The world that fear made : slave revolts and conspiracy scares in early America / Jason T. Sharples.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sharples, Jason T., 1981- author.

Series:

Early American studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Slave rebellions--United States--History--17th century.

Slave rebellions.

Slave rebellions--United States--History--18th century.

Slave rebellions--Caribbean Area--History--17th century.

Slave rebellions--Caribbean Area--History--18th century.

Race relations.

History.

United States--Race relations--History--17th century.

United States.

United States--Race relations--History--18th century.

Caribbean Area--Race relations--History--17th century.

Caribbean Area.

Caribbean Area--Race relations--History--18th century.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

328 pages : illustrations, map ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2020]

Summary:

"The conspiracy scare phenomenon emerged from a combination of enslaved people's traumatic experience of terror and enslavers' awareness of their culpability and exposure to the people whom they exploited. On at least ninety-six documented occasions before 1790, colonial officials in eastern North America and the British Caribbean believed that they discovered evidence of a "slave conspiracy"-a detailed plan for insurrection coordinated by a network of enslaved men-just in time to avert the uprising. Often they ended up convincing themselves that they regularly dodged ambushes at decoy fires and averted a world turned upside down. Two questions about conspiracy scares motivate The World That Fear Made. How and why did white colonists, with the coerced involvement of enslaved people, create these particular fears and come to believe in them? And how did people remake their societies in relation to fear and navigate the world that it conjured?"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

The cup of wrath is almost full

Making sense of strangers: The invention of Anglo-American slave conspiracy

Studying the horizon: The stories and circumstances that conjured demons

Seeking truth through terror: Coercion and survival inside the courtroom and the jail

The risk of relations: Community-seeking and the politics of association

The accountants, the opportunists, and the rebels: Taking chances in the era of the Seven Years' War

Governing in a world of fear: Political mobilization in the American Revolutionary era

The transforming fires of the Haitian Revolution.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780812252194

0812252195

OCLC:

1117312928