Survey
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
Arbeitsblätter des Anglistischen Seminars Heidelberg Contributions to the Study of Language, Literature and Culture www.as.uni-heidelberg.de/ejournal/ Beiträge zur Sprach-, Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft Volume 2009: 1 (edited by Frank Polzenhagen & Daniel Williams) Table of Contents Lena Endres Doom and Salvation in Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” 1-22 Stefan Petri Geräusche und Gefühle in Emily Dickinsons “I felt a Funeral in my Brain” 23-32 Ricarda Wagner “Your left is my north”: Spatial Representation across Languages 33-50 Svenja Habermann Americanisms and the t-Flap in New Zealand English: A Common Feature? 51-66 Barbara Wilhelm The History of Slavery and its Significance in the Emergence of African American Vernacular English 67-82 Kai Egner The Acquisition of Phonology 83-96 Frauke Sonnentag Language Acquisition in the Womb 97-111 ISSN: 0000000 Anglistisches Seminar Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg Kettengasse 12 69117 Heidelberg www.as.uni-heidelberg.de/ejournal/ Contributions to the Study of Language, Literature and Culture Vol. 2009: 1 Arbeitsblätter des Anglistischen Seminars Heidelberg www.as.uni-heidelberg.de/ejournal/ Beiträge zur Sprach-, Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft Barbara Wilhelm The History of Slavery and its Significance in the Emergence of African American Vernacular English 1. 2. Introduction History of world slavery 2.1. Definitions 2.2. Origin and causes 2.3. Historical records of slavery 2.4. Slave trade 2.5. Examples of slavery from recent history 3. History of slavery in the United States of America 3.1. Aboriginal slavery 3.2. From indentured servitude to slavery 3.3. Slaves of African descent 3.4. Treatment of slaves 3.5. Abolitionist movement and the end of slavery 4. Role of sugar in the history of slavery 4.1. Sugar consumption 4.2. Plantation system 4.3. Triangular trade 5. The significance of slavery in the emergence of AAVE 6. Conclusion References 1. Introduction Slavery was the institution which was probably the one to have had the greatest bearing upon the whole history of the region which is known today as the United States of America. The consequences of the slave system are far-reaching and can be traced right up to the present day. The language of the black American population today attests to the impact of the enslavement of Africans. The so-called African American Vernacular 67 English (henceforth AAVE) can therefore only be understood on the basis of the history of the black population in the Americas. The present study analyses both the historical backgrounds of slavery in the United States of America and the origins and developments of the institution of slavery in general. Commencing with some general remarks on the history and development of slavery as a universal institution, the main focus is on the origins as well as the historical record and examples of slavery in recent history. This is followed by an account of the history of slavery in the area which is today known as the United States of America. In addition to forms of aboriginal slavery and the history of slaves of African descent, the treatment of slaves and the movement towards the abolition of slavery are also analyzed. Since “the origins of the slave systems of the Americas lie in the complex story of sugar“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003: 75), the fourth chapter deals with the role of sugar in the history of slavery and the plantation system in particular. Finally, the paper also explains the significance of slavery in the emergence of AAVE. Without the transatlantic slave trade, the vernacular of the blacks today would never have arisen. AAVE is “inextricable from the complex social structure and political history of people of African descent“ (Rickford & Rickford 2000:ix) and can therefore only be analysed against the setting of the history of slavery. The present study is based on the most recent publications but also incorporates older but nonetheless crucial articles concerning the topic of slavery or AAVE. 2. History of World Slavery Slavery is a universal phenomenon. The institution of slavery certainly already existed before any written record, and evidence of slavery can be found in nearly all cultures or continents. It was a commonplace institution long before the Europeans began to enslave Africans. Slavery characterised the ancient civilisations of Greece and Rome. It was “ubiquitous in medieval Europe, and it existed throughout Africa on the eve of European maritime incursions“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003b: 76). Even today there are an estimated 27 million victims of slavery worldwide (Dodson 2005). The word slave in the English language originates in the Middle English term sclave and can also be found in Old French (esclave), Medieval Latin and Slavic (sclavus) (Encyclopedia Britannica online 2008) 2.1. Definitions The Oxford English Dictionary (online 2008) defines the word slavery as “the condition or fact of being entirely subject to, or under the domination of, 68 some power or influence“. The Encyclopedia Britannica (1974: s.v. slavery) defines a slave as “one who is owned by another and deprived of most or all rights and freedoms, hence the term chattel slave, denoting personal property at law. The slave is dependent on the whim of the owner, who may generally force him to any service and, at least in principle, may usually even dispose of his life.“ 2.2. Origin and causes “Explanations of the origins of slavery are [...] speculative“ (Encyclopedia Britannica 1974: s.v. slavery). Although it was probably unknown during the hunting and food-gathering stages of civilisation, the institution of slavery emerged when tribes reached the pastoral stage and increased during the agricultural stage (Encyclopedia Britannica 1974: s.v. slavery). The absolute authority over, and the severe exploitation of other persons can only originate in human depravity and in the attempt to enhance the personal gains of the ruling people. In order to pursue their own interests, people have developed an extreme selfishness and hardness with which they distinguish between those who are worked for and those who have to work and who are deprived of their personal freedom (Copley 1893: 12). Although liberty is the birthright of every human being, there are five main reasons for becoming enslaved. Firstly, people have been condemned to labour on account of their crimes. Secondly, people taken as captives in war have been detained and employed as slaves in public or sold to individuals for their private use. Moreover, debtors have sold themselves to their creditors or they have been enslaved as a result of treacherous behaviours. Children who were born of parents in a state of slavery could also end up as slaves (Copley 1893: 20). As these reasons already suggest, the status of a slave was usually not assigned to individuals born into a society, but reserved for members of other societies (Austen 1998: 370). 2.3. Historical records of slavery The first written record of slavery can be found in the Bible. Slavery probably existed before the flood (Copley 1893: 22), but the first evidence in the Bible can be found in the life of Abraham, where repeated references are made to servants who were his property or bought with his money (cf. Genesis 17:23).1 The first record of slave transportation can be found during the time of Ishmael, a son of Abraham, who carried on an extensive slave trade with Egypt (cf. Genesis 36:12-36). One of the most famous pieces of 1 Abraham is said to have lived in the period between 2000-1850 BC (Rienecker 1994: 20). 69 biblical evidence of slavery is the history of the Israelites who had to work as slaves in Egypt (cf. Exodus 1-12). The Hammurabi Code represents the first record of a concept of slavery. This Code dates back to about 1800 BC and originates from Babylonia. It defines a “concept of chattel slavery that served as a way of classifying the lowliest and most dependent workers in society“ (Isaac 1998: 94). One of the salient features of this status was the fact that once they were owned, slaves could be sold or inherited – a feature which would reappear throughout the ages in all cultures. 2.4. Slave trade The forced movement of people usually accompanies slavery. Even long before the European expansion, transportation of slaves was practised in most parts of the world on a large scale. A Slave trade existed not only in early Greece or Rome, but also in ancient Babylonia. The slave-trade routes in the Old World linked markets in the Mediterranean with more provincial markets in the north and south. In the middle of the fourteenth century, the slave traffic already flowed mainly from south to north. On account of the transatlantic slave trade it can be said that slaves of African origin were already present on the Columbian voyages. Instead of imposing slave status on victims of war or prisoners, European slave traders sent merchant ships to buy people on the African coast. One reason for this was epidemiology: Africans had better protection against tropical fevers than Europeans and could expect to live longer. The situation on the ships on which the slaves were transported was “probably too horrible to fully convey in human words“ (Davis 2006: 92). Mortality rates, mostly because of dehydration, averaged around 15 per cent, but could easily range to 33 per cent or even more (Davis 2006: 93). The Atlantic slave trade was the biggest and longest, but also the most awful traffic in the history of human migration. Like slavery, the slave transport was suppressed through legally and politically ascribed sanctions. 2.5. Examples of slavery from recent history When the plantation system began to decline and slavery was abolished in the ancient European colonies, the universal institution of slavery did not stop. Female slaves were and still are traded to Middle Eastern countries and kingdoms and sold into sexual slavery. A more recent example from German history during the era of National Socialism shows that forced labour, i.e. slavery, was a fundamental component of Hitler’s domination of Europe. Since more than 13 million Germans were drafted out of industry and agriculture into the 70 armed forces, the labour gap was filled with Jews, Gypsies, prisoners of war and other inmates of the concentration camps. The work in corrective labour camps of the Soviet Union must also be taken into account, as well as every kind of child labour, which exists on a large scale in many parts of the world even to this day (Dowd 1998: 297ff.). Although outlawed in most countries today, slavery is, nonetheless, practised in secret in many parts of the world – with outright enslavement still taking place in parts of Africa, the Middle East and South Asia (AntiSlavery Society 2003). 3. History of slavery in the United States of America 3.1. Aboriginal slavery Slavery already existed on a small scale in aboriginal North America. Slavery “was not a general institution in the Americas before the arrival of Europeans, [but] it certainly existed in some regions“ (Encyclopedia Britannica 1974: 860). Once the Europeans arrived, aboriginal slavery changed dramatically. Since there was always a shortage of labour throughout the European settlement of the Americas, the Spanish intruders first endeavoured to use Native Americans as labourers. Furthermore, the Amerindians began to sell their war captives to the Whites instead of torturing, adopting or keeping them. Soon afterwards, the Europeans began to enslave Amerindian prisoners, either for domestic use or for foreign export during the 17th century. Many of them were also exported to off-shore colonies, especially to the so-called sugar islands of the Caribbean. After the introduction of black slaves from Africa, the exploitation of Amerindians did not stop. Both forms of servitude “existed side by side“ (Encyclopedia Britannica 1974: 860). Amerindian labour, however, proved itself “notoriously reluctant or unable to work at what white settlers required“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003b: 78). In the 1550s, enslavement of Native Americans was effectively ended, but survived in frontier regions where settlers could operate outside the law (MacLeod 1998: 295). Both Spanish and Portuguese settlers knew by this time that other peoples, namely Africans, had “proved their worth as slaves in the sugar industry of the Atlantic islands“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003b: 78). 3.2. From indentured servitude to slavery The first Africans were treated as ‘indentured servants’ and were “typically bound to work for a master for seven years“ (Davis 2006: 127). The lives of these indentured servants did not differ significantly from the lives of most slaves. After their time in bondage, they were given the use of land and supplies by their former masters. In addition to African slaves, poor 71 Europeans were brought over to America as ‘indentured servants’. Black and white indentured servants worked alongside each other. The transformation from ‘indentured servitude’ to racial slavery happened gradually. This can be seen for example with the situation in Virginia, where there were no laws regarding slavery in the history of the state. To understand this “shift to a sharp and almost unbridgeable separation between black slaves and poor whites, one must look at AngloAmerican demography and the changing sources of [...] labour supply“ (Davis 2006: 132). In the 15th and 16th century, England’s population grew faster than the English economy, and therefore the government aimed at getting rid of the “so-called dangerous classes“ (Davis 2006: 132) by importing them to the colonies in the New World. They had contracts from five to seven years and could be sold and resold during this period. Some of these ‘indentured servants’ later even acquired their own farms and servants, but were usually not very successful in their enterprise. In general, however, the European organisers made no effort to impose slave status on victims of war, or prisoners. Instead, they chose the relatively expensive alternative of sending merchant ships to buy people on the African coast (Klein 1998: 32). 3.3. Slaves of African descent African slavery already existed when Europeans made their first maritime contacts with West Africa. African slaves had been transported to the Mediterranean, and between the eighth and fifteenth century, slave trade from Africa expanded to the Red Sea. There were many slave-trading systems within Africa as well. With the arrival of a European trading presence on the African west coast, the trade system changed fundamentally. The Portuguese were not looking for slaves, but rather for other valuable commodities, such as gold. They encountered local slave trading practices and in order to get the commodities they were looking for, they “had to buy slaves from Africans“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003b: 77). A large-scale transfer of Africans did not happen until the sugarplantation system was established on African off-shore islands in the middle of the 16th century. Since the treatment of Indian slaves was very harsh, a Spanish nobleman approached the Spanish king, Charles I, with the proposal that “each Spanish settler should be permitted to bring over a certain number of black African slaves“ (Encyclopedia Britannica 1974: 860). This proposal was accepted in 1517 and gave way to a prevailing enslavement of Black Africans. The first huge wave of slaves arrived with the establishment of the sugar plantations. Soon after, black slavery “seeped into all corners of economic and social life throughout the settled Americas“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003a: 2). Slaves were seen as the “natural and obvious means 72 of labour“ for different crops and “were available [...] to undertake any form of manual labour required by the slave-owning classes“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003a: 2). Black slavery, therefore, was a common “feature of life in the pre-modern Atlantic economy“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003a: 2). More than 12 million Africans are said to have been forced into the Atlantic slave ships. Only about 10.5 million Africans survived the journey to the Americas2. Although African slaves had been bought and traded by Europeans prior to the European colonisation of the Americas, it was the Portuguese settlements in Brazil and the accompanying rise of the sugar industry after 1560 that “revealed the value of African labour“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003a: 4). The voyage across the Atlantic Ocean usually took a month to Brazil and about two months to the West Indies or North America. Most of the slaves, however, had already been enslaved between six and twelve months in Africa (Heuman & Walvin 2003a: 8). In the course of time, slave traders decided on the ideal size and shape of slave ships. The average mortality rate was of “7.5 per cent for a voyage of thirty to fifty days in the later stage of the slave trade“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003a: 8). In general, the slave traders tried to preserve the lives and health of the slaves since they were considered“ a valuable investment“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003a: 9). 3.4. Treatment of slaves On large plantations, slave overseers were authorised to whip and brutalise non-compliant slaves. There were so-called ‘slave codes’ which authorised the use of violence. In addition to physical abuse and murder, the psychological pressure was very high since slaves were at constant risk of losing members of their families (Berlin 2003: 175ff.). Because the slaves were the legal property of their owners, it was not unusual for enslaved black women to be raped by their owners or members of their owner’s family or their owner’s friends. Children who resulted from such rapes were slaves as well. This destroyed the black families because the family was considered the basic unit of social organisation under the institution of slavery. Slave captains sometimes even took privately owned girls or boys on board their ships, and the fact that sexual exploitation was involved may easily be surmised (Postma 1990: 137). Not all the slaves did “accept their fate passively, although their resistance was against insurmountable odds“ (Postma 1990: 165). In many households, the treatment of the slaves depended to a huge degree on the slave’s skin colour. Generally, slaves were considered legal non-persons except if they committed crimes: 2 It must be noted that information concerning the actual number of African slaves varies. These figures are taken from Heuman & Walvin (2003a: 4). 73 slaves are rational beings, they are capable of committing crimes; and in reference to acts which are crimes, are regarded as persons. Because they are slaves, they are incapable of performing civil acts, and in reference to all such, they are things, not persons . (Catterall 1926: 247) Moreover, women and men had equally labour-intensive work. While men mostly worked on the large plantations, typical jobs for women were cooking for the slave master’s household as well as for the slaves themselves, sewing, midwifery, and also pruning fields and comparable agricultural work. Slave women were “critically important“ since they came to be valued both at work and for their “reproductive potential“. Therefore, they were “doubly valuable (and exploited) as workers and as mothers to a new generation of slaves“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003c: 155). In general, “slaves were seen and treated as objects of potential economic utility“ (Postma 1990: 227). Their work involved much more than only working in the fields. They could be found everywhere in the Americas, from the simplest of labours to the most skilled of crafts. 3.5. Abolitionist movement and the end of slavery The abolitionist movement began as early as the middle of the 18th century. Between 1780 and 1804, all the Northern states passed emancipation acts and banned slavery. This prohibition, however, did not always mean that the slaves were freed. The gaining of freedom was rather a gradual emancipation. This northern movement took place amid strong support for slavery amid white Southerners, who profited greatly from the system of enslaved labour. In January 1808, Congress banned the importation of slaves. This meant that any new slaves in the United States would have to be descendants of those who were currently in the U.S. The internal slave trade continued to exist and prosper. It was the American civil war which finally led to the end of chattel slavery in the United States. During this time, many slaves sought refuge in the Union territory, wanting to be declared “contraband“.3 Many of them also joined the Union Army and fought against the Southerners. The abolition of slavery became an official war goal when Abraham Lincoln passed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.4 With the Northern victory in the Civil War, the slave-labour system was abolished in the South and the large southern plantations became much less profitable. 3 4 The term “contraband“ describes runaway slaves encountered by Union soldiers (cf. Wikipedia 2008: sub Contraband). Information concerning the Emancipation Proclamation can be taken from Wikipedia (2008: sub Emancipation Proclamation). 74 The American Colonisation Society shipped many ex-slaves and free blacks who volunteered back to their homes in Africa. With the addition of the thirteenth amendment, slavery was constitutionally prohibited in the United States and it was then that the last forty thousand slaves were freed in the state of Kentucky (Coulter 1926: 268ff.). 4. Role of sugar in the history of slavery In their Slavery Reader, Gad Heuman and James Walvin state that “the origin of the slave systems of the Americas lie in the complex story of sugar“ (2003b: 75), and indeed, slavery on this scale would never have existed if the sugar plantations had not been created. 4.1. Sugar consumption World sugar production shows the most remarkable upward curve of any major food on the world market over the course of several centuries. The English soon became the biggest sugar consumers in the world. In 1000 BC, only few Europeans knew of the existence of sucrose, or cane sugar. However, from 1650 onwards, sugar began to change from a luxury and rarity into a commonplace. By 1800, sugar had become a necessity in the diet of every English person, and 100 years later, sugar was supplying nearly a fifth of the calories in the English diet (Mintz 1986: 5ff.). For the first time in the cultivation of sugar, slavery became important as the European crusaders took over the sugar plantations of the eastern Mediterranean. There were immense sugar plantations in the regions which are today known as Palestine, Cyprus, Crete, Sicily and later even in Spain and Portugal. Soon, the Mediterranean sugar industry declined because of the rise of a new, competing sugar industry on the Atlantic islands (Heuman & Walvin 2003b: 76). This consumer revolution can be considered as being “at the heart of [the] Atlantic slave system“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003a: 9) because the Europeans consumed the crops from the slave plantations in enormous volumes. Before European immigrants replaced them in the late nineteenth century, “it was African slaves who enabled this consumption revolution to occur. Without that labour, most of America would never have developed at the pace it did“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003a: 9). 4.2. Plantation system The development of the sugar industry began with the Portuguese and Spaniards, changing the character of European sugar consumption forever. 75 Sugar cane was first carried to the New World by Columbus on his second voyage in 1493. The first slaves were imported there soon after the sugar cane. The island plantations of sugar were the invention of Europe, or rather overseas experiments of Europe. Many of them were extremely successful. At the time that the Portuguese and Spaniards set out to establish a sugar industry on the Atlantic islands, sugar was still a luxury in Western Europe and was used only as medicine or as a spice (Mintz 1986: 30). The movement of the industry to the Atlantic islands occurred when European demand was probably growing. The development of the sugar industry, first in Brazil, and later in the Caribbean, with “its labourintensive plantation system of production, forced Europeans to look elsewhere for labour“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003a: 1). This is why they turned their interest to Africa and soon “acquired an appetite for Africans as slave labourers“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003a: 2). The “demand for labour in the Americas“ was always “the engine which dictated the rise and direction of the Atlantic slave trade“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003a: 5). Although slaves were crucial in the production of sugar, there were still free wage earners. 4.2.1. Plantations and capitalism While capitalism in Europe drew its workforce from free but landless people, the Caribbean colonies gained their workforce from massive populations of similarly dispossessed persons. Nevertheless, these labourers were enslaved, i.e. had no right to own their bodies or their own labour. Since the workforce of the free proletarians differed immensely from the enslaved labour force, it is commonly agreed that the plantation system does not belong to the economic system of capitalism. Nevertheless, the plantations were necessary for economic activities, and they generated huge profits. The plantation system can be regarded as an important step towards capitalism, but not capitalistic in itself (Mintz 1986: 54ff.). Both Europe and the enslaved labourers were dependent upon each other: on the one hand, the Europeans had to consume sugar in order to keep the plantation system alive, but on the other, this sugar could only be produced with the help of enslaved Africans and a prospering slave trade. 4.2.2. Situation in North America While the plantation system brought “profitable cultivation to vast reaches of the Americas“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003b: 80), the situation in North America was slightly different. The English settlements in the Chesapeake region also employed slaves from the earliest days, but the slaves there “did not become vital until much later“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003b: 80). 76 Tobacco, rather than sugar, changed everything. With the booming exports of tobacco, the number of African slaves increased. Most popularly, North American slavery is associated with the cotton states. Cotton, however, was the most valuable export only at the end of the Civil War. Moreover, the cotton planters faced a different situation from the situation of the planters of sugar or tobacco. By the time cotton was the most prominent crop, the planters did not need any transatlantic slave trade since the slave population in North America was already self-sustaining. An internal slave trade existed, “with slaves moving from the eastern slave states towards the south and the advancing western frontier“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003b: 81). In the course of time, the sugar production grew steadily and in 1625, Portugal was supplying nearly all of Europe with sugar from Brazil. When the Dutch were pushed out of Brazil, they moved their money, expertise, technology and slaves from Brazil to the West Indies. This enabled British and other settlers in this region to buy African slaves. With the help of the Dutch, the English were able “to brush aside the fading power of Spain in the Caribbean“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003b: 79). Soon after, England was able to drive Portugal out of the North European trade. From this time on, two so-called ‘triangles of trade’ grew. 4.3. Triangular trade Atlantic slavery is a very complex historical issue since its range and impact across both time and space was enormous. It mainly involved three continents: Africa, Europe and the Americas but it also “had economic consequences much further afield“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003a: 1). Although it was an extremely complex trading system, it can be viewed as a ‘triangular trade’. The first and more important trade triangle existed between Britain, Africa and the Americas. African slaves were imported to the New World where they had to work on plantations, especially on the huge sugar plantations. These slaves were bought in different coastal regions. The European slave traders were dependent on African middlemen and dealers who brought the slaves to the coast. One should not forget that it was Africans who controlled the slaves until they were sold and went on board the slave ships (Heuman & Walvin 2003a: 7). From the Americas, the tropical commodities (above all sugar) were transported to the mother country Britain and the rest of Europe. From there, the finished goods were sold back to Africa. The second, less famous trade triangle emerged between New England, Africa and the West Indies. Rum was transported from New England to Africa. Slaves were again imported from Africa to the 77 West Indies and the West Indies supplied New England with molasses5 with which to make rum. It was mainly the two islands of Jamaica and St Dominique that came to dominate the Atlantic sugar industry and consequently also the slave trade. On the European side, the Atlantic slave trade was dominated by English and French slave ships. Nevertheless, slaves were employed in every region throughout the Atlantic economy. With the end of the slave trade to the British colonies in 1807, and the abolition of slavery between 1834 and 1865, the dominance of sugar shrank. This led to huge demographic consequences: new labourers were needed on the plantations and some of the freed slaves went back to Africa. Now, there were other areas, however, which supplied Europe with sugar and where often the workforce of slaves was needed as well. The conclusion can therefore be drawn that sugar has been one of the massive demographic forces in world history. 5. The significance of slavery in the emergence of AAVE Most African Americans “do talk differently from whites and Americans of other ethnic groups, or at least most of [them] can when [they] want“ (Rickford & Rickford 2000: 4). During the last decades of research into the study of African American Vernacular English, no agreement has been found on whether AAVE derived from a creole or whether it developed from an English base. The creolists’ statement is that a significant number of Africans who arrived in the United States between the seventeenth and the nineteenth century went through processes of pidginisation, creolisation, and perhaps even decreolisation in acquiring English. The dialectologists, on the other hand, state that the Africans learned the English of British and other immigrants rapidly and directly, without any intervening pidgin or creole stage (Green 2002: 9f.). Both statements, however, depend upon the question of how many blacks there actually were in a community. Moreover, the question must be raised as to whether the slaves had already learned a creole in the holding forts on the West African coast (Rickford & Rickford 2000: 133). In general, it is agreed that most of the slaves, not only those who worked as house slaves, had direct contact with their masters. Since slaves and slaveholders spoke different languages, a massive communicative problem arose. While most other immigrants were able to continue to speak their ancestral language in ethnic ghettos, slaves were not treated as ‘normal’ immigrants. Instead, they were treated as human cargo and also often torn 5 Molasses is “a dark viscous syrup obtained during the refining of sugar“ (Collins English Dictionary 2006: 1048). 78 from their native communities and immediately isolated from others who shared not only their culture, rites and customs, but also their language. Slaves were not transported in coherent linguistic communities. The slave traders engaged this practice in order to minimise the occurrence of revolt. The linguistic dimensions of this action, however, continue to have consequences for many black speakers today. Moreover, it was illegal to teach slaves to read and write, and most of them therefore had no access to literate standard English. This explains the fact that there is a lack of valid diachronic data.6 Looking at the situation of black language acquisition from a diachronic point of view, the following observations can be made: during the 17th century, black indentured labourers worked alongside white indentured labourers. The Africans in the colonies all worked beside mainly English and Irish people. Many blacks learned their English by communicating with other labourers and consequently from speakers of non-standard English. In the 18th century, more slaves of African origin arrived in the colonies. Blacks acquired their English from other blacks during this time. It was then that the first comments and examples of black speech could be found. From the 19th century onwards, African-American Vernacular English spread westwards and finally reached the North during the “Great Migration“ (Rickford & Rickford 2000: 131-141). The linguistic consequences drawn from these diachronic data are biased. On the one hand, creolisation can be expected in states where the black population was the overwhelming majority. On the other hand, blacks probably had a good chance of learning English as a second or foreign language elsewhere. Dialectologists and creolists have come to no conclusion and will probably never reach one since there is not much evidence available. What is certain is that the unique black-American English ‘dialect’, which arose during the time of the enslavement of Africans in the colonies in the Americas, continues in the vernacular of the slaves’ descendants to this day. 6. Conclusion Slavery has existed in one form or another ever since. Slavery in the United States of America “rested upon a basic contradiction“ (Parish 1979: 1): on the one hand, slaves were seen as property, but in everyday life, on the other hand, it was impossible to deny the slave’s humanity. Moreover, transatlantic slavery was the harshest, longest and most awful in world history. Although the transatlantic slave system may seem to have originated in the initial European dealings with Africans on the African 6 The only source of diachronic data are the so-called ex-slave narratives. 79 West coast in the fifteenth century, that “episode provides only one piece of a historical jigsaw puzzle“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003b: 81). The rise and fall of earlier European slave systems, European expansion and the internal history of Africa also contributed their part. However, if there is one overriding factor which changed both the direction and velocity of Atlantic slavery, it was surely the establishment of the sugar plantation, the remarkable profits and the enormous consumption generated by the produce of those plantations for Europe itself. “With sugar and the plantation securely in place, both African slave labour and the plantation proved their importance and value” (Heuman & Walvin 2003b: 81f.). Slaves could be found everywhere, undertaking various forms of work. There was a great variety of slave labour and there were also major differences within the slave experience. In general, however, “slavery was designed not for the benefit of the slaves, but for others“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003c: 160). Slaves were seen as “beasts of burden [...] to be used [...] for purposes [over] which they had little control“ and as a “labouring task force which tamed and brought to profitable cultivation huge swathes of the Americas“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003c: 160). Without the transatlantic slavery system, an African-American Vernacular English would never have arisen. Since this vernacular is inescapably linked with the history of slavery, the social and political history of Africans has to be taken into account when dealing with AAVE. Therefore AAVE, which continues in the speech of many blacks, attests to the existence of this “dark chapter of American history“ to this day. References Anti-Slavery Society. 2003. Does slavery still exist? [http://anti-slaverysociety.addr.com/slavery.htm access 19/02/2008] Austen, Ralph A. 1998. Trans-Saharan trade. In: Seymour Drescher & Stanley L. Engerman (eds.), A Historical Guide to World Slavery, 367-370. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Berlin, Ira. 2003. Generations of Captivity. A History of African-American Slaves. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Catterall, Helen T. (ed.). 1926. Judicial Cases Concerning Slavery and the Negro. Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institute. Collins English Dictionary. 2006. 8th ed. Glasgow: HarperCollins. Coulter, Merton E. 1926. The Civil War and Readjustment in Kentucky. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Copley, Ester 1893. A History of Slavery and its Abolition. London: Houlston & Stoneman. 80 Davis, David B. 2006. Inhuman Bondage. The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dodson, Howard. 2005. Slavery in the twenty-first century. UN Chronicle online. Volume XLII. Number 3. [www.un.org/Pubs/chronicle/2005/issue3/0305p28.html access 18/02/2008] Dowd, Patrick S. 1998. Nazi slavery. In: Seymour Drescher & Stanley L. Engerman (eds.), A Historical Guide to World Slavery, 297-3003. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Drescher, Seymour & Stanley L. Engerman (eds.). 1998. A Historical Guide to World Slavery. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Encyclopedia Britannica online. 2008. [www.britannica.com/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=slave&query=slave/ access 18/02/2008] Green, Lisa J. 2002. African American English. A Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heuman, Gad & James Walvin (eds.). 2003. The Slavery Reader. London: Routledge. Heuman, Gad & James Walvin. 2003a. The Atlantic slave trade. In: Gad Heuman & James Walvin (eds.), The Slavery Reader, 1-10. London: Routledge. Heuman, Gad & James Walvin. 2003b. Origins and development of slavery in the Americas. In: Gad Heuman & James Walvin (eds.), The Slavery Reader, 75-82. London: Routledge. Heuman, Gad & James Walvin. 2004c. Slaves at work. In: Gad Heuman & James Walvin (eds.), The Slavery Reader, 155-160. London: Routledge. Isaac, Ephraim 1998. Hebrew scriptures. In: Seymour Drescher & Stanley L. Engerman (eds.), A Historical Guide to World Slavery, 91-98. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Klein, Martin A. 1998. “West Africa“. In: Seymour Drescher & Stanley L. Engerman (eds.). A Historical Guide to World Slavery, 32-37. Oxford: Oxford University Press. MacLeod, Murdo J. 1998. Native Americans. In: Seymour Drescher & Stanley L. Engerman (eds.), A Historical Guide to World Slavery, 293-297. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mintz, Sidney M. 1986. Sweetness and Power. The Place of Sugar in Modern History. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Oxford English Dictionary online. 2008. [http://dictionary.oed.com.ubproxy.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/cgi/entry/50227191? query_type=word&queryword=slavery&first=1&max_to_show=10&sort_type =alpha&result_place=1&search_id=67f4-yWDurX-7934&hilite=50227191 access 20/02/2008] Parish, Peter J. 1979. Slavery. The many Faces of a Southern Institution. Keele: Keele University Press. 81 Postma, Johannes M. 1990. The Dutch in the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1600-1815. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rienecker, Fritz (ed.). 1994. Lexikon zur Bibel. Wuppertal: R. Brockhaus Verlag. Rickford, John R. & Russel J. Rickford. 2000. Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English. New York: Wiley & Sons. The Bible in Basic English. 1965. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. The New Encyclopedia Britannica. 1974. Vol. 25. Chicago, IL: Encyclopedia Britannica Inc. Wikipedia. 2008. sub Contraband [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraband access 19/02/2008] Wikipedia. 2008. sub Emancipation Proclamation. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_proclamation access 19/02/2008] Note This paper was prepared during the course “African American Vernacular English” (HS Sprachwissenschaft; winter term 2007/08) held by Prof. Dr. Beat Glauser. Barbara Wilhelm (7. Fachsemester – Anglistik / Germanistik / Pädagogik) may be contacted via <[email protected]>. 82