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  • Lipking New World of Slavery

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    for english classes

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    671 просмотров8 страниц

    Lipking New World of Slavery

    Загружено:

    Anthony
    for english classes

    Авторское право:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Скачайте в формате PDF или читайте онлайн в Scribd
    Отметить как неприемлемый контент
    из 8
    JOANNA LIPKING The New World of Slavery—An Introduction 1 arly travelers to the Ameticas described lands that seemed to recover the fist age of the world, the golden oF innocent time of both classical i biblical tradition. Captain Barlowe on the fist Virginia voyage saw idyll: We found the people most gentle, loving, and faiaful, void ofall guile and treason, ane soc as tied arte manner of he golden 5. forth all things in abundance, as in the fist creation, or labor." Guiana, no less promising than Virginia, was advertised by Sir Walter Ralegh in a famous phrase. It was "a county that hath yet her mai cenhead,”? offering pure air, untouched natural bounty, and rumored stores of gold, a worthy prize for the Virgin Queen Eizabeth. About fifty yeas later. when Lord Willoughby of Parham, the "Lord Gover- not” of Behn's story, settled a permanent colony in Surinam, within ‘Guiana, he wrote hopefully to his wife that no one in the advance party hhad experienced so rmuch as a headache.’ For those at home, the discoveries brought travels of mind: catalogs ofthe plant life and strange animals, collections of natural specimens and artifacts, a stage fashion for New World pageantry. Most ofall, it brought accounts of “savage” peoples living without divine or human Jaw, as if far back in time of out of time. For restive writers in Europe—Montaigne, Swif, and Rousseau, among many others—the simpler New World societies could hold a mirror up tothe old, letting. civilized Europe view itself in al its habitual corruption and deceit, the ‘whole sud tangle ofits history. The impulse is a persbtent one, seen earlier in Greck and Roman admiration for certain primitive peoples, nd sill found, in weaker form, wherever adventurers or travel waiters, painters or photograpliers locals in indigenous peoples the vitalities and virtues they find lacking in themselves. No such idealizing marks the reports of West Aftica, European tra\= ow Balt PincplVoyees (589. ete in Neg near Wo A Daye. lo stay of Node Amenes Fe, d,Daid Bun en York: Arne Pros, 1979, 3. $3.0" Bucors irate cee ben ers, “hg Dainty afte Lage Ret and Beat Epa of Gasna” i Geld Haven, ed Seeted With (Ne Ve ig Peng, 196, 120. Sepa % Fonsia Larsis ers and traders—never settles—saw only a narrow strip of coasiin where disease struck down the sailors and onshore agents with st -wifines that the place would be called the “s Ns grave."* They ‘did not know the interior courts and towns or learn much of Aficans’ kinship groups, political and religious systems, or private lives. They ‘wrote about what they could sce—abore al, ers and inaportant men, their authority, finery, eeremonies, and the always fascinating subject of polygamy, the management of many wives, the tery. Moreover, the men who met them at the landings were often Ihghly proficient at trade. ‘The promise that opens a 1665 collection called The Golden Coast that “a man may gain an estate by a Irandfal of beads, and his pocket full of gold for an old hat”* was cockeyed iam. The Gold Coast peoples belonged to sophisticated trading networks that stretched far north across the Sahara ard east among the coastal nations, in addition to their longtime ocean trade with the Portuguese. Arriving traders found thensselves operating within complicated systems of fort cents and regulations, customs fees and gratuities, while vying for advantage with most of northecn Europe, No one called this a state of nature, a model of health, wholeness, It vas hot picturesque, attracting illus iments. Like most Native American peoples, West Africans were without written language and might go unclothed, but they provided no scenes of naked nnocence, no trust, cper-handed kings. On the contrary, by a reverse stereotyping passed on from book to book, the received opinion was that Affcan women were by nature lascivious, punishments notwithstanding, and the men erally oF ish.” Yet if Europeans were inclined to be disparaging, repelled by some rival practices, and often exasperated, they did not cngage in the sort of dogmatizing that would grow up with the slave trade. They did not suppose that inhabitants of several thousand miley of coastline could bee pooled and described collectively If they were attentive to skin color, they were much more attentive to the status, wealth, and pover of their ruling-class allies. They wtote to prove not how blacks differed from whites, but how blacks differed from blacks, carefully distingwi ing among the inhabitants of cach region and tation and port, typ cally favoring some peoples and some leaders said to mect European 4. Figyse sar with tne and ose ut conan st a of the a dt ed we {he Bat eds main nthe oe meh Ove say wc Dana “The Laing de Beat in: Ma Wen 1171 Raced tn ene pro St anal gee 1. Conese (neon Pee Unnenaetica, 931,855" i 5 et She ty dwt Coming send we recored be Altre Sltcpae, stn the Counce Case 1035-108 An ‘And the Ganda Copan Ake Hy ey 6 (IRD e238 ad Se iro Gt fr ia Sen. ar Ln of xp ae tac Poser ‘ian TT rae Ga yah” os Ao 2 198) $5, The lita of Cm ‘Si Camp Fonda he Alea nce, foal of Aon Hater Tue New Wontp oF Suavery—Aw Intropucrion 7 standueds of bea mindedness. telligence, politeness, and sometimes fair ints, inthe vicinity of Behn’s Cor often admired. “Handsome, and sellproportioned,” 1668, iothing disagrecable in their countenance, ‘on."* They were more humanized, more engaging features, agreed an observer on a passing Frenel wai, ml struck by one cord Toalgoermor he ele mre i than all the rest combined: ine, were wrote a French sod that 1 found in hint nothing barbarous. but coans, much uma He i al and el roportioned, all his limbs showing stiength, without the wnattrac- Fre Ba nose or that large meuth that the other blk haves hs eyes were prominent, very open, brilliant, and full of fie. In all fone notices that his features are eg and much genten Gold coast men also had a reputation for martial valor, and by the mid seventeenth century, reports regularly note the frequeney of lol wars and the enslavement of war captives unable to arrange for ransom. ng sates were small and variously governed, their courts tnt from a fnundted oF so miles to the east, ports of autocratic kings in finer courts, closely guarded seraglios, where members of the upper classes might bee sold into slavery fora single infaetion or simply at whim, A 1670 journal by a French trading company representative about a long visit {o allada* (in what is now Benin) describes a series of lavish enteriain- ments: ist by a prince of “majestic visage” who weleornes them at the const; then by the king, educated in a colonial Portuguese convent, ‘who mingles urbane repartee with swift and fair policy making: and finally by the high priest, who arranges a dinner with an accompanying choral concert by his sisty to eighty secluded wives.” Everyone speaks Portuguese, the presents are magnificent, and there are nniltiple off-

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