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ABSTRACT
Enslavers utilized various methods of physical and psychological violence to effect emotions of terror and fear in their African captives in order to create and maintain systems of enslavement throughout the Atlantic World. But these methods also produced emotions in the victims which could act against the systems of enslavement. One such emotion was anger and its visible display towards the enslavers was forbidden throughout the Atlantic World. But the extreme domination of enslavement also resulted in challenges to the system. In this article, I will document and analyse visible displays of the emotions of anger and vengeance by the enslaved in the colonies that became British Guiana. The emotion of vengeance in these cases was conducted through open insults which allowed slaves a way to assert themselves and belittle their enslavers. This study is based on documented complaints of the enslaved during the nineteenth century in the colony of British Guiana, housed at the National Archives of the United Kingdom. These documents are unique in the annals of British West Indian slavery as they give voice to the enslaved on a variety of topics.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 J. M. Barbalet, Emotion, Social Theory, and Social Structure: A Macrosociological Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 133; Katie Barclay, The History of Emotions: a student guide to methods and sources (London: Red Globe Press, 2020), 2–3.
2 Ville Kivimäki & Tuomas Tepora, ‘War of Hearts: Love and Collective Attachment as Integrating Factors in Finland during World War II’, Journal of Social History, 43 (2009): 285–305, (297).
3 Sowande' M. Mustakeem, Slavery at Sea; Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2016). Ramesh Mallipeddi, Spectacular Suffering: Witnessing Slavery in the Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2016), 4.
4 Rebecca J. Fraser, Courtship and Love among the Enslaved in North Carolina (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007).
5 Deborah Gray White, Ar'n't I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South (W. W. Norton: New York, 1985); Sergio A. Lussana, My Brother Slaves: Friendship, Masculinity, and Resistance in the Antebellum South (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2016), 17–8.
6 Erin Austin Dwyer, Mastering Emotions: Feelings, Power, and Slavery in the United States (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021), 3.
7 Lyman L. Johnson, '"A Lack of Legitimate Obedience and Respect": Slaves and their Masters in the Courts of Late Colonial Buenos Aires', Hispanic American Historical Review 87, no. 4 (2007): 631–57 (634).
8 Camillia Cowling, Conceiving Freedom: Women of Color, Gender, and the Abolition of Slavery in Havana and Rio de Janeiro (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013).
9 Bianca Premo, ‘As if She Were My Own: Love and Law in the Slave Society of Eighteenth-Century Peru’, in Sexuality and Slavery: Reclaiming Intimate Histories in the Americas, eds. Daina Ramey Berry and Leslie M. Harris (Athens, Ga: The University of Georgia Press, 2018), 71–87.
10 Humphrey E. Lamur, ‘The Slave Family in Colonial 19th-century Suriname’, Journal of Black Studies 23, no. 3 (1993): 371–81. Our definition of the Caribbean includes the islands and the colonies of Essequibo, Demerara, Berbice and Suriname on the northern coast of South America.
11 Sasha Turner, ‘The nameless and the forgotten: maternal grief, sacred protection, and the archive of slavery’, Slavery & Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies 38, no.2 (2017): 232–50.
12 John Lean and Trevor Burnard, ‘Hearing Slave Voices: The Fiscal’s Reports of Berbice and Demerara-Essequibo’, Archives 27 (2002), 37–50; Trevor Burnard, Hearing Slaves Speak: (Georgetown, Guyana: Caribbean Press, 2010).
13 The National Archives of the UK (TNA): CO116/138–142: Fiscal’s Reports, 1819–1832, Berbice; TNA: CO 116/143–53: Reports of Protectors of Slaves, 1826–1834 – Berbice; TNA: CO116/156-163: Reports of Protectors of Slaves, Demerara and Essequibo.1826–1834.
14 Daniel Lord Smail, The Consumption of Justice: Emotions, Publicity, and Legal Culture in Marseille, 1264–1423. (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2003), 92.
15 Barbalet, Emotion, Social Theory, and Social Structure, 26.
16 Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 170.
17 James C. Scott, Domination and the arts of resistance: Hidden transcripts (Yale University Press,1990), 111.
18 Scott, Domination and the arts of resistance, 113.
19 Barbalet, Emotion, Social Theory, and Social Structure,133.
20 Sue J. Kim, On Anger: Race, Cognition, Narrative. (Austin: The University of Texas Press, 2013), 4. Among others are fear, happiness, sadness, and disgust.
21 Kim, On Anger, 6.
22 Barbalet, Emotion, Social Theory, 26.
23 Ibid.
24 W. M. Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling. A Framework for the History of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2001); Dwyer, Mastering Emotions, 148–50. See this section in Dwyer’s book for a relevant discussion within the context of the antebellum United States.
25 Chavella T. Pittman, ‘Getting Mad but Ending Up Sad: The Mental Health Consequences for African American Using Anger to Cope with Racism’. Journal of Black Studies, 42, no. 7 (October 2011) 1106–24. Studies have found that active coping strategies have had a positive effect on physical and mental health. Repressed or unexpressed anger to cope with stress has been related to negative health issues such as high blood pressure and higher alcohol consumption.
26 Barrington Moore, Injustice: The Social Bases of Obedience and Revolt. (London: Macmillan. 1978) 17; J. M. Barbalet, Emotion, Social Theory, and Social Structure, 134.
27 Barbalet, Emotion, Social Theory, and Social Structure, 135–6. Another emotion almost always experienced with vengefulness is resentment; however, resentment does not necessarily lead to vengeance.
28 British Parliament Papers (BP) relating to Slaves in W. Indies: V. Record of Proceedings of Fiscals of Berbice in Disputes between Masters and Slaves. 1825(476). Plantation Demtichem, 17th June 1819. W. Ross, attorney, plantation Demtichem, complainant, against the negro Hans, belonging to Berenstein, on charge of Obiah; John Iliffe, Africans: the History of a Continent (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 89–90. A possible explanation for January’s decision to ask for Hans’ assistance is offered by John Iliffe who writes: ‘Western Africans with limited power to control their environment or experience generally looked outside themselves for explanations of misfortune and means of relief. Many blamed witches, especially where misfortune attacked the fertility of women, the survival of children, and the multiplication of the community’.
29 Gordon E A Gill, ‘Doing the Minje Mama: A Study in the Evolution of an African/Afro-Creole Ritual in the British Slave Colony of Berbice’, Wadabagei: A Journal of the Caribbean and Its Diaspora 12, no. 3 (Fall 2009): 7–29. This article is an analysis of the Minje Mama ritual which the colonial authorities referred to as Obiah/Obeah.
30 Kim, On Anger, 2.
31 Barbalet, Emotion, Social Theory, and Social Structure, 133.
32 Scott, Domination and the arts of resistance, 113.
33 Complaint of the Slave January belonging to Pl. Deutichem, 9 March 1829. Fiscal Reports. CO116/142.
34 Ibid.
35 Ibid.
36 Based on the available evidence, I have concluded that the ‘Mr Winter’, mentioned in the complaint, was Alexander Winter who was only 18 years in 1829. For an interesting discussion on the pronouncement of ‘Huzza!’, the dominant cheer in the English-speaking world from the late sixteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century, see, Norman Fuss, ‘You say Huzzah, They say Huzzay’ Journal of the American Revolution April 22 (2014).
37 Complaint of the Slave January belonging to Pl. Deutichem, 9 March 1829. Fiscal Reports. CO116/142.
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid.
40 Ute Frevert, Emotions in History – lost and found (Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2011), 4–5; Donald C Klein, ‘The Humiliation Dynamic: an Overview’, Journal of Primary Prevention 12, no. 2 (Dec.1991): 93–121.
41 Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling, 128.
42 Barbara H. Rosenwein, Anger. The Conflicted History of an Emotion. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2020); Richard A. Spears, Slang and Euphemism: A Dictionary of Oaths, Curses, Insults, Sexual slang and metaphor, Racial slurs, Drug talk, Homosexual lingo, and Related matters, (Middle Village, New York: Jonathan David Publishers, Inc., 1981), xiii.
43 J. M. Barbalet, Emotion, Social Theory, and Social Structure, 129–32. Our discussion is drawn from those pages in Barbalet’s work. However, the complex and contentious question has been raised as to whether emotions might be experienced collectively, looking especially at crowd behaviours and emotional contagions. There are scholarly discussions in terms of ‘mirroring’, people unconsciously copy the behaviours and emotions of others.
44 Smail, The Consumption of Justice, chap. 2. This chapter is a thoughtful exploration of the use of courts to seek revenge.
45 House of Commons, ‘Complaint No. 14, Protector’s Office, Berbice, Friday, 28 November 1828’, Protectors of Slaves Reports: Part 11. Berbice, P.P 1830-31, vol.15. (262), 27. Unsurprisingly, the three women ‘positively denied making use of the bad language’.
46 HC, ‘Complaint No. 14, Protector’s Office, Berbice, Friday, 28 November 1828’, Protectors of Slaves Reports: Part 11. Berbice, P.P 1830-31, vol.15. (262), 27.
47 Leonora Davidoff, Worlds Between: Historical Perspectives on Gender and Class (New York: Routledge, 1995)180. This definition with its chivalric overtones of reconstructed paternalism [went] hand in hand with market exploitation.
48 Davidoff, Worlds Between, Gentility and respectability were always heavily gendered categories.
49 pack-all n (Bdos, Guyn) A large, rectangular covered basket 1-1/2 ft deep, made of sturdy material; it has handles and is used like a suitcase for packing all your belongings. Dictionary of Caribbean English usage. edited by Richard Allsopp; with a French and Spanish supplement edited by Jeannette Allsopp. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
50 TNA: CO 116-151: Jacob, 56 years of age, residing in Canje Creek; Edgelow & Wase, owners; Manager, Robert McKenzie, 20 July 1832, Protector of Slaves Reports, fols. 165-171.
51 TNA: CO 116-151: Jacob, 56 years of age, residing in Canje Creek; Edgelow & Wase, owners; Manager, Robert McKenzie, 20 July 1832, Protector of Slaves Reports, fols. 165-171. According to the Slave Registry, Jacob was only 41 years of age, but to the Assistant Protector, he appeared to be over 60.
52 TNA: CO 116-151: Jacob, 56 years of age, residing in Canje Creek; Edgelow & Wase, owners; Manager, Robert McKenzie, 20 July 1832, Protector of Slaves Reports, fol.171.
53 TNA. CO116/142. 27 December 1830 Fiscal’s Reports fol. 44.
54 Ville Kivimäki & Tuomas Tepora, ‘War of Hearts: Love and Collective Attachment as Integrating Factors in Finland during World War II’. Journal of Social History, 43 (2009): 285–305, (297).
55 Barbalet, Emotion, Social Theory, and Social Structure, 27.
56 Kant held racist views whereby he saw, ‘Negroes’ as natural slaves. For example, Jon M. Mikkelsen, commenting on Immanuel Kant’s essay, On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy (1788), says, ‘For in this article Kant … also again employs examples and comments that can only be described as “racist” both in tone and intent, such as we find in the earlier texts’. Jon M. Mikkelsen ed. and trans., Kant and the Concept of Race: Late Eighteenth-Century Writings (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2013), 170. Huaping Lu-Adler also writes, ‘Given Kant’s consistent practice of profiling “Negroes” as natural slaves both in published writings and in numerous lectures through the 1780s’. Huaping Lu-Adler, ‘Kant and Slavery – Or Why He Never Became a Racial Egalitarian’, Critical Philosophy of Race 10, no. 2 (2022), 267.
57 Robert C. Solomon, ‘Chakrabarti's 'A Critique of Pure Revenge': A Response.’ In Passion, Death and Spirituality: The Philosophy of Robert C. Solomon, ed. Kathleen Higgins and David Sherman (Dordrecht: Springer, 2012), 56.
58 Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, 208.
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Notes on contributors
Gordon Gill
Ascription: Gordon Gill is an independent scholar who lives in the UK. Email: [email protected]