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Abstract
Creolization accounts are richly diverse as they are multifaceted. During the era of the Slave Trade, they were ever more unique. However, its mutually reinforcing nature and complexity across the Atlantic World have remained relatively unexplored until recently. Creole formation was nevertheless ubiquitously taking place as much in the New World as in Africa prior to the enslaved forced migration. Informed by historical debates on such cases, this article revisits constructions of cultural structures and their alterations throughout the Transatlantic Diaspora that lead to a better understanding of identity claims to an ‘African heritage.’ This article builds on the contact with certain synchronisms, but through new views of creole formations, I underscore the importance of African studies and African American studies working conjointly to foster a better understanding of Atlantic World History.
Notes
[1] As Dominique Chancé (Citation2011) points out, the term ‘creolization’ emerged from linguistics and was then borrowed to describe ‘cultural phenomena.’ Chancé therefore explains that ‘creolization eventually detached itself from these linguistic approaches and came to designate broad socio-cultural processes, without regard for the specifics brought to light by linguistics’ (262). However, as I argue here, certain aspects in constant fluctuation within the termed ‘creolized’ cultures might behave similarly to the way meaning of words change over time.
[2] Translation, ‘The Verbe “Marronner”/ For René Depestre, Haitian poet’ (Césaire, Eshleman, and Smith Citation1983, 368).
[3] Robin Blackburn explains that the Slave Trade presented ‘slave systems [that] were themselves radically new in character compared with prior forms of slavery’ (Citation1997, 3). In terms of scale, it was an ‘acquisition of some twelve million captives on the coast of Africa between 1500 and 1870 [that] helped to make possible the construction of one of the largest systems of slavery in human history. The Atlantic slave trade itself was to become remarkable for its businesslike methods as well as its scale and destructiveness’ (3). Consequently, ‘the slavery of the Americas not only presented many novel features. Its development was associated with several of those processes which have been held to define modernity: the growth of instrumental rationality, the rise of national sentiment and the nation-state, racialized perceptions of identity…,’ among other features (4). Perhaps most important was the unprecedented phenomenon that an intense transmigration based on labor was taking effect, as Blackburn notes: ‘[p]eople separated by an ocean were brought into vital relationship with one another’ (4).
[4] As for the Americas, while Amerindian and autochthonous cultural influences were also important, it falls outside of the ‘African’ scope of this article, but acknowledges the scholarly contributions that dialogize with this cultural influence in editors David Buisseret and Steven G. Reinhardt’s (Citation2000) Creolization in the Americas, asserting indigenous influence in the ‘acculturative process’ (7) in terms of language (11), pharmacopoeia (86), healing skills (66), and other aspects of cultural traditions.
[5] For instance, while the Spanish Crown sought to extract commodities and evangelize the natives (in the case of its Latin American colonies), the British sought to expand their empire with a settlement of people that led to a massive extermination of native peoples (similar to that of the Caribs and other indigenous groups in the Caribbean that were wiped out by disease).
[6] That year, he published Los negros esclavos (Citation1987), an account of the Middle Passage and slaves’ experience on the plantations, having researched the origins of the Black population in Cuba using 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-century accounts by Jean-Baptiste Labat, Abbey Laffitte, and Alexander von Humboldt, among many others, already making mention of the various ‘African’ groups present in Cuba, such as the ‘Lucumí’ or ‘Arará’ (Ortiz Citation1987, 83).
[7] Acculturation was a term that Ortiz (Citation1978) stated had become, in his lifetime, of popular usage. According to the author, ‘…al vocablo aculturación, cuyo uso se está extendiendo actualmente’ (‘the term acculturation, the use of which is currently expanding’) (93) to indicate ‘…el proceso de tránsito de una cultura a otra y de sus repercusiones sociales de todo género’ (‘the process of transit between one culture and another, and all kinds of social repercussions’) (93).
[8] From the original, ‘Hemos escogido el vocablo transculturación para expresar los variadísimos fenómenos que se originan en Cuba por las complejísimas transmutaciones de culturas que aquí se verifican, sin conocer las cuales es imposible entender la evolución del pueblo cubano…’ (Ortiz Citation1978, 93).
[9] From the original, ‘Todos ellos arrancados de sus núcleos sociales originarios y con sus culturas destrozadas, promidas bajo el peso de las culturas aquí imperantes’ (‘All of them uprooted from their original social nucleus and with their cultures destroyed, under the weight of dominant cultures here’) (Ortiz Citation1978, 93).
[10] Marronage is the action of fleeing the plantation. It is termed in French and refers to the maroon communities that fled and developed outside the plantation (Oxford English Dictionary).
[11] It must be noted that Mintz also conducted research in Haiti and Jamaica, but these regions were not included in the envisioning of the maroon community in the work at hand.
[12] The vast debates mainly respond to Tannenbaum’s (Citation1946) argument on ‘Lusotropicalism’ – a term coined by Gilberto Freyre (Freyre and de Garay Citation1933, 1942) in Casa grande e senzala – comparing US American plantations to be less benevolent than those in Brazil, claiming a unique relationship between Portuguese masters and slaves that granted them access to society.
[13] Another active academic discussion of the 1970s was that of Engerman and Genovese (Citation1975) who, based on quantitative studies, debated the correlation between plantation size and obedience to the master.
[14] For instance, Obeah was a practice in the Caribbean derived from a ‘synthesis’ of West African beliefs, and ‘used by African-Americans throughout the English Caribbean and the Guianas’ (Rodriguez Citation1997, 477). Similarly, voodoo, as it is practiced in Haiti today, is also derived from ‘African beliefs and practices’ (Rodriguez Citation1997, 678).
[15] Although an important topic, it is too extensive for our purposes here. See footnote 7.
[16] Sweet speaks of ‘layering’ as an individual’s ability to possess different coats of identities from which he can use one form of identity in one circumstance and another in a different environment. These are different coats of identity that ‘run concentrically from natal kin to meta-ethnic signifiers’ (Sweet Citation2011, 16).
[17] Sweet (Citation2011) notes that this must have been significant to him since he is reported to have remembered details, such as the name of the Parish where he was baptized.
[18] An example of a royal elite who was enslaved is Phillip Curtin’s example of Ayuba Suleiman, a Fuibe Muslim later released and sent back to Africa (Curtin Citation1967).
[19] The African American agency in the Slave Trade is another source of significant debate, since it has been established that the experience of slavery did not preclude the perpetuation of abuse when it comes to emancipated slaves.
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Notes on contributors
Sarah Quesada
Sarah Quesada is at Stanford University, Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, Pigott Hall, Building 260, 450 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305, USA (Email: [email protected]).