|
Cargo
plan for
the
slave
ship
“Brookes”.
By using
space to
the
utmost
on this
not
particularly
large
ship,
452
enslaved
laborers
could be
taken on
board.
Each
adult
man was
only
allotted
182
centimeters
x 41
centimeters
(71
inches
by 16
inches)
to lie
on and
only 80
centimeters
(31.5
inches)
up to
the next
layer of
people.
The
enslaved
laborers
lay here
for
months
on the
journey
to the
West
Indies
(Thomas
Clarkson,
The
History
of the
African
Slave-Trade,
vol. 2,
1808). |
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The
Fallacy
of 1619:
Rethinking
the
History
of
Africans
in Early
America
By
Michael
Guasco
African
American
Intellectual
History
Society
In
1619,
“20 odd
Negroes”
arrived
off the
coast of
Virginia,
where
they
were
“bought
for
victualle”
by
labor-hungry
English
colonists.
The
story of
these
captive
Africans
has set
the
stage
for
countless
scholars
interested
in
telling
the
story of
slavery
in
English
North
America.
Unfortunately,
1619 is
not the
best
place to
begin a
meaningful
inquiry
into the
history
of
African
peoples
in
America.
Certainly,
there is
a story
to be
told
that
begins
in 1619,
but it
is
neither
well-suited
to help
us
understand
slavery
as an
institution
nor to
help us
better
grasp
the
complicated
place of
African
peoples
in the
early
modern
Atlantic
world.
For too
long,
the
focus on
1619 has
led the
general
public
and
scholars
alike to
ignore
more
important
issues
and,
worse,
to
silently
accept
unquestioned
assumptions
that
continue
to
impact
us in
remarkably
consequential
ways. As
a
historical
signifier,
1619 may
be more
insidious
than
instructive.
The
fallacy
of 1619
begins
with the
questions
most of
us
reflexively
ask when
we
consider
the
first
documented
arrival
of a
handful
of
people
from
Africa
in a
place
that
would
one day
become
the
United
States
of
America.
First,
what was
the
status
of the
newly
arrived
African
men and
women?
Were
they
slaves?
Servants?
Something
else?
And,
second,
as
Winthrop
Jordan
wondered
in the
preface
to his
1968
classic,
White
Over
Black,
what did
the
white
inhabitants
of
Virginia
think
when
these
dark-skinned
people
were
rowed
ashore
and
traded
for
provisions?
Were
they
shocked?
Were
they
frightened?
Did they
notice
these
people
were
Black?
If so,
did they
care?
In
truth,
these
questions
fail to
approach
the
subject
of
Africans
in
America
in a
historically
responsible
way.
None of
these
queries
conceive
of the
newly-arrived
Africans
as
actors
in their
own
right.
These
questions
also
assume
that the
arrival
of these
people
was an
exceptional
historical
moment,
and they
reflect
the
worries
and
concerns
of the
world we
inhabit
rather
than
shedding
useful
light on
the
unique
challenges
of life
in the
early
seventeenth
century.
There
are
important
historical
correctives
to the
myth of
1619
that can
help us
ask
better
questions
about
the
past.
Most
obviously,
1619 was
not the
first
time
Africans
could be
found in
an
English
Atlantic
colony,
and it
certainly
wasn’t
the
first
time
people
of
African
descent
made
their
mark and
imposed
their
will on
the land
that
would
someday
be part
of the
United
States.
As early
as May
1616,
Blacks
from the
West
Indies
were
already
at work
in
Bermuda
providing
expert
knowledge
about
the
cultivation
of
tobacco.
There is
also
suggestive
evidence
that
scores
of
Africans
plundered
from the
Spanish
were
aboard a
fleet
under
the
command
of Sir
Francis
Drake
when he
arrived
at
Roanoke
Island
in 1586.
In 1526,
enslaved
Africans
were
part of
a
Spanish
expedition
to
establish
an
outpost
on the
North
American
coast in
present-day
South
Carolina.
Those
Africans
launched
a
rebellion
in
November
of that
year and
effectively
destroyed
the
Spanish
settlers’
ability
to
sustain
the
settlement,
which
they
abandoned
a year
later.
Nearly
100
years
before
Jamestown,
African
actors
enabled
American
colonies
to
survive,
and they
were
equally
able to
destroy
European
colonial
ventures.
These
stories
highlight
additional
problems
with
exaggerating
the
importance
of 1619.
Privileging
that
date and
the
Chesapeake
region
effectively
erases
the
memory
of many
more
African
peoples
than it
memorializes.
The
“from-this-point-forward”
and
“in-this-place”
narrative
arc
silences
the
memory
of the
more
than
500,000
African
men,
women,
and
children
who had
already
crossed
the
Atlantic
against
their
will,
aided
and
abetted
Europeans
in their
endeavors,
provided
expertise
and
guidance
in a
range of
enterprises,
suffered,
died,
and –
most
importantly
–
endured.
That Sir
John
Hawkins
was
behind
four
slave-trading
expeditions
during
the
1560s
suggests
the
degree
to which
England
may have
been
more
invested
in
African
slavery
than we
typically
recall.
Tens of
thousands
of
English
men and
women
had
meaningful
contact
with
African
peoples
throughout
the
Atlantic
world
before
Jamestown.
In this
light,
the
events
of 1619
were a
bit more
yawn-inducing
than we
typically
allow.
Telling
the
story of
1619 as
an
“English”
story
also
ignores
the
entirely
transnational
nature
of the
early
modern
Atlantic
world
and the
way
competing
European
powers
collectively
facilitated
racial
slavery
even as
they
disagreed
about
and
fought
over
almost
everything
else.
From the
early
1500s
forward,
the
Portuguese,
Spanish,
English,
French,
Dutch,
and
others
fought
to
control
the
resources
of the
emerging
transatlantic
world
and
worked
together
to
facilitate
the
dislocation
of the
indigenous
peoples
of
Africa
and the
Americas.
As
historian
John
Thornton
has
shown
us, the
African
men and
women
who
appeared
almost
as if by
chance
in
Virginia
in 1619
were
there
because
of a
chain of
events
involving
Portugal,
Spain,
the
Netherlands,
and
England.
Virginia
was part
of the
story,
but it
was a
blip on
the
radar
screen.
These
concerns
about
making
too much
of 1619
are
likely
familiar
to some
readers.
But they
may not
even be
the
biggest
problem
with
overemphasizing
this one
very
specific
moment
in time.
The
worst
aspect
of
overemphasizing
1619 may
be the
way it
has
shaped
the
Black
experience
of
living
in
America
since
that
time. As
we near
the
400th
anniversary
of 1619
and new
works
appear
that are
timed to
remember
the “firstness”
of the
arrival
of a few
African
men and
women in
Virginia,
it is
important
to
remember
that
historical
framing
shapes
historical
meaning.
How we
choose
to
characterize
the past
has
important
consequences
for how
we think
about
today
and what
we can
imagine
for
tomorrow.
In
that
light,
the most
poisonous
consequence
of
raising
the
curtain
with
1619 is
that it
casually
normalizes
white
Christian
Europeans
as
historical
constants
and
makes
African
actors
little
more
than
dependent
variables
in the
effort
to
understand
what it
means to
be
American.
Elevating
1619 has
the
unintended
consequence
of
cementing
in our
minds
that
those
very
same
Europeans
who
lived
quite
precipitously
and very
much on
death’s
doorstep
on the
wisp of
America
were, in
fact,
already
home.
But, of
course,
they
were
not.
Europeans
were the
outsiders.
Selective
memory
has
conditioned
us to
employ
terms
like
settlers
and
colonists
when we
would be
better
served
by
thinking
of the
English
as
invaders
or
occupiers.
In 1619,
Virginia
was
still
Tsenacommacah,
Europeans
were the
non-native
species,
and the
English
were the
illegal
aliens.
Uncertainty
was
still
very
much the
order of
the day.
When
we make
the
mistake
of
fixing
this
place in
time as
inherently
or
inevitably
English,
we
prepare
the
ground
for the
assumption
that the
United
States
already
existed
in
embryonic
fashion.
When we
allow
that
idea to
go
unchallenged,
we
silently
condone
the
notion
that
this
place
is, and
always
has
been,
white,
Christian,
and
European.
Where
does
that
leave
Africans
and
people
of
African
descent?
Unfortunately,
the same
insidious
logic of
1619
that
reinforces
the
illusion
of white
permanence
necessitates
that
Blacks
can only
be, ipso
facto,
abnormal,
impermanent,
and only
tolerable
to the
degree
that
they
adapt
themselves
to
someone
else’s
fictional
universe.
Remembering
1619 may
be a way
of
accessing
the
memory
and
dignifying
the
early
presence
of Black
people
in the
place
that
would
become
the
United
States,
but it
also
imprints
in our
minds,
our
national
narratives,
and our
history
books
that
Blacks
are not
from
these
parts.
When we
elevate
the
events
of 1619,
we
establish
the
conditions
for
people
of
African
descent
to
remain,
forever,
strangers
in a
strange
land.
It
doesn’t
have to
be this
way. We
shouldn’t
ignore
that
something
worth
remembering
happened
in 1619.
There
are
certainly
stories
worth
telling
and
lives
worth
remembering,
but
history
is also
an
exercise
in
crafting
narratives
that
give
voice to
the past
in order
to
engage
with the
present.
The year
1619
might
seem
long ago
for
people
more
attuned
to the
politics
of life
in the
twenty-first
century.
But if
we can
do a
better
job of
situating
the
foundational
story of
Black
history
and the
history
of
slavery
in North
America
in its
proper
context,
then
perhaps
we can
articulate
an
American
history
that
doesn’t
essentialize
notions
of “us”
and
“them”
(in the
broadest
possible
and
various
understandings
of those
words).
That
would be
a pretty
good
first
step,
and it
would
make it
much
easier
to sink
our
teeth
into the
rich and
varied
issues
that
continue
to roil
the
world
today.
Michael
Guasco
Michael
Guasco
is
professor
and
chair of
the
history
department
at
Davidson
College
where he
offers a
range of
courses
related
to early
American
history,
the
early
modern
transatlantic
world,
and the
early
history
of race
and
slavery
in the
Americas.
He is
the
author
of
Slaves
and
Englishmen:
Human
Bondage
in the
Early
Modern
Atlantic
World
(Penn
Press,
2014),
which
was a
finalist
for the
2015
Frederick
Douglass
Book
Prize.
Follow
him on
Twitter
@Mikeguasco.
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