Executive Summary
This report gives a summary of “Reevaluating the Antebellum Slave Community: A Comparative Perspective” by Peter Kolchin. In this article, Peter has given a preview of the history of the African Americans. The article has covered the history from the perspective of how other historians used to write about slavery, both the slaves themselves and also the slave owners. It covers slavery in America, Jamaica and in Russia. Apart from the lifestyles of the slave owners and how the different categories of the lords used to manage their properties, the lifestyles of the slaves, the economic activities they were involved in, the cultural practices that emerged in their settlements.
Body
In the 1970’s there were some writers who through their writings tried to give a bleak representation of the lives of the antebellum slaves as completely dependent on their masters, having no real cultural values of their own and living a life of servitude to their owners. These studies were characterized with parochialism. In contrast when some historians took the time to research into their history by doing interviews, reading their folklore, religion and family lives, it was found that they actually had a more meaningful life than previously presented. In this writing it is found that in as much as the slaves were treated miserably by their masters, they found ways of organizing themselves into functional communities with cultural practices and religions.
During this period, most of the studies which were done were mainly comparative of the slave owners, their ideologies and the relations between the different races then. On the other hand there was little study specifically on the lives of the antebellum slaves. Even though those who paid attention to the lives of the slaves tended to give mystical views of it, other writers and historians strived to give the real picture of how they carried out their lives as prudish, religious and committed to the ideals of family lives. The articles go further to state the extent of the independence of the slaves in the United States, Jamaica and Russia. For their economic independence, most of them were allowed to till the lands by their lords, though there were some of their masters who had mixed attitudes towards this. (Kolchin P,) Kolchin has also given a comparison of the slaves in America and Russia. There was a striking difference in their organization in their workplace. While the slaves in Russia elected leaders with authority to make decisions, with their loyalty lying with their fellow slaves and protected their interests. Their counterparts in America did not do the same, though they had minimal forms of representation at the plantations with some administrative structures. Most of their leaders were selected by the masters thus their loyalty was with the masters.
The resistances which came up among the slaves were due to bad treatment by their owners. Whereas in America the rebellions did not go to full revolts due to a number of disadvantages, in Russia and Jamaica, they were large scale and well organized and executed. This was due to the organizational differences that they had.
Conclusion
There were major differences between the various groups of slaves in terms of how they organized their affairs politically, culturally and at their workplaces. These differences affected them in different ways also: how they dealt with their masters, how they solved their problems and how they dealt with the authorities.
References
- Edinburgh Review, 1824. Proceedings of a general court Martial Held at the Colony House in George Town.
- Herbert Aptheker. 1976. Comparative perspectives on slavery in New World Plantation Societies.
- Kolchin P. Reevaluating the Antebellum Slave Community: A Comparative Perspective. The Journal of American History, Vol. 70, No. 3. (1983), pp. 579-601. Web
- Michael Craton, 1979. Proto-Peasant Revolts? The late slave Rebellions in the British West Indies 1816-1832.