LACS Lecture. Atlantic History Initiative. Rumors of Slavery: Defending Emancipation in a Hostile Caribbean

Professor Eller will be workshopping her recent article, “Rumors of Slavery,” as well as discussing its connections to her book, We Dream Together: Dominican Independence, Haiti, and the Fight for Caribbean Freedom. In her study of the reoccupation of Dominican territory by the Spanish, Eller deepens study of the impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic world and breaks from paradigms that emphasize perpetual conflict between Haitians and Dominicans in the nineteenth century. She contextualizes the small body of writing of Dominican elites with new analyses of inclusive and popular histories of identity, community, and freedom, summoning sources that range from trial records and consul reports to fragments of poetry and song. Rethinking Dominican relationships with their communities, the national project, and the greater Caribbean, Eller shows how popular anticolonial resistance, as well as Caribbean anti-slavery movements across multiple islands and coasts, were anchored in a rich and complex political culture that traveled beyond individual shores.

Anne Eller is an assistant professor of history at Yale University. She teaches and researches colonial and modern Caribbean and Latin American history, comparative colonialisms, citizenship, Atlantic history, and the African Diaspora. She is currently writing a second monograph about the Caribbean after emancipation, tentatively entitled Other 1898s.