In 1760, following the largest slave revolt in the eighteenth-century British Empire, the Afro-Caribbean word Obeah first appeared in British colonial law. In Archival Irruptions, Katharine Gerbner traces how British authorities in Jamaica came to criminalize Obeah, a practice that was variously seen as a healing method, an Africana religion, a science, and a form of witchcraft. Gerbner shows that in the years directly preceding its criminalization, for enslaved Africans and Maroons, Obeah was a prophetic practice tied to healing and death rites. Drawing on Moravian missionary archives, Gerbner theorizes these descriptions of African religious beliefs, rituals, and concepts as “irruptions”: moments when Africana epistemologies break the narrative of a European-authored archival document. In these irruptions, we see European assertions of authority through the lens of Obeah. Moreover, we find that the modern category of religion is rooted in the histories of slavery, rebellion, and the criminalization of Black religious practices. Gerbner’s search for archival irruptions not only creates an opportunity to write an alternative narration about Obeah; it provides a new methodology for all those conducting archival research.

Katharine Gerbner is Associate Professor of History and Director of Religious Studies at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of Christian Slavery: Conversion and Race in the Protestant Atlantic World.

Acknowledgments  ix
Introduction  1
Part I: Obeah
1. Africana Irruptions  17
2. Religio-Nations in the Archives  37
3. Maroons, Blood Oaths, and Gendered Irruptions  63
Part II: Heuchelei
4. Archival Silence, Sexual Violence  83
5. Policing Bodies, Saving Souls  101
6. Construction Religion, Defining Crime  121
Epilogue. Land and Archive  141
Appendix 1  147
Appendix 2  149
Notes  153
Bibliography  183
Index  211