I believe that a way to explore the daily life and culture of enslaved people of the Caribbean is through their knowledge and faith. This source of knowledge has roots in West Africa, and shaped by the experience of enslavement and colonisation. There are similarities that can drawn between Caribbean culture and cultures around the Americas as they too were forged by the same history of forced migration, enslavement, and roots in West Africa. The surviving knowledge and faith across the Americas tells me that the people under enslavement continue what they could under oppression and enslavement. This makes medical knowledge and faith of the Caribbean and the Americas important because there was an effort over generations within enslavement to continue their faith and knowledge. It is important to acknowledge and continue that culture.
A key historian that examines African medicine and culture is Susan A. McClure. She argues that plants are a way to examine social and cultural traditions of people. McClure argues that the slave trade carried plants, culture, and religion into Caribbean society from West Africa especially from Mandingo and Hausa cultures. The African influence in the Caribbean includes the culture, specific religious groups and practices, knowledge, lifestyle, and the language/accent. I agree and will explore the medicine culture to understand the daily lives of enslaved people.
The colonial and enslavement conditions impact the development and transmission of culture in everyday life. I argue that the influence of West African culture, traditions, and faith in the Caribbean led to the important development of Obeah in the Caribbean. This was part of the West African medical knowledge as well as continuing a type of faith practiced from home. The connection between healing knowledge and the African diaspora has been researched and shown to be key to the Caribbean and other locations of slavery and colonisation. George Brandon argues plants were vital in the medical and ritual religious traditions of Africa. He shows how this is evident in Afro-American religions in the New World such as Santeria in Cuba. Santeria is a practiced faith in the past and now. Santeria stems from the Yorubas and other neighbouring West African cultures, and Spanish Catholicism . I argue the same for Obeah practices that it was part of the West African diaspora and European cultures interacting to create something new in the Caribbean.
The academic discussion of slave medicine, religion, and culture by looking at supernatural forces, including the practice of Obeah, had only started in the scholar space until the 1990s and 2000s. Jerome S. Handler explores African faith in magic and spirituality to understand Obeah practices in Barbados. James Lorand Matory is another scholar who explores Atlantic world religion. Examining Candomble in Brazil, he argues that Candomble is a product of the culture and economy of the “black Atlantic”. Candomble was part of and the result of the long-distance communication between Africa and the New World. This was part of the academic efforts in the 1990s and 2000s to include African influence and culture in the New World which was not considered beforehand.
Pablo F. Gomez in 2017 explores African ritual practitioners in the Early Modern Period who used their knowledge and experience to create a physical, social, and spiritual foundation in the Caribbean. Gomez argues that the early Black Caribbean communities were active actors and shapers of Caribbean knowledge. Proving that the Atlantic world to be perceived as containing multiple coexisting healing traditions. As European sources would not acknowledge their contribution to medical knowledge and discovering. I argue in support of Gomez by focusing on Black communities as holders of medical knowledge and faith in the British Caribbean. The discussion of Africa’s influence in the New Word can be placed in the foundation of the ‘African diaspora’ which had shaped New World societies.
In my opinion, it is possible to examine the autonomy of African people within the colonial environment of the New World. A way to understand the dynamic and exchange within colonisation and slavery is by adopting a new definition of creolisation. Toby Green introduces this new definition as a two-way process of exchange and communication in culture and language which formed the Atlantic world. This allows us to explore carefully within imperial structures to understand the Atlantic world. It is not only African bodily work on plantations, farms, and households that should be discussed, but also their contribution as explorers, medical expertise, and shaping cultural products in the Caribbean and the Atlantic world ought to be included in this discussion.
Reference list:
Brandon, George, ‘The use of plants in healing in an Afro-Cuban religion, Santeria’, Journal of Black studies (1991) 22, 55-76.
Gomez, Pablo F., The experiential Caribbean: creating knowledge and healing in the Early Modern Atlantic (U.S.A.: The University of North Caroline Press, 2017).
Green, Toby, ‘Beyond an imperial Atlantic: trajectories of Africans from Upper Guinea and West-Central Africa in the early Atlantic world’, Past and Present (2016) no.230, 91-122.
Handler, Jerome S., ‘Slave medicine and obeah in Barbados, circa 1650-1834’, New West Indian Guide (2000) 74, 57-90.
Matory, James Lorand, Black Atlantic religion: tradition, transnationalism, and matriarchy in the Afro-Brazilian Candomble (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2005).
McClure, Susan A., ‘Parallel usage of medicinal plants by Africans and their Caribbean descendants’, Economic Botany (1982) 36.3, 291-301.
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