Today's listen:
Enjoyed this New Books Network on a new book on #Marronage , #AfricanAmericanHistory, and #EnvironmentalHistory
Engaging interviewed and narrator, plus lots of swamp talk.

https://newbooksnetwork.com/dismal-freedom

@litstudies. I just got these pretty flyers from #CambridgeUniversityPress. One is for a monograph I wrote; one is for an essay collection I edited and includes some extraordinary work by #MarkGoble, #BobLevine, and #StefanieSobelle, to name a few (there are many more). Both consider representations of #time in #US #literature. You'll find essays on #poet #RichardSiken, #Shaker dancing, #marronage, and much more. There is a 20% discount, which brings the cost to ~23.00.

A 🧵 about my paper. Through the sacrament of #confession, I try to reconstruct #enslaved agency in the #EarlyModern 🇫🇷 #Caribbean & show that slaves were attentive to tensions between #Church & State.

#Confession was an opportunity to interact with a recognized authority (priests) under the seal of secrecy & away from the vigilance of plantation staff.
Slaves used silence & loquacity as strategies in dealing with the priests.

And what if #sins trespassed into legal #crimes & elicited a punishment beyond spiritual atonement?

A 1777 Reglèment envisaged public penance for #marronage, poisoning & abortion. Selected slaves would be appointed vergers, wear a surplice & a cassock & monitor the church doors & the arrangement of people inside it.

For #missionaries: Reglèment→obedience.

But #enslaved #Africans may have seen it as a brake to planters’ violence, & a way to shape a sense of shared identity by co-identifying “sinners” & co-enacting punishment.

https://tinyurl.com/4bycb4p8

https://archive.org/details/theycalledusbrigands

They Called Us Brigands: The Saga of St. Lucia's Freedom Fighters by Robert J. Devaux; Patrick A.B. Anthony

Topics
#brigandage, #brigands, #Ioüanalao, #Iyonola, #Hewanarau, #Hewanorra, #StLucia, #SaintLucia, #LesserAntilles, #Caribbean, #Martinique, #Guadeloupe, #maroonage, #maroons, #marronage, #blackchattelslavery, #war, #guerrillawarfare, #guerrillawar, #guerrillas, #Caribbeanhistory, #NègMawon, #britishimperialism, #frenchimperialism, #colonialism

The Black freedom fighters of the Lesser Antilles became known as “brigands” during the french revolution. Their fascinating story has never been written, perhaps because they have been dismissed as runaway slaves in a state of insurrection. The author believed that history has been unfair to the “brigands”. He felt indebted to them for sparing the life of his great-great-great-grandmother who was left in their care when the rest of the Devaux family fled to Martinique for safety. His gratitude motivated him to attempt to exonerate the “brigands” from the stigma of their history and present them in a different light, as freedom fighters caught up in a desperate situation.

https://archive.org/details/thedominicastory

The Dominica Story: A History of the Island by Lennox Honychurch

Topics
#Dominica, #Caribbean, #blackchattelslavery, #slavery, #history, #frenchcolonialism, #britishcolonialism, #Kalinago, #geography, #ecology, #folklore, #Waitukubuli, #maroons, #maroonwars, #marronage

The Dominica Story was first presented by Lennox Honychurch as a dramatised radio series tracing the origin and development of this often mysterious island from its volcanic formation up until its present. History has been interwoven with geography, ecology, folklore and social custom to produce a concise and colourful work which is not only vital to our knowledge of Dominica but to Caribbean history as a whole.