Dark Work

Over the past thirty-five years, historians have reminded us that of all the colonies, Rhode Island was the most deeply embedded in the international slave trade. Its enslaved population, while small, comprised the highest percentage of any in New England. Now, Christy Clark-Pujara offers the first comprehensive account of the struggles of black men and women during Rhode Island’s formative years. First, she demonstrates that this colony’s foundation rested on the “centrality of slavery.” Next, she argues persuasively that the Plantation State’s dependence on slave-generated profits stymied black efforts for equality well after it became a state. She reconstructs the experiences of enslaved Africans and their descendants in this socio-economic context, and calculates the high cost to their lives and to the nation. Title aside, Clark-Pujara does not provide a forensic accounting of slavery-based businesses. Although Clark-Pujara identifies several of the most significant slave-labor investors, in most cases, she does not track their insurance and banking firms, distilleries, and plantation partners. Rather, she traces how white economic prerogatives generated shifting legal and extralegal stipulations regarding enslavement, emancipation, and black citizenship––and reveals how black people challenged these imposed conditions.

Archaeology · Art · Aside · Citizenship · Context (archaeology) · Economic history · Emancipation · Gentry · Political science · Politics · Population · Sociology · State (computer science) · White (mutation) · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Demography · History · Law · Race, History, and American Society