Free and Unfree Labor in Atlantic and Indian Ocean Port Cities (c. 1700-1850)
May 6-7, 2016, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Thursday 5 May
5:00 pm Welcoming reception (Hilton Garden Inn, Bar area)
Friday 6 May
9:00 am Registration
9:15-9:30 am Welcome
9:30-10:15 am Key note lecture 1: Seth Rockman, Brown University
10:15 am-12:15 pm: Labor in Atlantic Port Cities: Regimes, Structures, Linkages and Chains
Chair: Mike Thompson, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Leonardo Moreno-Alvarez, University of Pittsburgh
“Economic linkages and naval logistics in 17th century Cartagena”
Martine Jean, University of South Carolina, Columbia
“Free Africans, Slaves, and Convict Labor in the Construction of Rio de Janeiro’s Correction House: Atlantic Labor Regimes and Confinement in Brazil’s Atlantic Port-City”
Evelyn Jennings, St. Lawrence University
“The Path to Sweet Success: Free and Unfree Labor in the Building of Roads and Rails in Havana, Cuba, 1790-1835”
Robert J. Gamble, University of Kansas
“Governing Chains: Inspecting Goods and People on the North American Waterfront, 1780- 1830”
Comment: Niklas Frykman, University of Pittsburgh 12:15-1:30 pm Lunch
1:30-3:30 pm: Labor in Atlantic Port Cities: Mobility and Control
Chair: Anita Rupprecht, University of Brighton
Kevin Dawson, University of California, Merced “Enslaved Salvage Divers”
Pepijn Brandon, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
“Between the plantation and the port: Racializing labor control from New Amsterdam to Paramaribo”
Ty M. Reese, University of North Dakota
“Toiling for the Company: Agency, Alcohol and the African Laborers of Cape Coast Castle, 1750- 1820”
Mary Hicks, Amherst College
“Africanizing Atlantic Commerce: Enslaved and Free Sailors and the Maritime Trade in Dendê Oil and Pannos da Costa, from the Bight of Benin to Salvador da Bahia (1775 -1835)”
Comment: Seymour Drescher, University of Pittsburgh
4:00-5:15 pm: Gender, Status, and Work
Chair: Isaac Land, Indiana State University
Melina Teubner, University of Cologne “Preparing and selling food in Rio de Janeiro”
Rebecca Hartkopf Schloss, Texas A&M University
“‘Bad sorts’ and ‘good husbands’: Race, masculinity, and mixed-race deportees in the early nineteenth-century French Atlantic”
Comment: Françoise Vergès (Collège d’Études Mondiales, Paris)
5:30-6:00 pm Summary Remarks Day 1: Lex Heerma Van Voss, Huygens-ING, The Hague
7:00 pm Conference dinner (Lucca Ristorante, 317 S Craig St, Pittsburgh, PA 15213)
Saturday 7 May
9:00-9:30 am: Registration
9:30-10:15 am: Key note lecture 2: Clare Anderson, University of Leicester
10:30 am-12:00 pm: Indian Ocean Port Cities: Migrant Workers, Travelers, Settlers and Slaves
Chair: John Donoghue, Loyola University Chicago
Titas Chakraborty, University of Pittsburgh
“Enslaved workers of the East India Company settlements in Bengal, 1700-1765”
Megan Thomas, University of California, Santa Cruz
“Lascars, Sepoys, and the Traveling Labor of British Empire (Manila, 1762-1764)”
Janet J. Ewald, Duke University
“Bondspeople, Freedpeople, and other Migrant Workers in the Ports and Vessels of the Northwestern Indian Ocean, 1830-1880”
Comment: Pernille Røge, University of Pittsburgh
12:00-1:30 pm Lunch
1:30-3:30 pm Atlantic and Indian Ocean Port Cities: Transitions and Comparisons
Chair: Patrick Manning, University of Pittsburgh
Karwan Fatah-Black, Leiden University and Matthias van Rossum, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam
“A world of labor and conflict – comparing labor relations and conflicts in Dutch Atlantic and Asian port cities (1600-1800)”
Forrest Hylton, Northwestern University
“Black and Red in Maracaibo? Specters of Haiti, Indigenous Jurisprudence, and the Limits of Revolution in 1799”
Filipa Ribeiro da Silva, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam
“Masters, Slaves and Free Workers: Tracing the Profile of the working population of the island of Mozambique and Inhambane, c.1800”
Preben Kaarsholm, Roskilde University
“From Protectors of Slaves to Protectors of Immigrants: Humanitarian Imperialism and the Transformations of Labor Recruitment in the Western Indian Ocean from the Early 19th Century”
Comment: Molly Warsh, University of Pittsburgh
4:00-5:30 pm Closing discussion
Chair: Pepijn Brandon, VU Amsterdam / International Institute of Social History
Marcel van der Linden, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam
Lara Putnam, University of Pittsburgh
Marcus Rediker, University of Pittsburgh