“The Common Wind”的意思、由来-开放百科全书

The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution is a 2018 book by Julius S. Scott, based on his influential but previously unpublished 1986 Duke University doctoral dissertation. The book traces the circulation of news in African diasporic communities in the Caribbean around the time of the Haitian Revolution, and links the "common wind" of shared information to political developments leading to the abolition of slavery in the British and French Caribbean.

Summary

The book's title comes from an 1802 William Wordsworth sonnet to Toussaint Louverture.^[1] In Scott's book, "the common wind" refers to the shared information communicated among African diasporic communities by African-Americans who worked in ships, docks, and ports around the time of the Haitian Revolution. Scott reconstructed the flow of this information through archival research and documentary analysis of newspapers, shipping records, and both official and unofficial correspondence. The book describes the system by which black sailors, slaves and freemen in the Caribbean carried "ideas, news, and rumors of equality and liberation from port to port".^[2] Despite efforts by colonial powers to minimize the flow of information about slavery in the New World, African diasporic communities in the Caribbean learned about slave uprisings and efforts to re-enslave emancipated freemen of African descent. As a consequence of the "common wind" of information, these communities developed an autonomous political identity that was more radical than those in African diasporic communities in Europe or the American colonies.^[3] This communication across national and geographic boundaries "contributed to the destabilization and eventual collapse of the slave system".^[4]

Publication

Scott researched and wrote The Common Wind as his Duke University PhD dissertation, which he completed in 1986.^[5] He initially signed a contract with Oxford University Press to publish the dissertation in book form shortly after completing his degree, but did not agree with suggestions for revision and opted not to publish the book.^[6] Aside from a selection from one chapter of the dissertation reprinted in the 2010 volume Origins of the Black Atlantic, which Scott co-edited,^[6] the dissertation remained unpublished until a Verso Books editor, referred by another historian, offered to publish the text with minimal revisions.^[6]

Reception

As an unpublished dissertation The Common Wind was cited hundreds of times in scholarly literature.^[7] In Time, historian Vincent Brown called the dissertation "so exciting, original, and profound" that it inspired "an entire generation to create a new field of knowledge about the past".^[8] In 2008 the dissertation was the subject of a conference at the University of Michigan titled "The Common Wind: Conversations in African American and Atlantic Histories" that reviewed its impact on the fields of African-American history and Atlantic studies.^[9] Eugene Holley, writing in Publishers Weekly, described the dissertation and resulting book as "renowned for its creativity, imaginative research and graceful prose".^[10] Writing for CounterPunch, historian Peter Linebaugh praised the book's prose as "clear, persuasive, and (owing to understatement in the face of great crimes) even calming".^[1]

References

1. ^¹{{cite magazine|url=https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/12/14/the-significance-of-the-common-wind/|title=The Significance of The Common Wind|magazine=CounterPunch|first=Peter|last=Linebaugh|date=December 14, 2018|access-date=December 16, 2018}}
2. ^{{cite journal|journal=Journal of Haitian Studies|title=Haitian Connections: Recognition after Revolution in the Atlantic World by Julia Gaffield (review)|first=Margaret|last=Wilson Gillikin|volume=23|number=1|date=2017|page=183|doi=10.1353/jhs.2017.0012}}
3. ^{{cite journal|title=How the West was One: On the Uses and Limitations of Diaspora|journal=The Black Scholar|volume=30|issue=3/4|date=2000|pages=31-35|first=Robin D. G.|last=Kelley|doi=10.1080/00064246.2000.11431106 }}
4. ^{{cite journal|journal=The Journal of Caribbean History|title=A Multifunctional Space: The Uses of Rituals among Enslaved and Freed Afro-Caribbean Peoples|first=Edwina|last=Ashie-Nikoi|volume=39|issue=1|date=2005|page=92}}
5. ^{{cite thesis|type=PhD|last=Scott III|first=Julius Sherrard|date=1986|publisher=Duke University|title=The Common Wind: Currents of Afro-American Communication in the Era of the Haitian Revolution}}
6. ^{{cite book|title=Origins of the Black Atlantic|publisher=Routledge|date=2010|chapter="Negroes in Foreign Bottoms": Sailors, Slaves, and Communication|last=Scott|first=Julius S.|editor1-first=Laurent|editor1-last=Dubois|editor2-first=Julius S.|editor2-last=Scott|pages=69-98|isbn=9780415994453}}
7. ^¹²{{cite news|url=https://www.chronicle.com/article/An-Underground-Sensation/245000|title=An Underground Sensation Arrives|work=Chronicle of Higher Education|first=Tom|last=Bartlett|date=November 2, 2018|access-date=December 3, 2018}}
8. ^{{cite web|url=http://time.com/5157662/black-history-month-books-2018/|website=Time|title=9 Books to Read for Black History Month, According to Scholars|first=Sarah|last=Begley|date=February 15, 2018|access-date=December 4, 2018}}
9. ^{{cite web|url=https://www.law.umich.edu/facultyhome/lawslaveryfreedom/Documents/The%20Common%20Wind.pdf|title=The Common Wind: Conversations in African American and Atlantic Histories|website=Law in Slavery and Freedom Project|publisher=University of Michigan|date=November 14, 2008|access-date=December 3, 2018}}
10. ^{{cite interview|url=https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/interviews/article/78658-spreading-the-news-of-freedom-pw-talks-to-julius-s-scott.html|first=Julius S.|last=Scott|interviewer=Eugene Holley Jr.|title=Spreading the News of Freedom: PW talks to Julius S. Scott |work=Publishers Weekly|date=November 21, 2018|access-date=December 3, 2018}}