Undercurrents of Power: Aquatic Culture in the African Diaspora by Kevin Dawson

Description: Undercurrents of Power by Kevin Dawson Kevin Dawson considers how enslaved Africans carried aquatic skills--swimming, diving, boat making, even surfing--to the Americas. Undercurrents of Power not only chronicles the experiences of enslaved maritime workers, but also traverses the waters of the Atlantic repeatedly to trace and untangle cultural and social traditions. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description Long before the rise of New World slavery, West Africans were adept swimmers, divers, canoe makers, and canoeists. They lived along riverbanks, near lakes, or close to the ocean. In those waterways, they became proficient in diverse maritime skills, while incorporating water and aquatics into spiritual understandings of the world. Transported to the Americas, slaves carried with them these West African skills and cultural values. Indeed, according to Kevin Dawsons examination of water culture in the African diaspora, the aquatic abilities of people of African descent often surpassed those of Europeans and their descendants from the age of discovery until well into the nineteenth century.As Dawson argues, histories of slavery have largely chronicled the fields of the New World, whether tobacco, sugar, indigo, rice, or cotton. However, most plantations were located near waterways to facilitate the transportation of goods to market, and large numbers of agricultural slaves had ready access to water in which to sustain their abilities and interests. Swimming and canoeing provided respite from the monotony of agricultural bondage and brief moments of bodily privacy. In some instances, enslaved laborers exchanged their aquatic expertise for unique privileges, including wages, opportunities to work free of direct white supervision, and even in rare circumstances, freedom.Dawson builds his analysis around a discussion of African traditions and the ways in which similar traditions-swimming, diving, boat making, even surfing-emerged within African diasporic communities. Undercurrents of Power not only chronicles the experiences of enslaved maritime workers, but also traverses the waters of the Atlantic repeatedly to trace and untangle cultural and social traditions. Author Biography Kevin Dawson is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Merced. Table of Contents Introduction: Waterscapes of the African DiasporaPART I. SWIMMING CULTUREChapter 1. Atlantic African Aquatic Cultures: A Cross-Cultural ComparisonChapter 2. Cultural Meanings of Recreational Swimming and SurfingChapter 3. Aquatic Sports and Performance Rituals: Gender, Bravery, and HonorChapter 4. History from Below: Enslaved Underwater DiversChapter 5. Undercurrents of Power: Challenging Racial Hierarchies from BelowPART II. CANOE CULTUREChapter 6. African Canoe-Makers: Constructing Floating CulturesChapter 7. Mountains Divide and Rivers Unite: Atlantic African CanoemenChapter 8. Maritime Continuities: African Canoes on New World WatersChapter 9. The Floating Economies of Slaves and SlaveholdersChapter 10. Sacred Vessels, Sacred Waters: The Cultural Meanings of Dugout CanoesChapter 11. A World Afloat: Mobile Slave CommunitiesChapter 12. The Watermens Song: Canoemens Aural WaterscapesConclusion. A Sea Change in Atlantic HistoryEpilogueNotesIndexAcknowledgments Review "Kevin Dawsons masterly synthesis goes beyond filling a gap in maritime history: it reconfirms and expands a discourse on maritime traditions of Africans at home and abroad, from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries." * The International Journal of Maritime History *"This is an important book in a number of ways. It displays the ways many enslaved Africans used the knowledge they brought with them to expand the space available to them. It gives us a picture of how aspects of slavery in one of the most coercive slave societies ever created were negotiated. It is also a contribution to aquatic history and culture informed by Kevin Dawsons passion for and understanding of aquatic life. In making his arguments, Dawson uses a wide range of sources and uses them well. Most important, he gives us a picture of those enslaved as agents, who used their knowledge and their skills to push the boundaries of their enslavement." * Early American Literature *"Kevin Dawsons Undercurrents of Power is important. More than perhaps any study in recent memory, it brings the existence, value, and meaning of water in the African diaspora to the forefront of Atlantic cultural, social, and economic development. In a broad,sweeping narrative, Dawson covers remarkable ground, crisscrossing the Atlantic as he draws together hundreds of examples of how water defined the pre-slavery lives of Africans forced into the Atlantic slave trade and how it helped diverse peoples and cultures identify themselves, individually and collectively, in the whirlwind and trauma of enslavement. The work explores the complexities of honor, warfare, social status, youth, sex, technology, and leisure and how each interacted with, and indeed structured itself around, water and aquatic spaces." * The Journal of Southern History *"Stunning . . . Undercurrents of Power brings to light the various aquatic traditions of Africans and Diasporans working, cultivating, and negotiating the riparian, oceanic, lake, and swamp biomes both in the context of Africa and in the environments they encountered throughout the Atlantic and into the Americas . . . In the process of opening various kinds of waterscapes to historical analysis, Dawson fundamentally reimagines the cultural dynamics shaping the Americas." * Black Perspectives *"Undercurrents of Power is a significant intervention into the fields of Early Vast America, African Diaspora, African American, and Caribbean histories. By focusing on African aquatic cultural and material contributions, Dawson rescues African maritime narratives in the early Atlantic World, which have been grossly ignored or silenced. It is a must-read for scholars and graduate students in these respective fields. The prose is captivating and clear." * Journal of Early American History *"Kevin Dawson offers the remarkable untold history of the significance of aquatic culture in the African diaspora. Undercurrents of Power opens up a new and exciting aspect of slaves experience, providing a crucially important piece of the history of slave life and labor in the Americas." * James Sidbury, Rice University * Promotional Kevin Dawson considers how enslaved Africans carried aquatic skills—swimming, diving, boat making, even surfing—to the Americas. Undercurrents of Power not only chronicles the experiences of enslaved maritime workers, but also traverses the waters of the Atlantic repeatedly to trace and untangle cultural and social traditions. Long Description Long before the rise of New World slavery, West Africans were adept swimmers, divers, canoe makers, and canoeists. They lived along riverbanks, near lakes, or close to the ocean. In those waterways, they became proficient in diverse maritime skills, while incorporating water and aquatics into spiritual understandings of the world. Transported to the Americas, slaves carried with them these West African skills and cultural values. Indeed, according to Kevin Dawsons examination of water culture in the African diaspora, the aquatic abilities of people of African descent often surpassed those of Europeans and their descendants from the age of discovery until well into the nineteenth century. As Dawson argues, histories of slavery have largely chronicled the fields of the New World, whether tobacco, sugar, indigo, rice, or cotton. However, most plantations were located near waterways to facilitate the transportation of goods to market, and large numbers of agricultural slaves had ready access to water in which to sustain their abilities and interests. Swimming and canoeing provided respite from the monotony of agricultural bondage and brief moments of bodily privacy. In some instances, enslaved laborers exchanged their aquatic expertise for unique privileges, including wages, opportunities to work free of direct white supervision, and even in rare circumstances, freedom. Dawson builds his analysis around a discussion of African traditions and the ways in which similar traditions--swimming, diving, boat making, even surfing--emerged within African diasporic communities. Undercurrents of Power not only chronicles the experiences of enslaved maritime workers, but also traverses the waters of the Atlantic repeatedly to trace and untangle cultural and social traditions. Review Quote "This is an important book in a number of ways. It displays the ways many enslaved Africans used the knowledge they brought with them to expand the space available to them. It gives us a picture of how aspects of slavery in one of the most coercive slave societies ever created were negotiated. It is also a contribution to aquatic history and culture informed by Kevin Dawsons passion for and understanding of aquatic life. In making his arguments, Dawson uses a wide range of sources and uses them well. Most important, he gives us a picture of those enslaved as agents, who used their knowledge and their skills to push the boundaries of their enslavement."-- Early American Literature Promotional "Headline" Kevin Dawson considers how enslaved Africans carried aquatic skills--swimming, diving, boat making, even surfing--to the Americas. Undercurrents of Power not only chronicles the experiences of enslaved maritime workers, but also traverses the waters of the Atlantic repeatedly to trace and untangle cultural and social traditions. Excerpt from Book Introduction: Waterscapes of the African Diaspora PART I. SWIMMING CULTURE Chapter 1. Atlantic African Aquatic Cultures: A Cross-Cultural Comparison Chapter 2. Cultural Meanings of Recreational Swimming and Surfing Chapter 3. Aquatic Sports and Performance Rituals: Gender, Bravery, and Honor Chapter 4. History from Below: Enslaved Underwater Divers Chapter 5. Undercurrents of Power: Challenging Racial Hierarchies from Below PART II. CANOE CULTURE Chapter 6. African Canoe-Makers: Constructing Floating Cultures Chapter 7. Mountains Divide and Rivers Unite: Atlantic African Canoemen Chapter 8. Maritime Continuities: African Canoes on New World Waters Chapter 9. The Floating Economies of Slaves and Slaveholders Chapter 10. Sacred Vessels, Sacred Waters: The Cultural Meanings of Dugout Canoes Chapter 11. A World Afloat: Mobile Slave Communities Chapter 12. The Watermens Song: Canoemens Aural Waterscapes Conclusion. A Sea Change in Atlantic History Epilogue Notes Index Acknowledgments * * * * * Introduction: Waterscapes of the African Diaspora Our story begins in the Pacific, off the island of Hawaii, in Kealakekua Bay. Here, on January 22, 1779, surgeons mate David Samwell wrote an early account of surfing, an account capturing Western apprehensions of water and other peoples affinity for gliding through liquid infinities: "These People find one of their Chief amusements in that which to us presented nothing but Horror & Destruction, and we saw with astonishment young boys and Girls about 9 or ten years of age playing amid such tempestuous Waves that the hardiest of our seamen would have trembled to face." The sailors "looked upon this as no other than certain death." Like other Europeans, Samwell viewed surfing as mere "amusement," failing to comprehend non-Western cultural understandings of water. Conveying Western land-oriented perceptions, he reveals how anxieties about swimming caused white people to misconstrue Hawaiian aquatic traditions, while regarding water as an unnatural element and swimming as a life-threatening pursuit. The playground of Hawaiian youth was a place of "Horror & Destruction" for white men who had just spent three years at sea. Societies carve diverging identities from their interactions with and historicization of the same ocean. In many important ways, Westerners are terracentric--"landlocked, mentally if not physically"--treating waterways as empty, cultureless, historical voids. In 1620, William Bradford, governor of Plymouth Colony, captured beliefs concerning humans natural relationships with land as he witnessed the landing of Pilgrims who "fell upon their knees and blessed the God of Heaven, who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean and delivered them from all the perils and miseries, again to set their feet on the firm and stable earth, their proper element ." For more than a millennium, there has been a concerted effort to suppress the sea with religious, scientific, and historical perceptions beginning and ending on the terra firma. Scripture tells us humanity began in the Garden of Eden, while seas symbolized the unfinished chaos predating civilization, a metaphor for Gods vengeance, and a perpetuation of the Great Flood. Scientists explain that humanity emerged long after our common ancestor flopped ashore. Historians favor land-bound studies over maritime ones; occasionally using Atlantic voyages to frame accounts of Pilgrims, priests, conquistadors, colonists, and slaves. Terrestrial perspectives treat water as a border for land-bound events and an intercontinental highway, concluding that cultural creation was restricted to land. Water covers some 70 percent of the earth. Most people live near water. Water dominates much of Atlantic Africa. Stretching from Senegal to Angola, this region is rimmed by thousands of miles of coastline, bisected by rivers and streams, and pockmarked by lakes, while the Niger Rivers sweeping arch frames its northeastern limits and the Congo plunges through its southern reaches. Here, Africans maintained intimate interactions with water during work and personal time; regarding it as social and cultural spaces, not as intervals between places. Scholars regularly encapsulate societies into binary reductive spheres, treating individuals as land people or mariners; farmers or fishermen--not both. Societies were not dichotomized into discrete terrestrial and maritime worlds and water people equally understood land and water. Many Africans were fishing-farmers and farming-fishermen who wove terrestrial and aquatic experiences into amphibious lives, interlacing spiritual and secular beliefs, economies, social structures, and political institutions--their very way of life--around relationships with water. Undercurrents of Power: Aquatic Culture in the African Diaspora examines aquatic fluencies to consider how African-descended peoples charted cultural constellations onto waterscapes while forging similar communities of practice and meaning. African-born and country-born (or those born in the Americas) slaves recreated and reimagined African traditions as they cast cultural anchors into ancestral waters while interlacing diverse ethnic valuations upon New World waterscapes. Grounded in the eighteenth century, this book extends from 1444, when the Portuguese first entered sub-Saharan Africa, to 1888, when Brazil became the last New World society to abolish slavery. Like watermarks on paper, aquatics can leave ineffaceable impressions on cultures, on memories, and on ones sense of place and identity. Water was a defining feature for African-descended peoples living along seas, rivers, lakes, and estuaries as immersionary traditions enabled many to merge water and land into unified culturescapes. Accounts indicate many were adept swimmers, underwater divers, and canoeists. In Africa, the construction and use of dugout canoes was imbued with spiritual and secular meanings. Canoes were a central means of conveyance, possibly moving more goods than any other method. Men and women preparing to use them for fishing, market voyages, visiting family members and friends, and warfare made offerings to water deities and dugouts, asking for guidance and protection. The Atlantic slave trade created a cultural watershed, channeling traditions to the Americas where slaveholders clustered Africans into ethnic enclaves. Imported Africans constructed cultural beachheads, exercising muscle memories that provided New World waters with echoes of home. Sources suggest that captives used African-informed canoe designs and swimming and canoeing techniques to maintain ethnic traditions while forging new identities in multiethnic communities of belonging. Aquatics enabled unwilling colonists to forge semiautonomous cultural worlds as they traveled more extensively than previously assumed, gaining privacy away from white authority. Parting blue and green waters while swimming and canoeing, many African captives enjoyed their exploited bodies while temporarily escaping the gray monotony of agricultural bondage. Many leveraged their expertise for lives of privileged exploitation. Maritime retentions resulted from converging phenomena. During free time, saltwater (or African-born) captives of the same ethnicity purposefully re-created traditions, while members of diverse groups reimagined and merged customs. Slaveholders forced some to maintain traditions when members of the same and discrete ethnicities constructed and crewed dugouts or formed underwater dive teams. Multiethnic labor forces faced communication obstacles. Still, similar customs, spiritual beliefs, building techniques, and aesthetic valuations seemingly permitted waterscapes and dugouts to possess meanings for all as traditions coalesced. Undercurrents of Power expands traditional interpretations of how we examine the past. The Chesapeake, for instance, is one of the most examined regions of America. Historian Rhys Isaacs broadened our historical understandings, explaining how "Virginians of different ranks experienced their surroundings as they went through them, heading out from home along ways that connected them." Cutting through fields and woods, bondpeople gained subtle knowledge of their "alternative territorial system." Traveling by road, planters experienced the "landscape differently--from a vantage point some three feet higher." They observed fields, slaves, and great houses, encountering white and black people who showed them signs of deference, reaffirming their social status. Isaacs vibrantly illustrated how landscapes shaped human experiences. But what about water? What about the Chesapeake Bay? We would be remiss to ignore how geographic features, like mountains, urban settings, and agricultural fields, as well as the types of crops grown in them, informed human experiences. Still, we only consider a portion of the environment slaves intimately understood, forgetting the thousands of square miles of water that dominated this region, as well as the Caribbean, Latin America, and the rest of North America. Colonization redefined New World landscapes physically and conceptually, treating them as a savage wilderness that needed to be cultivated intocivilized gardens evocative of Europe. Colonists did not culturally conquer water. This allowed captives to impose African meanings upon waters that were once known only to Amerindians, using them to "maintain distance, distinctiveness, and some sense of ownership" over their lives. The term waterscape expresses how freshwater and saltwater systems actively informed group identities while articulating how water and land were interlaced into amphibious culturescapes Details ISBN0812224930 Author Kevin Dawson Short Title Undercurrents of Power Pages 360 Series The Early Modern Americas Language English Year 2021 ISBN-10 0812224930 ISBN-13 9780812224931 Format Paperback Subtitle Aquatic Culture in the African Diaspora Imprint University of Pennsylvania Press Place of Publication Pennsylvania Country of Publication United States Illustrations 29 illus. Publication Date 2021-05-07 UK Release Date 2021-05-07 AU Release Date 2021-05-07 NZ Release Date 2021-05-07 US Release Date 2021-05-07 Edited by Millie Thayer Birth 1927 Affiliation Oxford Internet Institute Position Translator Qualifications MSW, PhD Publisher University of Pennsylvania Press Alternative 9780812249897 DEWEY 305.89607090 Audience Tertiary & Higher Education We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:131532037;

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