During slavery, music has been used to convey secret messages. Songs of enslaved Africans have hardly been documented for American plantation societies outside the US. Here we discuss two versions of a work song of Maroon rice farmers in Suriname and French Guiana. The songs probably originated on a plantation in Suriname, where the enslaved secretly grew rice in their own food plots to plan their escape. The use of at least two different African terms for rice reflects their ingenuity to communicate in spite of linguistic differences and also indicates rice knowledge predating their transatlantic voyage, which confirms the African agency in rice cultivation in the Americas. Ancient songs about Maroon agriculture remain largely undocumented and are in danger of being lost, but reveal an unwritten history of slavery and the successful struggle of the Maroons for freedom.
In Turkey, slavery is predominantly regarded as a historical phenomenon. This article, however, interrogates its contemporary understanding by analyzing Sunni interpretations and their influence on present-day perceptions, alongside critical engagements that challenge mainstream Sunni positions. The analysis shows that slavery persists within Sunni religious discourse and is often implicitly legitimized. It also shows that critical scholars attribute this persistance especially slavery's continued presence in religious texts to structural features of Sunni theology rather than to historiographical shortcomings. Rationalist critics argue that Sunnism's theological conception of the Qur'an constrains efforts to historicize slavery. In their view, this constraint blocks literary or historical-critical methods that would treat slavery as a contingent historical institution rather than a timeless norm.
The American insurance industry underwent rapid expansion during the first half of the nineteenth century. As part of that growth in the South, insurance interacted with the institution of slavery. An examination of this relationship in Florida provides an illustration of how insurance enabled slavery to be financially protected from many of the risks it faced. After becoming part of the United States, Florida's population quickly grew as planters from other Southern states arrived. Florida agriculture increasingly involved the use of enslaved labor, particularly in Middle Florida's production of cotton. Insurance facilitated slavery not only through life insurance on slaves written for the benefit of owners, but more so by cargo insurance that financially protected goods produced by enslaved labor, and fire insurance that covered the means of production in the slave economy.
This article aims to offer a comprehensive framework for the study of slave agency globally, with specific application to antiquity. After examining the diverse forms of slave agency, its historical consequences and the wider field beyond slavery in which enslaved persons exercised agency, I argue that slave agency consists of four entangled axes. The first three axes concern agency as the power to act, intentional action, and consequential action. These three axes were held together by the diverse identities, networks and communities that enslaved persons created or participated in. The history of slave agency in antiquity should consist of three main elements: the history of enslaved identities, networks, and communities and the interaction units within which enslaved persons exercised their agency; the conjunctural impact of enslaved agency in events; and, finally, the long-term and cumulative impact of enslaved agency.
This article proposes new ways of thinking about and conceptualizing the influence of Black freedom on the development of citizenship and democracy in the United States between 1783 and 1861. Moving away from overgeneralized national narratives, it explores the spectrum of citizenship and democracy that developed in various states during the era of slavery. This study adopts a comparative perspective and advances a new conceptual framework that is potentially applicable to other post-revolutionary Atlantic societies, arguing that US states essentially developed in the direction of civic democracies (where free Blacks were considered full citizens), racial democracies (where free Blacks were considered non- citizens), or hybrid democracies (where free Blacks were considered second-class citizens), respectively, depending on how local communities understood and experienced Black freedom. It also briefly considers the ways in which free Black populations navigated, resisted, and helped shape local landscapes of citizenship and democracy across antebellum America.
