Course Description

Fulfills Upper-Level Elective for LCS Major and Minor
Fulfills Upper-Level Elective for History Major and Minor

From the late fifteenth century to the late nineteenth century Africans and their descendants have shaped the Atlantic-Caribbean world in significant ways. Bringing strong cultural memories and histories from Africa to the Caribbean, African experiences, labor and their navigation of the violent world of the colonial Caribbean has shaped not only the local region but also the economies and histories of the wider Americas and Europe. This course will examine the routes/roots of the forced migration of Africans from their continent to the New World with specific attention to the development of plantation economies in the Caribbean. The comparative nature of this course serves us well to explore how the enslaved negotiated and navigated distinct and different European colonial contexts. Through an interrogation of the Middle Passage, to the entrenchment of sugar economies, this course explores the Spanish, French, and English (with important references to the Dutch and Portuguese contexts) colonized islands and the ways in which Africans and their descendants, both rural and urban, lived, survived and resisted their enslavement toward their eventual emancipation(s). In our examination of comparative slavery in the Caribbean we will cover a series of themes to guide our trajectory including but not limited to: colonial geographies, legal systems of slavery, gender and slavery, culture and religion, resistance and revolution. As this is a history course we will also take note of the use of primary and secondary sources in constructing these histories and how the authors’ we read use sources to construct arguments and important themes. We will also use class time to read and interpret primary source material from this era and subject.