This book is incontestable proof: despite growth in the scholarship on Caribbean slavery, there are yet-untapped sources and approaches on the subject still awaiting the scrutiny of the diligent historian.
The first and most obvious strength of the publication is the solidity of its sources. It is shaped by an incisive interrogation of primary documents, chief among which are records that fiscals and protectors of the enslaved in Berbice created in the last years of slavery (59). Colonial-office correspondence, including amelioration legislation, has also been gleaned to support the main arguments. The author notes, “The 1826 and 1831 codes also generated a paper trail that shows enslaved people's efforts … to take advantage of imperial intervention to protest physical violence and other abuses” (56). These sources reduce the anonymity so common in slavery historiography and identify by name and experiences enslaved persons such as Bob, Donderdag, Cadet, Edward, Mary Ann, Rosje, Princess, Swift, and Scipio (44, 57, 58, 60, 63, 66, 69). Even though the work is mine- deep in primary documents, it also demonstrates an appropriate level of awareness of the published authorities in this area of study, among them Emilia Viotti da Costa, Paul Lovejoy, Barry Higman, Sydney Mintz, and Alvin Thompson.
The narrative is so tightly woven that the sources control the geographic, chronological, and thematic parameters of the text, as well as provide its major stylistic feature. Although from time to time reference is made to other West Indian territories such as Jamaica, Barbados, and Trinidad, Berbice is the work's central geographical entity. Two important factors, among others, justify Berbice's centrality. “Berbice,” Browne underscores, “was … one of the most demographically—and culturally—African places in the British Caribbean” (29). The second and more crucial consideration in the selection of Berbice is found in its unique legal history. Browne explained that “Berbice was … one of the only places in the Anglo-Atlantic world where enslaved people had formal access to legal intermediaries” (35).
Although Chapter 1 provides a historical survey of colonial Berbice from the voyage of Columbus in 1498 (19) to Dutch colonization from the late sixteenth to the mid eighteenth century (19–22), eventually giving way to British colonization (25), the chronology synchronizes with its early nineteenth-century sources. The first three decades of the nineteenth century—the last years of slavery in Berbice—is the time frame within which this historical work is locked. As noted, the sources also shape the thematic concerns of the text. Its distinctive contribution to Caribbean historiography lies in its focus on the struggles enslaved people experienced and survived, not just with their enslavers but also among themselves (4). Chapter 4 in particular turns the reader away from familiar narratives of work and punishment in Caribbean servile societies toward love triangles, jealousy, and crimes of passion.
Each chapter of the book, whether the theme explores complaints against white managers or problems with the driver or obeah man, opens with a summary narrative of a case centered on an enslaved plaintiff and added to the legal records. This stylistic structure is a byproduct of the principal sources of the text. To a large extent, the book is concerned with the extent to which enslaved persons succeeded or failed in using the law to survive slavery. Its largely legal framework notwithstanding, it maintains throughout a sensitivity to gender issues. Enslaved female recalcitrance, single-headed households headed by females, and male/female domestic disputes are recurrent themes of the narrative (83, 91, 102, 124). In this regard, the text keeps in step with the gender-conscious trend of modern Caribbean historiography.
Alas, two fundamental claims of the text are problematic. The author asserts that his exploration of the major theme, surviving slavery, is disconnected from “the enslaved people's efforts to rebel, resist and wrest some measure of autonomy from their enslavers” (4). Yet he repeatedly underscores that they were frequently compelled to disobey and run away to lodge complaints because their masters “did everything possible to keep enslaved people from making complaints” (57). Indeed, the letter of the Berbice law legalized their actions, but in practice enslaved persons intentionally defied their masters in lodging complaints. The perspective, therefore, that complaints were separate from resistance is not sustained in the discourse. The final conclusion of the text is also a difficult pill. In reference to the lives of enslaved persons in Berbice, the author declares, “It was, in the end, a world at once utterly foreign and disconcertingly similar to our own” (194). The comparative similarity the author draws between the lives of servile laborers and our current milieu is unacceptable and disconcerting.
Despite these two weaknesses, the sources of this study are solid. The thematic, geographical and chronological parameters are clearly established, the stylistic structure is consistent, and the text makes a unique and very interesting contribution to Caribbean historiography.
