The Freedom of Speech : Talk and Slavery in the Anglo-Caribbean World / Miles Ogborn.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ogborn, Miles, Author.

Series:

Chicago scholarship online.

Chicago scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Enslaved persons--Jamaica--Social conditions.

Enslaved persons.

Enslaved persons--Barbados--Social conditions.

Freedom of speech--Jamaica.

Freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech--Barbados.

Oral communication--Jamaica.

Oral communication.

Oral communication--Barbados.

Slavery--Jamaica--History.

Slavery.

Slavery--Barbados--History.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (320 pages)

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2019]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

The institution of slavery has always depended on enforcing the boundaries between slaveholders and the enslaved. As historical geographer Miles Ogborn reveals in The Freedom of Speech, across the Anglo-Caribbean world the fundamental distinction between freedom and bondage relied upon the violent policing of the spoken word. Offering a compelling new lens on transatlantic slavery, this book gathers rich historical data from Barbados, Jamaica, and Britain to delve into the complex relationships between voice, slavery, and empire. From the most "idian encounters to formal rules of what counted as evidence in court, the battleground of slavery lay in who could speak and under what conditions. But, as Ogborn shows through keen attention to both the traces of talk and the silences in the archives, if enslavement as a legal status could be made by words, it could be unmade by them as well. A deft interrogation of the duality of domination, The Freedom of Speech offers a rich interpretation of oral cultures that both supported and constantly threatened to undermine the slave system.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Abbreviations

INTRODUCTION. With One Little Blast of Their Mouths: Speech, Humanity, and Slavery

ONE. On Our Bare Word: Oath Taking, Evidence Giving, and the Law

TWO. The Deliberative Voice: Politics, Speech, and Liberty

THREE. Master, I Can Cure You: Talking Plants in the Sugar Islands

FOUR. They Must Be Talked to One to One: Speaking with the Spirits

FIVE. They Talk about Free: Abolition, Freedom, and the Politics of Speech

Last Words

Acknowledgments

Notes

Index

Notes:

Previously issued in print: 2019.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 06. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780226657714

022665771X

OCLC:

1120689451