Black Majority; Book Review
Peter Wood's Black Majority is a social history examining the cause and effects, both explicit and implicit, of the black majority that emerged in colonial South Carolina. His study spans the time period from the settlement of Carolina through the Stono Rebellion, which took place in 1739. He also takes into consideration and examines certain events that took place in the years immediately preceding the settlement of 1670, as well as those that immediately followed, as a direct result of, the Stono Rebellion and their respective relationships to the black majority that existed in the colony. Wood introduces the book as possibly the first real study of this black majority and its impact on the colony in its earliest years. Wood also proposes that many preceding social-historical studies of colonial South Carolina generally ignore or discredit the significance this overwhelming segment of the population played in the most developmental years of the colonies establishment. Through his studies of various contemporary documents, Peter Wood illustrates a South Carolina that was largely shaped by the numerical majority of the population far more than previous studies have acknowledged. Furthermore, he also suggests a South Carolina
These continuous instances of resistance, combined with the continual attempts to control slaves made by the whites eventually culminated in an event known as the Stono Uprising. This revolt began to the south of the city of Charleston, with moderate success initially. However, the rebel force eventually stopped in a field where they were engaged by a group of white planters and dispersed. While that effectively ended the revolt, some of the rebels remained at large for days and weeks following the initial violence. Even after the revolt was officially ended, rumors of other rebellions spread through the colony, resulting in certain measures being taken to try to prevent another similar scenario. Among these actions were punishments for masters who might be "driving" their slaves to run away or rebel, and the teaching of Christian doctrines of submission and obedience to slaves. Further action was taken with the passage of the Negro Act which increased surveillance of the activities of slaves, issued fines for masters who failed to regulate their slaves' activities, and rewards for informant slaves. There were also attempts to replace African labor with mechanized or white labor, as well as a brief prohibitive duty on imported African slaves. Wood closes by suggesting that, while the Stono Rebellion brought South Carolina to the brink of social and economic upheaval, it ultimately served to establish a social equilibrium based on heightened repression of the black majority by the white minority. As African and native-born slaves came to form the majority of the population, Wood examines the results this phenomenon had on the people of the colony. The slaves, partly out of the necessity to understand each other, partly out of the necessity to not be understood by their masters developed their own language, known in South Carolina as Gullah. This language, which emerged from a variety of other languages, provided slaves with a means of communication that linked together people of widely different pasts and backgrounds, giving them a new common ground to stand on in the face of the growing adversity they were facing from their white owners. If there are any two issues or aspects that seem to be lacking in Wood's work, the first of these would be the fact that the majority (and most likely, all) of the primary sources provide only the white Carolinian's point of view. Granted, this is not necessarily through any fault of Wood's, since primary sources from the earliest slaves would be difficult, if not impossible, to find. However, the fact remains that his argument is only supported with documents revealing primarily how the white minority saw and reacted to the developing black majority. In that sense, the book must be taken as a study of the black majority through the eyes of the white minority as they experienced it. While Wood does paint a vivid picture of the activities and impact the maj
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Approximate Word count = 1975
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)
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