Slavery, Geography and Empire in Nineteenth-Century Marine Landscapes of Montreal and Jamaica

Charmaine A. Nelson is Professor of Art History, Department of Art History and Communication Studies, McGill University, Canada.

'Charmaine A. Nelson's compelling and innovative reading of British Caribbean marine landscapes in Montreal and Jamaica (1760-1820) expands slavery studies and the visual culture of slavery to consider for the first time a second Middle Passage between the Caribbean and Canada. She thus expands the traditional slave trade triangle to now include Great Britain, the West Indies, and Canada. Her erudite and rich analysis of visual culture combined with postcolonial feminist theory is a major contribution to readers in a myriad of fields.' - Vivien Green Fryd, Vanderbilt University, USA 'Charmaine Nelson's keen analysis reveals her sharp intellect as she addresses the realities of racism in Canada and the Caribbean: the absences, the distortions and the erasures that stifled black voices suffering the opprobrium of slavery. Canada somehow, willfully, disappeared from Atlantic slavery, from the shameful, painful collective history that encompassed all of us. This is a "big book", and though its focus is visual arts, it is multidisciplinary and universal in its scope.' - Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, Professor emeritus, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, USA'Slavery, Geography and Empire in Nineteenth-Century Marine Landscapes of Montreal and Jamaica is a deeply researched and complex book. ...[Nelson's] comparative project signals her position as scholarly activist and practitioner of a hybrid art history that incorporates a close attending to the visuals, a concern for what is seen and not seen, and a self-reflexivity concerning how the author positions herself. Throughout the book, one senses her outrage and indictment of the slavery complex as well as her commitment to telling a new story about the visualization and imaginings of slavery, geography, and empire in the nineteenth-century colonial world of Montreal and Jamaica.'- RACAR'In this prolific and compelling study, Nelson draws from an impressive body of visual and textual sources to argue for a deeply entrenched set of geopolitical, commercial, and social connectivities between two key colonial ports of the British Atlantic....Nelson’s study works to interrupt dominant narratives of place and nationhood, and its address to an expansive range of geographies, images, texts, and histories should provide myriad openings for future studies on slavery and empire across disciplines.'- CAA Reviews

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionSlavery studies and its absencesContesting the erasure of black Canada and Canadian slaveryPostcolonial geography: Understanding landscapes as racializedThe case of two islands: Comparing Montreal and JamaicaSocieties-with-slaves vs. slave societiesMontreal and Jamaica: Colonized landscapesThe chaptersTerminology1 Colonialism and art: Landscape and empireCritical geography and art history: Of landscape representation, imperialism, and powerArt-making as empire-making: Whiteness, travel, and imperial visionMontreal and Jamaica: Imperial connectionsTransoceanic artMaps, landscape painting, and topographical ,landscapes2 A tale of two empires: Montreal slavery under the French and the BritishA transition of power: From French to British slaveryLiminal bodies: "Loose" women, drunken soldiers, and vagrancyAdapting slavery under the BritishSituating Montreal’s black minorityThe face of slave ownership in Montreal: James McGill3 Representing the enslaved African in MontrealPortraiture and slaveryGeographical alienation and the hierarchy of enslavementMarie-Thérèse-Zémire, revolutionary St. Domingue, and the politics of flightCritiquing Canadian museum practice: The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts’ installation of Portrait of a Haitian WomanThe conditions of African enslavement in eighteenth-century Montreal and St. DomingueLife after François: "Portrait" of a Montreal slave mistressMinuets of the Canadians and African Cultural SurvivalsThe tambourineConnecting black Canadian music to the African diaspora4 Landscaping MontrealMontreal as British Military StrongholdRe-Imagining Montreal as a Colonial Trade and Slave PortSt. Helen’s Island5 Landscaping JamaicaJohn Seller’s Atlas Maritimus: Jamaica in the early modern British imaginationSloane’s natural historyThe Beckfordesque landscape traditionBeckford, slavery, and sugar cultivationThe picturesque and Beckford’s debt to European landscape (painting)The planter’s vantage point: The tropical picturesque6 Imaging slavery in Antigua and Jamaica: Pro-slavery discourse and the reality of enslavementWilliam Clark’s AntiguaThe tropical picturesque as pro-slavery discourseThomas Thistlewood and Vineyard PenWhite male sexual exploitation of black womenThomas Thistlewood, Agostino Brunias, and cross-racial sexual relations in the CaribbeanThe price of excess: white male promiscuity and the spread of venereal diseaseThe state of Jamaican slavery7 James Hakewill’s Picturesque Tour: Representing life on nineteenth-century Jamaican sugar plantationsSugar cane or slaves: Representing and sublimating labourWilliam Clark’s labouring slavesAnimalizing slaves, humanizing animalsJames Hakewill’s white women"I am the Only Woman": Politeness and the erasure of black and coloured womenRiding side-saddle: White femininity, modernity, and privilege8 Beyond Sugar: James Hakewill’s vision of Jamaican settlements, livestock pens, and the spaces betweenCaretaking animals: Identity and penkeepingThe limits of mobility and the pervasiveness of surveillance: Exploring wainage"Other" whites: Representing British soldiers in the CaribbeanWhite anxiety: Cross-racial mixing and coloured populationsConclusion: Deception in the life and art of the white Jamaican creole planter class