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History, Literature, Cultural Studies |
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Editors: William Boelhower - Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, USA Dorothea Fischer-Hornung - Heidelberg University, Germany Richard Follett - University of Sussex, UK Neil Safier - University of British columbia, Canada
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Please send all contributions as email attachments (doc, docx or rtf format) to Atlantic-Studies@mesea.org. Articles should, in general, be under 10,000 words, written in English, double spaced (including all notes and references), and follow the Chicago Humanities style. An abstract of approximately 300 words should accompany the article. In addition a list of up to 6 key words, suitable for indexing and abstracting services, should be supplied. A brief biographical sketch of the author should be provided on a separate sheet. The author’s email and full postal address must be supplied. Submissions will be subjected to blind review before acceptance. |
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Atlantic Studies
 The quarterly Atlantic Studies provides an international forum for research and debate on historical, cultural and literary issues within the Atlantic world. Published on behalf of MESEA (The Society for Multi-Ethnic Studies: Europe and the Americas) , the journal challenges nationalist historiographies and literatures by focusing on the Atlantic as an area of cultural change and exchange, translation and interference, communication and passages. Atlantic Studies welcomes submissions in the areas of cultural studies, history, geography, critical theory, and literature.
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April 2009, Volume 6, Number 1
Editorial
The transformation of the Atlantic World, 1776-1867
This essay surveys recent overviews of Atlantic history and follows up on the encounters theme to provide a clearer view of how the Atlantic World was transformed from the late 18th to the mid-19th centuries and how its history is or should be distinguished from global history. The Atlantic World was the world made by contacts among Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans wherever they occurred on all four continents and at sea. It began with Columbus and three related developments occurring from 1776 to 1867 led to its transformation by the middle third of the 19th century: (1) revolution and independence in the Americas, (2) the end of the Atlantic slave trade, and (3) expanded European colonization of Africa. By pushing the end or transformation of the Atlantic World farther into the 19th century than most Atlantic historians have done, it becomes clearer how closely related revolutions and national liberation movements were to the end of the slave trade (and in many areas slavery itself). Further, tracing the course of these developments through the middle third of the 19th century reveals how the changing relationship between Europe and Africa influenced the transformation of the Atlantic World, something previous Atlantic historians have not fully considered. Many of the distinguishing features of the Atlantic World and the modern relevance of this subject lie in the paradoxes of slavery and freedom, and conquest and liberty (as well as opportunity) that developed during this era, and the tensions that evolved around these paradoxes during the era of transformation.
"Miss Fan can tun her han!" Female traders in eighteenth-century British-American Atlantic port cities
Miss Fan described in the quote above epitomises the tenacity and versatility of women in the early-modern Atlantic world. Lack of access to capital meant that women often had to be extremely entrepreneurial in their approaches to commerce. Half her lunch represents that small capital, but with hard work women could manage to successfully speculate. This article investigates the trading opportunities available to women in three Atlantic port cities: Philadelphia, Charleston and Kingston. Port cities presented women with particular opportunities and problems with regards to work and income opportunities because their economies were based far more on commerce than other activities. There is no doubt that despite the hindrances placed in their way, these women made significant contributions to the economies of each port. Taking a comparative perspective highlights not only the similar problems faced by female traders throughout early-modern British America, but also the way in which factors such as the wider economy, race, the law and gender constructs shaped their abilities to contribute to the economy. The ability of these women to work within these constructs and to stretch their boundaries, whether white or black, free or slave, and whether by choice or necessity, is amazing.
"Home" and "this country": Britishness and Creole identity in the letters of a transatlantic slaveholder
This article uses a case study of the transatlantic correspondence of Simon Taylor, a wealthy Jamaican planter, to examine the cultural identity of slaveholders in the British Caribbean at the end of the long eighteenth century. White settlers in the Americas faced metropolitan criticisms from the seventeenth century. These became more pronounced in the period after the American Revolution with the development of an organised British anti-slavery campaign. Opponents of the planters claimed white West Indians lacked self-control and that they exhibited characteristics of excessive ostentation, cruelty and sensuality. In his letters, Taylor tried to avoid discussion of those aspects of his life that might attract censure, such as his long-term sexual relations with women of colour and his daily involvement with slavery. He wished others to consider him as a transplanted Briton and downplayed the distinctively local, or creole, features of his life, presenting himself in his letters as an industrious, self-restrained and loyal colonist. Taylor's letters highlight the anxieties of white slaveholders in the Caribbean, who worried about how their creole lives in a distant slave society would affect their status as Britons. This evidence illustrates the importance of national belonging to such colonists. They fashioned a distinctively colonial British identity, seeking metropolitan acceptance as useful subjects of an extended British world, and these features of their world view fed into the unsuccessful pro-slavery campaigns of the period.
Outside and against the Quincentenary: Modern indigenous representations at the time of the Colombian celebrations
Celebrations in 1992 of Colombus' so-called Discovery of the Americas were a focal point for trans-Atlantic activism. The initial invisibility of Amerindian peoples in planned official proceedings became a source of conflict and was countered with instances of self-representation in conferences, protests, networks, ceremonies and interventions in public debate. In response to exclusion from Quincentennial discourse, indigenous movements coordinated protest across the Atlantic sphere. They achieved a worldwide hearing for perspectives that revolved around visions for differentiated citizenship that entailed (a) inter-nation compacts that were implicitly civilizational, and (b) assertions of indigenous historicity and bold claims around environmental guardianship. This essay begins to explore the vernacular of the social movement that developed at this juncture through a comparative sociological study of continental coordination. It counter-poses the heritage of Euro-American images of fossilized Indian civilizations to living assertions for various forms of sovereignty. It is argued that the transnational politics generated during this stormy episode are part of what can be characterized as an indigenous modernity.
Boucicault’s misdirections: Race, transatlantic theatre and social position in The Octoroon
This article challenges a number of myths the Irish-American melodramatist Dion Boucicault himself created about his play The Octoroon. Boucicault claimed that London theatre audiences were dissatisfied with the ending, in which the heroine commits suicide, because they had become unsympathetic to American slaves. He rewrote the play for these audiences, and the two versions of The Octoroon have subsequently been used to suggest differences of attitude between New York and London, a shift in British racial politics in the early 1860s, and an antislavery position in Boucicault himself. This article questions all of these interpretations using contemporary reviews, Boucicault's advertisements and self-promoting articles, and much hitherto undiscussed material: a Boucicault letter, his evidence to a Parliamentary Select Committee, and the source of Boucicault's play, Mayne Reid's novel The Quadroon. Boucicault was a showman and self-promoter, and his assertions ignored the political uproar the play had caused in New York, and deliberately misinterpreted his audiences in London. The article demonstrates that British audiences were in many cases more sympathetic to American slaves than Boucicault himself, that they objected to the play on aesthetic rather than political grounds, and that Boucicault changed the ending for commercial reasons. It also reveals what the rewriting controversy has obscured: Boucicault's close attention in the play to the subtleties of the plantation social hierarchy. His concern with social differences and distinctions ties The Octoroon more closely to his Irish plays than has been recognized and illuminates contradictory impulses in The Octoroon, which also help to explain the two endings. While the 'tragic ending' reinforces the racial determinism that many critics have observed in the play, the scenes where an outsider observer fails to comprehend the racial and social hierarchy on the plantation reinforce an alternative vision that helps justify the 'happy ending' versions. Both Boucicault and his play were more interestingly equivocal than the Octoroon myths have allowed.
The middle passages of black migration
In characterizing the desperate journeys undertaken by African and Haitian refugees as today's "middle passages," Caryl Phillips's A Distant Shore and Edwidge Danticat's "Children of the Sea" complicate the idea of a single origin to a transatlantic black diaspora. If, during an era of black power and nation-building, the middle passage signified a fundamental connection with Africa, the term is more recently used to describe multiple crossings that transform the meaning of Diaspora into a vital and ongoing process. These crossings do not coalesce into a single narrative of black migration in which the trauma of slavery has been overcome. Rather, the temporal simultaneity of past and present suggests a narrative of history as repetition. Both works of fiction transform received images from a slave past in order to critique the present treatment of black asylum seekers. A Distant Shore deploys the stalled temporality of the middle passage for staging the impossibility of diasporic community in post 9/11 Britain. But even as this novel redraws the oceanic map of the transatlantic slave trade to include continental Europe and Great Britain, Africa exists outside of that imperial history and geography. "Children of the Sea" uses the simultaneity of past and present and the symbolic value of the middle passage as a space of death to critique an oppressive Haitian regime and the treatment of Haitian boat people by their Caribbean and American neighbors. It also interrupts a stalled temporality with the prophetic time of vodou beliefs for shifting the meaning of the middle passage from death to life in a Haitian diaspora that stretches across the Caribbean Sea.
The structures of provincialism: Britain’s many voices in the colonies
Britain's 18th-century North American colonies were certainly provinces of the empire, but it remains unclear how these provincial societies developed amidst the influence of English fashions, customs, and styles. Traditional views that the American colonies had cultures simply derivative of Britain are inadequate, because they presume a single, monolithic imperial culture, which Americans either absorbed or rejected. In practice, Americans chose from different and even contradictory cultural sources, not passively mimicking styles, but consciously selecting elements of English culture to suit their provincial purposes. Two wealthy Protestant congregations in 18-cenutry New England exemplify this process, adapting different English architectural styles in a competition for local prestige. In 1726 Boston's minority Anglican community completed the London inspired Christ Church, then the largest and tallest structure in the capital of New England Puritanism. One might have expected the costly building to rankle the Congregationalist majority, who held to Reformed Protestant tradition by refusing crosses, wedding rings, and even the title of "church" for their houses of worship. But by the decade's close Boston's prestigious third Congregational society built the Old South Meetinghouse, nearly identical to Christ Church in its impressive brick exterior, but larger and taller. More than just a pursuit of London finery, both sects selectively incorporated elements of English architecture, hoping to project a sophisticated identity that would attract new members without offending Boston's Puritan aesthetic tradition. Sects used the height and stately form of the church exteriors to symbolize their prominence, while avoiding idolatrous or immodest flourishes. Inside, the designs reinforced each sect's distinct values, creating a unique churchgoing experience for attendees. The complex process of adapting English styles also produced unexpected results. As the provincial congregations financed their expensive constructions, they created tensions and social changes within their membership, altering the practice and image of their faiths.
Other Issues
September 2011, Vol. 8, No. 3
March 2011, Volume 8, Number 1
June 2011, Volume 8, Number 2
Special issue, Itineraries of Atlantic science - new questions, new approaches, new directions, Vol. 7, No. 4
September 2010, Vol. 7, No. 3
June 2010, Vol. 7, No. 2
March 2010, Volume 7, Number 1
December 2009, Volume 6, Number 3
August 2009, Volume 6, Number 2
December 2008, Vol. 5, No. 3
August 2008, Vol. 5, No. 2
October 2007, Vol. 4, No. 2
April 2007
, Vol. 4, No. 1
October 2006 , Vol. 3, No. 2
April 2006, Vol. 3, No. 1
October 2005, Vol. 2, No. 2
April 2005, Vol. 2, No. 1
April 2005, Vol. 2, No. 1
October 2004, Vol. 1, No. 2
April 2004, Vol. 1, No. 1