Erinnerungen an Sklaverei

This introduction explains the principal object of this volume of Comparativ to show when, where, how and by which media transatlantic slave trade and slavery have been remembered in former colonial states, plantation societies and in Germany until 2011, the International Year for People of African Descent, which focuses on the African diasporas as consequence of the slave trades. This article describes the historiography about this topic and social and political context of actual discussions on the national and international level which forms of commemoration are adequate to remember the victimization and the resistance of enslaved people, and also marks the silences and omissions on transatlantic slavery that persist until today.

This article looks at the origin of narratives on the Haitian Revolution in the context of competing narrations of slavery and abolition. I argue that the first texts written by white settlers and survivors of slave rebellion take part in the constitution of a cultural memory and bear witness to a process of remembering that includes forgetting and transformation, while it lays out lines of the unspeakable. These texts – historiographic accounts, testimonial and fugitive narratives – constitute a pool of narratives and anecdotes nourishing the modes and figures of remembering effective until the 20th century. Although competing communities of memory create competing narratives, something like a shared canon of figures and narrations emerges. Through a diachronic reading of different texts that visualizes processes of transformation, the reader is able to trace the ways in which a binding frame of memory is constituted.

Esteban Montejo was the ‘Cimarrón’ in Miguel Barnets Book Biografía de un cimarrón. He spent most of the timeof his life in the rural parts of central Cuba, where he worked and lived on several sugar cane plantations. Those places, forming stations of his life, will be presented here. In some places of his life slavery is remembered until today, in others all traces have been lost.

This paper refers to the „lieux de mémoire”, places of memory, of slave trade and slavery in some former colonial states which possessed plantations colonies in the Caribbean, England, France and Spain, and some former slavery societies, the U.S.A., the French and British West Indies, Cuba, and Brazil. It examines the development of the historiography on the topic, the development of memory practices from the honouring of white abolitionists to museums and monuments representing the slave´ s experience and resistance of slaves and maroons. Historical places where slavery took place (plantations, slave trade ports) or where it should be remembered in the context of colonial history (i. g. the Museo de América in Madrid), but where the memory is silenced because of political or commercial reasons, are also treated. The text tries to find out which social and political conditions lead to which forms of remembering or forgetting the history of slavery.

Dieser Artikel untersucht die Entwicklung der öffentlichen Erinnerung an Sklaverei in Brasilien. Er versucht zu verstehen, warum Sklaverei nach und nach im öffentlichen Raum sichtbar wird. Bei der Untersuchung der Initiativen zur Förderung des materiellen und immateriellen Erbes der Sklaverei widmet der Text der Erinnerung an den Widerstand gegen die Sklaverei, verkörpert durch Zumbi, den Anführer des quilombo Palmares, der größten und dauerhaftesten Sklavenfluchtsiedlung, besondere Aufmerksamkeit. Er belegt die wachsende Präsenz von Sklaven und Sklavinnen, die gegen die Sklaverei gekämpft haben, im öffentlichen Raum als Teil eines umfassenderen Phänomens, das in verschiedenen Städten der Karibik und Lateinamerikas erkennbar ist. Der Beitrag schließt damit zu zeigen, dass die wachsende Zahl von Denkmälern für Zumbi in Brasilien nicht nur aus dem Bedürfnis entspringt, schwarze historische Akteure sichtbar zu machen, sondern auch das Ergebnis der Forderungen ist, gegenwärtige soziale und ethnische Ungleichheiten zu beenden.

The article deals with the construction of commemorative traditions of slave emancipation in the U. S. Virgin Islands and in Denmark. In 1848 a successful revolt of the slaves ended slavery in the Danish Caribbean colonies. In Denmark this event is connected with Peter von Scholten, who proclaimed the slave emancipation, heavily pressed by the slaves, whereas in the U. S. Virgin Islands one of the leaders of the rebellion, General Buddhoe, is synonymous with emancipation and resistance. By analysing the depiction of von Scholten and Buddhoe in the Danish movie “Peter von Scholten” the article points out how the Danish created a dominant narrative of slave emancipation.