The interactions between the elites and the lower classes of Latin America are explored from the divergent perspectives of three eminent historians in this volume. The result is a counterbalance of viewpoints on the urban and the rural, the rich and the poor, and the Europeanized and the traditional of Latin America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
E. Bradford Burns advances the view that two cultures were in conflict in nineteenth-century Latin America: that of the modernizing, European-oriented elite, and that of the “common folk” of mixed racial background who lived close to the earth. Thomas E. Skidmore discusses the emerging field of labor history in twentieth-century Latin America, suggesting that the historical roots of today’s exacerbated tensions lie in the secular struggle of army against workers that he describes. In the introduction, Richard Graham takes issue with both authors on certain basic premises and points out implications of their essays for the understanding of North American as well as Latin American history.
Slaves and Slaveholders in Bermuda, 1616-1782, offers a fresh perspective on the complex relationship between racism and slavery in the often overlooked second-oldest English colony in the New World. As the first blacks were brought onto the islands not specifically for slave labor, but for their expertise as pearl divers and cultivators of West Indies plants, Bermuda's racial history began to unfold much differently from that of the Caribbean islands or of the North American mainland.
Bermuda's history records the arrival of the first blacks, the first English law passed to control the behavior of the "Negroes," and the creation of ninety-nine-year indentures for black and Indian servants. When the inevitable reality of slavery took hold in Bermuda, slaveholders realized that they, like their slaves, were not free. Slavery dictated and strained the relationships between whites and blacks, but in this smallest of English colonies it differed from slavery elsewhere because of the uniquely close master-slave relations created by Bermuda's size and maritime economy.
At only twenty-one square miles in area, Bermuda saw slaves and slaveholders working and living closer together than in other societies. The emphasis on maritime pursuits offered slaves a degree of autonomy and a sense of identity unequaled in other English colonies. This groundbreaking history of Bermuda's slavery reveals fewer runaways, less-violent rebellions, and relatively milder punishments for offending slaves.
Bernhard delves into the origins of Bermuda's slavery, its peculiar nature, and its effects on blacks and whites. The study is based on archival research drawn from wills and inventories, laws and court cases, governors' reports and council minutes. Intended as an introduction to both the history of the islands and the rich sources for further research, this book will prove invaluable to scholars of slavery, as well as those interested in historical archaeology, anthropology, maritime history, and colonial history.
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