Charity and terror in eighteenth-century Jamaica: The Kingston Hospital and Asylum for Deserted ‘Negroes’

The Hospital and Asylum for Deserted Negroes in Kingston, Jamaica, was a major site of care for indigent blacks in one of the most densely populated urban centers on one of Britain's most valuable sugar islands. When the hospital opened, sometime after 1788, blacks outnumbered whites ten to one in Jamaica, and the island's whites continued to enact oppressive measures to control the colony's restive black population. This article shows how the Hospital and Asylum for Deserted Negroes became a strategic component in this scheme, joining an expansive network of workhouses and gaols the colonial government used to instill racialized law and order. From its early inception, one of the hospital's unspoken goals was to prevent lawlessness in a space marred by slave resistance. Finally, this article demonstrates how the early development of Jamaica's public health medical infrastructure was, in a large part, nurtured by the slave system.     

Can justice be achieved for slave descendents in Mauritius?

This article discusses challenges to achieving justice for slave descendents in Mauritius 177 years after the abolition of slavery. It reflects on the 2009 institution of a Truth and Justice Commission (TJC) in Mauritius to investigate the legacies of slavery and indentured labour. It is argued that time, the ethnic and cultural complexity of Mauritius as well as the TJC itself makes it difficult for Mauritians to achieve restorative justice for slave descendents. Reviewing transitional and restorative justice, the article argues that the Mauritius case study is potentially useful to reflections on the issue of social justice for ancient atrocities and for reflections on the challenges of reparations in complex and democratic societies. It concludes that the greater participation of civil society is required in decisions regarding reparations and that such decisions need to be grounded in contemporary and democratic approaches to achieving justice and the protection of human rights.     

Sir/St. Thomas More on the US Constitution: ‘More Perfect’ is not Utopian

Sir Thomas More was a politician, statesman, visionary humanist, and a friend of Erasmus, Colet, and Henry VIII. His most famous literary work is Utopia, a word coined based on the Greek for ‘no place’. Its influence has been enormous, inspiring social thinkers as diverse as Rousseau and B. F. Skinner. Using the principles More seemed to advocate, this article addresses the question: ‘What would he have thought of the Constitution of the United States had he lived to read it and experience life under its aegis?’ Much of what the Americans have done he would appreciate, much he would deplore. He would appreciate the federal nature of government, the elective nature of the legislature, and the freedom granted to citizens. He would have deplored slavery based on race and applauded the 13th Amendment. He would have looked askance at the role of the president and the necessity for a military. In sum, if we can believe that what he wrote in Utopia reflects his attitudes correctly, Thomas More’s would be a mixed verdict on American republicanism.     

Colonial labour,Tawdenni and ‘L’enfer du sel’: the struggle from slave to free labour in a Saharan salt mine

Abstract

Can we understand the arrival of Capitalism in Africa by tracking labour – from unfree to free, from slave to wage? The question supposes slavery to lie at its heart, yet the conversation between labour and slave studies is in early stages. The sources are problematic: the colonial ‘language of labour’ was often political rhetoric camouflaging ongoing forms of slavery. Then, there was the question of how the metropole-incorporated colonies into its economy: French West Africa’s sun and sand offered few economic resources. One was salt. The Niger Bend economy depended on Tawdenni, a desert salt mine controlled by Saharans and exploited by their slaves. In 1910, it was predicted that the French abolition of slavery would spell the end of Tawdenni: “Never will a man from the South – unless a slave – give himself to this work”; what, therefore, was to be done? The paper challenges the view that engagement with colonial capitalism necessarily led directly or even inevitably from slavery to wage labour by exploring how Tawdenni’s servile labour system responded to French colonial attempts to combine political abolition and economic sustainability.     

泰国历史上的封建制与奴隶制

泰国历史上是否经历一个奴隶制占主导地位的发展阶段,即我们通常所说的奴隶社会阶段?这是一个尚有争议的问题.本文通过对泰国古代社会的演进及其特点进行分析后认为,在后来我们见到的封建社会出现之前,泰国的历史上并不曾有过一个奴隶社会阶段.但是,在泰国封建关系形成和发展的过程中,并没有完全取代或排斥奴隶制因素.相反,随着社会的进一步发展,早先处于萌芽状态的奴隶制因素也得到了相应的发展,甚至可以说,奴隶制真正作为一种剥削制度,是由于封建关系的确立和封建统治者贪欲的扩大及其对广大人民日益加重的封建剥削而进一步引发起来的.     

Slavery and capitalism

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I look at the relationship between slavery and capitalism through exploring the counterfactual of industrialization without slavery in the United States and by analyzing the deeper connection between slavery and capitalism. As we will see, slavery, and war capitalism more generally, played an important role in industrialization, and slavery and capitalism share an underlying connection that if obscured can facilitate higher levels of exploitation under capitalism at present.     

‘What is Africa to me’ now?: African-American heritage tourism in Senegambia

This article scrutinises how Afro-diasporic tourists exemplify concepts of liminality, historical memory, and racial construction while engaging in heritage tourism, and how these concepts inform the host community's perception of the visitors. It includes the results of extensive interviews with African Americans who engaged in roots or heritage tourism in Senegal and/or Gambia in 2010, and who visited the Maison des Esclaves in Gorée Island and/or Juffureh Village in The Gambia. The research shows that African American tourists emerge from these encounters with various conceptions of self. Some felt more ‘African’ following their pilgrimage, while others felt a stronger attachment to their American identity. Some preferred an unfinished combination of the two, asserting a newfound appreciation for their ‘African American’ identities. Corresponding with the latter point, I revisit the ‘Double-Consciousness’ theory proposed by W.E.B. Dubois, revealing how some tourists reexamine their diasporic identit(ies) as ‘Africans’ and ‘Americans’ during their sojourns.     

滇国法制初探

滇国为春秋至汉代我国西南古代民族建立的古王国,由于文献资料的阙如,滇国的法制状况鲜为人知,但从不断发现的丰富考古资料来对应文献记载研究,仍可以从阶级结构、民族关系、行政建置、刑事、民事、习惯法等方面对滇国的法制状况进行探讨,大致勾勒出滇国法制的概貌和其特点。     

美国内战前联邦制因素对奴隶制相关案件的影响

黑人奴隶制问题一直是美国历史上一个非常复杂的问题。内战前,联邦制原则和奴隶制问题纠合在一起,使这个问题越发复杂,在宪法法理学方面引发了很多争论。本文考察了1787年宪法中关于奴隶制的相关规定,指出宪法语言具有模糊性,最高法院法官的解释才能赋予这些法律条文真正的意义,最高法院的判例原则遂成为重要的法律原则。本文分析了内战之前的几个涉及奴隶制的重要案例,探讨这些案例形成的法律原则以及最高法院法官对联邦和州的不同态度。