Suchergebnisse

AbstractThis essay reflects on the workers in Atlantic and Indian Ocean port cities who made possible the rapidly expanding system of global capitalism between 1650 and 1850. In all of the ports treated in this volume, a mixture of multi-ethnic, male and female, unskilled, often unwaged laborers collectively served as the linchpins that connected local hinterlands (and seas) to bustling waterfronts, tall ships, and finally the world market. Although the precise combination of workers varied from one port to the next, all had an occupational structure in which half or more of the population worked in trade or the defense of trade, for example in shipbuilding/repair, the hauling of commodities to and from ships, and the building of colonial infrastructure, the docks and roads instrumental to commerce. This "motley crew" – a working combination of enslaved Africans, European/Indian/Chinese indentured servants, sailors, soldiers, convicts, domestic workers, and artisans – were essential to the production and worldwide circulation of commodities and profits.

AbstractThis essay explores the Amistad rebellion of 1839, in which fifty-three Africans seized a slave schooner, sailed it to Long Island, New York, made an alliance with American abolitionists, and won their freedom in a protracted legal battle. Asking how and why the rebels succeeded, it emphasizes the African background and experience, as well as the "fictive kinship" that grew out of many incarcerations, as sources of solidarity that made the uprising possible. The essay concludes by discussing the process of mutiny, suggesting a six-phase model for understanding the dynamics of shipboard revolt, and showing how such events can have powerful historical consequences.

Intro -- Contents -- Introduction -- The Wreck of the Sea-Venture -- Hewers of Wood and Drawers of Water -- ''A Blackymore Maide Named Francis'' -- The Divarication of the Putney Debates -- Hydrarchy: Sailors, Pirates, and the Maritime State -- ''The Outcasts of the Nations of the Earth'' -- A Motley Crew in the American Revolution -- The Conspiracy of Edward and Catherine Despard -- Robert Wedderburn and Atlantic Jubilee -- Tyger! Tyger! -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Index.