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Organizing Afro-Caribbean Communities: Processes of Cultural Change under Danish West Indian Slavery

Meader, Richard D.
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=toledo1249497332

Abstract Details

2009, Master of Arts, University of Toledo, History.
Nineteenth-century observers visiting the Danish West Indian islands of St. Thomas, St. John, and St. Croix, consistently describe slavery there, as the mildest in comparison with slavery in the American South or other Caribbean islands. This thesis questions the “mildness” of slavery, arguing that the observers witnessed the end result of a century-long process of independent slave community building outside the confines of the plantation system. First, the Danish colonial system relied on other European immigrants and settlers to populate their islands and used African slave labor to forge sugar-island plantations in the Caribbean. Slaves organized around ethnic and national identities they brought from Africa especially during the slave rebellion in 1733. This rebellion clearly reflected that slavery in the early eighteenth century was anything but mild on the Danish colonies. The introduction of provisioning grounds, shortly thereafter, not only required slaves to provide their own food, and therefore stayed rebellious intent, but provided opportunities to forge cultural and material relationships using Obeah practices, also transported from Africa, as the central organizing component. This continued until the abolition of the slave trade in 1802, which changed the demographic makeup of the islands and fostered the creation of families who utilized similar, yet more complex, relationships derived from the provisioning grounds. Finally, slaves used all the components of family, culture, religion, and provisioning grounds to participate in an annual “saturnalia” during the Christmas season. This turned society upside down as slaves mocked the system that kept them in subordinate social positions. These processes of community development over the previous century reveal a world that operated outside the formal structures of colonial society, and while treated inhumanly, slaves still found ways to mitigate the inherently harsh and demeaning system they lived in.
Charles Beatty Medina, PhD (Advisor)
Cynthia Ingham, PhD (Committee Member)
Peter Linebaugh, PhD (Committee Member)
106 p.
History
Danish West Indies; slavery; Afro-Caribbean; Danish slavery; Denmark; St. Croix; St. John; St. Thomas; Virgin Islands

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Meader, R. D. (2009). Organizing Afro-Caribbean Communities: Processes of Cultural Change under Danish West Indian Slavery [Master's thesis, University of Toledo]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=toledo1249497332

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Meader, Richard. Organizing Afro-Caribbean Communities: Processes of Cultural Change under Danish West Indian Slavery. 2009. University of Toledo, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=toledo1249497332.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Meader, Richard. "Organizing Afro-Caribbean Communities: Processes of Cultural Change under Danish West Indian Slavery." Master's thesis, University of Toledo, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=toledo1249497332

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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This open access ETD is published by University of Toledo and OhioLINK.