Black and White Manhattan The History of Racial Formation in Colonial New York City

by Foote, Thelma Wills

• ISBN13: 9780195088090
• ISBN10: 0195088093
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-10-28
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Race first emerged as an important ingredient of New York City's melting pot when it was known as New Amsterdam and was a fledgling colonial outpost on the North American frontier. Thelma Wills Foote details the arrival of the first immigrants, including African slaves, and traces encounters between the town's inhabitants of African, European, and Native American descent, showing how racial domination became key to the building of the settler colony at the tip of Manhattan Island. Foote investigates everyday formations of race in slaveowing households, on the colonial city's streets, at its docks, taverns, and marketplaces, and in the adjacent farming districts. The history of New York City demonstrates that the process of racial formation and the mechanisms of racial domination were central to the northern colonial experience and to the founding of the United States.

Author Biography

Thelma Wills Foote is Associate Professor of History and African-American Studies at the University of California, Irvine.

Table of Contents

Introduction. ``The Angel Would Like to Stay, Awaken the Dead, and Make Whole What Has Been Smashed'': Awaking to History on Manhattan Island	3	(20)
Part I. From Frontier Outpost to Settler Colony: The Project of Colony Building on Manhattan Island
``To Better People Their Land, and to Bring the Country to Produce More Abundantly'': Territory, Trade, Conquest, and the Project of Colony Building on Manhattan Island under Dutch Rule, 1624--1664	23	(30)
``Nothing That Is Necessary Is to Be Discouraged'': Immigration, Labor, and the Project of Colony Building under English Rule, 1664--1774	53	(38)
Part II. Racial Formation and the Art of Colonial Governance
``A Difference amongst Ourselves'': Divisions of Religion and Language, Solidarities of Race and Nation in Colonial New York City's Settler Population	91	(33)
``One and the Same Interest'': Antiblack Racism and Colonial Domination with and without Hegemony	124	(35)
``The Most Natural View of the Whole'': Discovering the ``Plot of 1741--42'' and the Discursive Construction of the ``Dangerous Other'' in the Colonialist Discourse of Conspiracy	159	(30)
Part III. Subaltern Insurgency and the Breakdown of Colonial Governance
``We Shall Never Be Quite Safe'': Policing the Fugitive Body of Colonial New York City's Servile Population	189	(21)
``The Happiness of Liberty of Which I Knew Nothing Before'': Passports to Freedom and the Black Exodus from Post-Revolutionary New York City	210	(17)
Epilogue. ``What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?'' The Aporia of American Democracy and the Permanence of Racism	227	(12)
Appendix A: Elias Neau's Short Question-and-Answer Catechism	239	(2)
Notes	241	(52)
Bibliography	293	(28)
Index	321