Resistance to slavery:

  • Armed resistance: Stone Rebellion, South Carolina 1739
  • Subterfuge, foot dragging
  • Running away people who ran away became part of Maroon communities (from 17th century) (founded their own communities). The word maroon comes from the spanings word cimarrones: mountains, so the people who fled to the mountains. Mountains have places where you can hide away. Maroon communities mostly in Central and South America. They had a very strong leadership structure, were very well organized. They engage in open conflict e.g. Maroon Wars (1730 - 1740) Former slaves can count on the maroon communities to support them. strong legacy of Maroons in Jamaican culture, means that their roots were part of a very strong resistance movement against slavery, very important in the Jamaican culture.

Diaspora

William Safran (1991) definintion: Diasporas are expatriate minority communities that 1. Are disperesed from a ‘centre' to at least two ‘perpiheral places'

  1. Maintain a longing to their original homeland
  2. Believe they are not and cannot be accepted fully by their new homeland
  3. See ancestral home as place of eventual return
  4. Are committed to maintenance to homeland
  5. Group consciousness/solidarity defined by continued relationship with homeland.

Stuart hall definition:

the diaspora experience is defined not my essence and purity, but by the recognition of a necessary heterogeneity and diversity.

The Black Atlantic: Black identity is something that exist through exchange, through conversations across the Atlantic. (for examples black intellectuals.) Double consciousness (W.E.B. du Bois): There is a dissonance between your real identity and the way your seen.

The Merchant Navy:

  • Conditions in the merchant navy
  • Impressed labour
  • Ship = factory at sea
  • Resistance - two waves (pirates)

Pirates are exceptional in volume and value, they engage in the carribean and the Indian ocean. A pirate ship conditions were a little better than on Merchant ships, there was an order on board on a pirate ship and authority. The captain was elected and there was also a council that concludes every man on the ship, this council had the most power. - Welfare system: People on the ship saved up to help the people of the group who were injured. - No fighting allowed on board, otherwise you were left on the first land they could find. - Pirates are connected by a common sense of revenge on the merchant navy that they left. - Symbols and flags (the jolly roger). - Pirates operated in networks this made pirates a force hard to deal with.

Differences Maroons and Pirates:

  • Where: plantation vs. ship
  • Who: gender, pirates all male, maroons male and female
  • Maroons - part of African diaspora, pirates are not part of a diaspora.
  • Maroons: Nature of non-freedom, pirates more freedom
  • Status

Similarities:

  • Violent world as starting point
  • slavery/maritime trade: systems that paved way for industrial capitalism
  • ‘outlaws' from a dispossessed underclass
  • agency: ability of these people to control their own futures is for both very important.
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