Grapevine in the Slave Market

This chapter begins with the successful inversion of United States slave traders' network of communication and transportation. In November 1841, a group of at least nineteen enslaved African American men held aboard the brig Creole violently captured control of the ship and forced the crew to chart a course for Nassau, Bahamas. There, with the aid of black Bahamians and British colonial officials, they gained freedom along with all but five of their enslaved shipmates. White contemporaries tended to view the Creole “incident” in terms of its contribution to an international trade conflict between the United States and Great Britain. The revolt, however, is important for what it illustrates about how enslaved African Americans worked to acquire, disseminate, and apply geographic and geopolitical knowledge and information—what the text refers to here as geopolitical literacy—and what that might mean for their broader Afro-American consciousness.

Alien · Ancient history · Colonialism · Consciousness · Creole language · Empire · Geography · Geopolitics · Political science · Politics · Portuguese · White (mutation) · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · History · Law

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  Open Access•David Featherstone•Global Networks•2019

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