Willie Lynch, a British slave owner from the West Indies, stepped onto the shores of colonial Virginia in 1712, bearing secrets that would shape the fate of generations to come. Within this manuscript, allegedly transcribed from Lynch’s speech to American slaveholders on the banks of the James River, lies a blueprint for subjugation. Lynch’s genius lay not in brute force but in psychological warfare. He understood that to break a people, one must first break their spirit. His methods—pitiless and cunning—sowed seeds of distrust, pitting slave against slave, exploiting vulnerabilities, and perpetuating a cycle of suffering. This document sheds light on the brutal realities of slavery and the ways in which its legacy continues to shape contemporary society

The Willie Lynch Letter, aka The Making of a Slave, is one of the most controversial texts in African-American studies.It was purportedly written by Willie Lynch, a British West Indies plantation owner, and given to a group of Virginia slaveowners as a masterplan to keep Blacks enslaved -- not just physically but mentally as well -- using such tactics as pitting on slave against the other. Lynch, in his letter, says by using these tactics for just one year it will keep slaves mentally in chains for at least 300 years.Modern historians have asserted that the letter is a hoax, but most still agree that it's a text worth reading as it points out the different divides in the African-American community that seem specifically designed to keep the race from throwing off mental chains that impede communal progress.Includes foreword by Karen E. Quinones Miller, author of An Angry-Ass Black WomanIncludes excerpt from The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave

Describes the African slave trade from the viewpoint of the Southern plantation owners.

This posthumous work by Jacques Arends offers new insights into the emergence of the creole languages of Suriname including Sranantongo or Suriname Plantation Creole, Ndyuka, and Saramaccan, and the sociohistorical context in which they developed. Drawing on a wealth of sources including little known historical texts, the author points out the relevance of European settlements prior to colonization by the English in 1651 and concludes that the formation of the Surinamese creoles goes back further than generally assumed. He provides an all-encompassing sociolinguistic overview of the colony up to the mid-19th century and shows how ethnicity, language attitude, religion and location had an effect on which languages were spoken by whom. The author discusses creole data gleaned from the earliest sources and interprets the attested variation. The book is completed by annotated textual data, both oral and written and representing different genres and stages of the Surinamese creoles. It will be of interest to linguists, historians, anthropologists, literary scholars and anyone interested in Suriname.