Ceramics in the African Atlantic: new perspectives on social, economic, political and other everyday interactions
by Liza Gijanto
with Akin Ogundiran
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Seen by:Socio-economic interaction and ceramic aesthetic: understanding West African ceramic production and use in context
by Liza Gijanto
This paper explores the multi-faceted nature of ceramic production and use in the context of contact and interaction... more This paper explores the multi-faceted nature of ceramic production and use in the context of contact and interaction through a detailed examination of pottery manufacture immediately before, during and after the decline of the Atlantic trade at the trading site of Juffure on the Gambia River. It is argued that potters’ decisions during the production process affected the aesthetic qualities of pots, including paste colour, temper, form and decoration and that some of these qualities are the by-products of acts of social displays related to diet. Analysis of ceramics during each phase of the Atlantic trade demonstrates that the potters’ choices were not exclusively expressions of communal ethnic identity of the producers or users. Additionally, the heightened production and eventual abandonment of this industry at Juffure fails to display a relationship between ceramics and personal identity. Rather, it is the broader socio-economic processes such as population fluctuations, consumer demand and socio-economic interactions as opposed to ethnic identity formation and maintenance, that affected shifts in local ceramic production.
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Seen by:Dockside Prostitution in South African Ports
History Compass 6/3 (2008): 673-690
Prostitution has been a staple of dockside social life for centuries. In South Africa, it dates from the Dutch East... more
Prostitution has been a staple of dockside social life for centuries. In South Africa, it dates from the Dutch East India Company's establishment of a refreshment station at the Cape of Good Hope. But unlike other prostitution sectors—streets, brothels, agencies—the women of the dockside sex trade in Cape Town and Durban participate in a global traffic of ideas, diseases, DNA, contraband, and currency through their ceaseless interactions with foreign sailors. They exploit their knowledge of the seamen's languages and cultures so as to more effectively solicit their marks in a competitive and cosmopolitan environment.
Social historians provide passing glimpses of dockside prostitution in their consideration of larger historical themes—Company rule, slavery, British colonial governance, the Mineral Revolution, the Anglo-Boer War, and apartheid—but they have yet to treat it as a distinct analytical category through which to view the past. Yet popular intellectual trends suggest that research into the dockside sex trade would add new dimensions to the histories of cosmopolitanism, gender, globalization, maritime recreation, and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.
This article provides a quick and accessible introduction to the historiography of dockside prostitution in South Africa.
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Seen by:Sailors as Scribes: Travel Discourse and the (Con)textualization of the Khoikhoi at the Cape of Good Hope, 1649-90
Journal of African Travel-Writing, 8 & 9 (2001): 30-44
Travel narratives have been one of the primary means by which Europeans learned about the rest of the world. This... more
Travel narratives have been one of the primary means by which Europeans learned about the rest of the world. This paper examines how travel narratives concerning the Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) from 1649 to 1690 utilized specific images of the Khoikhoi to serve either Dutch imperial intentions or a larger European cultural project. In both cases, writing was utilized as a technology of representation: texts served as tools in the construction of a Euro-managed Khoikhoi identity.
The paper is based on sailors' accounts. Between 1649 and 1690 at least eighty-eight reports of the Cape of Good Hope were written by sailors, many of them quoted by later academics and imperial strategists. This paper focuses on the most popular and representative of these writings. It first looks at how Khoikhoi were represented as "strategic shepherds", as herders who were seen as important assets in the Dutch colonial establishment at the Cape. It then investigates how travellers tapped into and enhanced the trope of the godless savage, extending this rather popular stereotype to Khoikhoi as part of European understanding of the "other". Finally it examines how local Cape peoples were valued as ethnographic specimens.
Sailing Beyond Apartheid: The Social and Political Impact of Seafaring on Coloured South African Sailors
in Carina Ray & Jeremy Rich (Eds.), Navigating African Maritime History (St John's, Newfoundland: Int'l Maritime Economic History Association, 2010), pp. 189-213
Historians of maritime culture show that, during the Revolutionary Era, the ship was an important site for the... more
Historians of maritime culture show that, during the Revolutionary Era, the ship was an important site for the development and dissemination of anti-authoritarian ideals, that seamen were important carriers of revolutionary political consciousness to distant ports, and that the Atlantic basin was radicalized by this maritime traffic. They further suggest that seafarers embraced rebellious strategies because, on land, their rights were often restricted, their property expropriated and their labour exploited while, at sea, many were press-ganged or shanghaied into service, others were bonded into debt-service agreements and all were subject to the capricious rule of an elitist officer class. But these “motley crews” found new opportunities to connect as fellow subalterns, both on ships and on docks, producing a radical maritime tradition.
The question this article poses is: to what extent was this bound to the revolutionary era? Did the cauldron of maritime labour continue to imbue seafarers with a radical political sensibility beyond the age of sail?
To answer this question, I focus on the fortunes of “mixed race” coloured South African seamen who sailed on South African ships during apartheid (1948-1994). I chose this group of Cape Town men because they share structural similarities with their Atlantic ancestors: they were politically oppressed, their land was expropriated by the government and they were physically exploited. By assessing their experiences at home, at sea and abroad, we can better understand how modern seafaring has affected their political consciousness.
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Seen by:Power and Landscape in Atlantic West Africa
With Akin Ogundiran. In Power and Landscape in Atlantic West Africa: Archaeological Perspectives, edited by J. Cameron Monroe and Akin Ogundiran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 1-46.
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Seen by:A Conference Announcement. Atlantiar: Human Traces on the Atlantic Façade of Europe
by Roslyn Frank
In the .pdf you will find the announcement in English for an international conference to be held May 18, 2012, in... more
In the .pdf you will find the announcement in English for an international conference to be held May 18, 2012, in Irun, Euskal Herria (Basque Country) sponsored by Jauzarrea (see below). The conference is entitled Atlantiar: Human Traces on the Atlantic Façade of Europe. The first conference in the series of four that are programmed examines territories around the Bay of Biscay with a focus on the Palaeolithic. The document contains a description of the conference and registration materials.
What follows is a description of Jauzarrea in Spanish outlinging the projects has supported in the past and the areas of research currently is promoting. The material below also includes an interview with the director of Jauzarrea, Xabi Otero, a well-known Basque historian, writer and photographer.
Un grupo de trabajo consolidado
La Editorial Txoria Errekan, con sede en Jauzarrea (Arraiotz), ha realizado desde 1984 más de 200 publicaciones en el ámbito del patrimonio cultural del País Vasco. Xabi Otero es su responsable y como consecuencia de esa tarea, ha concebido una doble idea: la creación de una institución estable, JAUZARREA –como fondo para el estudio y difusión de la Cultura Vasca– y el desarrollo del proyecto temporal, ATLANTIAR, como una herramienta para reunir el conocimiento más actualizado sobre la historia de los vascos.
Antecedentes.
Xabi explica la génesis del proyecto: “Desde 1972 he desarrollado mi labor en el ámbito profesional, estableciendo una sólida amistad con muchas de las personas con las que he trabajado. Gracias a la cantidad y diversidad de temas que he tenido que tratar, he atesorado un conocimiento sobre muchas materias que tiene dos vertientes realmente interesantes.
Por una parte, el proceso de aprendizaje me ha proporcionado una visión general muy completa para establecer conexiones e interacciones y plantear así un proyecto de divulgación de gran envergadura como es ATLANTIAR.
Por otra, el tejido de relaciones que he establecido, permite aglutinar a esas personas que constituyen, con su sabiduría, un aval científico para el proyecto –por el conocimiento que han acumulado sobre diversas facetas del ser humano, y porque la información que poseen es de primera mano, generada por sus propias investigaciones–, en torno a la editorial TXORIA ERREKAN.
Con esos elementos he implicado en el proyecto a un grupo cualificado de personas de mi entorno, artistas, investigadores, generadores de nuevas materias, gestores en diversos ámbitos, profesionales. Personas creativas que abarcamos el abanico de oficios que se da en nuestra sociedad; personas con ilusión y con una particular manera de encarar nuestro futuro juntos, desarrollando en la medida de lo posible la innovación cultural.
La calidad y el entusiasmo de este grupo humano lo convierten en el motor de una institución estable, JAUZARREA, constituida como fondo para el estudio y difusión de la cultura vasca desde Euskal Herria.
El conjunto de expertos que participan en el programa de congresos ATLANTIAR –integrado en su mayor parte por investigadores de otros países–, constituye un sólido núcleo científico de alto valor, con un bagaje profesional tras de sí rotundo”.
JAUZARREA desarrolla un modelo de gestión que permite:
• Difundir la cultura en la sociedad de manera dinámica y efectiva.
• Impulsar el conocimiento para mejorar la percepción de la cultura, especialmente cuestiones con implicación en las relaciones sociales.
• Crear conexiones interculturales –la relación entre culturas, común a varias culturas– y multiculturales –convivencia de diversas culturas–.
• Combinar actividades en los ámbitos del patrimonio material e inmaterial, potenciando estudio, investigación y difusión de la cultura de los vascos y su interrelación con la de otros pueblos indígenas.
• Consolidar y ampliar la base social con personas que constituyen el soporte en red que impulsa el proyecto.
JAUZARREA gestiona difusión de nuestra cultura, con presencia en proyectos de instituciones colaboradoras, aunando disciplinas necesarias para regenerar la información, con una dinámica activa de investigación y una divulgación fluida en la sociedad.
Una herramienta: el programa de congresos ATLANTIAR.
ATLANTIAR es un programa con cuatro congresos sobre la historia de los vascos, que se desarrollarán en 2012 y 2013, abordando cada uno de ellos el análisis multidisciplinar de un período histórico:
• PALEOLITÍCO, desde hace 45.000 años hasta el final del Magdaleniense.
• SOCIEDADES PRODUCTORAS, desde el Neolítico hasta el final de la Edad del Hierro.
• NUEVA ERA, desde los vascones prerromanos hasta la invasión del Reino de Navarra en 1512, por las tropas de las coronas de Castilla y Aragón.
• ERA MODERNA, desde 1512 hasta el presente.
Con este programa, los más de 100 expertos internacionales vinculados al proyecto, nos acercan a los resultados de sus investigaciones, con una línea de trabajo en la que confluyen todas aquellas evidencias de vanguardia, que tienen que ver con nuestra cultura y modos de vida. Se trabaja en una dirección compartida, liderada por JAUZARREA. Creando un corpus de conocimiento accesible, cuyo resultado será un proyecto editorial de amplio espectro, que reúna a estos autores de más de 40 instituciones científicas participantes. Desarrollando una campaña de marketing cultural en permanente evolución, dando a conocer nuestro bagaje creativo.
ATLANTIAR es un modelo integrador y riguroso de estudio que trabaja la clarificación de conceptos, renovando la información con nuevas lecturas, con la ayuda de los avances en ciencia y tecnología. Arma un corpus de conocimiento para ser canalizado e instalado a través de las instituciones participantes, para cohabitar –con sus señas de identidad, las de la cultura vasca–, con el resto de cátedras o grados que sean impartidos, dando a conocer nuestra historia y cómo ésta se articula y se entremezcla con la del resto del mundo. Creando y potenciando un modelo de referencia, del mismo modo que se utilizan conceptos específicos que definen e identifican a otras culturas.
Se desarrollan este y otros proyectos –estableciendo sinergias con grupos de trabajo–, que emitan una imagen de nuestra sociedad y cultura como referente de identidad y de prestigio. Creando una fuente para consulta de la cronología histórica sobre la civilización de los grupos de primeros pobladores europeos y su devenir hasta el día de hoy, como el conjunto de la población vasca.
Ejemplo práctico de un objetivo concreto: OREINA URKIAN KANATA.
A la par que cumplimos con el programa de congresos, se desarrolla en este caso un proyecto tan importante como el matriz, ATLANTIAR, ya que lo complementa, y constituye un adelanto de lo que será la puesta en práctica de JAUZARREA, como centro operativo de investigación y difusión.
En 2010, JAUZARREA presentó el proyecto OREINA URKIAN KANATA a la UPV/EHU, para efectuar una búsqueda de linajes genéticos vascos en los Pobladores de las Primeras Naciones. El Congreso Internacional Tras la estela de los balleneros vascos: Patrimonio Cultural y Genético de Vascos y Nativos Americanos del Atlántico Norte, celebrado el 21 y 22 de setiembre de 2011, en el Paraninfo de la UPV/EHU de Bilbao (BIZKAIA ARETOA), supuso el comienzo del proyecto, con objeto de poner al día la información existente sobre estas relaciones.
La búsqueda de los linajes de ADN –que la población vasca pudo haber aportado desde la baja edad media hasta el siglo XX–, se justifica por el intenso comercio establecido con los nativos desde el inicio de los viajes al litoral Atlántico Americano, llevado a cabo por nuestros pescadores de bacalao, cazadores de ballenas y tratantes de pieles. Destacando la buena relación de amistad existente; ya que los vascos – como pueblo– jamás arrebatamos territorio alguno, ni nos impusimos a ningún otro, produciéndose sin embargo una cooperación de manera ininterrumpida, con transferencia de conocimiento y tecnología entre ambas naciones. Continuando el contacto establecido desde hace años por JAUZARREA con las Primeras Naciones, retomamos el flujo de relaciones en más de treinta comunidades de Mi’kmaq, Malisset, Mohawk, Abenaki, Cree, Huron, Innu, Attikamekw, Algonkin y Ojibwa; con sus líderes y Consejos de Bandas. En un extenso territorio que abarca desde Newfoundland & Labrador, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Québec, Ontario, New England, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentuky y región de los Grandes Lagos.
Realizando un estudio que comprende disciplinas como historia, folklore, arqueología, antropología, etnología, lingüística, biología o geología y la interpretación multidisciplinar de sus resultados; para determinar como ha tenido lugar esa relación y desde cuando se ha dado.
Conseguiremos un notable flujo de información, beneficioso, para poderlo aplicar con inmediatez en las comunidades objeto del estudio. De igual modo servirá para establecer una relación intercultural más sólida a ambas orillas del Atlántico.
Slavery & Abolition in Latin America on Academic Minute
Short reading on the topic for Inside Higher Ed's "Academic Minute."
Comercio exterior del Reino de Sevilla a través de los manuales de mercaderías italianos bajomedievales
In "Historia. Instituciones. Documentos" 38 (2011), pp. 219-253
The evolvement of the pratiche di mercatura in the Italian Peninsula permitted access to information relating to the... more The evolvement of the pratiche di mercatura in the Italian Peninsula permitted access to information relating to the principal commercial and financial centres in medieval Europe, which were located mainly on the Mediterranean and in the Low Countries. This article analyses the relevance of the Kingdom of Seville in these texts. We will see that the Italians considered Seville the main centre of trade in the Crown of Castile, and to be the hub of an extensive commercial network that stretched from Byzantium and the Maghreb to Flanders, including Italy and the Crown of Aragon.
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Seen by: and 1 more"Procurators and the Making of the Jesuit Atlantic Network" in Soundings in Atlantic History: Latent Structures and Intellectual Currents, 1500-1830 (eds. Bernard Bailyn and Patricia L. Denault)
Hardcover: Harvard University Press, 2009
Paperback: Harvard University Press, 2011
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Seen by:Eden with Iroquois: Pierre Boucher’s L'Histoire Veritable et Naturelle and the Colonial Argument for the Second Conquest of New France
by Greg Rogers
13th Annual University of Maine / University of New Brunswick International Graduate Student History Conference, October 14-16, 2011
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Seen by: and 1 moreLe moment Atlantique de la dynastie des Winthrop au XVIIe siècle (The Atlantic Moment of the Winthrop Dynasty in the Seventeenth Century)
Lauric Henneton, « Le moment Atlantique de la dynastie des Winthrop au XVIIe siècle », Les Cahiers de Framespa [En ligne], 9 | 2012, mis en ligne le 08 mars 2012, consulté le 14 mars 2012. URL : http://framespa.revues.org/979
Using the case of the Winthrop dynasty, this essay explores the successive stages of an Anglo-American family’s... more Using the case of the Winthrop dynasty, this essay explores the successive stages of an Anglo-American family’s expansion in an Atlantic world that was still nascent in the mid-17th century. This process is here referred to as atlanticization. The Winthrop brothers (the sons of Governor John Winthrop) and their uncle Emmanuel Downing managed to establish a network stretching from New England to the West Indies to the British Isles, the Wine Islands and as far as the African west coast (« Guinea »). However, in spite of this genuinely Atlantic configuration (polygonal and shifting) and not just transatlantic (bipolar), the political upheavals of the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy and a series of deaths in the family were to launch a contrary process of de-atlantization, just as Atlantic trade began to expand significantly. Beyond the sole commercial dimension, this paper considers the multiple and overlapping Atlantic worlds (family, diplomatic, imperial, missionary and scientific) in which the Winthrops were involved.
Circulation, conversation, créolisation: l'intégration atlantique des phénomènes religieux (1630-1760)
Etudes Théologiques et Religieuses, vol. 86, 2011/1, p. 49-70
The religious history of American colonies should not be restricted to a national, or even transatlantic perspective.... more The religious history of American colonies should not be restricted to a national, or even transatlantic perspective. The diversity of the national - and confessional - origins of the people who migrated from Europe and the circulation of ideas and beliefs, people and goods at the scale of the whole Atlantic, reveal the obsolescence of the paradigm of cultural transfer and encourage the decentred approach that has become the hallmark of an abundant recent historiography. Lauric Henneton reappraises the religious history of New England in the enlarged contexts of the Atlantic area and of the commercial revolution that starts in the middle of the XVIIth century.
Las rutas del palo de Brazil: Contrabando, monopolio real y libre comercio en la provincia de Santa Marta (1778-1850)
Ante-proyecto de mi trabajo de posgrado en historia
Esta investigación busca analizar uno de los procesos de extracción del palo de Brasil en la provincia de Santa Marta,... more Esta investigación busca analizar uno de los procesos de extracción del palo de Brasil en la provincia de Santa Marta, su distribución (legal e ilegal) a través del Atlántico y su consumo en Europa, entre finales del siglo XVIII y mediados del XIX. De esta manera, a partir de un producto poco estudiado, se busca hacer un aporte a la historia atlántica y del Caribe desde la historia de las mercancías.
'Africa and the Atlantic World, 1450-1850' programme
by Edmond Smith
22nd-23rd June 2012, Centre for African Studies, University of Cambridge
Bringing speakers from four continents to Cambridge, including keynote speakers Prof Alison Games (Georgetown) and... more
Bringing speakers from four continents to Cambridge, including keynote speakers Prof Alison Games (Georgetown) and Prof Vincent Brown (Harvard), this conference will explore the role of Africa in the Atlantic World during the early modern period.
To register please follow the link attached, and for further information email africaatlanticconference@gmail.com
