Contesting Identities on an Emancipation Era Barbadian Plantation

Summary

The emancipation of the enslaved population throughout the British colonial empire in 1834 represented a complicated transition within those constituent societies, whereby the population was quickly transformed from bonded to ‘free’ laborers. This process is exemplified on the island of Barbados. Traditional historical studies have focused on colonial domination as maintained in this changing social context through the reinforcement of educational system, which served to enculturate the newly freed black proletariat. Material culture associated with education and literacy recovered from a nineteenth century Afro-Barbadian domestic context contrasts this passive model of black behavior. It demonstrates that Afro-Barbadians actively manipulated material culture to advance their own claim to humanity in a social discourse with a racist white plantocracy which sought to perpetuate the inequities of slavery in the post-emancipation era.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2014   •
• Historical Archaeology in the Caribbean: New Directions and Current Perspectives

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): SYM-6,17