Questioning Slavery by Walvin James;

Author:Walvin, James; [James Walvin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 166943
Publisher: Routledge

7

The Culture of Resistance

Working peoples everywhere evolved their own distinct styles of resistance to prevailing forms of domination. Though the trappings of economic and political control seemed to rest securely with this élite or that, power was rarely absolute. Instead, it was contested ground, resisted and argued over. Slaves were no different. Indeed, the history of slavery is not so much the durable and persistent success of the institution itself but the story of those millions of enslaved peoples whose individual and collective efforts were instrumental in moderating and counteracting the slave owners’ power and domination. Slaves (Africans or local-born) had to come to terms with their own position individually, not in the sense of accepting their allocated role (though some did) but in negotiating a personal, family or communal modus vivendi with the world at large.

The history of slavery is the story of enslaved resistance as much as slave-owning domination. Yet the two cannot be easily separated in this way, for they form the two polar opposites within the broader slave system. Nor should we think of slave resistance in simple terms (rebellion here, destructive reactions there). Rather, slave resistance forms the broadly defined structure of slavery itself; the very warp and weft of the slave experience across the Americas.

Slavery in the Americas faced challenges, from first to last. But, despite those challenges, it proved remarkably resistant to most of the attacks levelled against it. In retrospect at least, it seems remarkable that armies of people who were often kept in such abject conditions should not overthrow their tormentors and owners. Slave violence rarely destroyed the system that kept them enslaved.1 Of course, there were remarkable variations in the slave experience, ranging from the sick, newly arrived African scarcely able to lift a hoe, to more privileged artisans and servants who had secured for themselves a surprising degree of material well-being. No less important was the ratio between black and white; though, even in societies where black greatly outnumbered white, slavery survived. But it survived despite persistent, varied, daily (and sometimes bloody) resistance from the slaves. It would be wrong, however, to think of slave resistance solely—or even largely—as a violent phenomenon. Instead, it embraced a complexity of negotiations between slaves and masters—a process of adaptation, of testing, probing and redefining, which formed a culture of resistance. Similarly, it would be wrong to discuss slave resistance within the narrow confines of any particular slave society. In truth, resistance was endemic and began even before African slaves first met white people on the African coast.

It is, however, appropriate to begin with violent resistance, if only because slavery itself originated in and was maintained by violence. Among people who had been violated by enslavement, transportation and (if they survived) a lifetime’s bondage, violence must have seemed the norm. Their dealings with white people, from the African coast, to the boats, to the slave sales and on to the plantations, were characterized and defined by violence. The African apprenticeship to New World slavery was a horrifying litany of physical violence.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.