Description
Book SynopsisThough centered on a single Jamaican sugar estate, and dealing largely with the period of formal slavery, this book is firmly placed in far wider contexts of place and time. The Invisible Man of the title is found, in the end, to be not just the formal slave but the ordinary black worker throughout the history of the plantation system.
Table of ContentsPrologue: Worthy Park and Its Context, 1670-1975 Part 1: The Slave Population at Large 1. The Population before 1783 2. Demographic Patterns, 1783-1838 3. Mortality, Fertility, Life Expectancy, 1783-1838 4. Death, Disease, Medicine, 1783-1838 5. Economics, Employment, Social Cohesion, 1783-1838 Part 2: Individuals in Slave Society, Selected Biographies Introduction 6. Bunga--Men: Six Africans 7. Conformists: Ten Ordinary Slaves 8. Specialists: Five Slave Craftsmen 9. Accommodators: Five Patterns of Miscegenation 10. Resisters: Five Slave Nonconformists 11. Backra: Three Plantation Whites Part 3: The Sons of Slavery 12. The Transition to Free Wage Labor, 1834-1846 13. Continuities: Worthy Park's Modern Workers 14. The Rope Unraveled and Respliced: The Evidence of Genealogy 15. From House Slave to Middle Class: The Descendants of John Price Nash 16. From Field Slave to Peasant-Proletarian: The Descendants of Biddy and Nelson 17. Coda and Conclusion: The Seamless Cloth Appendixes A. The Slave Data and Its Deficiencies B. The Computer Programs C. A Doctor's Views on Childbirth, Infant Mortality, and the General Health of His Slave Charges, 1788 D. Medicine at Worthy Park, 1824 Notes
