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Black Ghost of Empire: The Long Death of Slavery and the Failure of Emancipation by Kris Manjapra
kmarkus15's review against another edition
Ran out of time in library hold. I didn’t find myself pulled into this book.
jakeclf's review against another edition
5.0
Blew me away--
Similarly to Richard Huzzey's Freedom Burning, Black Ghost of Empire by Kris Manjapra explores ‘the end of slavery’ across the imperial world. Manjapra employs the use of a lot of posthumous terms like “afterlife”, “endings”, and “long death” to understand the implied failure of emancipation (1,4, and 125). Principally, Black Ghost of Empire “pursues a comparative perspective on emancipation processes across the globe” (8). I ask, what can we learn differently from a comparative history rather than a singular one? Are all histories comparative in some way? Are all histories singular in other ways? What is singular about this history? In my opinion, the topic of slavery. What is comparative about this history? The locations and processes of emancipation. Manjapra explores four types of emancipation. First, gradual emancipations (New England, American mid-Atlantic, Spanish Americas) that made black people pay for their freedom. Second, retroactive emancipations (Haiti) that sought to contain the revolution in Haiti. Third, compensated emancipations (the British empire) which allowed for slave-owners to enrich themselves enormously through payouts from the public state. And finally, war emancipation through the American Civil War and the ongoing ‘dirty’ war against black people in the United States. My additional questions about the Manjapra reading are: what does Black Ghosts of Empire add to the history of the Haitian Revolution (with regard to Trouillot’s Silencing the Past)? What does Manjapra mean by the term ‘the long death’? What is ‘global Jim Crow’? And, how does Manjapra redefine the meaning of the word emancipation?
Similarly to Richard Huzzey's Freedom Burning, Black Ghost of Empire by Kris Manjapra explores ‘the end of slavery’ across the imperial world. Manjapra employs the use of a lot of posthumous terms like “afterlife”, “endings”, and “long death” to understand the implied failure of emancipation (1,4, and 125). Principally, Black Ghost of Empire “pursues a comparative perspective on emancipation processes across the globe” (8). I ask, what can we learn differently from a comparative history rather than a singular one? Are all histories comparative in some way? Are all histories singular in other ways? What is singular about this history? In my opinion, the topic of slavery. What is comparative about this history? The locations and processes of emancipation. Manjapra explores four types of emancipation. First, gradual emancipations (New England, American mid-Atlantic, Spanish Americas) that made black people pay for their freedom. Second, retroactive emancipations (Haiti) that sought to contain the revolution in Haiti. Third, compensated emancipations (the British empire) which allowed for slave-owners to enrich themselves enormously through payouts from the public state. And finally, war emancipation through the American Civil War and the ongoing ‘dirty’ war against black people in the United States. My additional questions about the Manjapra reading are: what does Black Ghosts of Empire add to the history of the Haitian Revolution (with regard to Trouillot’s Silencing the Past)? What does Manjapra mean by the term ‘the long death’? What is ‘global Jim Crow’? And, how does Manjapra redefine the meaning of the word emancipation?
twotanksofcoffee's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
informative
fast-paced
5.0
sphelps269's review against another edition
3.0
This book contains a wealth of information and is very thoroughly researched. My difficultly with it was that it was written in an academic style that was, at times, difficult to wade through.
ameliameabh's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
margaretpinard's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
sad
medium-paced
4.75
This books was one of those that slotted a lot of other information, previously heard but not placed into context, into place: CLICK. It's a powerful analysis of the emancipation process of three empires (France, UK, US), with supporting examples from other European colonial powers. And it so clearly shows that people in power can contort institutions and the law itself to keep them in power. I learned a lot of examples I'd never heard of, connected the dots of others I had, and learned about many individuals from various regions (Caribbean especially) key to the discourse on liberation from the 18th-early 20th centuries. Lots of bookmarks!
stanro's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
3.5
This is presented by the publisher (Penguin) as a “revelatory historical indictment of the long after-life of slavery in the Atlantic world … (R)anging across the Americas, Europe and Africa, Manjapra unearths the uncomfortable truths about the Age of Emancipations, 1780-1880. In Britain, reparations were given to wealthy slaveowners, not the enslaved …”
Manjapra writes in his introduction of “ghost lining” - the practice of excluding from dominant culture awareness of those who have been (and are being) oppressed and disadvantaged. Though he writes as a black American, this resonates with my Australian sensitivities.
Noting that the history of slavery is generally written as though the emancipation from slavery via its abolition ended it, he writes “Emancipations provided a failed pathway to justice, just as they were designed to do. This failure was not accidental but systematic …”
I was fascinated by the section about black-controlled burial places and the connections with the Underground Railroad (a means by which escaped slaves from the South found their way to the North).
Haiti was a French slave colony that succeeded in militarily freeing itself from French control early in the 19th century, thus ending slavery by revolutionary means rather than by the slave-owning “largesse” of emancipation. European and North American nations refused to recognise this newly created black nation, and the book presents substantial detail about how long various nations took to recognise Haiti and further, and more importantly, how Haiti was economically forced into huge debts to repay slave owners for their loss of assets from their revolution.
Amazing as I found that, it is such mechanisms that flesh out the thrust of the book, that the formal end of slavery was not an obtaining of full freedom and autonomy.
But Haiti, as the world’s only black republic, was much more than just this economic “victim”. It also inspired slave revolts in Virginia and Louisiana within the USA, Jamaica, Brazil and other places, in the next thirty years.
The British Empire is then searchingly spotlighted. The Emancipation Act of 1833 was mainly an act regarding the financial compensation to slave owners for the loss of slaves as property, and this compensation, monetarily £20M at the time, remained a taxpayer burden until 2015 when it was finally fully paid! Nothing was paid to the freed slaves. Indeed, they were required to serve a four year post-emancipation apprenticeship with their former owner to “prepare them” for post-slavery life.
As an interesting aside for those of us who like to read quality writers, the Booker family whose name is given to a major literary prize, was among the thousands of slave owners so compensated. They invested in related industries such as sugar plantations in Guyana, parlaying this monetisation of slavery into new forms of wealth.
As expected, there is a considerable section devoted to the US. Some interesting tidbits:
While still an Illinois congressman, Abraham Lincoln proposed a bill that would have eliminated slavery very slowly by:
Continuing slavery for the enslaved for the rest of their lives;
Including compulsory apprenticeship of black children born after 1850; and
The return to slavery of escaped slaves.
In US states where slavery existed, the slave owners received additional voting rights as 2/3 of the number of their unenfranchised slaves.
And despite the constitutional amendments enfranchising former male slaves to permit them to vote, the US Supreme Court “encouraged the states” to disenfranchise them, which a number did.
Manjapra then surveys world-wide developments, mainly in Africa, as well as surveying intellectuals who wrote on the subject. This includes noting several slave revolts and post-emancipation revolts (Ethiopians against Italian rule in the late 19th century has stuck). “Blackbirding” is briefly mentioned, but not in the Australian context.
The issue of reparations is raised, noting that enslaved Africans and their descendants have not obtained any, unlike European Jews by Germany, and those affected after the Rwanda genocide. By this time my brain was a bit overloaded and I just wanted to finish.
He concludes with a moving story of how the inhabitants of Woodside Village (Caribbean setting) stage an annual communal theatrical performance where they challenge the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act for its inadequacies. (“In the proclamation, why do we ask God to bless the Queen but not to bless those freed?” for example.)
Being rather fact-filled and dry, though anger and horror generating at times, this is a far from easy read, especially with the referendum on The Voice imminent. Still, I’m glad I read it.
Manjapra writes in his introduction of “ghost lining” - the practice of excluding from dominant culture awareness of those who have been (and are being) oppressed and disadvantaged. Though he writes as a black American, this resonates with my Australian sensitivities.
Noting that the history of slavery is generally written as though the emancipation from slavery via its abolition ended it, he writes “Emancipations provided a failed pathway to justice, just as they were designed to do. This failure was not accidental but systematic …”
I was fascinated by the section about black-controlled burial places and the connections with the Underground Railroad (a means by which escaped slaves from the South found their way to the North).
Haiti was a French slave colony that succeeded in militarily freeing itself from French control early in the 19th century, thus ending slavery by revolutionary means rather than by the slave-owning “largesse” of emancipation. European and North American nations refused to recognise this newly created black nation, and the book presents substantial detail about how long various nations took to recognise Haiti and further, and more importantly, how Haiti was economically forced into huge debts to repay slave owners for their loss of assets from their revolution.
Amazing as I found that, it is such mechanisms that flesh out the thrust of the book, that the formal end of slavery was not an obtaining of full freedom and autonomy.
But Haiti, as the world’s only black republic, was much more than just this economic “victim”. It also inspired slave revolts in Virginia and Louisiana within the USA, Jamaica, Brazil and other places, in the next thirty years.
The British Empire is then searchingly spotlighted. The Emancipation Act of 1833 was mainly an act regarding the financial compensation to slave owners for the loss of slaves as property, and this compensation, monetarily £20M at the time, remained a taxpayer burden until 2015 when it was finally fully paid! Nothing was paid to the freed slaves. Indeed, they were required to serve a four year post-emancipation apprenticeship with their former owner to “prepare them” for post-slavery life.
As an interesting aside for those of us who like to read quality writers, the Booker family whose name is given to a major literary prize, was among the thousands of slave owners so compensated. They invested in related industries such as sugar plantations in Guyana, parlaying this monetisation of slavery into new forms of wealth.
As expected, there is a considerable section devoted to the US. Some interesting tidbits:
While still an Illinois congressman, Abraham Lincoln proposed a bill that would have eliminated slavery very slowly by:
Continuing slavery for the enslaved for the rest of their lives;
Including compulsory apprenticeship of black children born after 1850; and
The return to slavery of escaped slaves.
In US states where slavery existed, the slave owners received additional voting rights as 2/3 of the number of their unenfranchised slaves.
And despite the constitutional amendments enfranchising former male slaves to permit them to vote, the US Supreme Court “encouraged the states” to disenfranchise them, which a number did.
Manjapra then surveys world-wide developments, mainly in Africa, as well as surveying intellectuals who wrote on the subject. This includes noting several slave revolts and post-emancipation revolts (Ethiopians against Italian rule in the late 19th century has stuck). “Blackbirding” is briefly mentioned, but not in the Australian context.
The issue of reparations is raised, noting that enslaved Africans and their descendants have not obtained any, unlike European Jews by Germany, and those affected after the Rwanda genocide. By this time my brain was a bit overloaded and I just wanted to finish.
He concludes with a moving story of how the inhabitants of Woodside Village (Caribbean setting) stage an annual communal theatrical performance where they challenge the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act for its inadequacies. (“In the proclamation, why do we ask God to bless the Queen but not to bless those freed?” for example.)
Being rather fact-filled and dry, though anger and horror generating at times, this is a far from easy read, especially with the referendum on The Voice imminent. Still, I’m glad I read it.