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Faces of Perfect Ebony: Encountering Atlantic Slavery in Imperial Britain (Harvard Historical Studies) Hardcover – Illustrated, January 2, 2012
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Though blacks were not often seen on the streets of seventeenth-century London, they were already capturing the British imagination. For two hundred years, as Britain shipped over three million Africans to the New World, popular images of blacks as slaves and servants proliferated in London art, both highbrow and low. Catherine Molineux assembles a surprising array of sources in her exploration of this emerging black presence, from shop signs, tea trays, trading cards, board games, playing cards, and song ballads to more familiar objects such as William Hogarth’s graphic satires. By idealizing black servitude and obscuring the brutalities of slavery, these images of black people became symbols of empire to a general populace that had little contact with the realities of slave life in the distant Americas and Caribbean.
The earliest images advertised the opulence of the British Empire by depicting black slaves and servants as minor, exotic characters who gazed adoringly at their masters. Later images showed Britons and Africans in friendly gatherings, smoking tobacco together, for example. By 1807, when Britain abolished the slave trade and thousands of people of African descent were living in London as free men and women, depictions of black laborers in local coffee houses, taverns, or kitchens took center stage.
Molineux’s well-crafted account provides rich evidence for the role that human traffic played in the popular consciousness and culture of Britain during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and deepens our understanding of how Britons imagined their burgeoning empire.
- Print length374 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarvard University Press
- Publication dateJanuary 2, 2012
- Dimensions6.12 x 1.1 x 9.25 inches
- ISBN-100674050088
- ISBN-13978-0674050082
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Editorial Reviews
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“A vivid and arrestingly original book. Molineux's innovative work shows us that the story of black life in imperial Britain survived in the most unlikely of sources: in contemporary print, iconography and theatre, in shop signs, trade cards, and ephemera of all kinds. Her persuasive argument, allied to the richness of her evidence, illuminates not only eighteenth-century Britain, but provides a discerning insight into the broader world of Atlantic history in the long century before abolition. What had once seemed a curiosity is now revealed, via Molineux's forensic and literary skills, as a multilayered portrait of cultural change during the long century of Britain's Atlantic empire.”―James Walvin, University of York
“An exemplary work that takes the study of the visual cultures of slavery in bold new directions. By turning her delicate skills of interpretation to anything and everything that Britain's colonial ambition generated, Molineux has inaugurated what may be a tidal change in early slavery studies. She deserves our gratitude for having produced a brilliant piece of detective work which redefines our notions of racial encounter. Faces of Perfect Ebony is a book we should all read, digest, and read again, if we hope to understand the bizarre ways in which the white gaze appropriated and unfortunately still appropriates the black body.”―Marcus Wood, University of Sussex
“Focusing on the period of Britain's greatest engagement in the Atlantic slave trade (ca. 1680-1807), Molineux taps on material culture and popular literature to reveal the presence of Africans in Enlightenment Britain. In doing so, she extends further into the past the growing body of scholarship emphasizing the imperial metropole as a significant contact zone between Britain and its tropical empire. She also highlights slavery's existence in the UK and correlation with racial "othering." While Britain's black population remained small, its presence exerted significant influence in British culture, from the use of images of Africans on shop signs and household commodities to the role of black subjects in performance and art. Most important is Molineux's exploration of British society's ambivalence toward people of African descent. This ambivalence enabled the simultaneous drawing of contrasts and similarities between whites and blacks in the UK, the latter feeding abolitionist sentiment. Based on exhaustive research, this book skillfully employs cultural critique to illuminate the empire's influence on British society.”―A. M. Wainwright, Choice
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Product details
- Publisher : Harvard University Press; Illustrated edition (January 2, 2012)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 374 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0674050088
- ISBN-13 : 978-0674050082
- Item Weight : 1.6 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.12 x 1.1 x 9.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #4,653,077 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #6,555 in British & Irish Literary Criticism (Books)
- #14,176 in Discrimination & Racism
- #18,105 in People of African Descent & Black Studies
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- Reviewed in the United States on August 9, 2020Fantastic!
- Reviewed in the United States on July 14, 2012I like the subject--how the British viewed Africans and slavery during the eighteenth century--but I did not like the execution. The organization is confusing in that chronologically it jumps back and for between a time when there were few blacks in Britain (earlier part of the century) to times when there were tens of thousands (from mid-century onwards). So it is not always clear with the author is dealing with actual Africans Britons encounter and mere visual representations of them. The prose are incredibly, almost painfully dense. It could have been far more concise, and at times it seems that the author is hiding behind it.
What is most disappointing is that the author employ's a title that show much promise, but then only investigates it narrowly. Most of the book relies on a handful of performed plays and a modest collection of images, rather than the considerable material generated in pamphlets, children's literature, newspapers, magazines, and the public political discourse. And the focus is on London almost exclusively, ignoring that Liverpool and Bristol were far more connected to slavery than the capital.
- Reviewed in the United States on July 19, 2012This is an excellent work that makes extensive use of visual images to give us a new perspective on slavery in the early modern British Atlantic World. I recommend it to anyone with serious interest in the history of slavery and the issues of race and rights.