![Templo Antiguo de los Totonacos in Tusapan [648.c.1]](http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/americas/images/temple.jpg)
A blog about the Americas by the Americas Collection team at the British Library
The UK Web Archive team, which includes several colleagues who sit behind the bookshelves that face me, now has a blog. They're talking a bit about what they are up to, but also highlighting websites in their collections in a kind of online Advent Calendar. Today's link seems apposite for our blog: 'Three Continents, One History: Birmingham, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, & the Caribbean'
For the US, of course, there's the Internet Archive.
[MJS]
['Off for Canada', an illustration from, Glenelg [pseud.] (1889), Broken Shackles, Toronto: William Briggs]
As with the United States, slavery is part of Canada's heritage. This heritage is complex, including the enslavement of native peoples, participation in the African slave trade and Canada's role as an Underground Railroad safe haven (to provide a simple sketch). As these examples suggest it is also an interconnected heritage, involving the United States, Britain and various Caribbean territories, as well as Canada itself. The British Library's collections, therefore, provide a unique resource for the consideration of this history. Information and accounts are contained in many elements of the collections, with monographs, newspapers, pamphlets, journals and various other materials all providing insight into slavery in Canada and its associated connections with the rest of the Americas.
My motivation in sketching this out is to promote a collaborative studentship being offered by Sheffield University in partnership with the British Library. 'Narratives and Depictions of Slaves and Former Slaves in Canada: 1800 - 1900' is an opportunity to conduct PhD research into the Canadian collections of the British Library, investigating how the experiences of slaves and former slaves in Canada are represented therein. It is also an opportunity to contribute to understandings of the richness of the collections here, drawing out the significance of the works held and illustrating their connections to materials and individuals from other parts of the Americas and the British Empire.
The link in the previous paragraph contains more information on the project, eligibility and the application process. There are also contact details for Dr. Jane Hodson (studentship supervisor at Sheffield University's School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics) and myself should you wish to discuss the project further.
[PJH]
King George VI and Queen Elizabeth at the Canada Pavilion of the New York World’s Fair, 1939. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and Library and Archives Canada
The Guardian has published a fun piece for audiophiles (and pretty much everyone else) today regarding the Queen Mother’s record collection. What grabbed my attention was the inclusion of Wilf Carter (the Canadian Country and Western singer), the Desperadoes Steel Orchestra (the Trinidadian calypso steel band) and a general Commonwealth presence.
Given the fondness the Queen Mother expressed for Canada and the times she spent in the Caribbean we should not be surprised to find this affected her musical taste and collection. Apparently, it was visits to Jamaica which resulted in the Queen Mother developing a taste for Ska, illustrating this point quite neatly. Personally, I would love to know what the Queen Mother thought of some of the musical ‘heirs’ to the above, such as Canada’s Stan Rogers or the Ska influenced No Doubt. I suspect, however, the record collection will provide few clues to this.
If you want to find out more about the Royal family the British Library collections are a great resource, as suggested by my previous post on King Edward VIII. In parallel, the British Library Sound Archive provides a rich resource for music from across the globe, as well as interesting oral histories about the spoken word and music in the Caribbean. Needless to say, our monographs on this subject would be well worth a look too.
[PJH]
“Exterior of the Boiling House, Antigua” from William Clark (1823), Ten Views from the Island of Antigua (Shelfmark: 1786.c.9)
Tuesday 13th October saw various members of British Library staff come together to produce a public display of the Library’s African, Caribbean and South Asian materials. The event sought to mark Black History Month and highlight the cross-connections that exist between the Library’s collection areas. In doing this the event also aimed to assert the interconnectedness of Africa, Britain, the Caribbean and South Asia over a long historical period, with display items covering the early 1600’s until the mid twentieth century.
The Caribbean materials on display articulated how these interconnections were expressed through knowledge transfer, individual biographies, the development of industrial processes and the growth of globalised transport networks. The arrangement of African and South Asian materials around those from the Caribbean provided further details and nuance to the narratives on display, illustrating how cause and effect operated on a global level, in particular as a result of the slave trade. The display of account books from slave traders based in Africa (some of which can be found at Shelfmark: Add ms 43841) and letters detailing the kidnap, sale and enslavement of individuals (an example is John Toogood’s 1720 account, held at: India Office Records/E/1/11 ff. 326-328v) added depth to the displayed illustrations of slavery in operation in the Caribbean, represented in part by William Clark’s idealised depiction above. Further, the display of India Office records regarding the transportation of indentured labour from South Asia to the Caribbean (for example: India Office Records:L/PJ/1/86), one of the responses to the ending of the slave trade, again illustrated how developments in one area could have marked effects on another.
While the event attempted to illustrate through the Library’s collections that the global interconnectedness we perceive as being a modern phenomena is not, in fact, new, it should still remind us of the myriad connections people and places maintain across the globe today. Indeed, this is part of a theme of an event being held at the Library next week, on the 25th October. Entitled "Our Memories of the Uprisings: the 1980's revisited", the event seeks to discuss the unrest of the 1980’s, its causes and contexts, and highlight the continuing significance of these years to multicultural, globalised contemporary Britain. Here too we can perceive how the Library’s collections of interconnected materials, from newspapers, to oral histories, to music and printed books provide opportunities for detailed research into the subject.
[P.J.H.]
Hans Sloane, A Voyage to the islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers, and Jamaica....., London, 1707-25. Shelfmark: 38.f.4
Team America is very pleased to welcome our first guest blogger - Professor Miles Ogborn, Queen Mary, UOL:
My current research seeks to understand the ways in which knowledge of the natural history of the Caribbean islands, especially Jamaica, was produced and communicated in the period between the late seventeenth century and the early nineteenth century. During that period, it was the plant life of those islands that was the prime focus for natural philosophers, many of whom were doctors interested in the medical uses of plants. There was also a concern to search for agricultural products that could play a profitable part in Britain’s imperial economy.
What I am interested in is the range of forms of communication of botanical knowledge. This involved speech, correspondence, collections of specimens (herbaria), and printed matter from newspaper articles to scholarly papers and elaborate volumes of botanical engravings. I want to know who communicated with whom about the plants of Jamaica and how they did so, thinking about both local discussions of plants and those which spanned the Atlantic world. I ask what the protocols were for these forms of communication? Who could be part of the ‘conversation’? And who the audiences were that they addressed. There are various elements to this: the role of polite sociability in the work of men of science in the Atlantic world; the particular forms of knowledge that were communicated between doctors and patients; attempts to make the knowledge of plants ‘public’, via both print and botanical gardens (and the intersection of the two in printed catalogues of the gardens’ collections); and the cross-cultural communication of botanical knowledge between Europeans and enslaved and indigenous people. Eighteenth-century Jamaica was a slave society based on deadly forms of agricultural labour on land which had been appropriated from its earlier inhabitants. It was a society of great brutality. Yet there was also an acknowledgement, albeit a circumscribed one, that enslaved Africans and Amerindians had knowledge of the botanical riches of the islands.
In doing the research it has been vital to be able to work across the range of material held in the Caribbean collections in the British Library. The communication of botanical knowledge depended upon images as well as many sorts of text. It has been crucial to the research to be able to consult, for example, the letters held in the manuscripts collections from Henry Barham (a Jamaican doctor) to Hans Sloane (then returned from Jamaica to London) as well as reading their published accounts of the natural history of the island. It has also been necessary to work between the manuscript correspondence of Thomas Dancer (the superintendent of Jamaica’s botanical garden) with Edward Long (a historian of the island who dealt in both ‘civil’ and ‘natural’ history) about the difficulties of getting public support for the island’s botanical garden, and the published garden catalogues and reports of speeches in newspapers in which Dancer celebrated the public spirit of this venture. It is only with such a range of material ready to hand that the range of forms of communication can become apparent, along with moments in which other voices are partially heard. For example, along with celebrating the contributions by European planters and plant collectors to the botanical gardens, in 1792 Dancer listed the Akee tree (a crucial part of Jamaica’s national dish of Akee and saltfish) as being an ‘African Fruit, introduced by Negroes in some of Mr. Hibbert’s ships.’ There is here a sense, albeit anonymous, of the African contribution to Jamaican botany, and to the talk about plants, their names and their uses.
Professor Miles Ogborn, School of Geography, Queen Mary, University of London
Having recently had reason to go through the Library’s cricket holdings for the Caribbean and Canada it seemed appropriate to post some notes about them here. Cricket is not only a dynamic and globally popular sport, but it also has an important place in nineteenth and twentieth century history.
(Cricketers on the George Town Parade Ground, 1866, An Illustrated History of British Guiana, 10470.i.3)
Cricket in the Caribbean has long had a political element and the sport has been played by some of the key thinkers and actors in Caribbean politics in the twentieth century and provided opportunities for them to travel and share their ideas with a wide audience. This is illustrated not least by Learie Constantine and C. L. R. James who spent long periods of time in Lancashire and London as a result of their cricket connections. Both James’s and Constantine’s writings on cricket and racial politics are available in the Library, with works such as Beyond a Boundary (James, 1963 [Shelfmark: 7926.n.25]), Cricket and I (Constantine, 1933 [Shelfmark:2271.d.15]) and Colour Bar (Constantine, 1954 [Shelfmark: W49/1369 DSC]) available, along with many works by other notable authors. Furthermore, these materials are well supported by the newspaper collections and Sound Archive which contain articles and recordings by and relating to both men.
Our collections also illustrate the changing face of cricket over at least the last hundred and fifty years. The publication Cricket Across the Sea; or, the Wanderings and Matches of the Gentlemen of Canada, 1887 (Toronto: 1887 [Shelfmark: 07926.b.9]) is an account of the Canadian Men’s Cricket successful tour of England in 1887. Given the success outlined in this work and the prevalence of publications such as The Canadian Cricketer’s Guide (St. Catharine’s: 1858) one can see that Canadian cricket has fallen on harder times, as has American cricket which is also noted in the collection. And, as you can see from, The American Cricket Annual for 1890 (New York: 1891 [Shelfmark: P. P. 2523. fd]), I’m not getting confused with baseball.
Given the continued pace of change within cricket in the twenty-first century, we can learn a lot from these collections as they illustrate the ebb and flow as well as the significance of the sport during the preceding two centuries.
[P. J. H.]
Cover of Michaud, F. and Léonidas, J. R. Rêver d’Haïti en Couleurs (Montreal, 2009)
[P.J.H writes] Today (Friday) has been a chance to sit down and take a deep breath from a busy week of giving papers, listening to seminars and organising events due in the far future. ‘Sitting down and taking a breath’ in Library terms means doing all important collection management; in particular acquiring monographs and processing donated items.
For me acquisitions are a largely Web 2.0 affair as most of our vendors operate impressive collection management systems or send lists of material in PDF form. This is all very neat and, as my orders are processed at Boston Spa, saves me getting swamped in the paper records and piles of material that can arrive at once.
That said, I do get envious of our Latin American Curator, Aquiles, who has huge packs of books deposited on his desk every couple of weeks. Therefore, one of my little joys is processing donations, of which the Library receives a generous flow from Canada and the Caribbean. When these materials arrive it’s a chance to have contact with some very interesting work and interact physically with material being added to the collection.
I can’t show you the things processed today as they are not in the collection yet but a few months ago the above, Rêver d’Haïti en Couleurs (Motreal: 2009), was donated to the Library’s Caribbean collections. Rêver d’Haïti en Couleurs documents the wonderful artistic heritage of Haiti in sumptuous detail and I would recommend having a look. If you would like to it’s at shelfmark LD.31.b.2210.
[P. J. H.]
The Boiling House. William Clark, Ten Views of Antigua, 1823
The opening of the re-furbished square in the centre of Brixton recently brought with it both festivities and, controversy. While many residents have been excited about the re-investment in Brixton’s public spaces, others have been more wary of the historical elisions such changes inevitably entail. In a letter to the editor of Lambeth Life one Brixton resident highlighted what they called the “irony” of juxtaposing the bust of the sugar giant Tate with a square named for the “economic refugees” of that “ugly and evil business.” In their response the Lambeth Life editor drew on the history of slavery and sugar in order to contextualize the issues. They stated, among other things, that Tate was involved in purchasing sugar from the Caribbean, but “not involved in running sugar plantations.” (Lambeth Life, p.6, 1 March, 2010)
The exchange was a perfect example of the way Caribbean history is part and parcel of the events and meanings that make up our present lives here in the UK. It also seemed an opportune way for me to highlight our Caribbean collections and, more specifically, the sources we have on Caribbean sugar production and slavery.
For those interested in investigating the history and legacy of plantation slavery and sugar production, the British Library is a treasure trove. For the last half of the 19th century we hold sources such as biographies of Henry Tate, reports on the sugar imported and refined by Tate, as well as parliamentary debates on the return of Jamaica in 1865 to a Crown Colony.
The Liverpool Papers contain reports on the production and profits of British Caribbean plantations as well as debates among colonial authorities on the spread of slave rebellions after the Haitian Revolution. The Sloane manuscripts and Edward Long papers contain records on the ships that travelled the “triangle trade” route in the 18th century.
In addition to manuscripts we have rare printed works, such as An Essay Upon Plantership by Samuel Martin, which discusses the technical innovations in sugar production throughout various islands in the English Caribbean, including Antigua, Jamaica and Barbados.
Last but not least, you will also find here the finest examples of secondary sources on the subject, from Eric Williams’ work Capitalism and Slavery to Sidney Mintz’s Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. Indeed, as Mintz’s title suggests, the Caribbean collections at the Library shed light on the history of modern Britain.
[E.N.C.]
from Empire d'Haiti, New York: [1852]
A month or so ago I received notification of a conference on Haiti and it caused me to think about our holdings from the country. At the American Studies Association annual conference in Albuquerque last year, I had met a Ph.D student who was working on 18th and early 19th century Haiti and I was able to tell her that we had some letters between the widow of Henri Christophe and Mrs Thomas Clarkson. Perhaps not totally surprising since they are included in Thomas Clarkson’s papers, but we’ve got a lot more on Haiti than you might think. And we’ve been finding even more as part of the work that Beth is doing for our Caribbean digitisation project (who knew that we had a 1793 letter from Dessalines!). I had intended to write a blog on the subject but was distracted by having to go off to do jury service for most of December. I never imagined that Haiti would have been brought back to my attention - and the centre of the news, in the way that it has over the past week, as we have watched on TV the dreadful aftermath of the earthquake and its effects on both the people and the land.
Inevitably I’ve been thinking about the history of the country – where more bad things have happened to the people over the years than you can possibly imagine. A piece in yesterday’s Guardian provided some much needed historical context for the disaster, with a good chronology of events. But some might question the omissions (what about the impact of neo-liberal globalisation policies and U.S. led or influenced military coups for example?), and it’s sadly become all too easy to perpetuate the ‘Haiti as tragedy’ narrative. So for a somewhat different perspective, you might want to listen to US policy in Haiti over decades "Lays the foundation for why the impact of natural disaster is so severe", which features Bill Quigley, the legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights, and Brian Concannon, director of the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti.
And I’m also reminded that at such times of terrible disaster and suffering, there are always those who try to take advantage, so if you’re thinking of donating to any of the disaster funds, make sure you choose carefully to avoid the scammers. The BBC has provided a useful list.
[C.H.]
I mentioned that the British Library has several curatorial blogs in the last post. I'm pleased to note that another one has joined the roster: Voices of the UK - a blog about the BL's audio collections of British accents and dialects. Among the first of Jonnie, Jon and Helen's posts is one about British Caribbean recordings made in Huddersfield - "Poppy-show and kiss-teeth". A quick click, and you can find out more about patwa, "KST" and the Database of Regional English ...
[M.S.]
