African Maroons in Sixteenth-Century Panama
African Maroons in Sixteenth-Century Panama

Author: Robert C. Schwaller

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2021-09-02

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 0806176768

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From the 1520s through the 1580s, thousands of African slaves fled captivity in Spanish Panama and formed their own communities in the interior of the isthmus. African Maroons in Sixteenth-Century Panama, a primary source reader, edited by Robert C. Schwaller, documents this marronage in the context of five decades of African resistance to slavery. The self-sufficiency of the Maroons, along with their periodic raids against Spanish settlements, sparked armed conflict as Spaniards sought to conquer the maroon communities and kill or re-enslave their populations. After decades of struggle, Maroons succeeded in negotiating a peace with Spanish authorities and establishing the first two free Black towns in the Americas. The little-known details of this dramatic history emerge in these pages, traced through official Spanish accounts, reports, and royal edicts, as well as excerpts from several English sources that recorded alliances between Maroons and English privateers in the region. The contrasting Spanish and English accounts reveal Maroons' attempts to turn European antagonism to their advantage; and, significantly, several accounts feature direct testimony from Maroons. Most importantly, this reader includes translations of the first peace agreements made between a European empire and African Maroons, and the founding documents of the free-Black communities of Santiago del Príncipe and Santa Cruz la Real—the culmination of the first successful African resistance movement in the Americas. Schwaller has translated all the documents into English and presents each with a short introduction, thorough annotations, and full historical, cultural, and geographical context, making this volume accessible to undergraduate students while remaining a unique document collection for scholars.

African Maroons in Sixteenth-Century Panama
African Maroons in Sixteenth-Century Panama

Author: Robert C. Schwaller

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2021-09-02

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 0806176695

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From the 1520s through the 1580s, thousands of African slaves fled captivity in Spanish Panama and formed their own communities in the interior of the isthmus. African Maroons in Sixteenth-Century Panama, a primary source reader, edited by Robert C. Schwaller, documents this marronage in the context of five decades of African resistance to slavery. The self-sufficiency of the Maroons, along with their periodic raids against Spanish settlements, sparked armed conflict as Spaniards sought to conquer the maroon communities and kill or re-enslave their populations. After decades of struggle, Maroons succeeded in negotiating a peace with Spanish authorities and establishing the first two free Black towns in the Americas. The little-known details of this dramatic history emerge in these pages, traced through official Spanish accounts, reports, and royal edicts, as well as excerpts from several English sources that recorded alliances between Maroons and English privateers in the region. The contrasting Spanish and English accounts reveal Maroons' attempts to turn European antagonism to their advantage; and, significantly, several accounts feature direct testimony from Maroons. Most importantly, this reader includes translations of the first peace agreements made between a European empire and African Maroons, and the founding documents of the free-Black communities of Santiago del Príncipe and Santa Cruz la Real—the culmination of the first successful African resistance movement in the Americas. Schwaller has translated all the documents into English and presents each with a short introduction, thorough annotations, and full historical, cultural, and geographical context, making this volume accessible to undergraduate students while remaining a unique document collection for scholars.

Flight to Freedom
Flight to Freedom

Author: Alvin O. Thompson

Publisher:

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13:

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This book is about the struggles of enslaved Africans in the Americas who achieved freedom through flight and the establishment of Maroon communities in the face of overwhelming military odds on the part of the slaveholders.

Beyond 1619
Beyond 1619

Author: Paul J. Polgar

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2023-11-14

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 1512825026

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Beyond 1619 brings an Atlantic and hemispheric perspective to the year 1619 as a marker of American slavery's origins and the beginnings of the Black experience in what would become the United States by situating the roots of racial slavery in a broader, comparative context. In recent years, an extensive public dialogue regarding the long shadow of racism in the United States has pushed Americans to confront the insidious history of race-based slavery and its aftermath, with 1619--the year that the first recorded enslaved persons of African descent arrived in British North America--taking center stage as its starting point. Yet this dialogue has inadvertently narrowed our understanding of slavery, race, and their repercussions to the U.S. context. Beyond 1619 showcases the fruitful results when scholars examine and put into conversation multiple empires, regions, peoples, and cultures to get a more complete view of the rise of racial slavery in the Americas. Painting racial slavery's emergence on a hemispheric canvass, and in one compact volume, provides historical context beyond the 1619 moment for discussions of slavery, racism, antiracism, freedom, and lasting inequalities. In the process, this volume shines new light on these critical topics andillustrates the centrality of racial slavery, and contests over its rise, in nearly every corner of the early modern Atlantic World. Contributors: John N. Blanton, Jesse Cromwell, Erika Denise Edwards, Rebecca Anne Goetz, Rana Hogarth, Chloe L. Ireton, Marc H. Lerner, Paul J. Polgar, Brett Rushforth, Casey Schmitt, Jenny Shaw, James Sidbury.

Overlooked Places and Peoples
Overlooked Places and Peoples

Author: Dana Velasco Murillo

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-06-03

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 1040029663

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This book examines the hemispheric histories of overlooked peoples and places that shaped colonial Spanish America. This volume focuses on the experiences of Native peoples, Africans and Afro-descended peoples, and castas (individuals of mixed ancestry) living in regions perceived as fringe, marginal, or peripheral. It covers a comprehensive geographic range including northern Mexico, Central America, the Circum-Caribbean, and South America, as well as a sweeping chronological period, from the earliest colonization episodes of the sixteenth century to the twilight of Spanish rule in the late eighteenth century. The chapters highlight the diverse peoples, from semisedentary and nonsedentary Native groups and Mosquito captains to free African governors—who lived, labored, fought, ruled, and formed communities across Spanish America. The volume examines how these overlooked peoples navigated colonial processes of conquest, displacement, and relocation, while drawing attention to local factors that influenced these experiences including ecological change, rivalries, diplomacy, contraband, time and distance, and geography. Through their analysis of the local and temporal contexts, the studies in this volume offer new insight into why the protagonists of these places responded contentiously—through resistance or flight—or cooperatively—by accepting treaties or alliances. Non-specialists-undergraduate students, booksellers, and librarians will be drawn to the individuals case studies, while scholars will find this collection to be an indispensable research tool.

Dying to Better Themselves
Dying to Better Themselves

Author: Olive Senior

Publisher:

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9789766404574

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The epic story of the involvement of the tiny islands of the West Indies in providing the work force for the construction of the Panama Canal (1904-1914) and before that, the Panama Railroad (1850-1855), and the French attempt under de Lesseps to build the Panama Canal (1881-1889). Written by a West Indian, the book allows the voices of the participants to tell their stories alongside the official accounts.

Africa from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century
Africa from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century

Author: Bethwell A. Ogot

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 1088

ISBN-13: 9780435948115

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The result of years of work by scholars from all over the world, The UNESCO General History of Africa reflects how the different peoples of Africa view their civilizations and shows the historical relationships between the various parts of the continent. Historical connections with other continents demonstrate Africa's contribution to the development of human civilization. Each volume is lavishly illustrated and contains a comprehensive bibliography. This fifth volume of the acclaimed series covers the history of the continent from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the close of the eighteenth century in which two themes emerge: first, the continuing internal evolution of the states and cultures of Africa during this period second, the increasing involvement of Africa in external trade--with major but unforeseen consequences for the whole world. In North Africa, we see the Ottomans conquer Egypt. South of the Sahara, some of the larger, older states collapse, and new power bases emerge. Traditional religions continue to coexist with both Christianity (suffering setbacks) and Islam (in the ascendancy). Along the coast, particularly of West Africa, Europeans establish a trading network which, with the development of New World plantation agriculture, becomes the focus of the international slave trade. The immediate consequences of this trade for Africa are explored, and it is argued that the long-term global consequences include the foundation of the present world-economy with all its built-in inequalities.

Atlantic Diasporas
Atlantic Diasporas

Author: Richard L. Kagan

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 0801890357

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This wide-ranging narrative explores the role that Jews, Conversos, and Crypto-Jews played in settling and building the Atlantic world between 1500 and 1800. Through the interwoven themes of markets, politics, religion, culture, and identity, the essays here demonstrate that the world of Atlantic Jewry, most often typified by Port Jews involved in mercantile pursuits, was more complex than commonly depicted. The first section discusses the diaspora in relation to maritime systems, commerce, and culture on the Atlantic and includes an overview of Jewish history on both sides of the ocean. The second section provides an in-depth look at Jewish mercantilism, from settlements in Dutch America to involvement in building British, Portuguese, and other trading cultures to the dispersal of Sephardic merchants. In the third section, the chapter authors assess the roles of identity and religion in settling the Atlantic, looking closely at religious conversion; slavery; relationships among Jews, Christians, and Muslims; and the legacy of the lost tribes of Israel. A concluding commentary elucidates the fluidity of identity and boundaries in the formation of the Atlantic world. Featuring chapters by Jonathan Israel, Natalie Zemon Davis, Aviva Ben-Ur, Holly Snyder, and other prominent Jewish historians, this collection opens new avenues of inquiry into the Jewish diaspora and integrates Jewish trade and settlements into the broader narrative of Atlantic exploration.

At the Heart of the Borderlands
At the Heart of the Borderlands

Author: Cameron D. Jones

Publisher: University of New Mexico Press

Published: 2023

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0826364756

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At the Heart of the Borderlands is the first book-length study of Africans and Afro-descendants in the frontiers of Spanish America. While people of African descent have formed part of most borderlands histories, this study recognizes and explains their critical contribution to the formation of frontier spaces. Lack of imperial control coupled with Spain's desperation for settlers and soldiers in frontier areas facilitated the social mobility of Afro-descendants. This need allowed African descendants to become not just members of borderland societies but leaders of it as well. They were essential actors in helping to shape the limits of the Spanish empire. Africans and Afro-descendants built, opposed, and shaped Spanish hegemony in the borderlands, taking on roles that would have been impossible or difficult in colonial centers due to the socio-racial hierarchy of imperial policies and practices.

Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest
Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest

Author: Matthew Restall

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021-04-13

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0197537316

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An update of a popular work that takes on the myths of the Spanish Conquest of the Americas, featuring a new afterword. Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest reveals how the Spanish invasions in the Americas have been conceived and presented, misrepresented and misunderstood, in the five centuries since Columbus first crossed the Atlantic. This book is a unique and provocative synthesis of ideas and themes that were for generations debated or perpetuated without question in academic and popular circles. The 2003 edition became the foundation stone of a scholarly turn since called The New Conquest History. Each of the book's seven chapters describes one "myth," or one aspect of the Conquest that has been distorted or misrepresented, examines its roots, and explodes its fallacies and misconceptions. Using a wide array of primary and secondary sources, written in a scholarly but readable style, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest explains why Columbus did not set out to prove the world was round, the conquistadors were not soldiers, the native Americans did not take them for gods, Cortés did not have a unique vision of conquest procedure, and handfuls of vastly outnumbered Spaniards did not bring down great empires with stunning rapidity. Conquest realities were more complex--and far more fascinating--than conventional histories have related, and they featured a more diverse cast of protagonists-Spanish, Native American, and African. This updated edition of a key event in the history of the Americas critically examines the book's arguments, how they have held up, and why they prompted the rise of a New Conquest History.