This dissertation seeks to explain why more than 110 African American individuals proposed to enslave themselves (and, in some cases, their children as well) in Virginia from 1854 to 1864. I examine the act of the Virginia legislature in 1856 "providing for the voluntary enslavement of the free negroes of the commonwealth" and suggest that this law provided some free Afro-Virginian individuals with an alternative to removal from the state and separation from their families (as called for by the sporadically enforced 1806 expulsion law, passed in part to discourage manumissions). I argue that if receiving legal freedom threatened a free black Virginian with removal, then a legal enslavement that allowed for domestic freedoms---a meaningful family life and a connection to a homeland or community---could come to seem preferable.;Many scholars have suggested that, by passing the 1856 self-enslavement law, legislators intended to facilitate the wholesale enslavement of Virginia's free black population. They have assumed that the passage of Virginia's so-called voluntary enslavement law marked the nadir of free black life in the state and the height of antebellum repression of a class that Virginia politicians at times unequivocally deemed to be "an evil." But such an interpretation of the law in Virginia is a misreading both of the intentions of white lawmakers and of the law's use by free blacks. to enslave oneself in the state during the politically tense 1850s was generally not an easy task. Safeguards incorporated into the law itself ensured that neither the state nor individual slaveholders could coerce free blacks into servitude. In fact, if the state played any part in self-enslavement, it was in an attempt to prevent it.;Through data gathered in county will books, court minutes, ended papers in chancery and law causes, personal property tax lists, and various other county sources, as well as state and federal records, I attempt to illuminate the lives of those individuals who chose to become legally enslaved---all in an effort to draw larger conclusions about the multiple meanings of manumission, freedom, and slavery to African Americans in nineteenth-century Virginia.

Historians have, of course, long been aware of the importance of Virginia's seventeenth-century conversion from white to black labor. But while scholars have devoted considerable effort to explaining why this pivotal transition occurred, a detailed analysis of how it happened does not exist, nor by extension have scholars ever fully considered the repercussions of what one might call the "process of conversion.";Although Virginia's black population remained small throughout much of the seventeenth century, it was heavily concentrated on the estates of a relatively small circle of wealthy planters. By the middle decades of the century some members of the gentry had acquired sizable quantities of slaves. as early as the 1660s, when the typical Chesapeake planter still only employed servants, on many elite plantations blacks made up nearly half of the workforce, and in some cases were numerous enough to comprise a considerable majority.;The gentry's early turn to slavery had a profound effect on the development of the plantation "machine." From a socio-economic perspective, it was instrumental in facilitating the rise of Virginia's great families. The founding members of these dynasties arrived in the colony with wealth and social status. But it was their remarkable success in building up their holdings in land and slaves that distanced them from their peers and that proved decisive in securing the lasting predominance of their descendants.;Yet because of their limited access to the transatlantic slave trade, even the wealthiest Virginians initially found it difficult to procure slaves and for decades elite-owned labor forces remained racially mixed. Early African immigrants consequently faced enormous pressure to conform to the behavioral norms of the dominant Anglo-American society, giving the cultural compromises that they ultimately reached with each other an assimilationist bent. as the founding generations relinquished community leadership to their native-born children and grandchildren, African-American society in the colony acquired an anglicized veneer that continued to persist and shape life in slave quarters even after the advent of large direct deliveries in the early eighteenth century.

This dissertation is about refugees in Somalia, how they got there, where they came from, and why they stay. It discusses the community development program, the notion of self-reliance and the manipulation of these concepts to create a circumstance of regional dependency. The research puts refugee circumstances in Somalia into a global context of economic and military oppression. Dispelling the myths of poor farm management, drought, overpopulation, and backwardness, war is named as the primary cause of refugee origins worldwide. A major theme of the research is that we live in a corporate warfare/welfare world in which development aid pursues hearts and minds, as well as markets. Within this system, development workers must understand local political/social structures and put them into the context of global political/economic realities.

<p> The Great Dismal swamp straddles the North Carolina and Virginia state lines. From the seventeenth century until the Civil War this remote landscape became home to thousands of Maroons. These Maroon communities were comprised of runaway slaves, Native Americans and disenfranchised Europeans. The swamp was not only part of the passage for the Underground Rail Road (UGRR) but it was also a destination for individuals who lived on high ground and islands throughout the swamp. These self emancipated individuals developed complex modes of communitization. This dissertation uses a variety of theoretical perspectives, including agency theory, diaspora, and marronage to aluminate and understand the conditions and cultural transformations that took place over the course of several centuries and generations. The examination of these different communal groups will show that the each possessed and left behind different archaeological assemblages. Towards the end of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the outside world began to view the swamp as an exploitable resource and commodity. This led to increased forays by the outside world into the swamp and increased the possibility of contact with remote communities living on mesic islands deep in the swamp&rsquo;s interior. As the outside world penetrated the interior of the Great Dismal Swamp it required the communities to adapt and transform. This dissertation will examine the cultural and communal transformations of a community that resisted contact with the outside world in response to loggers and canal laborers arriving in the deep interior of the swamp. The Great Dismal Swamp Landscape Study excavated The Crest of the nameless site during the 2009-2013 field seasons. These excavations ran in conjunction with American University&rsquo;s Archaeological Field School. The excavations revealed a new architectural feature and artifact assemblage that represent a cultural transformation and the emergence of a new mode of communitization. These features and artifacts will be examined using a lens of agentive action to shed new insights into the Maroons who occupied a mesic island deep in the Great Dismal Swamp.</p>

<p> Maroon communities are often portrayed as renegade groups of Africans living within or on the fringes of some of the more popular slave societies such as Jamaica, Saint-Domingue (Haiti), Suriname, or Brazil, whose purpose or goals in their existence was never to strive towards universal emancipation of the African lot, and whose resistance and radicalism, if occurring during the Age of Revolution (i.e. Haiti), is often attributed to European influences during that era. This socio-cultural and political history about a lesser known group of maroons in Dominica challenges the preconceived notions of African maroonage and resistance, and is original in four ways: One, this dissertation demonstrates that the maroons of Dominica who lived in the interior of the island worked with the enslaved population on plantations on several occasions to overthrow the British colonial government in an attempt to assist their African brethren in freedom; Secondly, this work highlights the African origins of the spiritual and political philosophies, particularly the lesser credited Igbo, who comprised of a significant portion of Africans in Dominica, are what guided their anti-slavery and anti-colonial resistance; Thirdly, the maroons and enslaved populations, who demonstrated alliances with one another in Dominica during the 1790s and early nineteenth century were not influenced by French Revolutionary ideals, but were pursued for an alliance, and the former, in particular, often rejected alliances with French Revolutionary sympathizers; Lastly, this dissertation takes the maroons of Dominica outside the confines of a national history and connects it to the greater African Diaspora.</p>

This dissertation recovers the life of Marie Justine Sirnir Couvent and the Atlantic World she inhabited. Born in Africa around 1757, she was enslaved as a child and shipped to Saint-Domingue through the Bight of Benin in the 1760s. In the tumult of the Haitian Revolution, Couvent fled the island, along with tens of thousands of Saint-Domingue inhabitants. She resettled in New Orleans where she eventually died a free and wealthy slaveholder in 1837. Although illiterate, Couvent left property to establish a free black school in her will. L'Institution Catholique des Orphelins Indigents was founded on her land in 1847 and a school operated on the site for over 150 years. This unique example of free black philanthropy in New Orleans demonstrates how the city's free people of color built a community through social ties, property, and collective institutions as the center of slavery shifted to the Deep South.;The dissertation traces both Couvent's geographic movement from the Slave Coast through the French Caribbean to New Orleans and her social mobility from slave to free and from property to property owner. I argue that Couvent utilized social networks and property ownership to rebuild her life in New Orleans and participate in the development of a free people of color community. Couvent formed important social connections at all stages of her life that aided her survival of slavery and her relocation to Louisiana. Reconstructing her social networks in New Orleans reveals a shift from relationships centered on multiracial, Saint-Dominguan ties to a network dominated by free people of color, as Couvent became integrated into the city's existing free black population. One way Couvent formed new relationships was through the acquisition and exchange of property. In addition to gaining economic security, Couvent bolstered her free status, created a family, and assisted in the creation of free black collective institutions through her property ownership. Taking into account her African birth and experience of enslavement in the Saint-Dominguan port city of Cap Francais, I analyze the different types of property Couvent owned separately to illustrate how property ownership facilitated as well as complicated the development of a free people of color community in New Orleans.;Her singular bequest and the remarkable endurance of the school have sustained Couvent's legacy in New Orleans as a patron of African American education. A final chapter traces the history of the school(s) and the emphasis its administrators placed on education as a tool to challenge racial prejudice and combat inequality. Couvent remains within New Orleans' public memory, but how she has been remembered varied over the twentieth century. The dissertation concludes with an analysis of the multiple interpretations of Couvent's legacy.

Black and white women in Virginia were on the front lines of the struggle over emancipation during and after the Civil War. Between 1861 and 1890, both former slave and former slaveholding women shaped black freedom and thereby re-invented themselves as citizens within their local communities.;Focusing on women who lived in the southeastern and south-central regions of Virginia, this study expands the narrative of Southern history to encompass the vigorous contest between black and white women over the meanings of slavery, the war, and freedom. Based on federal records and private papers, this dissertation assesses women's ideas about the end of slavery and the creation of a free society.;Emancipation was revolutionary for black women and profoundly affected the lives of many white women. For freedwomen, it meant greater control over their family and working lives, education, and community organization, as well as new access to public spaces and a sense of themselves as American citizens. For former slaveholding women, emancipation meant financial loss, fewer household workers, and reduced control over those domestic servants, in addition to a re-appraisal of the benefits of slavery and a stark representation of the destruction of the Confederacy.;As workers and employers after the war, Virginia women transformed the white-owned domestic workplace into one of the most significant and highly politicized venues for negotiating freedom. as skilled workers, cooks and washerwomen gained the most independence among servants. While both workers and employers sought to retain some aspects of slavery, employers' maternalism increasingly came into conflict with workers' communal resourcefulness.;While they interacted as workers and employers, black and white women led separate lives in the civic realm. They did, however, take part in some similar activities there. as engaged citizens, both freedwomen and former mistresses contributed to the public creation of communal histories of the war by participating, respectively, in Emancipation Day celebrations and Lost Cause commemorations. In these civic rituals, Virginia women emphasized racial solidarity and affirmed their national and regional allegiances. The orchestrated transition from slavery to freedom within civic spaces paralleled the struggle to define emancipation within individual households.

A detailed study of local Baptist communities in Tidewater Virginia, "Drawn Together, Drawn Apart" explores the interactions of black and white evangelicals both under slavery and following emancipation. Significant bonds of fellowship between black and white Baptists persisted throughout the antebellum years. The majority of black Baptists continued to engage in baptismal, worship, and disciplinary gatherings with their white neighbors. Baptists of both races participated in the national culture of reform through their commitment to temperance, mission work, and other forms of "benevolence.".;At the same time, a pattern of black religious autonomy was developing. as Christian paternalists, white Baptist leaders sought to bolster supervision of black members, but by frequently commissioning black deacons to do the actual work this monitoring entailed, they fostered opportunities for black leadership, preaching, and literacy; several large all-black congregations were founded during the antebellum period.;The aftermath of Nat Turner's Rebellion in 1831 plays a central role in this study. Scholars have seen that event as the beginning of a period of repression that lasted until general emancipation. Virginia did indeed adopt much stricter black codes in 1832; these included a complete ban on black preaching, exhorting, and independent religious activity. Yet this dissertation presents many examples of how such practices survived, sometimes with the support of white Baptists. Some blacks continued to preach---a fact of which whites were well aware---and black Baptists increasingly met separately from whites. While white leaders sometimes attempted to provide supervision for such meetings, their efforts were often cursory, leading to the conclusion that they either did not care enough about the law to enforce it or that they disagreed with it in the first place. What did bring an end to interracial religious activity was not the Turner revolt, but rather emancipation. Some church splits were initiated by whites, some by blacks, and some were ironically the result of a cooperative effort.;Through the careful examination of local Baptist records, this work illuminates the varied exchanges that took place between nineteenth-century blacks and whites. Amid an increasingly entrenched slaveholding system and an expanding body of black codes, followed by a cataclysmic Civil War, the ways in which black and white Baptists experienced fellowship---both together and separately---reveal much about the development of southern society before and after emancipation.

This study analyzes the entrepreneurial estate-building activities of three generations of the Tayloe family of Virginia from the 1710s to the 1820s. The three John Tayloes were model planter-businessmen---that is, they combined mixed commercial agriculture with a variety of business enterprises in an effort to secure long-term financial security and social status for themselves and their heirs. This diversified approach to plantation management characterized early Virginia's "culture of progress"---an early American business culture interpreted in many different ways throughout the colonies (and later the states) that had the pursuit of a better life as its organizing premise.;The Tayloes were not alone in their ironmaking, shipbuilding, land speculation, investing, and craft-service activities. Instead, the three generations of Tayloe planter-businessmen represent the activities, approaches, and values of the elite planter class of early Virginia.;For each of the Tayloes, slave labor served as the fundamental resource for successful enterprise. The presence of large populations of enslaved African Americans enabled the Tayloes and other planters to branch out from staple agriculture and ultimately necessitated that they continue to do so. Slaves demonstrated their abilities, became central to the daily operations of the South's business culture, and made the enterprises planters founded profitable.;Planter-businessmen as individuals founded businesses that were usually complementary in some way to their holdings in land and slaves. Recognizing the potentially dangerous fluctuations of the tobacco market, planters were apt to attempt new endeavors in good times and bad and rarely abandoned new businesses simply because the tobacco market rebounded. They kept their finger on the pulse of the market, braved risk, and attempted to keep up with the latest technology. Planters' non-tobacco activities provided an important buffer between the uncontrollable weather, shipping, and prices associated with tobacco agriculture and their family's future security. The institution of slavery certainly placed some structural limits on planters' entrepreneurial imaginations. However, whether compared against northern farmer-businessmen prior to the antebellum period or set against the definitions of Virginia's own slave society, early southern planter-businessmen exhibited rational and progressive economic behavior.

In nineteenth-century plantation literature, the runaway slave in the swamp was a recurrent "bogeyman" whose presence challenged myths of the plantation system. By escaping to the swamps, the runaway, or "maroon," gained an invisibility that was more threatening to the institution than open conflict. The chattel system was dependent upon an exercise of will upon the body of the enslaved, but slaves who asserted control over their bodies, by removing them to the swamps, claimed definition over the Self. In part, the proslavery plantation novel served to transform that image of the maroon from its untouchable, abstract state to a form that could be possessed, understood, and controlled. In other words, writers defending slavery would often conjure forth the rebellious image in order to dispel it safely.;This project contextualizes some of the major works in the plantation genre by revealing the dialectical processes involved in their creation. For example, one section gives special attention to the cultural milieu of the 1850s surrounding Harriet Beecher Stowe's second anti-slavery novels, Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp. Other primary works include Thomas Nelson Page's "No Haid Pawn" and John Pendleton Kennedy's Swallow Barn, arguably the first novel of the plantation genre. Contexts for these works are comprised of other "literary" works such as plantation romances and slave narratives. But the project also seeks to understand the signifying power of the maroon through the testimonies of former slaves, newspaper representations of African Americans, plantation rituals and daily interactions between black and white, and folklore of former slaves as it was collected (and conceived) by postbellum whites.;Despite the common occurrence of pillory scenes at the conclusion of maroon tales, this project shows that the final signifying power of the maroon was not of the law writ large upon his body; rather, the maroon survived as legend, as an invisible presence just beyond white control.