An Archaeology of Modernity in Colonial Jamaica

Abstract

________________________________________________________________The rise of modernity in Europe resulted in the redefinition of social relations between those in control of the apparatus of the state and economy on the one hand, and those who worked and lived within that apparatus on the other. This shift in the definition of the basic social unit from subject to individual citizen was fraught with tension, and resulted in vast changes in the lives of colonized people throughout the European sphere of control. While the material manifestations of these historical processes were many, this article considers how two phenomena associated with modernity impacted the lives of people enslaved at Marshall's Pen, a Jamaican coffee plantation, in the opening decades of the 19th century. These two considerations included the spread of mass-produced goods mediated through the rise of consumerism visible through archaeologically recovered material culture, and shifting definitions of the relationships between space and social organization reflecting in changing settlement patterns of village life. ________________________________________________________________Resumen: La expansió n de la modernidad en Europa redefinió las relaciones sociales entre quienes controlaban el aparato estatal y la economía y quienes trabajaban y vivían dentro de ese aparato. Este cambio en la definició n de la unidad social básica, de sujeto a ciudadano individual, estuvo plagado de tensió n y produjo vastas transformaciones en las vidas de los pueblos colonizados en la esfera de control europeo. Las manifestaciones materiales de estos procesos histó ricos fueron muchas; este artículo considera có mo dos fenó menos asociados con la modernidad impactaron en las vidas de las personas esclavizadas en Marshall's Pen, una plantació n jamaiquina de café, en las primeras décadas del siglo XIX: la difusió n de bienes producidos en masa, mediada por el consumismo visible en la cultura material arqueoló gica; y las definiciones cambiantes de las

Mission plantations, space, and social control: Jesuits as planters in French Caribbean colonies and frontiers

“…Relating Caribbean plantations to modernity is present among general accounts (e.g. Blackburn, 1997: 332–44; Mintz, 1985, 1996; Watts, 1987: 382–447), as well as studies of British (Delle, 1998: 24–43, 2008, 2009; Higman, 1998, 2005: 1–11; Williams, 1944), French (Stein, 1988: 17–18; Tomich, 2004) and Iberian-American colonies (Schwartz, 2004: 2–8).…”

“…Barry Higman’s research in Jamaica (1986, 1987, 1998: 78–80, 2005) reconstructs ideal models of plantation space to which the actual spatial organization of these sites can be compared, though Higman’s aim is to recover how plantations structured social relations. Also coming from a materialist, Marxist perspective is James Delle (1998, 2002, 2008, 2009), who argues that modernity is composed of various ‘strands’, or ‘precepts’ (Cobb and Loren, 2008), which are reflected in spatial and material remains of Jamaican coffee plantations (Delle, 2008, 2009). While my arguments derive from a more idealist approach, the point here is that ideas about plantation space are recoverable from the written record.…”

“…Elites created panoptic views by organizing space to promote surveillance mechanisms and visible power expressions which caused laborers to internalize and reproduce power in daily life. Evidence of panoptic principles has been detected in diverse settings such as the United States (Andrzejewski, 2008; Paynter and McGuire, 1991) and South America (Romero, 2002), and the panopticon as a surveillance method has been applied as a model for spatial relations between masters and the enslaved on plantations in North America (Epperson, 1990; Orser, 1988: 323–31) and the Caribbean (Clement, 1997; Delle, 1998, 2002, 2008, 2009; Higman, 1986, 1987, 1998; Singleton, 2001: 105–6). It is important to note that the panopticon has been identified in British and Spanish colonial contexts from the late eighteenth century at the earliest, and primarily in the nineteenth century.…”

“…Historical archaeologists working on plantations have demonstrated how elites manipulated plantation space to implement inequality through the strategic positioning of housing, industrial facilities, vegetation, and agricultural fields. These methods enforced discipline and discouraged rebellion among laborers (Armstrong, 1990;Armstrong and Kelly, 2000;Delle, 1998Delle, , 2002Delle, , 2008Delle, , 2009Higman, 1998: 1-4;Mintz, 1985Mintz, , 1996. Such measures were necessary in Caribbean island colonies because the white elite population was vastly outnumbered by enslaved laborers and maroons, and social structures of inequality needed to be enforced and regulated to maintain power (Delle, 2002).…”

Land, Labor, and Things: Surplus in a New West Indian Colony (1763–1807)

“…They also contain houses. In Barbados (Handler & Bergman, 2009), Jamaica (Armstrong, 1992;Armstrong & Kelly, 2000;Delle, 2008), the Bahamas (Wilkie & Farnsworth, 2005), Guadeloupe (Gibson, 2009), and Martinique (Kelly, 2009), the house yard has proven to be an important unit of analysis to ascertain the kinds of goods purchased by enslaved laborers on Sunday street markets through cash they acquired by the sale of their goods.…”