City Libraries, City of Gold Coast

The common wind, Afro-American currents in the age of the Haitian Revolution, Julius S. Scott ; foreword by Marcus Rediker

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

maps

index present

non fiction

The common wind

bibliography

Julius S. Scott ; foreword by Marcus Rediker

Afro-American currents in the age of the Haitian Revolution

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"opened up the Black Atlantic with a rigor and a commitment to the power of written words, " the manuscript remained unpublished for thirty-two years.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

"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