Introduction: “Me No B’longs to Dem”: Emancipation’s Possibilities and Limits in Antigua
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Published:November 2015
2015. "Introduction: “Me No B’longs to Dem”: Emancipation’s Possibilities and Limits in Antigua", Troubling Freedom: Antigua and the Aftermath of British Emancipation, Natasha Lightfoot
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This chapter presents the central argument of the book: attention to the immediate, everyday acts of survival among emancipated people most clearly illuminates their changing definitions of freedom. It reveals that while their new status as free persons bestowed new opportunities, certain crucial disadvantages originating in slavery remained well after abolition. This chapter highlights the shaping quality of persistent racial ideas among sugar estate owners, missionaries, and other powerful whites, alongside the colony’s increasing economic distress, that determined the failed outcomes of their repeated struggles to broaden freedom’s definition in their lived experiences.
Bibliography
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