DOCSLIB.ORG

ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: CITY of GRACE: POWER

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: CITY of GRACE: POWER ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: CITY OF GRACE: POWER, PERFORMANCE, AND BODIES IN COLONIAL SOUTH CAROLINA Matthew Thomas Shifflett, Doctor of Philosophy, 2014 Dissertation directed by: Professor Heather S. Nathans School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies Colonial Charles Town, South Carolina, was widely reputed to be one of the most refined and genteel cities in the early British Empire. As its planters and merchants grew rich from the overseas rice trade, they sought to embody their new elite status by learning the courtly styles of European social dancing, using dances such as the minuet to cultivate a sense of physical “grace.” This sense of grace allowed them to construct cosmopolitan identities and differentiate a social order that consolidated their power over the colony. Meanwhile, other social factions, such as the colony’s large slave majority and the emerging class of middling tradesmen, sought their own share in controlling the vocabulary through which bodies might mean. “City of Grace: Power, Performance, and Bodies in Colonial South Carolina” puts colonial Charles Town’s “bodies” into conversation in order to highlight how bodily behaviors such as dancing, posture, and comportment could organize power relations in an eighteenth-century British colony. This dissertation considers in turn the part that four groups played in the conflict over the values assigned to Charles Town’s bodies: the wealthy elites who sought to use “grace” as a means to proclaim and ensure their status, the dancing masters who sought to capitalize on the elites’ need for training, the African slaves whose syncretized performances of their own ethnically-specific dances troubled elite ideals of a graceful “white” body, and the emerging cohort of middling tradespeople and evangelical believers who critiqued the pretensions of elite manners. By using sources such as dancing manuals, paintings, and private letters, I put the colonial body back “on its feet,” in order to understand the kinesthetic qualities of movement itself as a site for creating and transmitting meaning. Within this framework, I suggest that genteel grace was a strategy by which eighteenth-century elites sought to perform class status without betraying the artificiality of the performance. CITY OF GRACE: POWER, PERFORMANCE, AND BODIES IN COLONIAL SOUTH CAROLINA by Matthew Thomas Shifflett Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2014 Advisory Committee: Professor Heather S. Nathans, Chair Professor Richard J. Bell Professor Gay Gibson Cima Professor Clare A. Lyons Professor Laura J. Rosenthal © Copyright by Matthew Thomas Shifflett 2014 This dissertation is dedicated to the memory of Dr. James W. Parker and Dr. Linda Livingstone Acknowledgements My greatest blessing in life has been the magnanimity of my teachers, and it is to them that I owe my every success. Some have been teachers in an institutional setting, while many have not. All of them made a difference in my life through their one-on-one engagement with a sometimes awkward, often sensitive, and always odd young man. I have driven myself over the years to live up to their investment, even though I know that to do so is both impossible and unnecessary. They have been my champions without thought of reward. My debt to them is inexhaustible. I thank the teachers and colleagues who have shepherded me through my institutional education. In particular, I thank Aaron Anderson, Noreen Barnes, Laura Browder, the late Carol Cuneo, Sandra Harris, Terry Oggel, Janet Rodgers, and Catherine Schuler for their faith in me over the years, even when I did my best to frustrate them. My fellow students have always been a considerable source of joy and inspiration for me, and I want to acknowledge two of them in particular. Jessica Krenek and Kate Spanos have gotten me over this mountain with their cheer, their patience, and their encouragement. They are my dear hearts. I also thank my committee, whose engagement with my work has accounted for the highest pleasures of this process. My committee was a “dream team” who were not only able to speak to my research from their own scholarship, but who offered a harmony of mentorship styles that helped me overcome this project’s obstacles. In particular, I am grateful to Heather Nathans, who has guided my work with patience, energy, and compassion. I cannot imagine achieving even half of what I have achieved in the last six years were it not for her mentorship. I am grateful to the American Society for Theatre Research, both for their munificence in the form of a travel grant and for being my intellectual home during this project. I have not only been fortunate enough to share my work in ASTR’s working sessions several times throughout this process, but I have also benefitted from the attention of several of the warm and kind scholars that make attending an ASTR conference such a delight. In particular, I thank Odai Johnson, Julia Walker, and Gary Jay Williams for their encouragement and graciousness over the years. I thank Gary Jay Williams also for sharing with me portions of his book-in-progress that address the theatre in colonial South Carolina. His work has been of great help to me. I have dedicated this work to the memory of two individuals who had a deep and incalculable effect on me as a young man. They were both theatre history teachers, although neither of them ever taught me in any formal capacity. But they both devoted many afternoons to conversation with me over the course of my young adulthood, Linda over Earl Grey tea in her glad, sunny living room and Jim in the gardens of his eighteenth-century farmhouse in rural Virginia. They each in their way taught me to have courage in my oddity and to follow obscure paths with the faith that I would find rare treasures. I think of them often and I wish they had lived to read this work. Lastly, I thank the network of friends and family that keep my life worth putting down a book for. I thank my parents and my siblings for their humor and energy. I thank my best friends, Lonnie Jones, Katy Hilton, and Lesslie Dodge Crane, for drawing me into trouble while keeping me out of danger. And I thank my wife Sarah Yount for being my companion and co-conspirator in all manner of adventures. Table of Contents List of Figures. ................................................................................................................. vi Introduction:………………………………………………………......………. ......................... 1 Chapter 1: The “Genteel Science”: Social Dancing and “Grace" ..................................... 26 Chapter 2: “The Manners-Making Crew”: The Plight of Dancing Masters in Eighteenth- Century Charles Town………………………………………………………. ..... 80 Chapter 3: “Pushing and Dancing”: Dance and Martial Arts in the Construction of the “African” Body ................................................................................................... 123 Chapter 4: A New Grace: The Rise of the Benevolent Class ......................................... 175 Epilogue: Gabriel Transformed…………………………………………………. ......... 225 Appendix: The Dancing Master, A Satyr……………………………………………….232 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 239 List of Figures FIGURE A: Ashley Hall Ruins……………………………………………………………1 FIGURE B: Charles Fraser Painting………………………………………………………2 FIGURE C: Drayton Hall…………………………….………………………………….27 FIGURE D: Drayton Hall, Stair Hall……………………………………………………28 FIGURE E: Drayton Hall Ballroom…………………………………………………….28 FIGURE F: Exact Prospect of Charles Town, Bishop Roberts…………………………37 FIGURE G: Feuillet’s notation system…………………………………………………44 FIGURE H: Kellom Tomlinson’s Art of Dancing………………………………………45 FIGURES I-M: Bickham illustrations of minuet……………………………………….52 FIGURE N: Taking hands (Bickham illustration)………………………………………53 FIGURE O: Panoramic View of London, 1751…………………………………………68 FIGURE P: Peter Manigault, by Allen Ramsay……………...………………………….76 FIGURE Q: Elizabeth Manigault, by Jeremiah Theus…………………………………..77 FIGURE R: Pink house…………………………………………………………………..37 FIGURE S: The Old Plantation………………………………………………………...149 FIGURE T: William Byrd III, by Charles Bridges……………………………………..157 FIGURE U: Liberty Displaying the Arts and Sciences…………………………………229 1 Introduction FIGURE A: The Ruins of Ashley Hall, photo by Gazie Nagle. All that is left now of Ashley Hall are the ruins of a semicircular set of rust- colored sandstone steps. Those steps once led to a brick Georgian mansion, one of the finest in South Carolina, replete with an alley of live oak trees leading to the door. Now Spanish moss hangs drowsily off the remaining oaks, and willowy tufts of Pampas grass have overtaken the lane. The ruins stand shaded by a canopy of cypress and tupelo, grown up from the blackwater swamp that lies just yards away. One can imagine the graceful façade that once rose behind these steps, with a strictly symmetrical arrangement 2 of multi-pane windows balanced according to classical proportions. But the building itself is gone, burned to the ground at the end of the Civil War. An 1803 painting by Charles Fraser provides little help; the building is almost completely obscured by trees. Nothing remains of the original structure—no material, pictorial, or anecdotal clues to the architectural face that greeted visitors to the home of four generations of the
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Portuguese Language in Angola: Luso-Creoles' Missing Link? John M
    Portuguese language in Angola: luso-creoles' missing link? John M. Lipski {presented at annual meeting of the AATSP, San Diego, August 9, 1995} 0. Introduction Portuguese explorers first reached the Congo Basin in the late 15th century, beginning a linguistic and cultural presence that in some regions was to last for 500 years. In other areas of Africa, Portuguese-based creoles rapidly developed, while for several centuries pidginized Portuguese was a major lingua franca for the Atlantic slave trade, and has been implicated in the formation of many Afro- American creoles. The original Portuguese presence in southwestern Africa was confined to limited missionary activity, and to slave trading in coastal depots, but in the late 19th century, Portugal reentered the Congo-Angola region as a colonial power, committed to establishing permanent European settlements in Africa, and to Europeanizing the native African population. In the intervening centuries, Angola and the Portuguese Congo were the source of thousands of slaves sent to the Americas, whose language and culture profoundly influenced Latin American varieties of Portuguese and Spanish. Despite the key position of the Congo-Angola region for Ibero-American linguistic development, little is known of the continuing use of the Portuguese language by Africans in Congo-Angola during most of the five centuries in question. Only in recent years has some attention been directed to the Portuguese language spoken non-natively but extensively in Angola and Mozambique (Gonçalves 1983). In Angola, the urban second-language varieties of Portuguese, especially as spoken in the squatter communities of Luanda, have been referred to as Musseque Portuguese, a name derived from the KiMbundu term used to designate the shantytowns themselves.
    [Show full text]
  • Documenting the University of Pennsylvania's Connection to Slavery
    Documenting the University of Pennsylvania’s Connection to Slavery Clay Scott Graubard The University of Pennsylvania, Class of 2019 April 19, 2018 © 2018 CLAY SCOTT GRAUBARD ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DOCUMENTING PENN’S CONNECTION TO SLAVERY 1 Table of Contents INTRODUCTION 2 OVERVIEW 3 LABOR AND CONSTRUCTION 4 PRIMER ON THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE COLLEGE AND ACADEMY OF PHILADELPHIA 5 EBENEZER KINNERSLEY (1711 – 1778) 7 ROBERT SMITH (1722 – 1777) 9 THOMAS LEECH (1685 – 1762) 11 BENJAMIN LOXLEY (1720 – 1801) 13 JOHN COATS (FL. 1719) 13 OTHERS 13 LABOR AND CONSTRUCTION CONCLUSION 15 FINANCIAL ASPECTS 17 WEST INDIES FUNDRAISING 18 SOUTH CAROLINA FUNDRAISING 25 TRUSTEES OF THE COLLEGE AND ACADEMY OF PHILADELPHIA 31 WILLIAM ALLEN (1704 – 1780) AND JOSEPH TURNER (1701 – 1783): FOUNDERS AND TRUSTEES 31 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1706 – 1790): FOUNDER, PRESIDENT, AND TRUSTEE 32 EDWARD SHIPPEN (1729 – 1806): TREASURER OF THE TRUSTEES AND TRUSTEE 33 BENJAMIN CHEW SR. (1722 – 1810): TRUSTEE 34 WILLIAM SHIPPEN (1712 – 1801): FOUNDER AND TRUSTEE 35 JAMES TILGHMAN (1716 – 1793): TRUSTEE 35 NOTE REGARDING THE TRUSTEES 36 FINANCIAL ASPECTS CONCLUSION 37 CONCLUSION 39 THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA’S CONNECTION TO SLAVERY 40 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 42 BIBLIOGRAPHY 43 DOCUMENTING PENN’S CONNECTION TO SLAVERY 2 INTRODUCTION DOCUMENTING PENN’S CONNECTION TO SLAVERY 3 Overview The goal of this paper is to present the facts regarding the University of Pennsylvania’s (then the College and Academy of Philadelphia) significant connections to slavery and the slave trade. The first section of the paper will cover the construction and operation of the College and Academy in the early years. As slavery was integral to the economy of British North America, to fully understand the University’s connection to slavery the second section will cover the financial aspects of the College and Academy, its Trustees, and its fundraising.
    [Show full text]
  • Africa Notes
    Number 137 June 1992 CSISAFRICA NOTES A publication of the Center for Strategic and International Studies , Washington, D.C. Angola in Transition: The Cabinda Factor by Shawn McCormick In accordance with the Portuguese-mediated agreement signed by leaders of the governing Movimento Popular de Libertac;:ao de Angola (MPLA) .and the Uniao Nacional para a Independencia Total de Angola (UNIT A) in May 1991, the 16-year civil war that erupted in Angola as the country achieved independent statehood in 1975 has ended. Efforts to implement the second priority mandated in the agreement-national elections by late 1992-are being assisted by a range of international actors, including the United Nations, the United States, Russia, and Portugal. More than 12 parties are likely to participate in the elections (scheduled for September 29 and 30, 1992). The process of achieving a third key element of the agreement-demobilization of three-fourths of the two armies and integration of the remaining soldiers into a 50,000-strong national force-seems unlikely to conclude before elections are held. Although media attention focuses on developments and major players in the capital city of Luanda, where UNIT A has officially established a presence, analysts of the Angolan scene are according new attention to tiny Cabinda province (where an increasingly active separatist movement is escalating its pursuit of independence from Luanda) as "possibly Angola's last and most important battlefield." The significance of Cabinda-a 2,807-square-mile enclave along the Atlantic Ocean separated from Angola's other 17 contiguous provinces by a 25-mile strip of Zaire-lies in the fact that current offshore oil production, including that from the Takula and Malanga fields, totals more than 310,000 barrels per day (bpd).
    [Show full text]
  • Politics, Commerce, and Colonization in Angola at the Turn of the Eighteenth Century
    Politics, Commerce, and Colonization in Angola at the Turn of the Eighteenth Century John Whitney Harvey Dissertação em História Moderna e dos Descobrimentos Orientador: Professor Doutor Pedro Cardim Setembro, 2012 Dissertação apresentada para cumprimento dos requisitos necessários à obtenção do grau de Mestre em História Moderna e dos Descobrimentos realizada sob a orientação científica do Professor Doutor Pedro Cardim e a coorientação científica do Professor Doutor Diogo Ramada Curto. I dedicate this dissertation to my father, Charles A. Harvey Jr. (1949-2009), whose wisdom, hard work, and dedication I strive to emulate. The last thing he knew about me was that I was going to study at FCSH, and I hope that I have made him proud. Acknowledgements There are so many people that were instrumental to the production of this dissertation that it would be impossible to include everyone in this space. I want to take the opportunity to thank everyone that supported me emotionally and academically throughout this year. Know that I know who you are, I appreciate everything done for me, and hope to return the support in the future. I would also like to thank the Center for Overseas History for the resources and opportunities afforded to me, as well as all of my professors and classmates that truly enriched my academic career throughout the last two years. There are some people whom without, this would not have been possible. The kindness, friendship, and support shown by Nuno and Luisa throughout this process I will never forget, and I am incredibly grateful and indebted to you both.
    [Show full text]
  • Philadelphia and the Southern Elite: Class, Kinship, and Culture in Antebellum America
    PHILADELPHIA AND THE SOUTHERN ELITE: CLASS, KINSHIP, AND CULTURE IN ANTEBELLUM AMERICA BY DANIEL KILBRIDE A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 1997 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In seeing this dissertation to completion I have accumulated a host of debts and obligation it is now my privilege to acknowledge. In Philadelphia I must thank the staff of the American Philosophical Society library for patiently walking out box after box of Society archives and miscellaneous manuscripts. In particular I must thank Beth Carroll- Horrocks and Rita Dockery in the manuscript room. Roy Goodman in the Library’s reference room provided invaluable assistance in tracking down secondary material and biographical information. Roy is also a matchless authority on college football nicknames. From the Society’s historian, Whitfield Bell, Jr., I received encouragement, suggestions, and great leads. At the Library Company of Philadelphia, Jim Green and Phil Lapansky deserve special thanks for the suggestions and support. Most of the research for this study took place in southern archives where the region’s traditions of hospitality still live on. The staff of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History provided cheerful assistance in my first stages of manuscript research. The staffs of the Filson Club Historical Library in Louisville and the Special Collections room at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond were also accommodating. Special thanks go out to the men and women at the three repositories at which the bulk of my research was conducted: the Special Collections Library at Duke University, the Southern Historical Collection of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the Virginia Historical Society.
    [Show full text]
  • Robert Douglass Russell, Jr
    Robert Douglass Russell, Jr. Curriculum vitae Department of Art History 67 Warren St. College of Charleston Charleston, S.C. 29403 66 George Street 843/469-8441 Charleston, South Carolina 29424 843/953-6352 [email protected] Education Ph.D., Art History, Princeton University, 1988 MFA, Art History, Princeton University, 1984 BA, Art, Southern Illinois University, 1981 Employment 1994-present: Addlestone Professor, Department of Art History, College of Charleston. (assistant professor:1994-7; associate professor: 1997-2006; professor: 2006), Co-director, Program in Historic Preservation and Community Planning: 1998-2002; Director: 2002-present. Acting Co-Director, Clemson/College of Charleston Joint Graduate Program in Historic Preservation: 2006-7; Co-Director: 2007-present. 1989-1994: Assistant Professor of Art History, University of Michigan-Dearborn. 1986-1989: Assistant Professor of Art History, Rhodes College, Memphis, Tennessee. Publications Books William Strickland and the Creation of an American Architecture, submitted. Cornerstones of Justice: the County Courthouses of South Carolina, submitted to University of South Carolina Press. Memphis. An Architectural Guide (with E.J. Johnson), Knoxville, TN (University of Tennessee Press), 1990. Articles & Chapters “The Planning and Failure of Cairo, Illinois, 1838-1840.” Journal of Illinois History, 13, 3, Autumn 2010, 189-210. ‘Gabriel Manigault,’ entry for Grove Encyclopedia of Art, 2009. ‘Beale Street, Memphis,’ for Tourist Nation: A Compendium of American Destinations Forty Places That Define the Trade, J. Mark Souther and Nicholas Dagen Bloom, Editors, in press. “Authenticity, Abstraction and the Abolition of Time: Three Preservation Charters in the 20th Century,” in The Venice Charter Revisited. Modernism, Conservation and Tradition in the 21st Century, Cambridge Scholars Publishing: Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 2008, 99-106.
    [Show full text]
  • An African Basketry of Heterogeneous Variables Kongo-Kikongo-Kisankasa
    ISSN 2394-9694 International Journal of Novel Research in Humanity and Social Sciences Vol. 8, Issue 2, pp: (2-31), Month: March - April 2021, Available at: www.noveltyjournals.com An African Basketry of Heterogeneous Variables Kongo-Kikongo-Kisankasa Rojukurthi Sudhakar Rao (M.Phil Degree Student-Researcher, Centre for African Studies, University of Mumbai, Maharashtra Rajya, India) e-mail:[email protected] Abstract: In terms of scientific systems approach to the knowledge of human origins, human organizations, human histories, human kingdoms, human languages, human populations and above all the human genes, unquestionable scientific evidence with human dignity flabbergasted the European strong world of slave-masters and colonialist- policy-rulers. This deduces that the early Europeans knew nothing scientific about the mankind beforehand unleashing their one-up-man-ship over Africa and the Africans except that they were the white skinned flocks and so, not the kith and kin of the Africans in black skin living in what they called the „Dark Continent‟! Of course, in later times, the same masters and rulers committed to not repeating their colonialist racial geo-political injustices. The whites were domineering and weaponized to the hilt on their own mentality, for their own interests and by their own logic opposing the geopolitically distant African blacks inhabiting the natural resources enriched frontiers. Those „twists and twitches‟ in time-line led to the black‟s slavery and white‟s slave-trade with meddling Christian Adventist Missionaries, colonialists, religious conversionists, Anglican Universities‟ Missions , inter- sexual-births, the associative asomi , the dissociative asomi and the non-asomi divisions within African natives in concomitance.
    [Show full text]
  • 0436 Peter Manigault Collection
    Peter Manigault collection, 1745- ca. 1950 SCHS 436.00 Description: 18.75 linear ft. Scope and Content: This collection chiefly consists of papers of the Manigault family and the Pringle family, as well as research material relating to these South Carolina families compiled by Richard N. Cote. A small portion of the collection represents the related families of Frost, Alston, Hayne, Mitchell, and Reid. The research material includes the Edward J. Pringle Collection (USC, Berkeley) on microfilm; photocopied material from the Alston-Pringle-Frost Papers at the South Carolina Historical Society; and Cote's research on the Miles Brewton House. Some of this collection was used as source material or produced as research for Cote's book "Mary's World" (published 2000) about the family of Mary and William Bull Pringle. Papers of the Manigault family include correspondence of Ann Mazyck Manigault (1821-1881), Arthur Middleton Manigault (1824-1886), Arthur Middleton Manigault (1851-1924), Charlotte Drayton Manigault (1781-1855), Joseph Manigault (1763-1843), Ann Manigault Taylor (1803-1864), and Thomas House Taylor (1799- 1867). There are also estate records, genealogical materials, journals, financial records, family bibles, plantation and slave records, numerous family photographs, a Richfield (Plantation) store account book (1882-1890) kept by Arthur M. Manigault (1851-1924), and legal and business documents. A plantation record book for White Oak Plantation and Ogilvie's Island lists the names of slaves and their children. Papers of Arthur Middleton Manigault (1824-1886) include military memoirs detailing his service in the Palmetto Regiment during the Mexican War (1846-1848), and in the 10th South Carolina Infantry Regiment during the War Between the States.
    [Show full text]
  • A Season in Town: Plantation Women and the Urban South, 1790-1877
    Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 8-23-2011 12:00 AM A Season in Town: Plantation Women and the Urban South, 1790-1877 Marise Bachand University of Western Ontario Supervisor Margaret M.R. Kellow The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in History A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Doctor of Philosophy © Marise Bachand 2011 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the Women's History Commons Recommended Citation Bachand, Marise, "A Season in Town: Plantation Women and the Urban South, 1790-1877" (2011). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 249. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/249 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A SEASON IN TOWN: PLANTATION WOMEN AND THE URBAN SOUTH, 1790-1877 Spine title: A Season in Town: Plantation Women and the Urban South Thesis format: Monograph by Marise Bachand Graduate Program in History A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment Of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies The University of Western Ontario London, Ontario, Canada © Marise Bachand 2011 THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies CERTIFICATE OF EXAMINATION Supervisor Examiners ____________________ ____________________ Dr. Margaret M.R. Kellow Dr. Charlene Boyer Lewis ____________________ Dr. Monda Halpern ____________________ Dr. Robert MacDougall ____________________ Dr.
    [Show full text]
  • Mbele a Lulendo
    ø Mbele a lulendo: a study of the provenance and context of the swords found at Kindoki cemetery, Mbanza Nsundi, Bas-Congo Master dissertation by Amanda Sengeløv Key words: power symbol, iron, bakongo, burial rites During the summer excavations carried out by the Kongoking project in the lower-Congo area, five swords where found in the tombs at the Kindoki cemetery. The study of these swords aims to understand the meaning of the deposition of these elite objects in a grave context and trace their provenance. The results of the analysis of these case-studies suggested sixteenth century European hilt types unified with indigenous produced blades. Swords were perceived as power symbols because of the embedded local mentality towards iron, which had a prominent role in the foundation myth of the kingdom. Also the form of the imported sixteenth century swords recalled these local ideas of religion and ideology. The swords had two different meanings; mainly they were used as investiture and where conceived as status symbols, only occasionally they were used as true mbele a lulendo. Mbele a lulendo-swords had a metaphysical connotation and were used during several rites, like executions. Some scholars presume that they used two kinds of swords for these different purposes; the European swords only as status symbols and the native swords as mbele a lulendo. I argue in this dissortation that the European swords where a status symbol as well as true mbele a lulendo. There is not a difference in meaning, but rather a difference in chronology. The European swords were gradually replaced by indigenous fabricated swords, which were inspired by the sixteenth century European examples.
    [Show full text]
  • Trade and the Merchant Community of the Loango Coast in The
    Trade and the Merchant Community of the Loango Coast in the Eighteenth Century Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Hull by Stacey Jean Muriel Sommerdyk Honors BA (University of Western Ontario) MA (York University) May 2012 ii Synopsis This thesis explores the political, economic and cultural transformation of the Loango Coast during the era of the transatlantic slave trade from the point of contact with Europeans in the sixteenth century until the end of the eighteenth century, with particular focus on the eighteenth century. While a number of previous studies of the West Central African slave trade have focused principally on the role of the Portuguese on the Angola Coast, this thesis makes a new contribution by evaluating the balance of power between Dutch and Loango Coast merchant communities. In doing so, this thesis concludes that well into the eighteenth century, local African religious and political traditions remained relatively unchanged on the Loango Coast, especially in comparison to their southern neighbours in Angola. Drawing upon detailed records compiled by the Middelburgse Commercie Compangie (MCC), the thesis builds upon an original database which accounts for approximately 10,000 slaves sold by 640 identified African merchants to the Dutch Middelburg Company over the course of 5,000 transactions. Expanding upon the work of Phyllis Martin and other scholars, this thesis highlights a distinction between the Loango and the Angola coasts based on models of engagement with European traders; furthermore, it draws attention to the absence of European credit data in the MCC slave purchasing balance sheets; and, finally, it explores the difficulties involved in procuring slaves via long distance trade.
    [Show full text]
  • Art in Province Proves Culture Unusual in Newly Settled Area
    S. c -; -t.ta Johnson reciVacT latingtinor is no available evidence to show tl are of flowering trees in their nat of them. The late Rev. Dr. Robert whether she was spinster, wife or ural colors, and two of these are fur Art in Province Proves Culture Wilson, in an article published in the widow. Her signatures to her por ther adorned by a butterfly each; 3 "Year Book©1 of the city of Charles traits furnish the correct spelling of flowering trees have twining plants ton for 1899 and republished in his <?rowin» through them, and one of "Half Forgotten By-Ways of the Old her name. Unusual in Newly Settled Area; In the preface to "The Natural His there is further embel©UV.r*:! by i South" (Columbia. 1028). says that he butterfly; one flowering plam was had identified 15 of her portrait©. tory of Carolina, Florida and the Ba The earliest of her portrait found hama Islands: Containing the Figures Many Early Paintings Yet Extant by Doctor Wilson were thr^e said to of Birds. Beasts, Fishes. Serpents, In painted alone, while 5 appear with be of Mrs, William Wragg, Mrs. Sam sects and Plants," Mark Catesby, its butterflies and 2 with other insects. uel Wragg and a Mrs. Wragg whose author, says: , Of the 20 paintings reproduced m husband©s name he did not discover, "I set out again from England, in the appendix, one is of a bird and Some First Families,*© Notably Huguenots, Brought all dated 1708. These nortraits were the year 1722, directly for Carolina; an insect; 5 are of birds with flower paint ?d before the Wragg brothers which Country, tho© inhabited by Eng ing plants; 4 are of flowering plants Portraits With Them Artists in Charles Town by were married.
    [Show full text]