2 Archives: the records of power?
Anthropologist and historian Ann Laura Stoler, has described colonial archives as ‘both transparencies on which power relations were inscribed and intricate technologies of rule in themselves’ (2002, p. 87). What does this mean?
The act of creating records about colonised people was part of the process by which power over them was exercised and maintained. The records that were created, collected, preserved and survived overwhelmingly reflected the interests of those in power. They were often constituted by elite white men in relation to colonial bureaucracy, local government, or business. Piecing together the archival traces of colonised lives is challenging because fewer accounts exist by people on their own terms. Where they might have existed, we could also ask, who would have valued them enough to preserve them?
To explore the relationship between archival and colonial power further let’s consider the example of enslaved people. There are hardly any accounts created by enslaved people. Although we have some examples of ‘slave narratives’ (testimonies by formerly enslaved people) these are exceptional documents because the vast majority of enslaved people did not leave any significant archival trace.
Enslaved people were counted as chattel and appeared in wills and inventories, recorded in estate records alongside animal stock, agricultural implements, and acres of land. Appearing in government mandated ‘slave registers’ and compensation claims. Marisa J. Fuentes argued ‘The objectification of the enslaved allowed authorities to reduce them to valued objects to be bought and sold, used to produce profit and to retain and bequeath wealth… This same objectification led to the violence in and of the archive’ (2016, p. 5). The refusal to acknowledge the humanity of enslaved people was replicated within the silences, omissions, and distortions of the archive. In this way we come to understand that the archive itself is implicated in the reproduction of colonial knowledge and power.
Understanding that the archive is shaped by the power inequalities of race, class, and gender helps us to unpick the politics of historical representation. It forces us to ask critical questions about how we construct our accounts of history and whose perspectives are prioritised. Historians have used different methods to analyse the archives of slavery. This has been described as ‘reading against the grain’ or ‘resistance reading’ – looking for evidence within the source which it was not designed to convey. Despite the mediation of translation and transcription, historians have worked with these archives to try and recover something of the perspectives and activities of enslaved people. The archives of violence and punishment also contain evidence of acts of survival and resistance. Slave court records, runaway advertisements, slave registers and plantation records detail the horrors of enslavement, attempts to undermine the system, and stories of everyday struggles. They are a reminder of the ways that power, resistance, and survival are in dialogue when studying empires.
As historians we can work to try and centre the voices and experiences of enslaved people, but the historical record is asymmetrical. The full spectrum of enslaved people’s subjectivity, their interior lives, hopes, joys and sorrows are mostly unrecoverable. Understanding that loss is part of coming to terms with the historic rupture and brutality that the system inflicted.
Activity 2 Reading against the grain
To practice ‘resistance reading’, you will take a closer look at a source related to the Baptist War of 1831–32. It was produced after slavery ended by the British abolitionists Joseph Sturge and Thomas Harvey. They travelled to the Caribbean to investigate the system of apprenticeship which replaced slavery between 1834 and 1838. They recorded testimony from an apprentice, Susan Mackenzie, who had previously been enslaved on Coventry plantation. She spoke about her experiences, including her punishment following the Baptist War.
- What different forms of resistance does Susan articulate?
- What does Susan’s story tell you about the relationship between power and resistance?
- Why might Susan have wanted to tell her story to the abolitionists?
During the rebellion she was sent for because she was a ‘great Baptist woman’. They tried to make some men swear against here to hand her, but did not succeed; and because she would not say anything against Mr Burchell, three men, with three new cats, were ordered to flog her. They have her about three hundred lashes, and she remained in the workhouse for three months. On the first of August, 1834, the attorney Mr Grant, said she must go into the fields. She says she was not able, and showed him her back; but he said that was nothing, and for her refusal she was sent three times to the workhouse: they then allowed her to cook for the children, which is her present employment.
This woman is an individual of superior intelligence, and bears a high character as a person of amiable and mild disposition, and consistent in her deportment as a professor of religion. She is almost blind from the effects of flogging, the upper part of her back is covered in white patches, where the rete mucosum [skin membrane] has been entirely obliterated by the horrid punishment described above.
Speaking of the condition of the apprentices on Coventry, she said, that, “the people are compelled to do task work in the field, and so much is given them, that they cannot finish it, though they work from sunrise to dusk without intermission. Their breakfasts are cooked for them, and they eat them in the field without sitting down. If there is a patch left, they are compelled to finish it on the Saturday. The Magistrate won’t hear what they have to say. They have no salt fish.”
Record your ideas in the box below.
Discussion
- At an individual level Susan refused to give false testimony against ‘Mr Burchell’. It speaks to community solidarity because the men asked to swear against her chose not to. There are other ways that we can decode acts of survival and resistance – in the face of a system designed to strip away selfhood, Susan practiced her religion and deported herself with dignity. Unbowed by the whipping and confinement she endured under slavery, she denied her labour on a further three occasions as an apprentice.
- Susan’s harrowing story enables us to understand the relationship between power and resistance. It demonstrates how the slave-owners and colonial authorities used both violence and the legal system to coerce enslaved people, but it also tells us something about the ways that the enslaved subverted that control. Whilst those in positions of power attempted to dominate, individuals exercised a limited degree of agency in meeting those demands, however, it could come at a great cost.
- Susan risked speaking out as she recognised that her story had the power to effect change. Conditions under apprenticeship were exploitative and people had limited recourse to the law as magistrates would not listen to complaints. In cooperating with Sturge and Harvey, Susan might have hoped that people in Britain would be able to understand how bad the situation was in Jamaica and would press for apprenticeship to be abolished. Perhaps she wanted to be remembered? Telling her story to the two men and having them commit it to print ensured that even now we can read Susan’s words and think about her experiences.