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In the 1970s, the United States and West Germany developed a vital transatlantic partnership focused on new military doctrines and technology that met the challenges of the late Cold War. Due to domestic politics and strategic concerns, the United States never recreated this type of relationship with countries in the Indo-Pacific region--specifically with South Korea. Using a unique synthesis of American, German, and Korean sources, this article argues that another partnership is required in Asia today. Rather than fall back on European partners, Washington should collaborate with Seoul to develop a new generation of doctrine and technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Racist violence has deep colonial roots that affect all aspects of life and the repertoires of violences in contexts such as the Colombian contemporary war. In this article, I will construct a woven web at three moments. Through this, I argue that teaching history from historical consciousness in settings such as schools can contribute to necessary social dialogues for processes of historical reparation such as those pertaining to the African diaspora who were victims of the slave trade and are now settled in Colombia. Through this web, I also discuss pedagogies that incorporate categories such as the longue durée, historical consciousness and continuity and change that contribute to restorative, anticolonial and historical reparation processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors offer a response to commentaries and criticisms made on their book "Slavery, Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution." They discuss the recognition made by the commentators on the authors' evaluation of the economic impact of slavery on the British economy, their view about the impact of the slave-based Atlantic trades on British region, and their major motivation for writing the book.

This article contributes to the scholarly literature on the rent controversy and labour shortages in Jamaica and the moral panic over idleness that attended the 'Quashee' stereotype, which proliferated among planters during apprenticeship (1834–1838) and persisted into the 1850s. While critics have previously understood the 'Quashee' stereotype popularized by Thomas Carlyle as antithetical to the sentimental discourse of a happy, industrious peasantry espoused by missionaries and abolitionists, this article traces some of their continuities through a lens of food studies. Using close readings of texts that engaged with provision grounds and discourses of idleness, natural bounty, and agricultural improvement from the 1830s to the late 1850s, it recontextualizes the 'Quashee' problem in the local and commercial interests in fruit that preceded the rise of the banana industry in the 1870s. The charges of idleness and insolence affixed to the provision grounds and fruit cultivation among the Jamaican peasantry were ostensibly resolved by the transition to large-scale exports, namely bananas. However, the patterns of mixed cultivation that emerged in slave provisioning systems and continued after emancipation laid the groundwork for the growth of peasant freeholds in the 1830s–1850s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a linguistic shift for scholars of trans-Atlantic slavery regarding the quintessential term 'the Middle Passage' to the plural 'Middle Passages'. As a singular noun, 'the Middle Passage' conforms with the 'triangular trade' which represented the three-way relationship between Europe, Africa and the Americas. The term almost exclusively encompasses the North Atlantic, failing to explore South Atlantic trading routes. By changing our language, we can look deeper into the multiple forced journeys of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic world. Through application of plurality, we can better study people's multiple 'Middle Passages' from the ancient silk roads to the slave castles and forts along the African littoral in a system of movement that does not belittle the horrors of the Atlantic oceanic passages. Indeed, multiple 'Middle Passages' as a concept exacerbates the experiences of enslaved persons through continual uprooting and journeys. 'The Middle Passage' is evocative of a peregrination preceded with a beginning and succeeded with an ending; while the pluralistic 'Middle Passages' forces us to recognize the multiple complex facets of journeys. For many enslaved persons, there existed no end to continual relocations on arrival in the Americas and people were in a constant state of flux. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1807 and 1843, British naval officers liberated more than thirty thousand Africans from slave vessels that embarked enslaved people along the Bight of Biafra. Large ledger books display these Liberated Africans' names, sexes, ages, and other characteristics. The names, many of which are easily recognizable today, provide clues about individuals pulled into the transatlantic trade and reveal a range of experiences that shaped the lives of Africans in the nineteenth century. Connecting the names to ethnolinguistic homelands helps establish a rough place of origin for more than twelve thousand of the individuals. The data underscore the centrality of Igbo-speakers – the major language in the Bight of Biafra hinterland – to the region's slave trade. Given the representative nature of the ethnolinguistic makeup of the individuals to the broader slave trade from the Bight of Biafra, we use the intended destinations of the captured vessels as a basis for projecting the size and direction of the transatlantic diaspora of Igbo-speakers. Despite their limited cultural impact on African and African-descended regions in the Americas, large numbers of captives from Igbo-speaking communities were sent to almost every plantation society in the New World in the nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The discovery that loans for the payment of slave abolition compensation had not been repaid by British taxpayers until 2015 took many by surprise. But it is the financial contribution of British Afro-Caribbeans towards the emancipation of their own ancestors that is most significant, calling for a re-examination of abolition historiography. By using Jeremy Bentham and Edward Gibbon Wakefield as analytical constructs, each July 1832 to February 1833 Colonial Office abolition proposal can be analysed against the greatest good of the greatest number principle. The result involves re-conceptualising abolition as an exercise in administering distributive justice through maximising freedom within a community of enslaved, enslavers, and British taxpayers. Here, freedom is the product of policy choices over who would bear the cost of financing abolition. In addressing these issues, this essay is written as reparative history, drawing parallels between the exclusions of 1832/1833 and Afro-Caribbean historiographical diasporic exclusions within the British academy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article "In the Shadow of Haiti: US Black Internationalism in the Dominican Republic, 1860-1904" examines African Americans' perspectives on the Dominican Republic in comparison to Haiti during the 19th century. It discusses how African Americans saw the Dominican Republic as a contrast to Haiti, emphasizing its importance to US Black internationalism during the Reconstruction era. The text also explores the role of Black US foreign service officers in Santo Domingo and their influence on US policies towards the Dominican Republic. It delves into the complexities of African Americans' views on the Dominican Republic, shaped by their perceptions of race relations and economic opportunities on the island. [Extracted from the article]

Visualizing the traumatic past is a perennial challenge, particularly for historians of the slave trade. New innovations in digital technologies may offer a transformative framework to address this problem. Epic Games and its Unreal Engine, developed for use in industries such as film and video game production, animation, architectural visualization, and virtual reality simulations, offer one potential avenue to efficiently visualize a challenging past. Epic Games's MetaHuman Creator – high-fidelity digital humans, fully rigged and able to be quickly animated with little more than an iPhone – offer another related means of viscerally recreating the past in ways which offer new insights for researchers and new tools for educators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the first study of the full range of documentary evidence concerning the unintended arrival of the Enterprise in Bermuda in 1835, the earliest incident of an American slave ship entering a British colonial port after the Emancipation Act. The choice for freedom made by 72 enslaved people touched off a tense discussion in Bermuda about the legal status of its human cargo. This challenged the capacity of elite white Bermudians to reconcile their reluctance to accept them into Bermuda with the imagined benevolence they had conjured during Bermuda's own recent emancipation. Bermuda's officials negotiated the degree to which calculated inaction would balance imperial abolitionism with local racial anxieties and American entanglements. Scholars have noted the incident mainly for its geopolitical significance in the post-emancipation Atlantic, but Bermudian and Colonial Office sources emphasize the role of local Black Bermudian communication networks and their knowledge of the law. The archive also reveals that the Enterprise incident encompassed some of the most prominent slave traders and abolitionist families in the United States. Rather than an aberration, in characteristics such as the striking young age of its human cargo, the Enterprise was typical of this phase of the American internal slave trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 11 May 1789, the night before Parliament’s first debate on ending the slave trade, a woman advocated for abolition before hundreds of Londoners at a debating society. Despite her compelling oratory and numerous speeches on the slave trade, her name remains unknown, and she is recorded only as the ‘Fair Orator’. This article begins to restore her place in history by examining the role of London debating societies as crucial yet neglected venues for abolitionist advocacy in late-eighteenth-century Britain. By drawing on newspaper advertisements and government spy reports, it highlights the Fair Orator’s impact, explores her potential identity—possibly Mary Robinson—and addresses the historical anonymity that has obscured women speakers’ contributions to the abolitionist movement. The article also sheds light on the hostile environment women orators faced during this period. In doing so, it argues for the recognition of women’s vital yet often overlooked roles in the abolitionist soundscape and the campaign against the slave trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This note presents for the first time material on Edward Long's views on Jamaican enslavement and British slave trade abolition in 1804. His letter of that year, deposited at the William Salt Library, Stafford, shows that in old age he adapted his position from being an ardent slave trade supporter to a stance where ending the slave trade could be accepted. Long emphasized that, in circumstances where slave revolt and Jamaica's security were concerned, the pro-slave trade argument would need to be shelved, the implementation of abolition would be acceptable and planters could then concentrate their efforts on amelioration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The four generations of Hohenzollern rulers who transformed the electorate of Brandenburg into the kingdom of Prussia — a regional player into a great power — all employed Black men at their courts and in their armies. Through court performance, including processions and tournaments, as well as through artistic commissions, the Brandenburgian rulers adapted existing traditions of representing and displaying human difference and hierarchy for their own ends. As the only member of the Holy Roman Empire to join the Atlantic slave trade, Brandenburg had a particular commitment to staging its global aspirations, both during its slave-trading venture and after it failed. Brandenburg-Prussia's belated rise exhibits with particular clarity the importance to early modern statecraft not just of foreign enterprise but of its courtly representations. Through the display and representation of Black people in performance and art, the rulers of Brandenburg participated in forms of 'race-making' that altered the perception not only of sub-Saharan Africans but of the princely lineage as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a biography and multi-generational microhistory of Nathaniel King (1847–1884), the University of Aberdeen's first African-born student and a pioneering practitioner of Western medicine in colonial West Africa. Nathaniel's father, Thomas King, rose from slavery to become a missionary and linguist in Sierra Leone and what would later become Nigeria. Nathaniel, born to survivors of the Middle Passage, graduated M.B., C.M. from Aberdeen in 1876, before returning to West Africa to become a prominent member of the educated elite in Victorian Lagos. The long-established historiography of Scottish 'sojourners' abroad has not yet explored the impact of colonial sojourners to Scotland, an itinerary travelled particularly by male students from within the empire, especially as Scotland's universities became imperial centres of medical training. This article draws particular attention to the significance of Britain's nineteenth-century campaign against the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the arrival of the first African-born students at Scottish universities, placing King's history within a broader pattern of Africans born to people liberated from slave ships who ventured to Aberdeen, Edinburgh, and St Andrews in the middle decades of the nineteenth century for medical training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assessing the differences between scholarly collaboration on slave trading in the Atlantic World, on the one hand, and similar activities in the wider Indian Ocean, on the other, needs to begin with an assessment of the relative importance of slave trading in the two oceans. Both oceans saw a maritime slave trade that drew heavily on sub–Saharan Africa. But while almost all captives arriving in the Americas came from Africa, in the Indian Ocean World there was a significant, probably majority, traffic in non-Africans, especially if one includes the South China Sea, as indeed most assessments of the Indian Ocean World slave trade do. Focusing on Africa alone initially, scholars who have made their name in the Atlantic World have tended to support the idea that the combined numbers of the Sahara Desert and Indian Ocean slave trade over two millennia were about the same as the volume of the transatlantic slave trade in its 360 years of existence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the historical impact of droughts in the early modern Caribbean and their effects on the region's environment and population. The author examines a letter from 1726 written by Colonel John Hart, the Governor of the British colony of the Leeward Islands, which describes the devastating consequences of a prolonged drought in Antigua. The letter raises questions about climate change, water security, and environmental racism, highlighting the need for further research on how colonialism altered the region's climate and affected the lives of African, Indigenous, and European residents. The article emphasizes the importance of understanding the historical context of droughts in order to address present-day challenges of water insecurity and climate change in drought-prone regions worldwide. [Extracted from the article]

Rice is a keystone crop of the peasant farming system of Maranhão, Brazil. Its origins can be traced to the food fields of fugitive slave communities that proliferated throughout the Amazonic frontier during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Maranhão was the setting for a rice plantation economy, which knowingly exploited enslaved West African rice growers. Plantation runaways carried rice to maroon (quilombo) communities where the esteemed dietary staple was planted. Oral histories commemorate the role of enslaved African and Afrodescendant women in quilombo rice transfers and the subsistence practices that shaped the rice-based peasant farming systems of the African Diaspora. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Schistosoma mansoni was introduced from Africa to the Americas during the transatlantic slave trade and remains a major public health problem in parts of South America and the Caribbean. This study presents a comprehensive comparative analysis of three S. mansoni strains with different geographical origins—from Liberia, Belo Horizonte and Puerto Rico. We demonstrated significant variation in virulence and host-parasite interactions. Methods: We investigated the phenotypic characteristics of the parasite and its eggs, as well as the immunopathologic effects on laboratory mouse organ systems. Results: Our results show significant differences in worm morphology, worm burden, egg size, and pathologic organ changes between these strains. The Puerto Rican strain showed the highest virulence, as evidenced by marked liver and spleen changes and advanced liver fibrosis indicated by increased collagen content. In contrast, the strains from Liberia and Belo Horizonte had a less pathogenic profile with less liver fibrosis. We found further variations in granuloma formation, cytokine expression and T-cell dynamics, indicating different immune responses. Conclusion: Our study emphasizes the importance of considering intra-specific variations of S. mansoni for the development of targeted therapies and public health strategies. The different virulence patterns, host immune responses and organ pathologies observed in these strains provide important insights for future research and could inform region-specific interventions for schistosomiasis control. Author summary: Schistosomiasis continues to be a major global health problem, affecting millions of people worldwide. One of the human pathogens, Schistosoma mansoni, was introduced to the Americas from Africa during the transatlantic slave trade. Despite its widespread distribution, intraspecific variation between geographically separated strains of S. mansoni has been studied insufficiently. Our study provides a comparative analysis of three laboratory S. mansoni strains with original provenance from Liberia, Belo Horizonte and Puerto Rico. We found significant intraspecific differences in virulence patterns, host immune responses and organ pathology. Our results show differences in the phenotypic characteristics of the parasite and its eggs. The Puerto Rican strain was the most virulent and was characterized by severe liver and spleen damage and advanced liver fibrosis. In contrast, the strains from Liberia and Belo Horizonte were less pathogenic and showed only minimal liver fibrosis. In addition, we observed significant differences in granuloma formation, cytokine expression and T-cell dynamics, indicating different host immune responses. These different virulence patterns and immune responses highlight the need to consider the intraspecific variation of S. mansoni when assessing disease burden and developing new therapeutic approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that Thomas Clarkson (1760–1846), the founder of the British campaign to abolish the slave trade, was a heterodox Anglican. Suspected of 'Unitarian opinions' in his youth, his religious writings in old age, including neglected notes on his copy of the New Testament, display a deep commitment to critical study of the Bible and a broadly Arian view of Christ. Knowing that Clarkson was a life-long but heterodox member of the Church of England challenges the conventional focus on Quakers and Evangelicals in the study of religion and abolitionism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article "Introduction. Paz Ramos and her work" focuses on the series of collages created by Paz Ramos between 2020 and 2023, which illustrate the novel "Ekumbi and the legend of capoeira" written by her husband, Fernando Harris. These works reflect Ramos' interest in the history and origins of capoeira, as well as her vision of the tragedy of the slave trade during European colonization. Inspired by Afro-Brazilian naïve painting, Ramos creates colorful and textured collages that show the cruelty of history from a figurative perspective. The illustrations presented offer a journey through the story of Ekumbi, a boy captured in Angola and taken to Brazil as a slave, where he discovers capoeira and finds love. [Extracted from the article]

Australian South Sea Islanders are a distinctive cultural group comprising descendants of over 60000 labourers who came to Australia from Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and elsewhere in the Western Pacific between 1863 and 1904. "Blackbirded" labourers were commonly referred to as victims of a slave trade, though many also came voluntarily to work in the sugar plantations of northern New South Wales and Queensland. The advent of racist exclusionary immigration policies introduced from 1901 further forced South Sea Islanders to the margins of colonial society. Yet many Australian South Sea Islanders would argue their untold history speaks to resilience and overcoming adversity. Australian South Sea Islanders have a distinctive cultural heritage, including material culture, oral traditions embedded in the landscape and connections to places – from sugar mills to domestic sites – revealed archaeologically. This heritage must be approached sensitively given its association with sometimes difficult histories but is crucial to understanding the contributions of Australian South Sea Islanders to Australian society, contemporary communities and identities, and historical and social significance across multiple scales. Collaborative research with Australian South Sea Islanders pushes the boundaries of "community archaeology" by taking a slow approach to research, reframing ethnographic objects and cultural landscapes, and producing an archaeology that can include many voices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article "Financing Freedom: Self-Purchase and Reenslavement in Seventeenth-Century Andalucía" from the William & Mary Quarterly explores cases of individuals in Andalucía who sought freedom through self-purchase agreements and wage-earning slavery. The text delves into legal disputes, financial struggles, and social dynamics surrounding the concept of contingent liberty in a Mediterratlantic framework. Through detailed analysis of historical records, the article sheds light on the complexities of freedom, debt bondage, and enslavement in a diverse and interconnected society. The cases presented in the article highlight the intricate relationships between individuals, owners, and legal systems in the pursuit of autonomy and self-determination. [Extracted from the article]

The emergence of African diasporic communities in the Americas, especially in the United States, is one of the legacies of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which brought millions of enslaved Africans from their ancestral homeland in Africa to the so-called New World. For many scholars, the African diaspora is not only one of the largest diaspora communities in human history, but there have also been shared efforts, on the part of Africans in Africa and those in the diaspora, to reconnect through Pan-African ideas and movements for several decades. To better understand the ongoing desire to strengthen the connection between Africa and its diasporic communities in the Americas, especially on the changing trends of the discourse on global African political thought and movements, this article draws on African-centered conceptual ideas with emphasis on African ethos and cultural commonalities for the discussion. The article underscores the central argument that the nature and trends of global African thought and movements appear to be consistent with the common or shared African cultural commonalities idea in Africa and the African diaspora. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The port city of Havana, central to the Spanish colonial fleet system since the late sixteenth century, remained an important nexus for nineteenth-century Atlantic trade networks of sugar, coffee, tobacco, and the slave trade. Positioning Irish immigrants in this global hub allows us to examine their presence in Cuba and their participation in global circuits of commodities, trade, and labor. Drawing on local colonial sources, we evaluate the opportunities and experiences of Irish immigrants as social actors in the multi-ethnic urban spaces of Havana and other strategically located port cities of Santiago and Cienfuegos. The Irish who converged on Cuba rarely came directly from Ireland. Hence, we explore three migration trajectories mediated through the British West Indies, the Spanish metropole, and globally connected cities of North America. The most prominent were high-ranking military men who arrived in Cuba in the eighteenth century through Iberian-Irish connections; a smaller number of propertied Irish who migrated from the West Indies; and lastly, distinct flows of largely anonymous nineteenth-century immigrants who came through emerging Atlantic networks of colonial labour via the United States. This study explores the entangled histories of Irish, African, and European diasporas in the social and political worlds of three Spanish Caribbean port cities. Through an analysis of how Irish immigrants negotiated processes of class, religion, race, and gender in colonial Cuba, we highlight their participation in key economic and social dynamics of white colonization strategies, plantation slavery, and the Atlantic slave trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Problems caused by overcrowding and the simple need to breathe represent one of the major consequences of medical racism. With few exceptions, histories of epidemics, disease prevention, and sanitation often focus on municipal reform efforts to clean up gritty urban centers from London to Paris to New York. This article traces how concerns about ventilation emerged during the transatlantic slave trade and continued to be a problem for Black people throughout the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The article emphasizes that Black people were not just the victims of medical racism but initiated many crusades in the United States to promote better ventilation throughout the twentieth century. This article highlights the work of Black reformers, doctors, and thinkers who fought to create healthy living conditions for Black people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maroons in Suriname and French Guiana descend from enslaved Africans who escaped the plantations during colonial times. Maroon farmers still cultivate a large diversity of rice, their oldest staple crop. The oral history and written records of Maroons by colonial authorities provide contrasting perspectives on the origins of Maroon rice. Here, we analyzed the genomic ancestry of 136 newly sequenced Maroon rice varieties and found seven genomic groups that differ in their geographical associations. We interpreted these findings in light of ethnobotanical and archival investigations to reconstruct the historical contexts associated with the introduction of rice varieties to the Guianas. We found that two rice groups trace to West Africa, which we propose are linked to the transatlantic slave trade (c. 1526 to 1825). We posit that the Maroon rice stock additionally contains varieties that derive from rice introduced by indentured laborers from Java (1890 onwards), USA rice breeders (1932 onwards), and Hmong refugees who fled the Vietnam War (1991). Furthermore, on the Maroon fields, we found rice types never documented before that were derived from crosses. Overall, our results demonstrate that the Maroon farmers prioritize maintenance of a high stock diversity, which we posit reflects the expertise they inherited from their (African) ancestors. Ignored by agricultural modernization initiatives, Maroon farmers today are custodians of a unique cultural heritage. Notably, the genomic findings underline many Maroon stories about their past. We anticipate that a similar study approach can be applied to other heirloom crops of (Indigenous) communities that may have preserved their history on their farms to reconstruct, acknowledge, and honor the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marcus Anthony Hunter’s Radical Reparations: Healing the Soul of a Nation presents a novel and interesting meditation on the issue of reparations. This review essay addresses the meaning and function of the three speculative parables Hunter presents in the book in three sections. First, by detailing the human travails of African people and their descendants during and in the aftermath of the transatlantic slave trade in an engaging prose style, the book offers an important intervention as a form of public sociology, accessibly written for a popular audience. Second, Hunter’s parables also convey the complex humanity of Africans’ lives, detailing both their subjection and agency. Finally, the review essay understands the book’s critique of ascribed blackness as importantly de-racializing Africans and establishing an expansive form of reparations as necessary for the realisation of their humanity and repair. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have provided impressive analyses of the transatlantic slave trade to the Americas and its demise over the past four decades, this led by contributions to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database (https://www.slavevoyages.org/). England played a decisive role in the suppression of that traffic after prohibition of British participation in 1808, this partly achieved by British interceptions of slave vessels by its West Africa Squadron (1819–1867) and the establishment of Courts of Mixed Commission for the Abolition of the Slave Trade (1819–1871). Given a North Atlantic Ocean current clockwise gyre and South Atlantic counterclockwise gyre, a major northern slave vessel route connected Africa to the Caribbean and a second southern route connected Africa to Brazil. 1 Africans disembarked in the Caribbean had diverse origins in West Africa (Sierra Leone, Ghana, Togo, Nigeria) and West Central Africa (Congo, Angola). Brazil received fewer Africans from West Africa (there was a long-term connection between Benin and Bahia), large numbers of African slaves from West Central Africa and a small number from Southeast Africa (Mozambique) at or near Rio de Janeiro. Language difference (Spanish, French, English, Dutch, Danish in the North Atlantic, Portuguese in the South Atlantic) contributed to a conceptual separation of those two regions, particularly evident in historiographies related to slavery and abolition. The Scottish diplomat David Turnbull was one of the few observers of the nineteenth century who connected Caribbean islands with Brazil. Turnbull asserted to the British Foreign Office that subaltern resistance by slaves and free blacks in both the British and non-British Caribbean could aid in England's quest to extinguish the transatlantic slave trade. Turnbull organized a petition campaign in Jamaica in the late 1840s to pressure England's Foreign Office to pursue more aggressive actions at sea and on land to halt slave disembarkations in Cuba and Brazil. Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston's positive response combined with slave resistance in Brazil contributed to Brazil's imperial government decision to act decisively to halt further slave disembarkations in 1850–1851. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Journal of Global Slavery has announced the winner of the Paul E. Lovejoy Prize, named after esteemed scholar Paul E. Lovejoy, for excellence in works related to global slavery. The winning book, "Sojourners, Sultans, and Slaves," by Gunja SenGupta and Awam Amkpa, connects Atlantic and Indian Ocean slavery histories, exploring global discourses on freedom and bondage. The book is praised for its meticulous research, engaging narrative, and contribution to understanding interconnected systems of slavery and colonialism. Submissions for next year's Lovejoy Prize are open until February 14, 2025, and should highlight significant contributions to the field of global slavery studies. [Extracted from the article]

The article "Four Years of Joe Biden: The old man who reconciled with Europe" describes Joe Biden's presidency as US President from 2021 to 2025. Biden was elected as the Democratic Party candidate to overcome the division in the country. His presidency was characterized by a strong focus on Europe and transatlantic relations. Domestically, Biden focused on a "nationalization" of the USA with extensive investment programs that led to record debts. Despite some successes in foreign policy, such as supporting Ukraine, relations with China and the failed withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan remained challenges. [Extracted from the article]

M. NourbeSe Philip's book-length poem, Zong!, while seemingly focused on a particular catastrophe which occurred in 1781 aboard the slave ship Zong, is also a metonymy for the entirety of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and its legacy. Philip's book (written with the guidance of the voice of the ancestors Setaey Adamu Boateng) is an attempt to retrieve the voices of the drowned, unnamed slaves. It makes its difficult – almost impossible – poems from out of the words of the court case between the owners and the insurers of the ship. Through Zong!, a poem which remembers and grieves the unnamed African victims of the Zong, Philip asks if and how it is possible to make meaning of the suffering of the past, and even to heal. In tracing and retracing these questions, the poem goes beyond grief to become a work of prophetic annunciation, both joining and disjointing "the visionary company." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses four books that focus on the history of fugitives from slavery and their impact on American history. The books cover various aspects of the Underground Railroad, abolitionist movements, and the experiences of escaped slaves in urban settings. Each book offers a unique perspective on the role of fugitives in shaping American history, challenging traditional narratives and highlighting the complexity of their contributions. The authors explore themes of resistance, activism, and the interconnectedness of different strands of the abolitionist movement, providing a nuanced understanding of the historical significance of fugitives from slavery. [Extracted from the article]

This document provides an overview of a virtual issue of the journal Social Science History that focuses on race in the United States. The issue features a collection of articles that explore different perspectives and approaches to understanding race. The articles cover a range of topics, including the role of enslaved labor, the experiences of Black strikebreakers, the formation of interracial working-class identity, the racialization of domestic work, and the relationship between health and race. The authors emphasize the need for more research on racial dynamics outside of the US context and the importance of addressing health as a factor in racial inequality. Overall, this collection of essays aims to deepen our understanding of race and its impact on historical analysis and contemporary society. [Extracted from the article]

This article examines the life and representation of Joachim Nettelbeck, a Prussian sailor and slave trader, who was celebrated as a national hero in Germany for his defense of Kolberg against Napoleon in 1807. However, his involvement in the slave trade was largely ignored or downplayed in public representations of him. In recent years, there have been efforts to challenge Nettelbeck's commemorative presence and confront Germany's colonial past. The article analyzes the different narratives surrounding Nettelbeck and the strategies used to shield him from criticism. It also calls for further research on German involvement in the slave trade and its connections to nationalism and colonialism. [Extracted from the article]

This article is an introduction to a special issue of the journal History & Memory dedicated to the memory of Professor Alon Confino. The issue includes articles on various topics related to cultural memory, such as the memory of a Sāsānian imperial standard in Persian history, debates surrounding the memory of a Prussian slave trader, the role of humor in countering Holocaust denial, the soundscape of a national museum in Poland, and attempts at historical reconciliation in Colombia. The article highlights Professor Confino's contributions to the field of memory studies and his ability to engage with present-day issues through his research. [Extracted from the article]

This article is a reflection on the history of enslaved children (Pon pekpen) in African slavery and post-slavery societies, such as the Bamum Kingdom. This traditional monarchy of the Grassfields of Cameroon, founded in 1394 by Nchare Yen, was one of the largest providers of captives transported to the Atlantic coast and used locally to meet the needs of traditional slavery. In this kingdom, slaves and their descendants, as well as enslaved peoples, represented nearly 80% of the total population. The trade of captives and servile practices left indelible traces, particularly where enslaved children were concerned. So, what did enslaved children represent in African slavery and post-slavery societies, such as the Bamum Kingdom? The aim of this study is to show that the enslaved children were the most vulnerable and dependent members of slavery and post-slavery systems. This study is based on oral, archival iconographic, written and electronic sources, using theories of social dominance and subaltern studies. It clearly shows that the vulnerability and dependence of enslaved children (Pon pekpen) made them special, weak and hopeful links in the slavery system and the persistence of slavery practices. They were mainly victims of traditional slavery and of the trans-Saharan and transatlantic slave trades. Despite the formal abolition of the slave trade and slavery between the 19th and 20th centuries, enslaved children and the descendants of enslaved people continue to be victims of a kind of subalternisation because they are usually considered second-class citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the views of Jonathan Swift, a writer and satirist, on population and poverty in the early eighteenth century. Swift observed the prevailing mercantilist doctrine that emphasized a large but low-wage labor force and positive trade balance for a country's wealth. He criticized this system, particularly in Ireland where he witnessed widespread poverty. Swift's works, including "The History of the Four Last Years of the Queen," an essay from 1724, and "A Modest Proposal," satirize the issues of population growth, unemployment, and poverty. These writings challenge conventional thinking and propose alternative solutions, such as selective immigration and the export of people. [Extracted from the article]

This article explores the life of Gabriel, an Ethiopian Jew who faced persecution and oppression in the 16th century. Gabriel was kidnapped and enslaved in the Arab world before converting to Islam and later Christianity. He found himself in front of the Portuguese Inquisition in Goa, where he faced multiple interrogations and sentencing. Gabriel's experiences shed light on the practices of enslavement in the Horn of Africa and the African diaspora in the Indian Ocean World. His story highlights the challenges faced by non-elite individuals during this time period. [Extracted from the article]

This article examines the participation of white women in whipping enslaved individuals in the West Indies throughout the eighteenth century in both fiction and historical examples. While sensibility and sentimentality were growing in popularity in metropolitan England, white women in the West Indies encountered and participated in scenes of violence that shocked many metropolitan viewers. During the last decade of the eighteenth century, images appeared that seem to condemn the African Slave Trade and promote abolitionist rhetoric. While these scenes of suffering do portray the brutal reality of whipping in the West Indies, these depictions also emerge at a period in which flogging became more overtly sexualized. Examining the 1792 print 'A Forcible Appeal for the Abolition of the Slave Trade' by Richard Newton, this article contextualizes the flagellation and sexual undertones of the white woman in the print. Comparing this print to the flagellation erotica, often sold in the same establishments as prints like Newton's, the sexual undertones in the print are complicated. Through the fetishization of the pain of enslaved women, metropolitan inhabitants of England could voyeuristically indulge in these scenes of misery without explicitly seeking out flagellation or pornographical works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay argues that, in Richard Wright's Native Son (1940), Boris Max's pronouncement to his client, "This thing's bigger than you," indicates not only the aporetic status of Black being—and ultimately, all singularities—in modernity but also the process through which this hard knot can begin to be unraveled. The communist lawyer at once identifies his client with Mary Dalton's murder and its aftermath ("This thing's Bigger") and, through the identification, seems to miss the singularity of his being ("bigger than you"). The double gesture repeats Karl Marx's identification of the proletariat as the particularity that encompasses the "concrete universal." Condensed in Max's speech act, Wright's argument turns Marx's characterization of capitalist modernity into one of diasporic modernity. In several of his texts, Wright indicates that, while the modern era promised the emergence of this self-determining, rational being, the birth was aborted by the "tragic error" of the African slave trade and the consequent forms of bad faith that are characteristic of modern racial identities. This history of bad faith has prevented the actualization of modernity's promise; with Boris Max's formula for Bigger's aporetic being, Wright seeks to precipitate modernity's second coming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the eighteenth century, Newport, Rhode Island stood at the centre of the Transatlantic slave trade, producing commodities like rum to be traded for African captives from Senegambia, the Gold Coast, the Bight of Biafra, and the Bight of Benin. These captive men, women and children were then transported to South America, the West Indies, the Chesapeake, Charleston, and Savannah. Those who were not sold in these markets, were labelled as 'refuse,' and endured a second or third voyage to the north to be sold in markets in New York, Newport, or Boston. Through an examination of a court case between prominent Newport merchant, John Banister and wigmaker, David Cummings, this article queries the life of a sick African girl, bought by David Cummings, but rendered useless because of her rapidly declining health due to the 'great pox,' also known as yaws. What conditions allowed for her enslavement? How did she become ill and how was she treated? Lastly, how did the law commodify her bonded existence? By examining the mechanisms that allowed for her enslavement, a young life that was reduced to a monetary value, and the bare labour she was forced to provide, is brought to the fore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article explores the life and ideas of André-Daniel Laffon de Ladébat, an eighteenth-century abolitionist deputy from Bordeaux, France. Laffon de Ladébat's treatise, "Discours sur la nécessité et les moyens de détruire l'esclavage dans les colonies," argued for the abolition of slavery and the slave trade. Despite the strong pro-slavery sentiment in Bordeaux, the region consistently elected abolitionist deputies to represent them in Paris. The article suggests that the influence of the abolitionist movement may have been perceived as weak, and the eventual abolition of slavery in France was largely influenced by the revolt of African slaves in Saint-Domingue. The study highlights the importance of considering lesser-known abolitionists and the political and economic contexts of the time. [Extracted from the article]

This article discusses the life of Catalina Alvarez, a free Black woman who petitioned the Council of the Indies in Madrid in 1584 for a license to return to Lima, Peru. Catalina had traveled to the Iberian Peninsula in the service of Viceroy Francisco de Toledo's entourage and served as a cook in Spain for three years before longing to return home. The article explores the challenges of reconstructing the lives of plebeian and enslaved subjects like Catalina and highlights the patterns of mobility and migration within the Iberian Empire. The author reflects on the significance of Catalina's story and her role as an Atlantic creole cosmopolitan. [Extracted from the article]

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This article represents a study of one of the most distinctive, yet neglected, utopian visions of the late 1960s and early 1970s in America. It examines the Black Nationalist struggle of that decade as an expression of utopia with special reference to one of its leaders, Amiri Baraka. The article shows how Baraka's Black Nationalist works express a prophecy of creating a new reality for Blacks in America. Baraka's ideal society, his utopia, it is shown, is reached by "breaking the continuity of history," that is, by a total separation from what he views as the "rotten and hellish" white American society. Black Americans should create, instead, an alternative Black society through what Ashcroft calls "the myth of return," reimaging the Black man's glorious pre-slavery African past, that is, going back to his origins--the home of his ancestors (Africa). The article argues the reconstruction of a number of Eastern/African elements (ancient Africa, its traditions, culture, heritage, and language) that Baraka describes as "keys to a new black world." The article concludes with a discussion of the reasons behind the collapse of Baraka's Black Nationalist utopian project in 1974. As Baraka started to move toward the left due to the influence of Mao, Nkrumah, and Cabral in the mid-1970s, he realized the clash between his utopian ideals (equality, freedom, justice, selfdetermination... etc.) and the unidealistic foundation of his utopia. This new Barakan Socialist utopian vision remains untouched and is thus recommended for a profound examination in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article makes a case for a critical engagement with the Ottoman institution of slavery and slave trade in its globalist rethinking of the rise of the novel. It argues that production of late Ottoman Turkish novelistic writing hinged on a domestic imagination to which the labor of enslaved women was indispensable. Placing Namık Kemal's İntibah in conversation with other novels contemporaneous with it, the article underscores the interlacement between the genre‐conscious crafting of novelistic writing in the nineteenth‐century Ottoman Empire and the ubiquitous presence of enslaved women in the fictions from the period. As such, it highlights the necessity of reframing the transnational history of the novel by expanding the interrogation of its gendered and racialized economy to hitherto neglected Ottoman contexts of enslavement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Masquerades form an important part of indigenous African religions, and headpieces of masks are found all over the world as an iconic African art form. Contrary to expectation, however, the geographical distribution of masking is very restricted, occurring only in three areas of the continent, mainly situated in the forested zones. I explain this peculiar distribution by tracing the ecological and historical parameters of the societies that harbor mask rituals. The main ecological factors are the absence of cattle and the type of horticulture, while a crucial historical element is the long history of slave raiding and trading to which the continent has been subjected. These factors have led to societies in which both gender and local power arrangements show a marked indeterminacy, operating as internal arenas between men and women, and between different groups of men. Crucial in the explanation of masquerades is the fact that masking is completely absent from societies that practice cattle husbandry with the Bos indicus species (zebu). Since sleeping sickness prohibits cattle husbandry, wherever the tsetse fly thrives, masks appear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]