This article will show the discussion by scholars about Obeah practices as a focus point of Caribbean culture and history. This is important to recognise where the discussion started, how it has developed, and how I will be adding to understanding of Obeah in the history of the Caribbean. The discussion of Obeah practices started from the 1990s. Obeah practices was mentioned in a small section, by Barbara Bush, as part of the enslaved experience. In the 2000s Jerome Handler, who solely focused on Obeah practices, addressed the medical beliefs and practices in Barbados. He argued that you cannot understand the practice unless African theory on magic and practices was examined. Obeah was practiced out of necessity of self-help in their own communities. Handler shows there was a strong connection between illness and supernatural forces. Obeah practitioners were seen as doctors by the enslaved population and the term ‘Obeah’ was more enforced by the white population to stress certain qualities of the practice. The difficulty in understanding Obeah is by it’s nature of the practice having different definitions according to who you are speaking to. It can be referred to as someone who can diagnose and treat with herbal medicines as well as known to be witchcraft.
In 2011, Randy M. Browne focused on a murder of an enslaved woman in Berbice in 1821, and it was rumoured that she had died during an obeah ritual. This case shows, according to Browne, that obeah practices were still going on regardless of the illegal status of the practice. Keith Sandiford also in 2011 added to the Obeah discussion, examining literature and the imaginary on the Caribbean which he argues is where the values and symbols of society become apparent. According to Sandiford, literature and the cultural imaginary embodies the interconnection zone of cultures in the Caribbean; this includes Europe, Indigenous, and African cultures. He argues that the experience of the Caribbean had reworked and moulded the Atlantic imaginary in literature and the narrative of Obeah practices.
Sasha Turner Bryson in 2013 adds to the discussion, that Obeah men and women were a convenient figure in society to blame sudden deaths, poison, and fraud. Obeah men and women, however, served as a resolution to problems for enslaved people who had no other alternative to turn to. This analysis paints enslaved people as ‘human’ who had personal, family, and household needs, and the struggle of slavery included in this perspective. Bryson adds that the white population of the Caribbean creating a negative narrative of Obeah’s, and this did not reflect the position Obeah practitioners had within the enslaved community. She argues that the Jamaican revolt in 1760 led to anti-Obeah laws being introduced. This was an attempt to control the enslaved population by making poison and fraud as part of Obeah practices and image, when it was a attempt to dampen the revolt and take the power away from Obeah practitioners.
Diana Paton focuses on the multiple meanings of obeah, and the meaning behind the creation of this term. Paton argues that the one of the many definitions of ‘obeah’ was meant to mark status in the Caribbean about power, race, and citizenship. The representation of obeah includes cultural work to construct it and turning it into a legal category. J. Alexandra McGhee in 2015 analyses obeah as a cultural contaminant in the British imagination. He focuses on a British play which follows the rebel Jack. McGhee argues that England responded to Obeah from a distance, and with little experience and understanding of the practice. He argues that Obeah became a cultural force rather than a medical force, and that it threatened colonial order as it influenced the enslaved population. I disagree with the idea that obeah was less of a medical force than a cultural force, perhaps when looking at England. Jeffrey Cottrell examines texts produced between 1788 and 1820 to understand colonial authors who included the threat of Obeah. Cottrell argues that this literature added to the negative legacy of enslaved people and Obeah practices, as well as the dangerous potential of a revolution. In 2020 Vincent Brown focuses on the Tacky’s revolt which was a slave revolt in Jamaica in 1760. Brown includes the role Obeah men and women played in this revolt which was organising war, providing inspiration, and oaths. This is the most recent contribution to the discussion of Obeah in the British Caribbean.
Reference list:
Brown, Vincent, Tacky’s revolt: the story of an Atlantic slave war (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2020).
Browne, Randy M., ‘The “Bad Business” of Obeah: power, authority, and the politics of slave culture in the British Caribbean’, The William and Mary Quarterly (2011) 68.3, 451-480.
Bryson, Sasha Turner, ‘The art of power: poison and obeah accusations and the struggle for dominance and survival in Jamaica’s slave society’, Caribbean studies (2013) 41.2, 61-90.
Bush, Barbara, Slave women in Caribbean society, 1650-1838 (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990).
Cottrell, Jeffrey, ‘At the end of the trade: obeah and black women in the colonial imaginary’, Atlantic studies (2015) 12.2, 200-218.
Handler, J.S., and Bilby, K. M., ‘Notes and documents – on the early use and origin of the term ‘Obeah’ in Barbados and the Anglophone Caribbean’, Slavery and Abolition (2001) 22.2, 87-100.
Handler, Jerome S., ‘Slave medicine and obeah in Barbados, circa 1650-1834’, New West Indian Guide (2000) 74, 57-90.
Handler, Jerome S., and Bilby, Kenneth M., Enacting power: The criminalisation of obeah in the Anglophone Caribbean 1760-2011 (Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2012).
Hartman, Saidiya V., Scenes of subjection: terror, slavery and self-making in 19th century America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
McGhee, J. Alexandra, ‘Fever dreams: obeah, tropical disease, and cultural contamination in colonial Jamaica and the metropole’, Atlantic studies (2015) 12.2, 179-199.
Paton, Diana, The cultural politics of Obeah: religion, colonialism and modernity in the Caribbean world (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
Sandiford, Keith, Theorizing a colonial Caribbean-Atlantic imaginary: Sugar and obeah (Oxon: Routledge, 2011).
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