation, the absence of fundamental change in the distribution of land and wealth left most men and women of color with little hope of political independence or social mobility.
Mining a rich vein of primary and secondary sources, Newton's unique study elegantly describes how class divisions and disagreements over labor and social policy among free and slave black Barbadians led to political unrest and devastated the hope for an entirely new social structure and a plebeian majority in the British Caribbean.
Melanie J. Newton is an assistant professor of Caribbean and Atlantic world history at the University of Toronto.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8071-3326-2 clothPage count: 336
Published: 2008
$42.50
Dr. Alexander Hamilton and Provincial America: Expanding the Orbit of Scottish Culture
by Elaine G. Breslaw
In this sweeping biography, Elaine G. Breslaw examines the life of Dr. Alexander Hamilton (1712–1756), a highly educated Scottish physician who immigrated to Maryland in 1738. From an elite European family, Hamilton was immediately confronted with the relatively primitive social milieu of the New World. He faced unfamiliar and challenging social institutions: the labor system that relied on black slaves, extraordinarily fluid social statuses, distasteful business methods, unpleasant conversational quirks, as well as variant habits of dress, food, and drink that required accommodation and, when possible, acceptance. Paradoxically, the more acclimated he became to Maryland ways, the greater the motive to change that society and make it more satisfying for himself both emotionally and intellectually. Breslaw perceptively describes the ways in which Hamilton tried to transform the society around him, attempting to recreate the world he had left behind and thereby justify his continued residence in such an unsophisticated place.
Hamilton, best known as the author of the Itinerarium—a shrewd and insightful account of his journey through the colonies in 1744, also founded the Tuesday Club of Annapolis, promoted a local musical culture, and in his letters and essays, provided witty commentary on the American social experience. In addition to practicing medicine, Hamilton participated in local affairs, transporting to Maryland some of the rationalist ideas about politics, religion, and learning that were germinating in Scotland's early Enlightenment. Unlike the northern colonies, Maryland had no large metropolitan areas on the scale of a Boston, New York, or Philadelphia to facilitate the reception of the new philosophical and scientific currents. Unlike her sister colony to the south, she had no one individual of the caliber of a Thomas Jefferson to illustrate the acceptance of those radical philosophies. As Breslaw explains, Hamilton's writings tell us that those adopted ideas were given substance and vitality in the New World long before the revolutionary crises.
Throughout her narrative, Breslaw usefully sets Hamilton's life in both Scotland and America against the background of the major political, military, religious, social, and economic events of his time. The largely forgotten story of a fascinating, cosmopolitan, and complex Scotsman, Dr. Alexander Hamilton and Provincial America illuminates our understanding of elites as they navigated their eighteenth-century world.
Southern Biography Series
Elaine G. Breslaw is a visiting scholar at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She is retired from the history department at Morgan State University in Baltimore, where she taught for twenty-nine years. She is the author of Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salemand editor of Witches of the Atlantic World and Records of the Tuesday Club of Annapolis, 1745-56.
$55.00ISBN: 0-8071-3278-0 cloth
ISBN13: 978-0-8071-3278-4
Published 2008
472 pages, 2 Halftones, 6 x 9
Calvinist Humor in American Literature
by Michael Dunne
Though the phrase "Calvinist humor" may seem to be an oxymoron, Michael Dunne, in highly original and unfailingly interesting readings of major American fiction writers, uncovers and traces two recurrent strands of Calvinist humor descending from Puritan times far into the twentieth century. Calvinist doctrine views mankind as fallen, apt to engage in any number of imperfect behaviors. Calvinist humor, Dunne explains, consists in the perception of this imperfection. When we perceive that only others are imperfect, we participate in the form of Calvinist humor preferred by William Bradford and Nathanael West. When we perceive that others are imperfect, as we all are, we participate in the form preferred by Mark Twain and William Faulkner, for example. Either by noting their characters' inferiority, or by observing ways in which we are all far from perfect, Dunne observes, American writers have found much to laugh about and many occasions for Calvinist humor.
The two strains of Calvinist humor are alike in making the faults of others more important than their virtues. They differ in terms of what we might think of as the writer/perceiver's disposition: his or her willingness to recognize the same faults in him- or herself. In addition to Bradford, West, Twain and Faulkner, Dunne discovers Calvinist humor in the works of Flannery O'Connor, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ernest Hemingway, and many others. For these authors, the world—and thus their fiction—is populated with flawed creatures. Even after belief in orthodox Calvinism diminished in the twentieth century, Dunne discovers, American writers continued to mine these veins, irrespective of the authors' religious affiliations—or lack of them. Dunne notes that even when these writers fail to accept the Calvinist view wholeheartedly, they still have a tendency to see some version of Calvinism as more attractive than an optimistic, idealistic view of life.
With an eye for the telling detail and a wry humor of his own, Dunne clearly demonstrates that the fundamental Calvinist assumption—that human beings are fallen from some putatively better state—has had a surprising, lingering presence in American literature.
PRAISE FOR THE BOOK
"So effective has Dunne made his argument that the reader can move on from here to other American authors and, with this book in hand as a guide, find in their work the presence of Calvinist humor."-M. Thomas Inge, Robert Emory Blackwell Professor of English and the Humanities, Randolph-Macon College
Michael Dunne is professor emeritus of English at Middle Tennessee State University. He is the author of several books, including Intertextual Encounters in American Fiction, Film, and Popular Culture. He is coeditor, with his wife, Sara Lewis Dunne, of The Greenwood Chronology of American Popular Culture.
$37.50ISBN: 0-8071-3260-8 cloth
ISBN13: 978-0-8071-3260-9
Published 2007
216 pages, 5.5 x 8.5
Rituals of Resistance: African Atlantic Religion in Kongo and the Lowcountry South in the Era of Slavery
by Jason R. Young
In Rituals of Resistance, Jason R. Young explores the religious and ritual practices that linked West-Central Africa with the Lowcountry region of Georgia and South Carolina during the era of slavery. The choice of these two sites mirrors the historical trajectory of the trans-Atlantic slave trade which, for centuries, transplanted Kongolese captives to the Lowcountry through the ports of Charleston and Savannah. Analyzing the historical exigencies of slavery and the slave trade that sent not only men and women but also cultural meanings, signs, symbols, and patterns across the Atlantic, Young argues that religion operated as a central form of resistance against slavery and the ideological underpinnings that supported it.
Through a series of comparative chapters on Christianity, ritual medicine, burial practices, and transmigration, Young details the manner in which Kongolese people, along with their contemporaries and their progeny who were enslaved in the Americas, utilized religious practices to resist the savagery of the slave trade and slavery itself. When slaves acted outside accepted parameters—in transmigration, spirit possession, ritual internment, and conjure—Young explains, they attacked not only the condition of being a slave, but also the systems of modernity and scientific rationalism that supported slavery. In effect, he argues, slave spirituality played a crucial role in the resocialization of the slave body and behavior away from the oppressions and brutalities of the master class. Young's work expands traditional scholarship on slavery to include both the extensive work done by African historians and current interdisciplinary debates in cultural studies, anthropology, and literature.
Drawing on a wide range of primary sources from both American and African archives, including slave autobiography, folk tales, and material culture, Rituals of Resistance offers readers a nuanced understanding of the cultural and religious connections that linked blacks in Africa with their enslaved contemporaries in the Americas. Moreover, Young's groundbreaking work gestures toward broader themes and connections, using the case of the Kongo and the Lowcountry to articulate the development of a much larger African Atlantic space that connected peoples, cultures, languages, and lives on and across the ocean's waters.
PRAISE FOR THE BOOK
"A signal contribution to our understanding of the African diaspora. The author presents a vision of culture that is fluid and multidimensional, that allows for novelty and transformation, and that avoids ongoing debates over ethnic provenance."—Michael Gomez, author of Reversing Sail: A History of the African Diaspora
Jason R. Young is assistant professor of history at the State University of New York at Buffalo
$40.00ISBN: 0-8071-3279-9 cloth
ISBN13: 978-0-8071-3279-1
Published 2007
264 pages, 3 Halftones, 2 Maps, 6 x 9
Voices from an Early American Convent: Marie Madeleine Hachard and the New Orleans Ursulines, 1727–1760
Edited by Emily Clark
In 1927, twelve nuns left France to establish a community of Ursuline nuns in New Orleans, the capital of the French colony of Louisiana. Their convent was the first in the territory that would eventually be part of the United States. Notable for establishing a school that educated all free girls, regardless of social rank, the Ursulines also ran an orphanage, administered the colony's military hospital, and sustained an aggressive program of catechesis among the enslaved population of colonial Louisiana that contributed to the development of a large, active Afro-Catholic congregation in New Orleans. In Voices from an Early American Convent, Emily Clark extends the boundaries of early American women's history through the first-hand accounts of these remarkable French female missionaries, in particular Marie Madeleine Hachard.
The heart of the volume consists of letters that Hachard wrote to her father in Rouen describing the physical and emotional ordeal of crossing the Atlantic, the startling combination of strangeness and familiarity of Louisiana, and the exhilaration of participating in a unique missionary adventure. Biographies of pioneering Ursulines, written as obituaries by the nuns who survived them, pick up the missionaries' story. Clark also includes a contemporary account of the festive procession the nuns made through New Orleans in 1734 to their newly constructed convent compound. These fascinating documents reveal early American women of determination, courage, and conviction who turned their backs on the traditional roles of wife and mother to embrace lives of public service. From within their cloister they made an indelible impact on the lives of early colonists.
Voices from an Early American Convent allows readers to see early Louisiana from the perspective of women whose eyes rest on the domestic details of colonial life—foodways, clothing, children—largely ignored by the more familiar accounts penned by male officials and adventurers. The words of these women reveal their work in forging community among the diverse inhabitants, enslaved and free, who occupied early New Orleans.
"Our city is very beautiful, well constructed and regularly built, as much as I am able to know of it from what I saw the day of our arrival in this land. . . . It is enough to tell you that here one publicly sings a song in which there is only this city which resembles the city of Paris. This tells you everything."
—Marie Madeleine Hachard, in a letter to her father
Emily Clark is an assistant professor of history at Tulane University. She worked as an archaeologist, social worker, and university vice president before returning to graduate school in midlife to pursue a Ph.D. in history. She is a native of New Orleans, where she was educated in public schools and at Tulane University.
ISBN13: 978-0-8071-3237-1
May 2007
160 pages, 6 Halftones, 5.5 x 8
0-8071-3237-3 cloth
$25.00
The Forgotten Expedition, 1804–1805: The Louisiana Purchase Journals of Dunbar and Hunter
Edited by Trey Berry, Pam Beasley, and Jeanne Clements
The day-by-day accounts of two southern-bound explorers who were contemporaries of Lewis and Clark
At the same time that he charged Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the great Northwest, President Thomas Jefferson commissioned William Dunbar and George Hunter to make a parallel journey through the southern unmapped regions of the Louisiana Purchase. From October 16, 1804, to January 26, 1805, Dunbar and Hunter, both renowned scientists, made their way through what is now northern Louisiana and southern Arkansas, ascending the Ouachita River and investigating the natural curiosity called “the hot springs.” Though Dunbar and Hunter’s journals have the same value and appeal as Lewis’s, theirs have long been out of print and have never been published in a single volume. Their daily accounts now appear together, enhanced by a wealth of useful notes.
The team of the “Grand Expedition,” as it was optimistically named, was the first to send its findings on the newly annexed territory to the president, who received Dunbar and Hunter’s detailed journals with pleasure. They include descriptions of flora and fauna, geology, weather, landscapes, and native peoples and European settlers, as well as astronomical and navigational records that allowed the first accurate English maps of the region and its waterways to be produced. Their scientific experiments conducted at the hot springs may be among the first to discover a microscopic phenomena still under research today.
The Forgotten Expedition completes the picture of the Louisiana Purchase presented through the journals of explorers Lewis and Clark, Zebulon Pike, and Thomas Freeman and Peter Custis. It is a treasure of the early natural history of North America and the first depiction of this new U.S. southern frontier.
”Set out at half past six a.m. The morning very foggy on the river & not so cold as yesterday. The banks still rising in height by slow degrees & the land more & more intermixed with sand…. Found on the bank a young Fawn just killed by a Panther, the throat being tore very much. We took it on board & made a hearty meal of it, or two for all hands.”
Trey Berry is a professor of history at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. He served as project director for the documentary film The Forgotten Expedition: The Journey of Dunbar and Hunter.
Pam Beasley is the director of the Arkansas Museum of Natural Resources in Smackover, Arkansas.
Jeanne Clements retired as director of the Arkansas Museum of Natural Resources in 2003. She lives in Tucson, Arizona.
ISBN: 0-8071-3165-2 clothISBN13: 978-0-8071-3165-7
June 2006
312 pages, 3 Halftones, 1 Map, 6 x 9
$29.95
Caribbean Slave Revolts and the British Abolitionist Movement
Gelien Matthews
In this illuminating study, Gelien Matthews demonstrates how slave rebellions in the British West Indies influenced the tactics of abolitionists in England. Moving between the world of the British Parliament and the realm of Caribbean plantations, Matthews reveals a transatlantic dialectic of antislavery agitation and slave insurrection that eventually influenced the dismantling of slavery in British-held territories.
Focusing on slave revolts that took place in Barbados in 1816, in Demerara in 1823, and in Jamaica in 1831–32, Matthews identifies four key aspects in British abolitionist propaganda regarding Caribbean slavery: the denial that antislavery activism prompted slave revolts, the attempt to understand and recount slave uprisings from the slaves’ perspectives, the portrayal of slave rebels as victims of armed suppressors and as agents of the antislavery movement, and the presentation of revolts as a rationale against the continuance of slavery. She makes shrewd use of previously overlooked publications of British abolitionists to prove that their language changed over time in response to slave uprisings.
Unlike previous historians, Matthews emphasizes the agency of slaves in the march toward freedom. Her compelling work is a valuable analytical tool in the interpretation of abolition, uncovering the important connections between rebellious slaves on one side of the Atlantic and abolitionists on the other side.
Gelien Matthews teaches history at Caribbean Nazarene College in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.
Antislavery, Abolition, and the Atlantic WorldR. J. M. Blackett and James Brewer Stewart, Editors
June 2006
240 pages,
5 1/2 x 8 1/2
ISBN 0-8071-3131-8
cloth $42.95s
Conjure in African American Society
Jeffrey E. Anderson
From black sorcerers’ client-based practices in the antebellum South to the postmodern revival of hoodoo and its tandem spiritual supply stores, the supernatural has been a key component of the African American experience. Jeffrey E. Anderson unfolds a fascinating story as he traces the origins and evolution of conjuring practices across the centuries. What began as a mixture of African, European, and Native American influences within slave communities finds expression today in a multi-million-dollar business.
Though some may see the study of conjure as a perpetuation of old stereotypes that depict blacks as bound to superstition, the truth, Anderson notes, is far more complex. Drawing on folklore, fiction and nonfiction, music, art, and oral interviews, he explores various portrayals of the conjurer—backward buffoon, rebel against authority, and symbol of racial pride. He also examines the actual work performed by conjurers, including the use of pharmacologically active herbs to treat illness, psychology to ease mental ailments, fear to bring about the death of enemies and acquittals at trials, and advice to encourage clients to succeed on their own.
Conjure’s ability to merge supernaturalism and religion—along with a widespread belief in, fear of, or respect for conjure’s effectiveness—has made it a force across generations, Anderson shows, and not only among blacks. New Age spiritualism, Afro-Caribbean syncretic faiths, and modern psychological understandings of magic have all contributed to a recent revival of conjure.
By critically examining the many influences that have shaped conjure over time, Anderson effectively redefines magic as a cultural power, one that has profoundly touched the arts, black Christianity, and American society overall.
Praise for the Book
“The people who invented conjure to survive centuries of brutal slavery and repression have much to teach us. This exquisitely researched book calls the logic and necessity of conjure, hoodoo, voodoo, and magic into the light of our collective histories. It is essential reading for all students of the black experience in America, essential for all who wish to understand what these powerful and practical spiritualities still offer the world.”—Martha Ward, author of Voodoo Queen, The Spirited Lives of Marie Laveau
“Drawing on a wealth of primary and secondary sources, Conjure in African American Society sensitively explores hoodoo's sources in Africa, its creolization on the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century slave plantations, its urban permutations in the twentieth century, and its significance at the dawn of the twenty-first.”—Charles Joyner, author of Shared Traditions: Southern History and Folklore
Jeffrey E. Andersonis an assistant professor of history at Middle Georgia College and lives in Cochran.
December 2005
272 pages, 6 x 9
5 halftones
2 line drawings, 3 tables
ISBN 0-8071-3092-3
cloth $39.95s
May 13, 2008