"Pandora's box" : the masterless Caribbean at the end of the eighteenth century -- "Negroes in foreign bottoms" : sailors, slaves, and communication -- "The suspence is dangerous in a thousand shapes" : news, rumor, and politics on the eve of the Haitian revolution -- "Ideas of liberty have sunk so deep" : communication and revolution, 1789-93 -- "Know your true interests" : Saint-Domingue and the Americas, 1793-1800.
Summary:
The Common Wind is a gripping and colorful account of the intercontinental networks that tied together the free and enslaved masses of the New World. Having delved deep into the gray obscurity of official eighteenth-century records in Spanish, English, and French, Julius S. Scott has written a powerful "history from below." Scott follows the spread of "rumors of emancipation" and the people behind them, bringing to life the protagonists in the slave revolution. By tracking the colliding worlds of buccaneers, military deserters, and maroon communards from Venezuela to Virginia, Scott records the transmission of contagious mutinies and insurrections in unparalleled detail, providing readers with an intellectual history of the enslaved. hough The Common Wind is credited with having "opened up the Black Atlantic with a rigor and a commitment to the power of written words," the manuscript remained unpublished for thirty-two years. Now, after receiving wide acclaim from leading historians of slavery and the New World, it has been published by Verso for the first time, with a foreword by the academic and author Marcus Rediker."-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.