Black Ranching Frontiers
African Cattle Herders of the Atlantic World, 1500-1900
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7307216 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kenneth A Dawson (0000-0002-0568-6588, University of California, Merced, corresponding author), K Dawson |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 100 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 806-807 |
| Publication date | 2013-11-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of American History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/jahist/jat366 |
| OpenAlex | W2335324226 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
The study of New World slavery has become a topic of increasing scholarly attention, moving from the periphery of historical analysis to the center as we expand our understanding of both the institution of slavery and captives' experiences, especially their ability to re-create and reimagine African traditions. Andrew Sluyter's Black Ranching Frontiers considers how free and enslaved ranchers (called cowboys, vaqueros, gauchos, and other terms depending on time and place) interlaced African, European, and Amerindian herding traditions to develop New World ranching cultures. Even as bondpeople are situated at the center of a growing body of scholarship, Sluyter considers how black ranchers working on the margins of plantation systems developed robust economies and African-influenced cultures that fed bondpeople toiling at the heart of these juggernaut plantations. Black Ranching Frontiers is the first book-length study of slaves' “creative role” in establishing “colonial herding ecology and practices,” placing “open-range cattle ranching frontiers” into an Atlantic paradigm (pp. 4, 149). It examines the active roles Africans played in emerging colonies, documenting their involvement in the creation of networks of knowledge, trade, and communication that disseminated throughout the Western Hemisphere livestock, grasses, and wisdom from Africa and Europe. Sluyter ambitiously examines cattle ranching in Africa, Europe, and New World colonies belonging to Spain, France, and England, comparing and contrasting techniques employed in disparate environments, including Spain's Marismas region, Britain, the Senegambia (an arid region devoid of the tsetse flies that precluded cattle herding in most of sub-Saharan Africa), the wetlands of Veracruz and southern Louisiana, the arid island of Barbuda, and the subtropical and arid plains of Argentina. The author demonstrates bondpeople's centrality in establishing ranching cultures, often working free of direct white supervision while tending hundreds, even thousands of cattle. Though the evidence is admittedly thin, he convincingly argues that slaves braided elements of their African ranching traditions into New World herding ecologies, and he considers how specific African, European, and Indian herding methods were adopted and adapted to suit local environmental conditions, while unsuitable methods were discarded
Archaeology · Colonialism · Economy · Ethnology · Geography · Herding · Livestock · Political science · Scholarship · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · History · Law
The future of social science integration in rangelands research
Lessons Learned from the CSWE Task Force to Advance Anti-Racism in the Social Work Education Policy and Accreditation Standards
Using scale and human agency to frame ranchers’ discussions about socio-ecological change and resilience
Cattle (Bos taurus) as colonists in South Carolina’s Lowcountry (USA), CE 1670–1900
African Environmental Crisis
| Citations per year | 0.83 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2020 - 2024 (5) |
| Highly cited | No |