When: Tuesday, October 10, 2023, 5:30 PM - 7:30 PMWhere: Room 243, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU and Zoom
Professor Ryan Fontanilla’s (Ohio State University) and Professor Vincent Brown (Harvard University), IHSS Visiting Fellow talk will retell the story of how and why Afro-Jamaican tenants of the drought-prone region of Bluefields attempted to expropriate their landlord of his water in October 1865, using the event as a window into the broader political motivations and settlement strategies through which the first generations of free Afro-Jamaicans contested water-based forms of environmental racism from below.
Paper by Ryan Fontanilla (Ohio State University) The battle for Bluefields, Jamaica: water politics in the Age of Abolition, c. 1860s, discussion led by Professor Vincent Brown
After the abolition of slavery in Jamaica, white proprietors relied upon the enclosure of freshwater resources to disrupt the proliferation and reproduction of Black autonomous communities. Ryan Fontanilla’s talk will retell the story of how and why Afro-Jamaican tenants of the drought-prone region of Bluefields attempted to expropriate their landlord of his water in October 1865, using the event as a window into the broader political motivations and settlement strategies through which the first generations of free Afro-Jamaicans contested water-based forms of environmental racism from below. An oft-unrecognized event on the western front of the Morant Bay War, the battle for Bluefields affords an opportunity for scholars to reimagine the age of abolition as a fight over not only political and economic rights, but also ecology and building sustainable relations with the natural environment. The seminar is open to all (either in person or online).