An A.D. White Professors-at-Large keynote public lecture

Sir Hilary Beckles (Vice-Chancellor, University of the West Indies-UWI; A.D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell) will present the keynote public lecture, “The Idea of White Slavery: The West Indies Experience in the 17th Century,” on Thursday, March 27, at 4:45pm, Klarman Hall Auditorium, and via Zoom. A reception will follow in Klarman Atrium.

Abstract: The establishment of colonial dispensations on the Caribbean frontier by rival European imperial powers was conceived and implemented within an ideological framework that sanctioned and mandated the extensive use of servile labour.  The creation and survival of economic enterprises across imperial borders in mining, agriculture, distributive trades and services, depended upon the availability of coerced unfree labour.  Entrepreneurial thinking, likewise, was constrained by a set of specific economic references in which the attainment of growth and profitability, and a stable social order, were seen as contingent upon the supply and organization of unfree labour.

It was clear to all with an interest in the colonial mission that by the seventeenth century the options as far as labour use was concerned were reduced to three basic forms.  These choices were the reduction of the conquered indigenous population to servitude on lands apropriated from them, the transfer or surplus labour from the imperial centre to the colonial periphery under set contractual conditions, and the trading in chattel labour from the already well established African market.  Also, these forms were considered discrete in the sense that their structures were clilnically demarcated by racial differences – heightened by clearly distinct methods of recruitment.

About the speaker: Sir Hilary Beckles, eighth vice chancellor of the University of the West Indies, is a distinguished academic, international thought leader, United Nations committee official, and global public activist in the field of social justice and minority empowerment. Beckles was elected as an Andrew D. White Professor-At-Large at Cornell University in 2022. His appointment runs through 2028.

He received his higher education in the United Kingdom and is professor of economic history. He has lectured extensively in Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia. He has published over 100 peer reviewed essays in scholarly journals and over 13 books on subjects ranging from Atlantic and Caribbean History, to gender relations in the Caribbean, sport development, and popular culture.

Beckles is president of Universities Caribbean, chair of the Caribbean Examinations Council, chair of the CARICOM Reparations Commission, and advisor on sustainable development to former United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon. He was knighted by the government of Barbados. He has received numerous honorary doctorates from around the world and recently received the Martin Luther King Jr. Peace and Freedom Award.

This event is part of an A.D. White Professors-at-Large (ADW-PAL) visit and is cosponsored by the Dept. of History and the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program.