This course covers works published in the years between 1660 to 1815, directly under the banner of British literature. Assuming you were born on a different planet, this extended 18^th century period is a big deal because it changed what would be the modern world forever.

During this time many major world events occurred. This is the period of modern history where things get a little funky. The strongest of the white nations collectively figured that the fight to be the most “powerful” of them all constitutes of the division and distribution of all the colored, conquered main lands.

A couple novels, and stories will be highlighted that help the reader gain a little more insight into the time period. Appropriately titled Restoration through Revolution. Starting at the beginning of the era, Aphra Behn’s Oronooko was published in 1688. This short prose, written by a white, British woman, utters the fictional story of an African prince who is tricked and sold into slavery by British Colonists in Surinam. Oddly enough, the story is written as a first person account. The importance of this story not only lies within its words but also within the fact that the author had done something new of the time. Not only writing in the voice of the subaltern but also being one of the first white female British authors.

There was the published autobiography of The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano in 1789. Unlike the previous novel, this one was an account of one’s time in the slave trade as a slave. This novel shares an almost emotional sympathy towards the colonizer figure. Like Oronooko the narrative shows the slaves with relationships that lends towards more than just other enslaved or Negro occupants. They show a connection to the whites or captors with adoption of their ideologies in many different ways.

These are the few the few “black” voices covered during this time period. Many and most texts are centered on the situations of the subaltern but not necessarily ever voiced from the happenings of the colonized themselves. There are many pieces of literature from this time period. The diversity lies mainly in the language, French, English, and Spaniard Spanish. It wont show much a difference in color of the writer but there will be cultural difference.

Behn, Aphra. Canning, 1688.

Equiano, Olaudah, and Vincent Carretta. Point Par Point, 2008.

Over the span of this course we have covered texts that have been presented from the perspective of the colonized (slave) or the non-colonized (colonizer/non-slave) point of view and the different persons in-between the two opposite spectrum. Major texts and readings have included Aphra Behn’s Daniel Defoe’s Captain Singleton, and Phillis Wheatley’s The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano. Amongst this collective there has been a personal narrative, a fictional slave narrative, and the tales of an “ex-slave” captain at sea.

These texts carry many similarities between them. As one may begin to understand, there can be but so many reasons as to why texts published 40 to 80 years apart share a sort of resemblance. This resemblance, feeling of familiarity of sorts, lies in the truths (or narrative) of the colonized and the enslaved. The experiences of voyage from land to land, the impact on the governing of the world between whites and non-whites, the narrative of the lack of voice of the enslaved are reiterated throughout these novels.

This first artifact seems somewhat symbolic in this short comparison of life to “art” work.

It is a digital scan from the New Netherland Council Curaçao records of a Bill of lading for 20 healthy men-slaves or Negroes, shipped from Curaçao to New Netherland in the ship Eyckenboom. In modern times today, a bill of lading works as a receipt of freight services, a contract between a freight carrier and shipper and a document of title. A bill of lading is a required document to move freight. What you can now understand that this above document shows that the freight were live slave and/or Negro men. Just like canned foods or any other common source goods, this specific group of men were “acquired” from the Caribbean (Curaçao) and sold to New Netherland. Reminiscent to Captain Bob Singleton’s travels in Captain Singleton, Bob headed to the Canary Islands in the West Indies (also known as the Caribbean). As the story formulates, Singleton ends up on the island of Tobago. Tobago and Curaçao are actually quite close on the map.

This immediately stands out because Defoe’s tale may hail from fiction but the significant histories are still embedded in there. It is not believed that such accuracies to facts are purposely done by the writer in regards to respect to history and literature, rather it seems that the knowledge is so widely learnt of certain aspects of colonization, more so the slave trade. It is common knowledge of the Atlantic Slave trade and the conditions in which captives existed, the relationship between colonizer and the colonized.

The view of the colonized is only half of the picture. There is also that of the non-colonized, the “freed” slave, the white sympathizer, and eventually the abolitionist.

The Abolitionist, or record of the New England Anti-Slavery Society was published for the first time in 1833 under the publication of The Liberator. The New England Anti-Slave society sponsored people to go out into communities of the area and sold their pamphlets whilst promoting the formation of anti-slavery societies.

The significance of this artifact is in regards to Phillis Wheatley’s The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano. In discussion, it can be agreed across the literary board that Equiano was written to appeal to the abolitionist: the type of person who favors of the abolition of slavery. It was a tool for the abolitionist movement. It was written in ways that “softened” the description presented by the slave voice but somehow still kept the truth of the situation.

The above first issue tried to bring a humanizing quality to what were called the “slaves”. After a formal decree of what their society was and stood for, there began first hand accounts of people’s interactions with Negroes. From the West Indies and high talks of the life in Cape Francois in Hayti (Haiti) to letters from different men of position to census polls of the recorded numbers of Negroes or slaves (depending on the state). The journal was an all around mecca of information regarding the Negro and the efforts to re-humanize their image to the white men and women around the United States.

Works Cited

New York State Archives. New York (Colony). Council. Curaçao records, 1640-1665. Series A1883-78. Volume 17, document 61.

Translation: Gehring, C., trans./ed., Curaçao Papers, 1640-1665 (New Netherland Research Center and the New Netherland Institute: 2011).A complete copy of this publication is available on the New Netherland Institute website.

“,” Abolitionist 1 (1833): 1-16

The class thus far focuses our attentions on British (L)iterature; years 1660 to 1815. Due to this “border”, we are set upon reading texts that waver around a very select couple of themes. If you’re judging by the years and the country you can probably put two and two together and figure out what those things are: Colonialism (yes, the colonized and the colonizer). The two go hand in hand. Yes, there is probably more to this time period but how effective would that be when it comes to teaching you what the time was really about.

Despite the historical works, we have gotten through our first full-length text: Oroonoko: The Royal Slave. The title’s quite ironic isn’t it. It is as it sounds, and that is a completely fictional narrative of a royal African man tricked into slavery and his life thereafter.

Now the question is posed. What does a student from NYC reading this feel from the matter? Better yet how do the “histories” from the text connect to the communities that I currently identify with and see throughout my time in NYC?

The historical facts behind these works are tales of slaves and slave master.

As for what I see as the truth… well, it is that the last wave of colonialism is one of the major reasons and causes for the displacement of millions of hue-mans, especially those of Afrikan descent. Plainly saying, this new regularity of the randomization of birthplace versus birth location by phenotype is due to the effects of Britain’s hand in colonialism. Colonialism forced the path of “evolution” and for that we have the world in which we exist today.

A New York City is the exemplar set for the world of what a successful melting pot in a Utopian-esque land could look like. NYC has had influx of people from everywhere on this planet. It is one of the most famous places in the world and the populace of immigrants show. To me, NYC shows what it could’ve looked like if people were given the natural choice to go across seas and leave their homes for the purpose of work instead of the brutish ways of the past during England’s (and friends) golden hour. Whilst Oroonoko’s tale and the other texts are portraits of the time period, it is unrealistic to expect any such thing from the blood thirsty but in a city with an account for everyone on the planet, it really brings to mind what the possibilities could have been had things been approached differently.