Conference studied African slave culture
By Shelly Simonds When most people think of slavery, they imagine the millions of black Africans stolen from their villages and sent directly to work the large plantations of the Americas. But before the insatiable labour demands of the plantation reached a peak in the 19th century, there were the Atlantic Creoles, a group of Africans who led quite different lives from the unfortunate mass caught in the cogs of the plantation economy, ANU Visiting Fellow, Professor Ira Berlin, told a recent conference on "Black Diasporas in the Western Hemisphere" held at the Humanities Research Centre. The conference was the first at the ANU to look at the massive migrations of African slaves which have shaped the West. Atlantic Creoles were worldly Africans, who travelled to find work in the great ports of the Atlantic: London, Lisbon, Nantes, Seville, Boston and Baja, Prof Berlin said. They often spoke more than one language, they were familiar with the traditions and religions of the West, were often literate, able to negotiate the legal system and knowledgeable in trade and seamanship. Many Creoles worked on ships as translators or seamen. "The sea is the key ingredient in all of this; it becomes a vehicle for poor people to make new lives for themselves," said Prof Berlin, who teaches history at the University of Maryland. His discussion focused on what happened to the Atlantic Creoles as the plantation economies boomed. He also examined the affect Creoles may have had on plantation systems. Aron, who lived in the mid-1700s, was one of the unfortunate Creoles sold into slavery on a Virginia Plantation. "Aron was a worldly man, who had been free to walk the streets of London and who wore fine clothes. He was out of place in the plantation world and paid dearly for it," Prof Berlin said. Because of their knowledge and worldliness, Creole slaves were famous among slave owners for being insolent. Aron was considered a trouble maker after trying to escape and was slashed, pickled, salted, collared and shackled in the inhuman manner of plantation slave owners. "Violence was inherent in the plantation society. It was systematic and endemic in a pioneer land populated by men with guns," Prof Berlin said. As the number of Atlantic Creoles as a percentage of the slave population declined during the boom years of the plantation, black life in the Americas was degraded, according to Prof Berlin. Slaves brought directly from Africa lived shorter lives, worked harder, had little access to the court system or church and were cut off from their families. However, Prof Berlin found that while some Creoles like Aron were swept into slavery, Creole culture remained strong even in the shadow of the burgeoning plantation economy. "The force of the diasporas of the Atlantic Creoles remained very much alive even as the plantation tried to seal the doors to the Atlantic," he said.