You Should Give them Blacks to Eat
Waging Inter-American Wars of Torture and Terror
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2992508 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sara E Johnson (0000-0001-9101-8334, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2009 |
| Volume | 61 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 65-92 |
| Publication date | 2009-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0003-0678 • E-ISSN: 1080-6490 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/aq.0.0068 |
| OpenAlex | W2165294138 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 21 |
| References cited | 7 |
This article examines the role of the state in sanctioning canine torture within the brutal context of late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century plantation societies. While the employment of dogs as a slave-catching strategy was commonplace throughout the Americas, I trace the use of Cuban-bred dogs trained to track down and feed upon black flesh. Spanish, French, British and North American slave-holding powers in the region collaborated in subduing enemy combatants, using canine warfare techniques that dated back to the Spanish Conquest. These techniques were employed during the Haitian Revolution (1791-1803), the Second Maroon War in Jamaica (1795-96), and the Second Seminole War in Territorial Florida (1835-1842), the three largest-scale conflicts pitting the colonial state against African and indigenous populations from the 1790s-1840s. I illustrate that the viciousness of this strategy was a topic of strident debate for contemporary observers and that it left an indelible mark on public memory. This memory has been vividly preserved in the visual record, as well as in historical fiction by African American and Caribbean intellectuals. The use of canine torture and the debate it engendered recurred in the public sphere with the allegations surrounding the American prison at Abu Ghraib, and I close by examining continuities between the Age of Revolution and the contemporary War on Terror. Justified as a question of colonial/national security in each case, torture has proved an indispensable component in the imperial subjugation of non-white peoples
Adversary · Archaeology · Colonialism · Context (archaeology · Ethnology · Human rights · Indigenous · Political science · Prison · Spanish Civil War · State (computer science · Torture · White (mutation · Historical and Scientific Studies · History · Law · Torture, Ethics, and Law · Traumatic Ocular and Foreign Body Injuries
K9 carcerality and coloniality
From the human to the planetary
Open jaws of this monster-tyranny”
Black Sheep
Commemorating police over Latino death
Queer canine becomings
Whose Best Friend? Muslims, Dogs, and the Making of American Humanity
Understanding African Americans’ Attitudes toward Nonhuman Animals
A mosaic of exchange
They Stood like Men”
Slavery
Visions of violence in the Haitian Revolution
Bringing the Animals Back in
American Indians for Saint-Domingue
Animal Humanism
Robot Dogs and the Paw Patrol
US Military Nationalism and the Intimate Public Sphere
Os Primeiros Cachorros
For the Very Existence of Civilization
A Dog's Life
Slavery and the 'American Way of War,' 1607-1861
| Unique citing works | 21 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,31 |
| Citation span | 2010 - 2025 (16) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 21 |