Slaves & Slaveholders in Bermuda, 1616-1782, offers a fresh perspective on the complex relationship between racism & slavery in the often overlooked second-oldest English colony in the New World. As the first blacks were brought onto the islands not specifically for slave labor, but for their expertise as pearl divers & cultivators of West Indies plants, Bermuda's racial history began to unfold much differently from that of the Caribbean islands or of the North American mainland. Bermuda's history records the arrival of the first blacks, the first English law passed to control the behavior of the "Negroes," & the creation of ninety-nine-year indentures for black & Indian servants. Slavery may have dictated & strained the relationships between whites & blacks, but in this smallest of English colonies it differed from slavery elsewhere because of the uniquely close master-slave relations created by Bermuda's size & maritime economy. At only twenty-one square miles in size, Bermuda saw slaves & slave-holders working & living closer together than in other societies. Additionally, the emphasis on maritime pursuits offered slaves a degree of autonomy & a sense of identity unequaled in other English colonies. This groundbreaking history of Bermuda's slavery reveals fewer runaways, less-violent rebellions, & relatively milder punishments for offending slaves. One anecdote recounts that in 1782, seventy black seamen offered freedom in Boston voluntarily returned to their Bermuda homes. Bernhard delves into the origins of Bermuda's slavery, its peculiar nature, & its effects on blacks & whites. She bases her study on archival research drawn from wills & inventories, laws & court cases, governors' reports & council minutes. Intended as an introduction to both the history of the islands & the rich sources for further study, this book will prove invaluable to scholars of slavery, as well as those interested in historical archaeology, anthropology, maritime history, & colonial history.

This book provides a legal historical insight into colonial laws on enslavement and the plantation system in the British West Indies. The volume is a work of comparative legal history of the English-speaking Caribbean which concentrates on how the laws of England served to catalyse the slavery laws and also legislation pertaining to post-emancipation societies. The book illustrates how these “borrowed” laws from England not only developed colonial slavery laws within the English-speaking Caribbean but also inspired the slavery codes of a number of North American plantation systems. The cusp of the work focuses on the interconnectivities among the English-speaking slave holding Atlantic and how persons, free and unfree, moved throughout the system and brought laws with them which greatly affected the various enslaved societies. The book will be essential reading for students and researchers interested in colonial slavery, Caribbean studies and Black and Atlantic history.

Technically speaking, slavery was not legal in the English-speaking world before the mid-seventeenth century. But long before race-based slavery was entrenched in law and practice, English men and women were well aware of the various forms of human bondage practiced in other nations and, in less systematic ways, their own country. They understood the legal and philosophic rationale of slavery in different cultural contexts and, for good reason, worried about the possibility of their own enslavement by foreign Catholic or Muslim powers. While opinions about the benefits and ethics of the institution varied widely, the language, imagery, and knowledge of slavery were a great deal more widespread in early modern England than we tend to assume. In wide-ranging detail, Slaves and Englishmen demonstrates how slavery shaped the ways the English interacted with people and places throughout the Atlantic world. By examining the myriad forms and meanings of human bondage in an international context, Michael Guasco illustrates the significance of slavery in the early modern world before the rise of the plantation system or the emergence of modern racism. As this revealing history shows, the implications of slavery were closely connected to the question of what it meant to be English in the Atlantic world.

This book establishes Central Africa as the origin of most Africans brought to English and Dutch American colonies in North America, the Caribbean, and South America before 1660. It reveals that Central Africans were frequently possessors of an Atlantic Creole culture and places the movement of slaves and creation of the colonies within an Atlantic historical framework.

A groundbreaking collective biography narrating the history of emancipation through the life stories of women of African descent in the Americas.

This brief, up-to-date examination of American colonial history draws connections between the colonial period and American life today by including formerly neglected areas of social and cultural history and the role of minorities (African-Americans, Native-Americans, women, and laboring classes). It summarizes and synthesizes recent studies and integrates them with earlier research. Key topics: European Backgrounds. The Native Americans. The Spanish Empire in America. The Portuguese, French, and Dutch Empires in America. The Background of English Colonization. The Tobacco Colonies: Virginia and Maryland. The New England Colonies. The Completion of Colonization. Seventeenth-Century Revolts and Eighteenth-Century Stabilization. Colonial Government. African-Americans in the English Colonies. Immigration. Colonial Agriculture. Colonial Commerce. Colonial Industry. Money and Social Status. The Colonial Town. The Colonial Family. Religion in Colonial America. Education in Colonial America. Language and Literature. Colonial Arts and Sciences. Everyday Life in Colonial America. The Second Hundred Years' War. The Road to Revolution. The Revolutionary War. Governments for a New Nation. Market: For anyone interested in Colonial History, American Revolution, or Early American Social History.

In an exploration of the oceanic connections of the Atlantic world, Michael J. Jarvis recovers a mariner's view of early America as seen through the eyes of Bermuda's seafarers. The first social history of eighteenth-century Bermuda, this book profiles how one especially intensive maritime community capitalized on its position "in the eye of all trade." Jarvis takes readers aboard small Bermudian sloops and follows white and enslaved sailors as they shuttled cargoes between ports, raked salt, harvested timber, salvaged shipwrecks, hunted whales, captured prizes, and smuggled contraband in an expansive maritime sphere spanning Great Britain's North American and Caribbean colonies. In doing so, he shows how humble sailors and seafaring slaves operating small family-owned vessels were significant but underappreciated agents of Atlantic integration. The American Revolution starkly revealed the extent of British America's integration before 1775 as it shattered interregional links that Bermudians had helped to forge. Reliant on North America for food and customers, Bermudians faced disaster at the conflict's start. A bold act of treason enabled islanders to continue trade with their rebellious neighbors and helped them to survive and even prosper in an Atlantic world at war. Ultimately, however, the creation of the United States ended Bermuda's economic independence and doomed the island's maritime economy.