Wednesday, April 13/15th- What are you doing?

We should be focusing on this two page assignment as a proposal of sorts. Follow this guideline for your papers. From this investigation and short description of your project, you can make an outline for your larger paper.  Use this space to let me know how you are going to address the issues below. You just need to tell me in a sentence or two.  I will respond when I can. Use both today and Friday to come up with something good. Cheers!

Assignment #1: Proposal- use this as the model for your 500 word analysis of the AST data


I have noticed that you guys are attempting to move into good theoretical territory. This is a good way to structure your paper:

1. Figure out what argument you like from the specific historian you are focusing on. Then parse down their argument to one paragraph.

2. You are now engaging with their theoretical model, or methodology. This means that you are going to try to use their model to prove or disprove your own argument, based on very specific data from your AST project. Write a paragraph on what you are going to do and how.

3. Now is the time to provide an analysis. This is the point where you have left their argument and the way they constructed their theoretical model and now you are on your own. You have made your own argument, you are using your own evidence, and you are developing your own analysis. This is the bulk of your essay.

4. Conclude, but don't act like you have figured out some gospel truth. Make room for further analysis, or future research, stuff like that., so that you can use it as the base for your larger paper

Monday, April 11th- What are you doing?

Please let me know what you have been doing for your AST project.

What are you doing?

Please post a few lines about what arguments from the readings you are engaging with and the information that you are attempting to uncover from the Atlantic Slave Trade Database. Use this space to draft out your ideas.  Here is the url for the books that I have on reserve at the library. http://tinyurl.com/hbxe4rk

I will offer you some feedback as well as three points on your last test grade if you have your post up before 10 pm Thursday night.

Atlantic Slave Trade Assignment

History 2501

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Project 

Assignment #1 Due: Friday, April 8

Assignment #2 Due: Friday, May 6

Overview

In this two-part project,   The first assignment will be an elementary exploration of voyages.  The second assignment will require you to present your findings to the class.  

Assignment #1- April 8

1. Identify ONE of the historical arguments from the weekly readings that you thought was particularly strong or weak.

 2. Explore the search tools in the Voyages database - like the flag, place of embarkation and/or debarkation, sex ratios, and other variables - to pin-point specific evidence that will either bolster or undermine the argument you picked, or create your own argument based on the readings and the sources.

Write a 500 word analysis AND bring a hard copy with you to Friday discussion

Assignment #2 May 6

Based on  your essay, prepare a five-minute  presentation that highlights the argument you are engaging with, identifies exactly where you found your evidence, and visually explains how you came to your conclusions.  You can use images, maps, Art, music, or digital media to help you set the stage. This is your project, so you can do what you want; however, you need to have specific information either written or displayed that represents your scholarly interpretation of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.  Please include a bibliography with all of the sources that you have used at the end of the presentation.  

Grade Breakdown = 20%

2% - Assignment #1

5%- Strength of evidence through effective use of the database

5%- Engagement with and understanding of the existing historical arguments

5% - Creativity of Presentation

3% - Presentation (Note: If you go over 5 minutes, I will ask you to stop and lower your grade by 1 point, so you need to practice prior to class!)

Women and Slavery (183-212)

Hello All:  Please read pgs 183-212 in Collins for this week. You will read the rest next week.

1- Explain the different demographic arguments that are being presented by Thornton, Meillassoux, and Kline. Is there one that you agree with more than the others? Why?

2- According to Thornton, what does polygyny have to do with population growth? What historian is he arguing with and do you think he has enough evidence to support his hypothesis? How does he come up with his sources?

3- According to Meillassoux, what does fertility have to do with price of enslaved women? From what sources is he able to make his analysis?

4- According to Kline, what is the difference between the 'household mode of production' and the 'slave mode of production'? How do these modes of production affect the costs of enslaved workers? What sources does he use to make his claims?

5- Do enslaved people have any rights, and if so, what are they?

Memory and Luba Art

1. What is the main argument of this article and what sources do they utilize to support their points?

2. How is memory defined and then used as a methodological device? Does the concept of "Uchronia" fit into this model? Why or why not?

3. How did the term "empire" become associated with the Luba Kingdom and why is it problematic for the authors? Is there another term that might be more indicative for the role the Luba?

4. What is a lukasa, how does it work, and do you think that there is a text/object relationship in them? A(hint: you will need to look at the pictures and read the captions.)

5. Is there evident to support the concept of the  Lieux de memorie  as valid way to describe how the Luba understand their histories? How does the body fit into the concept of place and memory?

ROUGH DRAFT

For Peer Review on Friday, you must bring at least a 5 page draft of your paper to class. This is just a draft and does not need to be perfect, but it must be clean enough for your reviewer to read and comment on. The better your draft is, the more feedback  you can get. 10 points will be taken off of your final draft if you fail to come to class or participate in the peer review.

For your footnotes, use this link to clarify:

http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html

My Paper, to be used as a reference only (the margins are off, but you should have 1in on all sides) :

During the colonial era, enslaved Africans and their British captors transformed old-world marketing

 practices into a system of local commerce that was unique to the American   South. Both European 

and African women were expected to participate in small-scale food trade in order to maintain 

their households, and the sight of women selling homegrown vegetables, cooked foods, and 

other perishables throughout the Atlantic World was common.  Prior to industrialization, 

British women were responsible for the buying and selling of the majority of food in the

 urban and rural areas of England but they rarely engaged in the importing and exporting 

of sugar, tobacco, or cotton.[1]  In large West African cities like Eko, Ouidah, and Kano 

women also controlled vending in the local markets but unlike England, elite African 

women also dealt with large-scale trade in commodities like slaves, cloth, and salt.  

In the American South, social mores kept the unmarried sisters and widows of slave-owning 

men in a type of urban purdah and they rarely engaged in market activities, but their 

relationships with certain enslaved domestics allowed both groups of women to profit 

off of the gendered nature of the urban food trade. African and African American 

women utilized their strangely privileged positions in the market place to reinforce a 

type of internal economy and to create a version of southern commerce that reflected 

African customs.

        Like both their enslaved and free West African counterparts, bondwomen in the Low

       Country established economic relationships between themselves and their mistresses, but  

        also among groups of people on multiple plantations.  The task system encouraged

enslaved laborers to grow corn, yams, and gourds in addition to keeping hogs, 

chickens, and cows.  A property map of the plantation locations on a modern map 

creates visual depiction of the movements of enslaved people from rural areas to the 

Charleston marketplace. The WPA map identifies “negro grounds” where certain plantation 

owners, like the Maybank, Phillips, and Manigault families, allowed their enslaved workers 

to maintain independent fields for the cultivation of their own crops. Gabriel Manigault’s 

trusted laborer Cudjo travelled up to 24 miles on Sundays, an accustomed free day, to sell 

surplus produce in urban marketplaces.[2] Enslaved men were frequently seen by 

foreign travelers moving throughout the lowcountry with permission from their masters 

to sell surplus food crops in local marketplaces. These men were provided with the 

opportunity to move about the countryside unmolested and were the people who linked the 

plantation to the urban market. 

Borrowing from West African traditions, female vendors would meet these suppliers 

along specific routes in or around urban centers and purchase surplus goods. Bondwomen

used this strategy to control the rates of particular items, like corn or yams, and influenced

 their prices.  In 1772, a concerned citizen wrote to the South Carolina Gazette describing this 

practice, noting that “I have seen the country negroes take great pains, after having been first 

spoke to by those women to reserve whatever they chose to sell to them only, either by 

keeping the particular article in their canows, or by sending them away and pretending they

 were not for sale.”[3] Market women were so adept at these transactions the citizen 

proclaimed that “the wenches so briskly hustle them about from one to another that in 

two minutes they could no longer be traced.”[4] Trade networks allowed bonded laborers 

and market women to profit without having to include the dominant class in any monetary 

transactions. Through these processes, urban women and rural plantation workers organized

 a distinctive informal economy in southern slave society.

---

[1] E.P. Thompson, “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present, 50 (1971); 

Alice Clark, Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century, (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Howe, 1920).

[2] Philip Morgan, “Work and Culture: The Task System and the World of Lowcountry Blacks, 1700 to 1880,” 

The William and Mary Quarterly 39, no. 4 (1982): 565; Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 1-7, 535-540; Douglas R. Egerton, 

“Markets Without a Market Revolution: Southern Planters and Capitalism,” Journal of the Early Republic 24 (2004): 212.

[3] South Carolina Gazette, September 24, 1772.

[4] South Carolina Gazette, September 24, 1772.