ABSTRACT
The roughly 10 million Africans transported forcibly to the Americas between 1500 and 1850 were thrust headlong into a bewildering variety of different environments. Some cleared the jungles of South America, others grew sugar on small Caribbean islands, while a smaller number laboured in rice fields and tobacco farms, or on the wharves of ports on the North American mainland. In all these locations, enslaved Africans added to a pre-existing mix of Native Americans, immigrant Europeans and their descendants. Enslaved Africans were never completely isolated from these other populations, although in several Caribbean islands and in the coastal regions of South Carolina and Georgia nine out of ten individuals were enslaved (Goveia, 1965: 203). Historians writing on slavery have scrutinised the lives of the enslaved in detail, carefully documenting, amongst other things, religious experiences, family formation, cultural expression and resistance. Where historians have studied how slaves interacted with other people, they have concentrated on the master/mistress–slave relationship, exploring themes such as paternalism, hegemony and capitalism. The importance of the interaction between owners and the enslaved cannot be underestimated, since the master determined the amount of work required from slaves, the amounts of food and clothing dispensed, and how punishment would be determined and delivered. Trevor Burnard, in Chapter 11 of this volume, explores this relationship in depth.
