From Kalinagos to Black Caribs: Racialization & Dispossession in the 18th Century Caribbean

In 1796 and 1797, almost 5,000 individuals termed ‘Black Caribs’—the descendants of Indigenous Kalinagos, or ‘Caribs,’ and of Africans—were exiled from the Caribbean island of St. Vincent.

This talk explores why and how people who identified as indigenous to the Caribbean ultimately came to be seen as too great a threat to be tolerated within the region’s borders. Drawing on French and English manuscript and archival sources, Dr. Tessa Murphy traces the emergence and growth of popular narratives that situated St. Vincent’s native inhabitants as foreign to—and therefore lacking any ancestral claims to—the island, and considers how this rhetorical transformation was deployed to dispossess people who impeded the spread of sugar plantations.

Please reach out to africain@syr.edu for Zoom link.