Notice bibliographique
- Notice
Type(s) de contenu et mode(s) de consultation : Texte noté : sans médiation
Auteur(s) : Dunn, Richard S. (1928-....)
Titre(s) : A tale of two plantations [Texte imprimé] : slave life and labor in Jamaica and Virginia / Richard S. Dunn
Publication : Cambridge (Mass.) : Harvard University Press, 2014
Description matérielle : x, 540 pages ; 25 cm
Comprend : Prologue ; Mesopotamia versus Mount Airy : the demographic contrast ; Sarah Affir
and her Mesopotamia family ; Winney Grimshaw and her Mount Airy family ; "Dreadful
idlers" in the Mesopotamia cane fields ; "Doing their duty" at Mount Airy ; The
Moravian Christian community at Mesopotamia ; The exodus from Mount Airy to Alabama
; Mesopotamia versus Mount Airy : the social contrast ; Emancipation.
Note(s) : Includes bibliographical references (pages 463-524) and index
"This book reconstructs the individual lives and collective experiences of some 2,000
slaves on two plantations--Mesopotamia sugar estate in western Jamaica and Mount Airy
Plantation in tidewater Virginia--during the final three generations of slavery in
Jamaica and the USA. It also compares Mesopotamia with Mount Airy to demonstrate the
differences between slave life in the British West Indies and slave life in the Antebellum
US South. The chief difference was demographic. Mesopotamia had a continually shrinking
slave population, with many more deaths than births, which was standard throughout
the British Caribbean. Mount Airy had a continually expanding slave population, with
many more births than deaths, which was standard throughout the Old South. At Mesopotamia
the slaveholders imported their laborers from Africa, worked them to death and replaced
them with new Africans, so that family life was perpetually stunted. At Mount Airy,
where the slaves were all American-born, the slaveholders sold their surplus people
or moved them to distant work sites, so that families were routinely broken up. On
both plantations numerous individual slaves are observed in action, a mix of leaders
and followers, rebels and conformists. A principal theme is slave motherhood and intergenerational
family formation; another is the impact of field labor upon health and longevity.
The Mesopotamia people engaged with Moravian missionaries and responded to two major
Jamaican slave rebellions, while 218 of the Mount Airy people migrated to Alabama
as cotton hands. The book concludes with emancipation in Jamaica and the USA. Never
before have two slave communities from differing regions in America been portrayed
over a long time period in such full detail"
Sujet(s) : Vie dans les plantations -- Virginie (États-Unis) -- Histoire
Vie dans les plantations -- Jamaïque -- Histoire
Esclaves -- Virginie (États-Unis) -- Histoire
Esclaves -- Jamaïque -- Histoire
Identifiants, prix et caractéristiques : ISBN 9780674735361. - ISBN 0674735366
Identifiant de la notice : ark:/12148/cb44321342z
Notice n° :
FRBNF44321342
(notice reprise d'un réservoir extérieur)
