Enslaved Archives

Explores the relationship between the production of enslaved property and the production of the past in the antebellum United States.It is extraordinarily difficult for historians to reconstruct the lives of individual enslaved people. Records—where they exist—are often fragmentary, biased, or untru...

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Autor Principal: Montalvo, Maria R.
Formato: Online
Idioma:inglés
Publicado: Johns Hopkins University Press 2024
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Acceso en liña:ONIX_20240802_9781421449500_8
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author Montalvo, Maria R.
author_browse Montalvo, Maria R.
author_facet Montalvo, Maria R.
author_sort Montalvo, Maria R.
collection Directory of Open Access Books
description Explores the relationship between the production of enslaved property and the production of the past in the antebellum United States.It is extraordinarily difficult for historians to reconstruct the lives of individual enslaved people. Records—where they exist—are often fragmentary, biased, or untrue. In Enslaved Archives, Maria R. Montalvo investigates the legal records, including contracts and court records, that American antebellum enslavers produced and preserved to illuminate enslavers' capitalistic motivations for shaping the histories of enslaved people. The documentary archive was not simply a by-product of the business of slavery, but also a necessary tool that enslavers used to exploit the people they enslaved. Building on Montalvo's analysis of more than 18,000 sets of court records, Enslaved Archives is a close study of what we can and cannot learn about enslaved individuals from the written record. By examining five lawsuits in Louisiana, Montalvo deconstructs enslavers' cases—the legal arguments and rhetorical strategies they used to produce information and shape perceptions of enslaved people. Commodifying enslaved people was not simply a matter of effectively exploiting their labor. Enslavers also needed to control information about those people. Enslavers' narratives—carefully manipulated, prone to omissions, and sometimes false—often survive as the only account of an enslaved individual's life. In working to historicize the people at the center of enslavers' manipulations, Montalvo outlines the possibilities and limits of the archive, providing a glimpse of the historical and contemporary consequences of commodification. Enslaved Archives makes a significant intervention in the history of enslaved people, legal history, and the history of slavery and capitalism by adding a qualitative dimension to the analysis of how enslavers created and maintained power.
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spelling doab-20.500.12854ir-1427062024-08-02T15:13:37Z Enslaved Archives Montalvo, Maria R. Social Science / Discrimination & Race Relations thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBF Social and ethical issues::JBFA Social discrimination and social justice Explores the relationship between the production of enslaved property and the production of the past in the antebellum United States.It is extraordinarily difficult for historians to reconstruct the lives of individual enslaved people. Records—where they exist—are often fragmentary, biased, or untrue. In Enslaved Archives, Maria R. Montalvo investigates the legal records, including contracts and court records, that American antebellum enslavers produced and preserved to illuminate enslavers' capitalistic motivations for shaping the histories of enslaved people. The documentary archive was not simply a by-product of the business of slavery, but also a necessary tool that enslavers used to exploit the people they enslaved. Building on Montalvo's analysis of more than 18,000 sets of court records, Enslaved Archives is a close study of what we can and cannot learn about enslaved individuals from the written record. By examining five lawsuits in Louisiana, Montalvo deconstructs enslavers' cases—the legal arguments and rhetorical strategies they used to produce information and shape perceptions of enslaved people. Commodifying enslaved people was not simply a matter of effectively exploiting their labor. Enslavers also needed to control information about those people. Enslavers' narratives—carefully manipulated, prone to omissions, and sometimes false—often survive as the only account of an enslaved individual's life. In working to historicize the people at the center of enslavers' manipulations, Montalvo outlines the possibilities and limits of the archive, providing a glimpse of the historical and contemporary consequences of commodification. Enslaved Archives makes a significant intervention in the history of enslaved people, legal history, and the history of slavery and capitalism by adding a qualitative dimension to the analysis of how enslavers created and maintained power. 2024-08-02T15:13:35Z 2024-08-02T15:13:35Z 2024 book ONIX_20240802_9781421449500_8 9781421449500 https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/142706 eng image/jpeg Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International https://muse.jhu.edu/book/123275 Johns Hopkins University Press 1f9b1002-ec35-4fcf-94be-32cfd0a1dfd3 9781421449500 184 open access
spellingShingle Social Science / Discrimination & Race Relations
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBF Social and ethical issues::JBFA Social discrimination and social justice
Montalvo, Maria R.
Enslaved Archives
title Enslaved Archives
title_full Enslaved Archives
title_fullStr Enslaved Archives
title_full_unstemmed Enslaved Archives
title_short Enslaved Archives
title_sort enslaved archives
topic Social Science / Discrimination & Race Relations
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBF Social and ethical issues::JBFA Social discrimination and social justice
topic_facet Social Science / Discrimination & Race Relations
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBF Social and ethical issues::JBFA Social discrimination and social justice
url ONIX_20240802_9781421449500_8
work_keys_str_mv AT montalvomariar enslavedarchives