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This collection looks at Caribbean religious history from the late 18th century to the present including obeah, vodou, santeria, candomble, and brujeria. The contributors examine how these religions have been affected by many forces including colonialism, law, race, gender, class, state power, media represenation, and the academy.
Hamel, the Obeah Man is set against the backdrop of early nineteenth-century Jamaica, and tells the story of a slave rebellion planned in the ruins of a plantation. Though the novel is sympathetic to white slaveholders and hostile to anti-slavery missionaries, it presents a complex picture of the culture and resistance of the island’s black majority. Hamel, the spiritual leader of the rebels, becomes more and more central to the story, and is a surprisingly powerful and ultimately ambiguous figure. This Broadview Edition includes a new foreword by Kamau Brathwaite, as well as a critical introduction and appendices. The extensive appendices include contemporary reviews of the novel, other authors’ and travellers’ descriptions of Jamaica, and historical documents related to slave insurrections and the debate over slavery.
How colonial categories of race and religion together created identities and hierarchies that today are vehicles for multicultural nationalism and social critique in the Caribbean and its diasporas. When the British Empire abolished slavery, Caribbean sugar plantation owners faced a labor shortage. To solve the problem, they imported indentured ÒcoolieÓ laborers, Hindus and a minority Muslim population from the Indian subcontinent. Indentureship continued from 1838 until its official end in 1917. The Deepest Dye begins on post-emancipation plantations in the West IndiesÑwhere Europeans, Indians, and Africans intermingled for work and worshipÑand ranges to present-day England, North America, and Trinidad, where colonial-era legacies endure in identities and hierarchies that still shape the post-independence Caribbean and its contemporary diasporas. Aisha Khan focuses on the contested religious practices of obeah and Hosay, which are racialized as ÒAfricanÓ and ÒIndianÓ despite the diversity of their participants. Obeah, a catch-all Caribbean term for sub-Saharan healing and divination traditions, was associated in colonial society with magic, slave insurrection, and fraud. This led to anti-obeah laws, some of which still remain in place. Hosay developed in the West Indies from Indian commemorations of the Islamic mourning ritual of Muharram. Although it received certain legal protections, HosayÕs mass gatherings, processions, and mock battles provoked fears of economic disruption and labor unrest that lead to criminalization by colonial powers. The proper observance of Hosay was debated among some historical Muslim communities and continues to be debated now. In a nuanced study of these two practices, Aisha Khan sheds light on power dynamics through religious and racial identities formed in the context of colonialism in the Atlantic world, and shows how today these identities reiterate inequalities as well as reinforce demands for justice and recognition.
In Obeah, Race and Racism, Eugenia O'Neal vividly discusses the tradition of African magic and witchcraft, traces its voyage across the Atlantic and its subsequent evolution on the plantations of the New World, and provides a detailed map of how English writers, poets and dramatists interpreted it for English audiences. The triangular trade in guns and baubles, enslaved Africans and gold, sugar and cotton was mirrored by a similar intellectual trade borne in the reports, accounts and stories that fed the perceptions and prejudices of everyone involved in the slave trade and no subject was more fascinating and disconcerting to Europeans than the religious beliefs of the people they had enslaved. Indeed, African magic made its own triangular voyage; starting from Africa, Obeah crossed the Atlantic to the Caribbean, then journeyed back across the ocean, in the form of traveller's narratives and plantation reports, to Great Britain where it was incorporated into the plots of scores of books and stories which went on to shape and form the world view of explorers and colonial officials in Britain's far-flung empire. O'Neal examines what British writers knew or thought they knew about Obeah and discusses how their perceptions of black people were shaped by their perceptions of Obeah. Translated or interpreted by racist writers as a devil-worshipping religion, Obeah came to symbolize the brutality, savagery and superstition in which blacks were thought to be immured by their very race. For many writers, black belief in Obeah proved black inferiority and justified both slavery and white colonial domination. The English reading public became generally convinced that Obeah was evil and that blacks were, at worst, devil worshippers or, at best, extremely stupid and credulous. And because books and stories on Obeah continued to promulgate either of the two prevailing perspectives, and sometimes both together until at least the 1950s, theories of black inferiority continue to hold sway in Great Britain today.
A comprehensive introduction to the syncretic religions developed in the Caribbean region Creolization—the coming together of diverse beliefs and practices to form new beliefs and practices—is one of the most significant phenomena in Caribbean religious history. Brought together in the crucible of the sugar plantation, Caribbean peoples drew on the variants of Christianity brought by European colonizers, as well as on African religious and healing traditions and the remnants of Amerindian practices, to fashion new systems of belief. Creole Religions of the Caribbean offers a comprehensive introduction to the syncretic religions that have developed in the region. From Vodou, Santería, Regla de Palo, the Abakuá Secret Society, and Obeah to Quimbois and Espiritismo, the volume traces the historical–cultural origins of the major Creole religions, as well as the newer traditions such as Pocomania and Rastafarianism. This second edition updates the scholarship on the religions themselves and also expands the regional considerations of the Diaspora to the U. S. Latino community who are influenced by Creole spiritual practices. Fernández Olmos and Paravisini–Gebert also take into account the increased significance of material culture—art, music, literature—and healing practices influenced by Creole religions.
The secrets of Santeria, Voodoo and Obeah are among the oldest enigmas in the world. Their roots go back to pre-historic Africa - perhaps even beyond that. From the 16th century onwards, the slave trade brought these ancient mysteries to the West, where they blended strangely with traditional Christianity: the ancient African gods became identified with legendary saints. This integration of the two faiths slowly evolved to form the many varieties of Santeria, Obeah and Voudoun that are widely practiced throughout the world today. Their characteristic dancing and drumming seem able to invoke strange states of mind in which almost anything is possible. Even stories of zombies - the walking dead - still persist. Is there a rational explanation for them? Contemporary Voudoun priests, priestesses, magicians and enchanters use rare herbs and spices as well as charms, dolls and talismans to control the natural world in ways that science cannot always explain. Accounts of their inexplicable successes are examined in depth. Most intriguing of all are the claims that are made for their love philtres and aphrodisiacs. What powers do these old religions still possess?