The Atlantic slave trade
Related: African American - slave
And so anyway Mark went over, spoke to Greg, came back, started writing on Black Science Fiction. He wrote a big piece in The Wire, a really early piece on Black Science Fiction in which he posed this question, asks "What does it mean to be human?" In other words, Mark made the correlation between Blade Runner and slavery, between the idea of alien abduction and the real events of slavery." - Kodwo Eshun [...]
Map of the Atlantic slave trade
Description
The Atlantic slave trade was the capture and transport of black Africans into bondage and servitude in the New World. The slaves were one element of a three-part economic cycle—the Triangular Trade and its infamous Middle Passage—which ultimately involved four continents, four centuries and the lives and fortunes of millions of people.
Records of the era were kept erratically, if at all, but contemporary historians estimate some 12 million individuals were taken from west Africa to North, Central and South America and the Caribbean Islands by European colonial powers. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_trade_in_the_Americas [Nov 2004]
Slavery and oppression
People of Sub-saharan Africa, kidnapped and sold into slavery by Arabs and other black Africans (sometimes as a result of inter-tribal warfare), were brought to the United States involuntarily by slave traders from many European nations as well as the United States from 1619 through 1806 until the trade was delcared illegal. After the abolition of slavery at the end of the Civil War, African Americans continued to be denied fully equal civil rights in many jurisdictions. This happened through both legally and by extra-legal cultural practices, including the efforts of groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. Legal barriers to equality were removed as a result of the work of the civil rights movement during the years between the end of World War II and the end of the 1960s (see Lyndon Johnson).The African American race is the most punished race in North America. African American males are more likely to be imprisoned than any other demographic group, especially between the ages of 20 and 39. African American public school students are most likely to be assigned to special-education classes. --http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American
1860s: end of Slavery in British colonies and in America
Slavery ended in British colonies and in America. See American Civil War, 1861 to 1865. End of global slave trade enforced by British navy. --jahsonic [Jul 2004]Slaves on Screen : Film and Historical Vision (2000) - Natalie Zemon Davis
Slaves on Screen : Film and Historical Vision (2000) - Natalie Zemon Davis [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
From Publishers Weekly
A history professor at Princeton University, Natalie Zemon Davis (The Return of Martin Guerre; Women on the Margins) is also a seasoned critic of historical film. With Slaves on Screen: Film and Historical Vision, she discusses how movies represent history differently than books do. Can narrative films achieve the accuracy and authenticity that writers can? "Can there be lively cinematic equivalents to what prose histories try to accomplish in prefaces, bibliographies, and notes and through their modifying and qualifying words 'perhaps,' 'maybe,' and 'we are uncertain about'?" In order to answer these questions, Davis looks at a handful of films that have attempted to capture themes of slavery, struggle and rebellion (Spartacus, Burn!, The Last Supper, Amistad and Beloved) and analyzes the devices they've used to convey history, as they understand and wish to express it. It is her hope that "with patience, imagination, and experimentation, historical narration through film could become both more dramatic and more faithful to the sources from the past." (Harvard Univ., $22.95 176p ISBN 0-674-00444-2; Sept.) Given that Shakespeare is one of the world's most famous interpreters of history, it seems fitting that the 14 academics whose essays form Shakespeare, Film, Fin de Si?cle believe that the recent surge of Shakespearean films (Shakespeare in Love, Hamlet, Richard III, Romeo and Juliet) reflects modern man's association of millennium-sized issues with the Bard himself. Edited by Mark Thornton Burnett and Ramona Wray (respectively, a reader and a lecturer in English at Queen's University of Belfast), the volume tackles such topics as advancing technology, families at risk and cultural intolerance. Included among the provocative pieces is a gem of an interview with Kenneth Branagh. (St. Martin's, $42 272p ISBN 0-312-23148-2; Aug.) --Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) - Harriet Beecher Stowe
Uncle Tom's Cabin is a novel by American novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe which treats slavery as a central theme. The work was first published on March 20, 1852.
Stowe had written the novel as an angry response to the 1850 passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, which punished those who aided runaway slaves and diminished the rights of fugitives as well as freed slaves. Many writers have credited this novel with inflaming the passions of residents of the northern half of the United States to work towards the abolition of slavery, though the novel's historical influence has been disputed. Moreover, some critics highlight Stowe's paucity of life-experience relating to Southern life; for instance, she never set foot on a Southern plantation. However, Stowe did state she based the characters of her book on stories she was told by runaway slaves.
Before being published in novel form, the story was a long-running, anti-slavery serial called Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly. It ran in the National Era, an abolitionist periodical, for eleven months starting in the 5 June 1851 issue.
Stowe lived in Cincinnati, Ohio, and:
"she observed firsthand several incidents which galvanized her to write [the] famous anti-slavery novel. Scenes she observed on the Ohio River, including seeing a husband and wife being sold apart, as well as newspaper and magazine accounts and interviews, contributed material to the emerging plot." [1]--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Tom%27s_Cabin [Jun 2005]
Abolitionism
Abolitionism, a political movement that sought to abolish slavery and the slave trade, started with The Enlightenment and became a large movement in several nations of the 19th century. The movement continues to this day. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolition_of_slavery [Jun 2005]
see also: 1852
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