The Fear of French Negroes: Transcolonial Collaboration in the Revolutionary AmericasThe Fear of French Negroes is an interdisciplinary study that explores how people of African descent responded to the collapse and reconsolidation of colonial life in the aftermath of the Haitian Revolution (1791-1845). Using visual culture, popular music and dance, periodical literature, historical memoirs, and state papers, Sara E. Johnson examines the migration of people, ideas, and practices across imperial boundaries. Building on previous scholarship on black internationalism, she traces expressions of both aesthetic and experiential transcolonial black politics across the Caribbean world, including Hispaniola, Louisiana and the Gulf South, Jamaica, and Cuba. Johnson examines the lives and work of figures as diverse as armed black soldiers and privateers, female performers, and newspaper editors to argue for the existence of “competing inter-Americanisms” as she uncovers the struggle for unity amidst the realities of class, territorial, and linguistic diversity. These stories move beyond a consideration of the well-documented anxiety insurgent blacks occasioned in slaveholding systems to refocus attention on the wide variety of strategic alliances they generated in their quests for freedom, equality and profit. |
Contents
Mobile Culture Mobilized Politics I | 1 |
Canine Warfare in the CircumCaribbean | 21 |
Une et indivisible? The Struggle for Freedom in Hispaniola | 49 |
Privateering | 91 |
French Set Girls and Transcolonial Performance | 122 |
The Black Press | 157 |
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abolition aforementioned African descent Arredondo Barataria bčlč Bissette Bolívar bomba British C. L. R. James Campos Taváres Caribbean chapter chasseurs cinquillo cited collaborations colonial Colored American comegente communities context creole Cuba Cuban cultural dance depicted Dessalines diaspora discussion documents dogs Dominican Republic drum editors elite emigration especially evidence example exile figure Florida free blacks freedom French Creole French negroes French Set girls gens de couleur guangua Haiti Haitian Revolution Hispaniola History intellectual inter-American interest island Jamaica Jean Laffite labor lives Louisiana Maroons Martinique migration military Moreau narrative native neighboring nineteenth century North American Ogou Orleans papers performance plantation planters political population provides Puerto racial region revolutionary Revue Saint Saint-Domingue Saint-Domingue refugees Santiago Santo Domingo Savary slave-holding slavery slaves social societies Spanish story struggles territories tion torture Toussaint Louverture traditions transcolonial Trinidad tumba francesa United University Press Vodou women York