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Atlantic History Captivity
by
Neal Salisbury

Introduction

The study of cross-cultural captivity as a phenomenon of Atlantic history from the late 15th to late 19th centuries remains largely undeveloped. Yet, since the end of the 20th century, scholars of captivity have moved away from earlier, provincial foci toward broader, more balanced approaches. Although most of their work remains oriented toward one or another geographic region or colonial empire, it does enable us to begin considering captivity from an Atlantic perspective and in the making of an “Atlantic world.” We are now able to see that Christian Europeans and their descendants were captors as well as captives of Indians in North America and of Muslim North Africans in the western Mediterranean and adjacent Atlantic. The extent of the forced movement of Native American captives, particularly from the mainland to the West Indies as enslaved laborers, has also become more apparent in recent years. To complement the rich scholarship on enslaved Africans and African Americans, we are learning much more about captive Africans’ experiences in Africa and during the Middle Passage, prior to reaching their ultimate destinations. (For coverage of slavery in the Americas, see other Oxford Bibliographies articles such as Atlantic Slavery and The Origins of Slavery.) Recent studies also make clearer the range of outcomes that captives experienced. The vast majority, Indians as well as Africans, were permanently enslaved as commodities rather than humans. Yet many of these and other captives died before reaching their destinations, while others escaped. Some surviving captives were redeemed, either informally or through routinized procedures. Those who remained with their captors, or with others to whom their captors transferred them, either became full members of their new households and societies or were assigned to one or another inferior status. Above all, the new studies, including narratives and biographies of captives, recognize that their protagonists’ identities were fluid and varied rather than rooted in rigid, hierarchicalized racial or cultural categories, from which at most an exceptional few deviated. Despite these promising developments, our understanding of Atlantic captivity remains limited by geographic and other gaps and by a paucity of transregional and comparative work. Nevertheless the titles listed here help us to recognize that captives figured among the millions of people whose movements over vast geographic and cultural distances helped to shape a new Atlantic world.

Reference Works

The encyclopedia Drescher and Engerman 1998 is solid but is less detailed and somewhat less easy to navigate than Finkleman and Miller 1998. The unparalleled online resource, Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, can be consulted profitably at any stage of a project relating to that subject.

Bibliographies

The online Bibliography of Slavery and World Slaving, regularly updated by Miller and associates, includes unpublished works and is truly global in its reach. The bibliography Magnaghi 1998 is useful for its thorough coverage of the entire Western Hemisphere. While published in the format of a journal article, Handler 2002 is less an argument than a series of capsule biographies of sub-Saharan African captives.

  • Handler, Jerome S. “Survivors of the Middle Passage: Life Histories of Enslaved Africans in British America.” Slavery and Abolition 23.1 (2002): 25–56.

    DOI: 10.1080/714005224Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »

    Briefly summarizes and compares basic biographical information in fifteen African captivity narratives from the 18th and early 19th centuries. Emphasizes historical details of their lives in Africa, initial captivities, and voyages to British colonies. Notes include useful references to other African captives.

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  • Magnaghi, Russell M., ed. Indian Slavery, Labor, Evangelization, and Captivity in the Americas: An Annotated Bibliography. Native American Bibliography series 22. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 1998.

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    Lists more than 3,600 titles, with brief annotations, of both primary and secondary sources, a majority of which concern Latin America. Includes a section on non-Indian captives and narratives, both fictional and nonfictional.

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  • Miller, Joseph C., ed. The Bibliography of Slavery and World Slaving.

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    A database currently listing about 25,000 published and unpublished scholarly works, covering all periods and places in world history, that have originated since 1900 in Western European languages. Annual updates are published in the journal Slavery and Abolition (cited under Journals), before being incorporated into the database the following year.

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    Journals

    The journals that most frequently publish articles relating to captivity are Slavery and Abolition and the William and Mary Quarterly. While oriented historically toward the trans-Atlantic slave trade and early North America, respectively, both have broadened their geographic scopes in recent years to include articles on Atlantic captivity and related topics that reach beyond those limits.

    Primary Sources

    Published primary sources on Atlantic captivity consist largely of captivity narratives, once of interest largely to historians and literary scholars who focused on Anglo-American narratives of Indian captivity as evidence of American exceptionalism. More recently historians of Africa have turned to captivity narratives as one of the few sources of evidence on slavery from the perspective of Africans rather than Europeans. Although narratives of Anglo-American and African captives predominate among collections and editions available today, even the former are most often presented in terms of transcultural and trans-Atlantic perspectives. Some of the narratives listed below include texts originating elsewhere in the Atlantic world or offer supplementary, non-narrative documents.

    Introductory Collections

    These editions are readily accessible to beginning undergraduates but can also be consulted by more advanced scholars as entry points to a new text or topic. Curtin 1967 remains a useful collection of excerpted African narratives, each preceded by an authoritative headnote. Gates and Andrews 1998 includes texts by Africans and an African American, the latter being one of the few narratives of Indian captivity by a black author. Sayre 2000 is the most wide-ranging introduction to the North American captivity narrative. Derounian-Stodola 1998 assembles ten Indian captivity narratives by or about Anglo-American women, highlighting the importance of gender in discussions of the genre. Two of the best-known narratives included in Derounian-Stodola 1998 are treated in greater detail in Seaver 1995 and Salisbury 1997, respectively.

    • Curtin, Philip D., ed. Africa Remembered: Narratives by West Africans from the Era of the Slave Trade. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967.

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      A pioneering collection of ten excerpted sources, eight of which are captivity narratives by enslaved Africans. One of the eight is the now more ambiguous Olaudah Equiano (see Carretta 2005 under Captivity Narrative Studies). Each selection is introduced and annotated by a specialist in the appropriate history.

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    • Derounian-Stodola, Kathryn Zabelle, ed. Women’s Indian Captivity Narratives. New York: Penguin, 1998.

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      Good selection of ten complete English-language texts narrating the captivities of white women among Native North Americans from the late 17th to late 19th centuries. The narratives range from factually accurate to wholly fictional accounts. Informative introduction plus headnotes to each text.

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    • Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., and William L. Andrews, eds. Pioneers of the Black Atlantic: Five Slave Narratives from the Enlightenment, 1772–1815. Washington, DC: Civitas/Counterpoint, 1998.

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      Besides Olaudah Equiano (see Carretta 2005 under Captivity Narrative Studies), three of the authors were enslaved and subsequently freed Africans. The fifth was John Marrant, a free black North American who recounts his captivity among Cherokee Indians.

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    • Salisbury, Neal, ed. The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, Together with the Faithfulness of His Promises Displayed, Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, and Related Documents. Bedford Series in History and Culture. Boston: Bedford, 1997.

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      The foundational Anglo-American captivity narrative, a Massachusetts woman’s account of captivity by Indians during King Philip’s War (1675–1676). Supplementary documents present perspectives of Indians on both sides of the war and documentation of English enslavement of Native Americans. Editor’s introduction contextualizes the text, particularly the worlds of Mary Rowlandson and her captors.

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    • Sayre, Gordon M., ed. American Captivity Narratives: Selected Narratives with Introduction. New Riverside editions. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000.

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      Excellent introduction to the genre and its cultural influences in North America. Besides Anglo-American narratives, includes fiction, poetry, sermons, and texts translated from French, Spanish, and German. Some texts are excerpted. While most concern white captives of Indians, selections by Olaudah Equiano and Geronimo are included.

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    • Seaver, James E. A Narrative of the Life of Mary Jemison, 1824. Edited by June Namias. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995.

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      Classic narrative of Pennsylvania-born woman captured as a child during the Seven Years War and adopted by Seneca Iroquois, with whom she remained for the rest of her life. This edition reprints the definitive edition of 1824, preceded by an introduction that establishes the appropriate historical and literary settings.

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    Specialized Editions and Collections

    These editions and collections provide more detailed and specialized discussions of narratives than do the introductory collections. As such they better reflect the scope and concerns of current scholarship. Haefeli and Sweeney 2006 broadens older understandings of one well-known raid for captives by including the perspectives of non-English captors. The most informative editions of captivity narratives from Latin America are Adorno and Pautz 1999 and Staden 2008. Law and Lovejoy 2007 is a thorough edition of the unusual odyssey of an enslaved African, edited by two leading historians. Vitkus 2001 and Baepler 1999 offer good selections of Barbary captivity narratives by English and American authors, respectively. Matar 2009 provides a selection of Arab-language sources on Muslim captives of Europeans.

    • Adorno, Rolena, and Patrick Charles Pautz, eds. Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca: His Account, His Life, and the Expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez. 3 vols. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999.

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      English translation of author’s first (1542) account of shipwreck in the Gulf of Mexico and of his and fellow survivors’ experiences among Indians before and while journeying overland to New Spain. Includes biography of author plus detailed commentary and contextualization of text. Largely uninformative on indigenous peoples and cultures.

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    • Baepler, Paul, ed. White Slaves, African Masters: An Anthology of American Barbary Captivity Narratives. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.

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      Nine complete or excerpted narratives of Anglo Americans and US nationals in North Africa, ranging from the late 17th to early 20th centuries. While making clear the differences among the narratives, the editor argues that together they and others constitute a subgenre of American captivity narratives.

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    • Haefeli, Evan, and Kevin Sweeney. Captive Histories: English, French, and Native Narratives of the 1704 Deerfield Raid. Native Americans of the Northeast. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2006.

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      A model collection, including not only the oft-published account by Deerfield’s Puritan minister but less familiar English and French accounts and orally preserved memories of Mohawk and Abenaki descendants.

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    • Law, Robin, and Paul E. Lovejoy, eds. The Biography of Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua: His Passage from Slavery to Freedom in Africa and America. 2d ed. Princeton: Markus Weiner, 2007.

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      Enslaved in West Africa and carried to Brazil, Baquaqua escaped from slavery during a visit to New York City in 1847. The editors sort out the roles of Baquaqua and a coauthor, provide a full biography, and include useful supplementary documents.

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    • Matar, Nabil. Europe through Arab Eyes, 1578–1727. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009.

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      The second half consists of a selection of translated Arab-language accounts and letters by Muslims in Europe. Several documents are captivity narratives and many of the others at least touch on captivity, making clear that it was a constant source of anxiety for Muslims sailing on the Mediterranean.

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    • Staden, Hans. Hans Staden’s True History: An Account of Cannibal Captivity in Brazil. Edited and translated by Neil L. Whitehead and Michael Harbsmeier. Cultures and Practice of Violence series. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008.

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      Early narrative by a German employee of Portuguese colonizers who was seized by Tupinambá Indians in the early 1550s and escaped nine months later. Editor/translators provide full historical, literary, and ethnographic context for the narrative. They address the many controversies surrounding the text and affirm its scholarly significance.

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    • Vitkus, Daniel J., ed. Piracy, Slavery, and Redemption: Barbary Captivity Narratives from Early Modern England. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001.

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      The seven narratives provide a wide range of English captives’ perspectives on their experiences. An appendix includes letters from captives and other related documents. Editor’s headnotes introduce each text while an introduction by Nabil Matar ably situates Anglo–Muslim encounters in the Mediterranean.

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    Captivity Narrative Studies

    Current scholarship on captivity narratives ranges across such texts from self-authored autobiographies to wholly fictionalized accounts. Out of this seeming jumble emerged a recognizable genre that reflects the multiple anxieties and interests of producers, purveyors, and consumers of narratives—and, to widely varying degrees, the experiences of protagonists. Derounian-Stodola and Lavernier 1993 admirably conveys this variety in a solid and informative introduction to the Anglo-American literature. Strong 1999 complicates and ultimately undermines older readings of those narratives. Operé 2008 draws extensively on narratives in surveying captivities of Spaniards throughout Latin America; Voigt 2009 is a more focused and searching study, primarily of selected Iberian narratives of captivity by Indians. Together these two studies belie claims for the captivity narrative as an exclusively English-language genre. Colley 2002 demonstrates the importance of British captivity narratives for revealing a little-understood dimension of British imperial history. A controversy over the best-known African captivity narrative, by Olaudah Equiano, has emerged since Carretta 2005 cast doubt on the veracity of Equiano’s account of his birth in Africa and his experience of the Middle Passage. Lovejoy 2006 offers the most extended and informed rebuttal of Carretta’s contention. An unusual study by Lamadrid 2003 presents a detailed examination of captivity narratives that are still performed by contemporary descendants of cross-cultural captives in the American Southwest.

    • Carretta, Vincent. Equiano the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2005.

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      In part a biography but especially valuable as a study of Equiano’s literary self-fashioning. Most controversial for its claim that Equiano transformed himself in his famous narrative from a South Carolina–born slave into an African who had been sold into slavery and experienced the Middle Passage.

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    • Colley, Linda. Captives: Britain, Empire, and the World, 1600–1850. London: Jonathan Cape, 2002.

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      Insightful discussion of British captivity narratives from the Mediterranean, North America, and South Asia. Argues that in revealing Britons’ insecurities and vulnerabilities as their tiny nation violently expanded its imperial reach, the narratives were central to the construction of a popular British identity.

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    • Derounian-Stodola, Kathryn Zabelle, and James Arthur Levernier. The Indian Captivity Narrative, 1500–1900. New York: Twayne, 1993.

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      Accessible and useful introduction to the genre in North America. Examines the multiple purposes and meanings of the narratives and their representations of Native Americans. Focuses largely on English-language accounts of white captives. Good, extended discussion of representations of female captives.

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    • Lamadrid, Enrique R. Hermanitos Comanchitos: Indo-Hispano Rituals of Captivity and Redemption. Pasó por Aquí. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2003.

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      A folklorist’s study of narratives that are primarily performed rather than written. Focuses on Spanish, Pueblo, Comanche, and other southwestern Native American communities that renew their hybridized identities by ritually celebrating their colonial-era interactions, including as one another’s captives.

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    • Lovejoy, Paul E. “Autobiography and Memory: Gustavus Vassa, alias Olaudah Equiano, the African.” Slavery and Abolition 27.3 (2006): 317–347.

      DOI: 10.1080/01440390601014302Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »

      The most wide-ranging and thorough of the many critiques of Carretta 2005. While agreeing with Carretta that Equiano carefully crafted his literary persona, Lovejoy affirms the veracity of Equiano’s account of his life in Africa and during the Middle Passage.

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    • Operé, Fernando. Indian Captivity in Spanish America: Frontier Narratives. Translated by Gustavo Pellón. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008.

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      A useful, narrative-centered survey of Spanish and Spanish-descended captives from the North American borderlands to Tierra del Fuego.

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    • Strong, Pauline Turner. Captive Selves, Captivating Others: The Politics and Poetics of Colonial American Captivity Narratives. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1999.

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      An anthropologist’s contextualized study of British North American narratives. Juxtaposes indigenous and English captivity practices with Anglo-Americans’ representations of captivity as a dimension of their struggle against Indian “savagery.”

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    • Voigt, Lisa. Writing Captivity in the Early Modern Atlantic: Circulations of Knowledge and Authority in the Iberian and English Imperial Worlds. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.

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      Argues cogently that captives in colonial Iberian narratives claimed expertise on non-European lands and peoples on the basis of their experiences of transculturation. Final chapter points to role of Iberian narratives in shaping early English exploration texts.

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    Captive Biographies and Family Histories

    Recent biographies of Atlantic captives are yielding rich insights into the lives of individuals who crossed geographic and cultural boundaries in the course of their forced movements. By meticulously reconstructing and contextualizing their protagonists’ experiences, these works enable us to consider the widely varying ways in which captives came to terms with their situations. Two widely known Mediterranean captives, both men of ideas, are the subjects of biographies— Leo Africanus is the subject of Davis 2006, and Cervantes is the focus of Garcés 2002. Demos 1994 sensitively appraises one of the best-known but least-documented Anglo American captives, Eunice Williams. The lives of two iconic Native American female captives, Pocahontas and Malintizin, are reinterpreted in compelling fashion in Townsend 2004 and Townsend 2006, respectively. Scholars have also reconstructed the lives of some more obscure captives. Venture Smith, an enslaved and eventually manumitted African in New England, is the subject of essays collected in Stewart 2010. Sparks 2004 examines the remarkable lives of two West African brothers who traveled from freedom to slavery and back to freedom. Colley 2007 looks at an English woman whose experience and narrative of captivity in North Africa were central to a life of travel throughout the British Empire during the mid-18th century.

    • Colley, Linda. The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History. New York: Pantheon, 2007.

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      Remarkable account of a nonelite English woman whose travels in the mid-18th century included three months as a captive in Morocco and reflected the range of experiences made available to some Britons by their nation’s global empire. Colley deftly critiques Elizabeth Marsh’s widely read captivity narrative.

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    • Davis, Natalie Zemon. Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim between Worlds. New York: Hill and Wang, 2006.

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      Compelling, at times speculative biography of Moroccan diplomat and scholar al-Hasan al-Wazzan, known in the West as Leo Africanus. Captured on the Mediterranean by Spaniards and turned over to the papacy, he seemingly converted to Christianity. His subsequent writings, Davis argues, carefully sought to build bridges between Islam and Christianity.

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    • Demos, John. The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America. New York: Knopf, 1994.

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      Penetrating study centering on Eunice Williams, captured with her family at Deerfield, Massachusetts, in 1704. While her father returned home and publicized their experience, she remained in Canada and married a Catholic Mohawk. Deftly recounts the struggles of the Williamses and other white New Englanders to fathom Eunice’s seeming defection.

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    • Garcés, María Antonia. Cervantes in Algiers: A Captive’s Tale. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2002.

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      Argues that Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra’s five years as a captive in Algiers resulted in trauma that occasioned and informed his subsequent literary work. Informative study of Cervantes’s life during and after his captivity, with some dubious comparisons and conclusions.

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    • Sparks, Randy J. The Two Princes of Calabar: An Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Odyssey. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004.

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      Highly readable account of two slave-trading West African brothers who were themselves enslaved and carried to North America and then to Britain before drawing on English connections to return home as freemen.

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    • Stewart, James Brewer, ed. Venture Smith and the Business of Slavery and Freedom. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2010.

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      Nine essays examine, in multiple contexts, the life and narrative of an enslaved African who eventually gained his freedom in 18th-century New England. Includes a facsimile reproduction of Smith’s oral autobiography.

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    • Townsend, Camilla. Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma. American Portrait. New York: Hill and Wang, 2004.

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      Accessible, elaborately contextualized biography that ably dispenses with the many myths surrounding Pocahontas, presenting her instead as an astute captive who attempted to bridge the divide between her people and the English.

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    • Townsend, Camilla. Malintzin’s Choices: An Indian Woman in the Conquest of Mexico. Diálogos. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006.

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      Engaging, deeply researched account of the Nahua-born slave of Chontal Mayas (often called Malinche or Doña Marina), who became translator, diplomat, and mistress for Hernando Cortés. While fully recognizing the limits on Malintzin’s ability to act, the biography emphasizes her considerable agency nonetheless.

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    Western Mediterranean

    From the late 15th to early 19th centuries, Christian European and Muslim North African corsairs captured and enslaved one another’s people in the western Mediterranean and adjacent Atlantic. As Earle 1970 delineates, raiders seized rival ships or invaded coastal communities for slaves to carry back and sell in their home ports. Most studies of captives and their experiences focus on Europeans taken to Muslim North Africa and, until recently, Anglophone scholars singularly designated British and American captives in North Africa as “slaves.” Friedman 1983 looks at Spanish captives of Barbary corsairs. Davis 2003 notes the raids, often on land, that led many Italians into North African slavery. Although Colley 2002 has broader concerns, its initial section is the best introduction to British captivity in the Mediterranean. Allison 1995 situates the enslavement of United States seamen within the larger framework of US perceptions of and relations with the Islamic world, primarily North Africa. Although looking at both Christian and Muslim captives, Davis 2009 discusses the former in greater depth. Matar 2009 is the most thorough look at North African perspectives on captives’ experiences. Bennett 1960 juxtaposes the captivity in North Africa of Christian Europeans and that of sub-Saharan Africans.

    • Allison, Robert J. The Crescent Obscured: The United States and the Muslim World, 1776–1815. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

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      Two chapters discuss the experiences of the seven hundred American seamen taken captive in North Africa. The remaining chapters provide ample background with their discussions of US attitudes and policies toward Islam and the North African polities.

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    • Bennett, Norman Robert. “Christian and Negro Slavery in Eighteenth-Century North Africa.” Journal of African History 1.1 (1960): 65–82.

      DOI: 10.1017/S002185370000150XSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »

      Discusses, without explicitly comparing, the experiences and treatment of European and sub-Saharan African captives, primarily in Morocco and Algiers.

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    • Colley, Linda. Captives: Britain, Empire, and the World, 1600–1850. London: Jonathan Cape, 2002.

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      The first section, “Mediterranean: Captives and Constraints,” constitutes the best study of British captives in North Africa, including those taken from England’s little-studied, short-lived colony at Tangier.

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    • Davis, Robert C. Christian Slaves and Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500–1800. Early Modern History. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

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      A detailed examination of the capture and enslavement of Italians in Algiers, Tunisia, and Tripoli. Argues that scholars’ focus on black slavery in the Atlantic has led them to ignore or minimize the extent of “white slavery” in the early modern Mediterranean.

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    • Davis, Robert C. Holy War and Human Bondage: Tales of Christian-Muslim Slavery in the Early-Modern Mediterranean. Praeger Series on the Early Modern World. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger/ABC-CLIO, 2009.

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      Anecdotally rich discussion of what the author terms “faith slavery,” as opposed to the “race slavery” practiced by Europeans in sub-Saharan Africa. Although examining captivity experiences of both Christians and Muslims, the book gives more attention to the former.

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    • Earle, Peter. Corsairs of Malta and Barbary. London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1970.

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      Treats captivity, enslavement, and ransoming of slaves within the larger context of two major Mediterranean corsair operations. Like Davis 2009, points to parallels between Christian and Muslim practices.

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    • Friedman, Ellen G. Spanish Captives in North Africa in the Early Modern Age. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983.

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      Useful study of Spaniards enslaved and, in some cases, subsequently redeemed in Algiers and Morocco between late 16th and late 18th centuries. Attention to economic costs for Spain and benefits for North Africans. Includes corsairs’ expansion of operations from Mediterranean to Atlantic in 17th century.

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    • Matar, Nabil. Europe through Arab Eyes, 1578–1727. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009.

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      An important counter-balance to the plethora of studies of Christian captives in Islamic North Africa. The first half of the volume, Matar’s introduction, broadly contextualizes North African representations of early modern Europe and distinguishes between popular and elite writings, with accounts of captivity comprising most of the former.

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    Sub-Saharan Africa

    The vast majority of Atlantic captives were Africans who were transported to the Western Hemisphere and consigned to lifetimes as slaves. This heading lists works that focus on Africans’ captivity experiences outside of the Americas. Several works focus on the Middle Passage at varying scales. Within a deeply researched social and economic history, Miller 1988 meticulously examines captives’ African experiences as well as voyages with Portuguese traders over the course of a century. Rediker 2007 is a powerful study that draws widely on British and early United States voyages, while Smallwood 2007 looks at British voyages from one African region over half a century. Harms 2002 looks at a single French voyage to illuminate all dimensions and contexts of its captives’ experiences. Diouf 2007 also focuses on a single voyage, in this case an illegal one to the United Sates in 1860. Northrop 2006 and Byrd 2008 both look closely at questions of identity formation among captive Africans. Both also discuss freed Africans who settled in Sierra Leone. The essays in Eldredge and Morton 1994 move us forward in our understanding of captivity and slavery in South Africa, which to date has received little attention.

    • Byrd, Alexander X. Captives and Voyagers: Black Migrants across the Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic World. Antislavery, Abolition, and the Atlantic World. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008.

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      The first part treats captives transported from the Bight of Biafra to Jamaica during the 18th century and argues that their collective experiences shaped an emergent Igbo identity. The juxtaposition of these captives to free Africans who settled Sierra Leone enables Byrd to make illuminating generalizations about black migration.

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    • Diouf, Sylviane A. Dreams of Africa in Alabama: The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

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      Fascinating account of the capture and trans-Atlantic passage to Alabama of 110 Africans on the eve of the Civil War. Unable to return home after emancipation, they experienced Reconstruction and Jim Crow in their own community of African Town.

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    • Eldredge, Elizabeth A., and Fred Morton, eds. Slavery in South Africa: Captive Labor on the Dutch Frontier. African Modernization and Development. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1994.

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      A collection of essays arguing vigorously that indigenous as well as imported slaves and other captive laborers decisively shaped the development of South Africa. Includes extensive discussions of captivity practices.

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    • Harms, Robert. The Diligent: A Voyage through the Worlds of the Slave Trade. New York: Basic Books, 2002.

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      Meticulously traces a voyage of 1731–1732 from Vannes, France, to the West African coast to Martinique, where it delivered 256 captive Africans before returning to Vannes laden with sugar. Emphasis on economic and political conditions at each of the ship’s numerous stops illuminates the voyage’s distinct characteristics.

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    • Miller, Joseph. Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, 1730–1830. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988.

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      A monumental study, the first two parts of which detail the economic and social interactions sustaining the capture of west central Africans and their shipment to Brazil. Miller successfully integrates quantitative data and economic abstractions with sensitivity to the perspectives of his varied human protagonists, including the enslaved.

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    • Northrop, David. “Becoming African: Identity Formation among Liberated Slaves in Nineteenth-Century Sierra Leone.” Slavery and Abolition 27.1 (April 2006): 1–21.

      DOI: 10.1080/01440390500499794Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »

      Focuses on Africans rescued from other nations’ slave ships by British patrols in the early 19th century and settled as free persons in Sierra Leone. Argues that these “recaptives” combined creolization and Africanization in the course of developing new ethnic identities, a process paralleling that among enslaved Africans in the Americas.

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    • Rediker, Marcus. The Slave Ship: A Human History. New York: Viking, 2007.

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      Exceptionally well-written discussion of life aboard British and early US slavers from the perspectives of captives, crewmen, and officers. Powerfully conveys the terror and cruelty that pervaded African captivity in the Middle Passage. Views the slaver as a factory producing laborers for global capitalism.

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    • Smallwood, Stephanie E. Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.

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      Focuses on the approximately 300,000 captives transported from the Gold Coast in West Africa to English colonies, mostly in the West Indies, between 1675 and 1725. Especially effective for conveying the captives’ traumatized experiences and the social relationships they forged among themselves.

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    Caribbean and Mesoamerica

    We have long known that the earliest Atlantic captives in the Western Hemisphere were indigenous peoples of the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean. But recent studies make clear the just how massive this displacement and enslavement of Native Americans actually was. Whitehead 1999 provides good background on the topic. The relevant parts of MacLeod 2008 and Sherman 1979 discuss Spanish seizures and exports of enslaved Indians from Central America. Boomert 1984 points to the role of Arawaks in facilitating the movement of captive Indians to the Spanish West Indies, while Helms 1983 examines a comparable Miskito relationship with British colonists in Jamaica two centuries later. Handler 1969 documents English enslavement of Arawaks and other Caribbean Indians in Barbados. Wheat 2010 shows that Spaniards also used captive North Africans in the early colonial Caribbean.

    • Boomert, Arie. “The Arawak Indians of Trinidad and Coastal Guiana, ca. 1500–1650.” Journal of Caribbean History 19.2 (1984): 123–188.

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      Thorough ethnohistorical overview based on a wide range of sources. Outlines how Arawaks parlayed their domination of precolonial trade into ties with Spanish in Antilles that included supplying the latter with Indian slaves captured on the mainland.

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    • Handler, Jerome S. “The Amerindian Slave Population of Barbados in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries.” Caribbean Studies 8.4 (1969): 38–64.

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      Useful for its outline of the colony’s capture and enslavement of Indians from elsewhere in the Caribbean. Overlooks the massive influx of enslaved Indian captives from Carolina (see Gallay 2002, cited under Southeastern North America).

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    • Helms, Mary W. “Miskito Slaving and Culture Contact: Ethnicity and Opportunity in an Expanding Population.” Journal of Anthropological Research 39.2 (1983): 179–197.

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      Insightful discussion of English-armed Miskitos in the early 18th century raiding other Central American Indians for captives to sell as slaves, primarily to British planters in Jamaica. Compares Miskito practices with those of Orinoco Caribs and southeastern North American Indians.

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    • MacLeod, Murdo J. Spanish Central America: A Socioeconomic History, 1520–1720. 2d ed. Lillas Special Publications. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008.

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      Chapter 2, “Slaves and Silver: the First Exports,” offers an excellent overview of Spanish shipping of Indian captives to the Antilles, Panama, and Peru during the second quarter of the 16th century.

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    • Sherman, William. L. Forced Native Labor in Sixteenth-Century Central America. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979.

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      Although ethnographically uninformative, a useful introduction to the subject. The first part focuses on the mass capturing of Indians, mostly for sale as slaves in the West Indies and elsewhere.

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    • Wheat, David. “Mediterranean Slavery, New World Transformations: Galley Slaves in the Spanish Caribbean, 1578–1635.” Slavery and Abolition 31.3 (September 2010): 327–344.

      DOI: 10.1080/0144039X.2010.504541Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »

      Demonstrates the role of Mediterranean Muslim captives in Spain’s diverse Caribbean labor force during the early colonial period.

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    • Whitehead, Neil L. “The Crises and Transformations of Invaded Societies: The Caribbean (1492–1580).” In The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas. Vol. 3, South America. Part 1. Edited by Frank Salomon and Stuart B. Schwartz, 864–903. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

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      A good entry point for examining the ways in which the captivities of indigenous peoples shaped the early colonial history of the West Indies.

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    South America

    The enslavement of Native Americans and widespread conflict between natives and colonizers gave rise to various forms of captivity throughout South America. The geographically broadest studies, by Schwartz and Salomon 1999 and Weber 2005, consider captives within the larger context of new identities that emerged in the course of interactions among Indians, European colonists, and—in some cases—enslaved Africans. Metcalf 2005 finds such cultural fluidity at work from the very beginning of the colonization of Brazil. Schwartz 1978 shows where captive Indians fit into the sequence of labor systems in 16th-century Brazil. Wright and Carneiro da Cunha 1999 provides broad background for situating the captivity and enslavement of indigenous peoples in Brazil. Lockhart 1994 looks at the range of captive peoples who populated colonial Peru during the first generation. Socolow 1992 is valuable for its study of captive Europeans and European Argentines in Argentina.

    • Lockhart, James. Spanish Peru, 1532–1560: A Social History. 2d ed. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994.

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      A study of the colony’s social structure with useful information on the lives of enslaved captives, including Peruvian Indians, “foreign” Indians imported from Central America, sub-Saharan Africans, and moriscos—Muslims from Spain and North Africa.

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    • Metcalf, Alida C. Go-Betweens and the Colonization of Brazil, 1500–1600. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005.

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      African, Indian, and European captives figure prominently in this study of the roles of intercultural brokers during the first century of European occupation of Brazil.

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    • Schwartz, Stuart B. “Indian Labor and New World Plantations: European Demands and Indian Responses in Northeastern Brazil.” American Historical Review 83.1 (February 1978): 43–79.

      DOI: 10.2307/1865902Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »

      Thorough discussion of the transition from peaceful Indian-Portuguese barter to coerced (including captive) Indian labor on sugar plantations, followed by the shift to enslaved Africans as the primary source of labor.

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    • Schwartz, Stuart B., and Frank Salomon. “New Peoples and New Kinds of People: Adaptation, Readjustment, and Ethnogenesis in South American Indigenous Societies (Colonial Era).” In The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas. Vol. 3, South America. Part 2. Edited by Frank Salomon and Stuart B. Schwartz, 443–501. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

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      A penetrating examination of new identities arising from colonialism. Includes good discussions of factors facilitating, impeding, and altering indigenous, African (maroon), and European practices of incorporating captives and other outsiders.

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    • Socolow, Susan Migden. “Spanish Captives in Indian Societies: Cultural Contact along the Argentine Frontier, 1600–1835.” Hispanic American Historical Review 72.1 (1992): 73–99.

      DOI: 10.2307/2515948Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »

      A useful survey of captivity practices across nearly four centuries. Closely analyzes demographic data on 634 Spaniards freed from captivity by an Argentine military expedition in 1833. Brief attention to Indian captives seized by Spanish.

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    • Weber, David J. Bárbaros: Spaniards and Their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.

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      An insightful study of Spanish attitudes toward, and interactions with, independent Indians in its American empire, primarily in lower South America and in the North American-Mesoamerican borderlands. Chapter 6, “Crossing Borders,” discusses captives as well as those who voluntarily moved between Spanish and Indian societies.

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    • Wright, Robin M., with Manuela Carneiro da Cunha. “Destruction, Resistance, and Transformation—Southern, Coastal, and Northern Brazil (1580–1890).” In The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas. Vol. 3, South America. Part 2. Edited by Frank Salomon and Stuart B. Schwartz, 287–381. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

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      Informative overview that situates raiding for, and trading in, Indian slaves in the larger context of Luso-Brazilian colonization.

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    North America

    Although most of the literature on captivity in North America is regional in focus, a few works of broader scope serve to introduce readers to the scholarly literature and some recent debates. Strong 2002 and Chaplin 2005 are both critical reviews that juxtapose representations of white captivities in narratives to the more ubiquitous and less documented captivity of Native Americans, and point to the enriched interpretations that such juxtapositions make possible. Gallay 2009 nicely introduces the enslavement of Native Americans and its regionally varying histories in a single volume. Donald 1997 addresses a debate over the nature of Indians’ own captivity practices, which has engaged some scholars in recent years.

    • Chaplin Joyce E. “Enslavement of Indians in Early America: Captivity without the Narrative.” In The Creation of the British Atlantic World. Edited by Elizabeth Mancke and Carole Shammas, 45–70. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005.

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      Important historiographical intervention arguing that enslavement of Native Americans must be integral rather than peripheral to narratives of British North American history. Notes ways in which both colonists and past scholars avoided acknowledging the pervasiveness of Indian enslavement in Anglo-American society, even when accepting the centrality of African enslavement.

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    • Donald, Leland. Aboriginal Slavery on the Northwest Coast of North America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

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      Chapter 12, “Captivity and Slavery in Aboriginal North American Cultures,” examines anthropological literature to determine whether captivity practices in eastern North America can be considered “slavery.” Argues that Starna and Watkins 1991 (cited under Northeastern North America) does not prove the existence of Iroquoian slavery, while captives of the Calusa in Florida were probably enslaved.

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    • Gallay, Alan, ed. Indian Slavery in Colonial America. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009.

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      The editor’s accessible introduction briefly situates the enslavement of Native North Americans in global historical context and makes clear its historical significance. The eleven essays (nine of them original) display the range of recent scholarship on regions throughout colonial North America. Especially strong on the Southeast.

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    • Strong, Pauline Turner. “Transforming Outsiders: Captivity, Adoption, and Slavery Reconsidered.” In A Companion to American Indian History. Edited by Philip J. Deloria and Neal Salisbury, 339–356. Blackwell Companions to American History. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002.

      DOI: 10.1002/9780470996461Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »

      A penetrating review of scholarly debates on captivity by Indians and Europeans in North America. Advocates substituting “incorporation” and “subordination” for the misleading terms of the subtitle. Following a discussion of captivity narratives, successive sections treat indigenous practices by region.

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    Southwestern North America

    Although far from the Atlantic, Southwestern North America was intricately connected to the Atlantic by Indians’ trade ties with Spaniards to the south and with French, British, and Americans to the east, and by its nonindigenous residents, most of whom (or whose forebears) had arrived from central Mexico. A rich outpouring of recent scholarship points to the centrality of intercultural captivity in the region. Much of this work is part of a broader scholarly thrust that emphasizes the relative weakness of Spanish colonial power in the region. As Brooks 2002 makes clear, the social ties arising from ongoing captivity practices shaped the cultural landscape of the Southwest from the arrival of the Spanish until the full advent of United States power in the late 19th century. Weber 2005 fruitfully discusses captivity in the Southwest alongside other regions where Spain dealt with independent Indians (those who had not submitted to Spanish rule). Blackhawk 2006 focuses on indigenous peoples in the Great Basin, emphasizing colonial violence over Indian-Spanish ties. Barr 2007 looks especially at Comanches, joining Brooks and others who have emphasized Comanche domination of Spanish and other southwestern Indians. Rivaya-Martínez 2006 provides a highly detailed study of Comanche captive practices over nearly two centuries. The prize-winning study by DeLay 2008 looks at the impact of raids by Comanches and others on Mexico in the period leading up the US–Mexican War, while Griffen 1988 provides chronologically comparable coverage of the Apaches. Smith 2009 shows that captivity remained common after the war until Indian–US hostilities ended.

    • Barr, Juliana. Peace Came in the Form of a Woman: Indians and Spaniards in the Texas Borderlands. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.

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      Argues that gendered kinship profoundly shaped Indians’ interactions with Spanish, in which female captives figured as both pawns and agents. One of several recent studies to emphasize Comanche domination in Spain’s northernmost provinces.

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    • Blackhawk, Ned. Violence over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.

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      The leading study of Great Basin Native Americans and their encounters with Spanish and US colonizers. In contrast to Brooks 2002 (whose study is centered to the east), argues that colonial violence, including the capture and enslavement of indigenous peoples, lies at the center of the region’s history.

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    • Brooks, James F. Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.

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      Pathbreaking study that first revealed the pervasiveness of intercultural captivity in the Southwest from the arrival of the Spanish to the late 19th century. Argues that indigenous and Spanish captivity practices readily meshed and emphasizes cross-cultural bonding over colonialism as the principal legacy of enslavement.

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    • DeLay, Brian. War of a Thousand Deserts: Indian Raids and the U.S.-Mexican War. Lamar Series in Western History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008.

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      Examines devastating raids by Comanches and other independent Indians against northern Mexican communities in the 1830–1840s. Points to ways in which captives shaped captor societies. Demonstrates how the United States took advantage of Mexican vulnerability to Indian raids when seizing the northern half of Mexico in 1846–1848.

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    • Griffen, William B. Utmost Good Faith: Patterns of Apache-Mexican Hostilities in Northern Chihuahua Border Warfare, 1821–1848. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988.

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      Although more limited in its interpretive sweep than DeLay 2008, its focus on Apache raiding and captive-taking complements that study’s emphasis on Comanches.

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    • Rivaya-Martínez, Joaquin. “Captivity and Adoption among the Comanche Indians, 1700–1875.” PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2006.

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      Thorough study of captivity practices among the Comanches, based on a sample of about 1,400 captives. Offers a wide range of richly suggestive anecdotal evidence. More directly engaged with theoretical literature on small-scale societies, modes of production, and slavery than with recent Comanche historiography.

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    • Smith, Victoria. Captive Arizona, 1851–1900. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009.

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      Surveys captivity after the US–Mexican War as the United States sought to confine formerly independent Indians to reservations. Rich in biographical and anecdotal information on individual Indian, Mexican, and non-Indian American captives.

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    • Weber, David J. Bárbaros: Spaniards and Their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005.

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      An insightful study of Spanish attitudes toward, and interactions with, independent Indians in its American empire, primarily in lower South America and in the Mesoamerican–North American borderlands. Chapter 6, “Crossing Borders,” discusses captives as well as those who voluntarily moved between Spanish and Indian societies.

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    Southeastern North America

    Gallay 2002 transformed the study of captivity in the colonial Southeast with its revelation of the extent and centrality of the Indian slave trade. Everett 2009 demonstrates the early and significant importance of the Virginia dimension of that trade. The selections in Ethridge and Shuck-Hall 2009 argue for the devastating effects of epidemic disease and enslavement on southeastern Native Americans. Preceding the recent scholarly upsurge, Perdue 1979 remains valuable for its emphasis on indigenous perspectives, including precolonial captivity practices. Amid that upsurge, Snyder 2010, a more sweeping study, likewise attends to Indian understandings. Saunt 2002 argues for the centrality of slavery in shaping Creek factionalism and civil war. Miles 2002 contends that southeastern Indians’ varied experiences with slavery upend rigid racial categories and complicate older, biracial definitions of slavery.

    • Ethridge, Robbie, and Sheri M. Shuck-Hall, eds. Mapping the Mississippian Shatter Zone: The Colonial Indian Slave Trade and Regional Instability in the American South. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009.

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      The “shatter zone” refers to the Southeast and adjacent areas that were massively depopulated and destabilized by the combined impact of epidemic diseases and the advent of European colonization, particularly the trade in enslaved indigenous peoples. Fifteen original essays explore local and tribal examples of this phenomenon.

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    • Everett, C. S. “‘They shalbe slaves for their lives’: Indian Slavery in Colonial Virginia.” In Indian Slavery in Colonial America. Edited by Alan Gallay, 67–108. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009.

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      Argues authoritatively that colonists’ enslavement of Native Americans was central to Virginia history through the 1720s, especially as the driving factor behind Bacon’s Rebellion (1675–1676).

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    • Gallay, Alan. The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670–1717. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002.

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      The book that significantly heightened the visibility—and made plain the primacy—of the English trade in captive Indians. Thoroughly explores the Anglo-Indian trade and related wars, the demographic and other effects on Indian societies, and captives’ destinations, mostly the English Caribbean. Some attention to French practices as well.

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    • Miles, Tiya. “Uncle Tom Was an Indian: Tracing the Red in Black Slavery.” In Confounding the Color Line: The Indian-Black Experience in North America. Edited by James F. Brooks, 137–160. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002.

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      Argues that historians’ routine equating of “black” and “slave” is belied by colonists’ enslaving of southeastern Native Americans before Africans arrived. Subsequent kin ties between Indians and blacks gave rise to biracial identities that withstood enslavement by other Indians.

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    • Perdue, Theda. Slavery and the Evolution of Cherokee Society, 1540–1866. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1979.

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      Emphasizes Cherokee understandings of captivity and enslavement—and the impact on Cherokee society—of precontact practices, the colonial-era Indian slave trade, and Cherokee slaveholding of African Americans.

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    • Saunt, Claudio. “‘The English Has Now a Mind to Make Slaves of Them All’: Creeks, Seminoles, and the Problem of Slavery.” In Confounding the Color Line: The Indian-Black Experience in North America. Edited by James F. Brooks, 47–75. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002.

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      Argues that while Creeks initially traded other Indian captives to English Carolinians, they became divided as plantation slavery expanded and Anglo-Creek mestizos bought their own enslaved Africans. Tensions over slavery resulted in the exodus of Seminoles and the Red Stick War (1813–1815).

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    • Snyder, Christina. Slavery in Indian Country: The Changing Face of Captivity in Early America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.

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      The definitive study of southeastern Native Americans (primarily Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Seminoles) as both captives and captors from Mississippian times through the 1830s. Like Perdue, foregrounds Indian perspectives in contrast to Gallay’s and others’ focus on European trade practices.

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    Northeastern North America

    Although cross-cultural captivity prevailed throughout the Northeast to 1815, most scholarship until recently focused on white captives of the Iroquois and their pro-French rivals, with little attention to the Ohio valley and England’s middle colonies. Axtell 1975, an older study, is a partial exception. Newell 2009 helps to shift our understanding of captivity in New England away from white captives to colonists’ extensive enslavement and sale of Indian captives. Similarly, the New England–New France borderlands emerge as a complex zone of interaction rather than a forbidding barrier in Haefeli and Sweeney 2003 and Foster 2003. The extent to which French colonizers in North America were involved in enslaving captive Indians is made apparent in Rushforth 2003 and Ekberg 2007. Among Native Americans, the Iroquois were the most visible captors. Richter 1983 argues that most of their captives were fully adopted into Iroquois families and communities while Starna and Watkins 1991 maintains that most captives of the Iroquois were enslaved.

    • Axtell, James. “The White Indians of Colonial America.” William and Mary Quarterly 32 (1975): 55–88.

      DOI: 10.2307/1922594Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »

      Useful, albeit overly general, overview of the experiences of English captives incorporated into Native American communities from Pennsylvania to New England, as described in published narratives. Overstates conclusion that Indians’ effective adoption practices led most (as opposed to many) captives to accept their new societies.

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    • Ekberg, Carl. Stealing Indian Women: Native Slavery in the Illinois Country. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007.

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      Outlines the emergence of a relatively flexible system of Indian slavery in French and Spanish Illinois, and provides a case study revealing the harsh limits imposed on enslaved indigenous women.

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    • Foster, William Henry. The Captor’s Narrative: Catholic Women and Their Puritan Men on the Early American Frontier. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003.

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      Upends several stereotypes by pointing out that most Anglo-American captives taken by Indians to New France were male and that many of them subsequently served French women as laborers.

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    • Haefeli, Evan, and Kevin Sweeney. Captors and Captives: The 1704 French and Indian Raid on Deerfield. Native Americans of the Northeast. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003.

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      A thorough and deeply contextualized study of a single but extraordinary incident of captivity on the Massachusetts frontier. Examines multiple historical contexts as well as perspectives of the event’s many and diverse protagonists.

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    • Newell, Margaret Ellen. “Indian Slavery in Colonial New England.” In Indian Slavery in Colonial America. Edited by Alan Gallay, 33–66. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009.

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      Excellent overview of the topic, including colonists’ enslavement and overseas sales of war captives during the 17th century and importation of enslaved Indian captives from the Southeast in the early 18th century.

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    • Richter, Daniel K. “War and Culture: The Iroquois Experience.” William and Mary Quarterly 40 (1983): 528–559.

      DOI: 10.2307/1921807Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »

      Influential examination of Iroquois captivity and adoption practices in the context of ritualized mourning wars, and of the transformation of those practices in the face of colonization to c. 1720. Emphasizes the adoption and incorporation of captives rather than their enslavement.

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    • Rushforth, Brett. “‘A Little Flesh We Offer You’: The Origins of Indian Slavery in New France.” William and Mary Quarterly 60 (2003): 777–808.

      DOI: 10.2307/3491699Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »

      Demonstrates in illuminating detail how enslaved Indians, acquired from Native American captors, provided New France with an economically significant labor force in the early 18th century. Reprinted in Gallay 2009, pp.353–390.

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    • Starna, William A., and Ralph Watkins. “Northern Iroquoian Slavery.” Ethnohistory 38.1 (1991): 34–57.

      DOI: 10.2307/482790Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »

      Repudiates Richter 1983 and others who argue that captivity by the Iroquois generally led to adoption and full integration into Iroquois families and communities. Instead asserts that Iroquois practiced a form of slavery as defined by sociologist Orlando Patterson. Draws most of its evidence from Iroquois–Huron conflict in the 1630s–1640s.

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    LAST MODIFIED: 08/26/2011

    DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780199730414-0096

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