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Slavery before Race : Europeans, Africans, and Indians at Long Island's Sylvester Manor Plantation, 1651-1884 /
The study of slavery in the Americas generally assumes a basic racial hierarchy: Africans or those of African descent were usually the slaves, and white people were usually the slaveholders. In this unique interdisciplinary work of historical archaeology, an anthropologist draws on years of fieldwor...
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| Format: | Electronic eBook |
| Language: | Inglés |
| Published: |
New York :
New York University Press,
[2013]
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| Series: | Book collections on Project MUSE.
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Texto completo |
| Summary: | The study of slavery in the Americas generally assumes a basic racial hierarchy: Africans or those of African descent were usually the slaves, and white people were usually the slaveholders. In this unique interdisciplinary work of historical archaeology, an anthropologist draws on years of fieldwork on Shelter Island's Sylvester Manor to demonstrate how racial identity was constructed and lived before plantation slavery was racialized by the legal codification of races. Using the historic Sylvester Manor Plantation site turned archaeological dig as a case study, the author draws on artifacts and archival material to present a rare picture of northern slavery on one of the North's first plantations. There, white settlers, enslaved Africans, and Native Americans worked side by side. While each group played distinct roles on the Manor and in the larger plantation economy of which Shelter Island was part, their close collaboration and cohabitation was essential for the Sylvester family's economic and political power in the Atlantic Northeast. Through the lens of social memory and forgetting, this study addresses the significance of Sylvester Manor's plantation history to American attitudes about diversity, Indian land politics, slavery, and Jim Crow, in tension with idealized visions of white colonial community. |
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| Item Description: | Revision of the author's thesis (doctoral)--University of California, Berkeley, 2008. |
| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (240 pages). |
| ISBN: | 9780814724699 |