41 pages • 1 hour read
Ira BerlinGenerations of Captivity
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2003A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Charter Generations”
Chapter 1 recreates the transatlantic system that gave rise to New World slavery. As early as the 15th century, coastal towns along Africa’s west coast emerged alongside large, mercantile companies. In these “trading factories” (24), male European travelers forged relationships with African women and created a new generation of mixed-race individuals, a demographic that Berlin defines as “Atlantic creoles” (24). They occupied a precarious position in society, on the fringes of both European and African communities, but their multilingualism and knowledge of various cultures left them in a unique position to act as cultural and commercial intermediaries and brokers.
In the 17th century, forced migration brought Atlantic creoles to regions in the lands that would become the United States. They brokered their cross-cultural skills in the New World in similar capacities to their African pasts and forebears. This positionality meant marginal autonomy in societies with slaves. As various regions transitioned into slave societies (born of the “plantation revolutions” that established central industries dependent on slave labor, specifically), the conditions of bondage worsened and slaves exercised less bargaining power in their negotiations with slaveholders.
Berlin accounts for this transition in four locations: New Netherland (the Mid-Atlantic coast), the Chesapeake, the Lower Mississippi Valley (Louisiana), and Florida. In early-17th-century New Netherlands, “black people participated in almost every aspect of life” (36) as regular fixtures in Christian churches and Dutch militias and courts. Atlantic creoles in this context integrated into the larger colonial culture and formed their own communities even though many were slaves. In the Chesapeake, a relatively high proportion of black people secured freedom while those in bondage navigated social relationships to their advantages (similar to their counterparts in New Netherlands). This flexibility was still possible in the era before lucrative plantations, though as plantations transformed colonial economies, the charter generations transformed into “plantation generations” (the subject of the next chapter).
Plantations came late enough in the Lower Mississippi Valley to “extend the charter generation’s life to nearly a century” (39). The Natchez Rebellion, a 1729 anti-colonial attack launched by indigenous warriors and allied African slaves, staved off the development of a slave society based on plantations in the Deep South. In Florida, creole society grew as Spanish colonizers allied with Atlantic creoles and refugee slaves in an effort to resist encroachment by English settlement to the north. Berlin stresses the extent of this “alliance” (43): Spanish Florida offered freedom in exchange for religious conversion to Catholicism and military service. The English conquest of Florida changed this creole landscape and effectively evacuated many people of color, but the charter generation had exercised definitive influence in Spanish Florida, in particular.
Chapter 1 Analysis
In this chapter, we see Berlin’s approach in action: He relies on archival and secondary sources and organizes his analysis into different cases based on geography. Where the sources are complete enough to reconstruct personal stories in some detail, Berlin includes the names of slaves and replicates some of this detail, which helps to communicate the individuality and humanity of slaves and not merely their status as unfree laborers. Every chapter follows this model, though the geographies slightly fluctuate to account for the nature of the relevant historical examples. No central characters emerge, given the timeline of the study and Berlin’s goal to explain the development of largescale institutions.
The differences in the geography help to illustrate the degree of historical contingency that shaped each case in the history of slavery in the lands that would become the United States. The advent of plantations based on trade in key crops (namely rice, sugar, and cotton) transformed societies with Atlantic creole slaves into slave societies that would eventually flatten ethnic diversity and establish an unyielding racial hierarchy that upheld invented white superiority over black subservience. Before this “plantation revolution,” however, Atlantic creoles navigated a much more nuanced social landscape of transatlantic cultures and languages to position themselves as indispensable assets for powerful employers (usually mercantilist companies that sustained colonies). This critical engagement with powerful colonizers did not necessarily result in largescale manumission (official release from slavery), but it did create channels for Atlantic creoles to integrate into colonial society and associate among themselves to form the early vestibules of black culture on mainland North America.
Berlin suggests the most significant achievements across the diverse cases to be “Atlantic creoles’ ability to trade freely, profess Christianity, gain access to the law, secure freedom, and enjoy a modest prosperity” (49). Each of these areas (individual wealth accumulation, religion, legal privileges, and paths to freedom) will remain at the center of analysis of each generation of American slaves that Berlin discusses. While Berlin will stress continuity among generations, the charter generation faced unique circumstances in navigating societies with slaves rather than launching their negotiations within or surrounded by slave societies. This distinction meant that larger society had not fully racialized the charter generations as entirely inferior and unskilled inferiors. While Berlin does describe Atlantic creole communities as centers of black life in the emerging nation, he will continue to trace the development of racial ideology and racism in later generations of slaves.
Atlantic creoles in each geography established distinct communities and cultures in addition to integrating into key components of colonial cultures and societies. Atlantic creoles’ unique knowledge of transatlantic traders facilitated the construction and maintenance of their own social space, but slave culture more broadly defined was in no way unique to the charter generations. Under very different circumstances and constraints, slaves continued to build cultures with personal relationships, religion, and many more categories. They resisted their oppressors at every turn to secure as much control as possible over their personal and communal circumstances. These efforts were universal among slave generations.
