The Reaper's Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery

336 Pages·2010·15.02 MB·English

by  Vincent Brown

THE REAP'ER'S GARDEN
Death and Power in th'e World
of Atlantic Slavery
VINCENT BROWN
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
LONDON, ENGLAND
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Copyright © :wo8 by Vincent Brown
All rights reserved
Printed mn the UnitJed States of America
First Harvard University Press paperback edition, 2010
Library ofC ongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brown, Vincent, 1967-
The reaper's garnen :·death and power in the
world of Adant:ic slavery I Vincent Brown.
p. em.
Includes b~lbliogra:phical references and index.
ISBN 978-0~674-0242.2:-9 (doth: alk. paper)
ISBN 9'78-o-674-05712-8 (pbk~)
I. Death-Social aspecrs-Jamaica.
2.. Slavery-·J amaica. I. Tide.
HQ107M··J2.6876 2007
306.9086'9I20972.92___:.JC22 200,7025907
For the dead,
alive in so many more ways
than I can tell
Acknowledgments
OF ALL creative writers, historians should be the most skeptical of claims
to originality. Our works depend upon so many sources that never appear
in our footnotes-conversations with kin, friends, and casual acquain
tances, the lyrics, rhythms, and melodies of our favorite music, the mood
of our times. Yet at the same time, no announcement could possibly
encapsulate the number of my contemporaries who are embedded in the
story I have told,. or aU of the events of the recent past that have found
their way into my turns of phrase and points of emphasis. This unforgiv
ably partial list reflects just a few of the influences that have shaped this
book.
Surely, the story I tell has been indelibly marked by the foUowing hap
penings: the civil rights and Black Power movements; the crack wars of
the 1980s and 1990s; the mushrooming of the U.S. prison industry; hip
hop's conquest of popular culture; the global AIDS pandemic; the collapse
of the Soviet Empire and the triumphalism of global corporations; the
U.S.-Soviet proxy wars in Asia, Mrica, and Latin America and the terror
wars that followed the events of September n, 2001; the death of my
beloved grandfather, Charles Samuel Greene (1905-2002), and the birth
of my beloved daughter, Zareen Subramanian Brown in 2004.
I owe much of my perspective on the legacies of the past to masters of
the art, philosophy, and spirit of the African diaspora, especially Khalid
Saleem, Ava Vinesett, Pastel, Caxias, Ramos, and Chuvisco. Axe!
vm ~ Acknowledgments
Several valued friends and counselors helped me nurture this project
from its inception. Steven Hahn, whose lectures at the University of Cal
ifornia, San Diego, first attracted me to the discipline of history, was my
first adviser in the profession, and he has continued to have a profound
impact on the choices I make. David Barry Gaspar's guidance in the early
stages of this project was invaluable. He believed in me and my ideas
enough to give me the greatest gift a reader can offer: patience. My early
development as a scholar was shaped immeasurably by John D. French,
Jane Gaines, Raymond Gavins,. Lawrence Goodwyn, Nancy Hewitt, Julius
S. Scott, and Peter H. Wood. Among the people who kept me going when
I thought the coffin might close on my career as a scholar were Fran<;oise
Bordarier, Derek Chang, Katy Fenn, Paul Husbands, Nadine Le Meur,
Paul Ortiz, Jody Pavilack, Sidarta Ribeiro, David Sartorious, Subir Sinha,
Matthew Specter, Ajantha Subramanian, Rashmi Varma, and Richard
Vinesett.
At conferences and at the invitation of colleagues at other universities,
I have presented many of the themes and arguments that appear in The
Reapers Garden. I have learned immensely from the comments and criti
cisms of colleagues at Brandeis University, Florida International University,
the Universicy of Sourhern California-Huntington Library Early Modern
Studies Institute workshop, New York University, Northwestern University,
Princeton University, the University ofToronto, and Washington Univer
sity. I also benefited from discussions of my work at the Slavery and Reli
gion in the Modern Era conference in Essaouira, Morocco, in (he
2001,
Political Histories of Death in the Black Diaspora panel, held during the
annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians (OAH),
2002
the Oceans Connect conference at Duke University in the New
2002,
Directions in the Study of the Atlantic: Slavery, Continuing Conversations
conference at Rutgers University in 2003, the Black Atlantic workshop of
the Adantic History Seminar at Harvard University in 2003, the Atlantic
History Workshop on the Age of Revolution in the Atlantic World, held
at Michigan State University in 2005, and Violence, Dissent, and the
Shaping of New World Slavery, a panel held during the 2006 annual
meeting of the OAH.
At Harvard University, I have benefited greatly from the advice and
support of Emmanud Akyeampong, David Armitage, Sven Beckert:, Joyce
E. Chaplin, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Andrew Gordon, Evelyn Brooks
Acknowledgments ~ zx
Higginbotham, Waher Johnson, Jill Lepore, Susan E. O'Donovan, and
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, as well as from the careful critiques of the partic
ipants in Harvard's Early American History workshop. A little writer's
group in Cambridge kept me facing deadlines when I most needed them.
For this I thank Robin Bernstein, Cheryl Finley, Barbara Rodriguez, and
especiaHy Glenda Carpio, whose close readings of several chapters com
pelled me to clarify my thoughts.
No historian could achieve anything without the help of library cura
tors and archivists. I am especiaUy indebted to the helpful people at the
Public Record Office of the United Kingdom, the British Library, Cam
bridge University Library, the Bodleian Library, the Lambeth Palace
Library, the Methodist Missionary Society Archives at the School of Ori
ental and African Studies, the House of Lords Record Office, the Institute
of Jamaica, the Jamaica Archives, the National Library of Jamaica, the
Rare Books, Manuscripts and Special Collections Library at Duke Uni
versity, and Harvard College Library.
I am a[so grateful to Edward E. Baptist, Ian Baucom, Herman L.
Bennett, Ira Berlin, Marie Burks, Alexander Byrd, Stephanie Camp,
Vincent Carretta, Michelle Craig, Colin Dayan, Vasanrhi Devi, Maria
Grahn-Farley, Anthony Farley, Kim Hall, Jerome S. Handler, Engseng
Ho, Sharon Ann Holt, Walter Johnson, Rebecca Ladbury, Michael
McCormick, Roderick McDonald, Joseph C. Miller, C. Benjamin
Nutley, Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy, Geeta Patel, Cory Paulsen,
Charles Piot, Richard Price, EBen Quigley, Louise Reid, Daniel Richter,
Julie Saville, Philip Schwartzberg, Stephanie Smallwood., Werner Sol
lars, Orin Starn, K. S. Subramanian, Mark L. Thompson, David Wells,
Kath Weston, Caron Yee, Kevin Yelvington, and Michael Zuckerman,
all of whom, in various important ways, helped to make the completion
of this book possible. Generous financial support has come from the Duke
Endowment, Duke University's Center for International Studies, and
fellowships from the University of Pennsylvania's McNeil Center for
Early American Studies and Harvard University's Charles Warren
Center, as well as the Lillian Gollay Knafel fellowship at the Radcliffe
Institute for Advanced Study.
Special thanks go to my editor at Harvard University Press, Joyce Seltzer,
for her enthusiastic encouragement. At the press I also thank Jennifer Banks
and Susan Abel. The reports of two anonymous reviewers for Harvard Press,
x ~ AcknowLedgments
who have since become known to me as Laurent Dubois and James
Sidbury, made a vital contribution to this work by pushing me to revise,
clarify, or, in a few cases, reconsider aspects of my analysis. I am similarly
indebted to an anonymous reviewer for questions, comments, and sugges
tions regarding an earlier dratt of Chapter 4, which first appeared as "Spir
itual Terror and Sacred Authority in Jamaican Slave Society" in Slavery &
Abolition 24, no. I (April 2003), parts of which are reproduced herein with
the permission of Taylor & Francis Group, Ltd.
Lessons learned from family members are often the deepest and most
difficult to fathom. Nothing I could ever say or do would be enough to
acknowledge the importance of the love and support I have received from
my mother and father, Willie and Manuelita Brown, who taught me to
cherish that most valuable thing: curiosity. Finally, I give thanks for
Ajantha Subramanian, my best friend and most persuasive teacher, who
has taught me to revel in life even as I meditate on death.
~I
Contents
List: of Illustrations xu
PROLOGUE Death, Power, and Atlantic Slavery r
ONE Worlds of Wealth and Death IJ
TWO Last Rites and First Principles 6o
THREE Expectations of the Dead 92
FOUR Icons, Shamans, and Martyrs 129
FIVE The Soul of the British Empire !57
srx Holy Ghosts and Eternal Salvation 201
SEVEN Gardens of Remembrance 231
EPILOGUE Regeneration 255
Appendix 265
Abbreviations in Notes 269
Notes 271
Index 327
Illustrations
MAPS
Map r The Adamic Basin, drawn by Philip Schwartzberg x1v-xv
Map 2 The Caribbean, drawn by Philip Schwartzberg XVI
Map 3 Jamaica, drawn by Philip Schwartzberg xvUI
Map 4 Enslaved immigrants to Jamaica, by region, 174I-r807, drawn
by Philip Schwartzberg 26
FIGURES
Figure P.r View ofP ort Royal and Kingston Harbours, jamaica 2
"N ,
Figure P.z yame nwu na mawu 5
Figure LI "J o h nny N ew-come" r8
Figure 1.2 The Torrid Zone 21
Figure 2.r Funeral of Johnny New-come 6r
Figure 2.2 Afro-Jamaican funeral procession 67
Figure 2.3 Afro-Jamaican funeral music 71
Figure 2.4 Dearh and burial preparations for Johnny New-come 84
Figure 3.1 "John sends for Mr. Codicil" 94
Figure 3.2 Portrait of the Taylor family 97
Figure 4-1 Executions of convicted rebels 130
Figure p The survivors of the Zong massacre, advertised for sale r61
Figure 5.2 Graveyard ethics r66
Figure 5·3 A Negro hung alive by the Ribs to a Gallows 193
Figure 5·4 Barbarities in the West Indias 19 5
Figure 5·5 Detail from Plan and Sections ofa Slave Ship 196
Figure 6.1 Visit ofa Missionary and Wife to a Plantation Village 221
Figure 7.1 Monument oft he Late Thomas Hibbert 240
Figure A.I The Transatlantic Slave Trade to Jamaica, 1741-r8o7:
African Regional Distributions 266
Figure A.2 The Transatlantic Slave Trade to Jamaica, 174I-1807: Volumes
of Embarcation by Decade 267