Robert Heinze

The sea in #Normandy looks different if you’ve chosen (a local bookstore accommodated) to read #Condé, #Glissant, and a book on regional entanglements in the #transatlantic slave trade and the slave economies. #slavery #history

Glissant, in his “discours antillais”, talks about “inquiète tranquillité”:
“The uneasy tranquillity of our existences, by so many obscure relays tied to the tremor of the world.”

Aug 8, 2023 at 12:10pmWeb
Show threadRobert HeinzeAug 8, 2023

These quaint little fishing towns are so deeply entwined in the trade - local shipping companies got rich by trading slaves, the whole hinterland was engaged in weaving cotton cloth (called „indienne“) which was in turn sold to #African #slave traders. Last photo shows the #cloth distributed all over the region in which #cotton was woven into #textiles in the #earlymodern workshop system.

@histodons

Show threadRobert HeinzeAug 9, 2023
@histodons This, for example, is Honfleur, a little port close to Le Havre on the other side of the Seine estuary. It’s a nice old touristy place, although one can see it used to be a rich port. The local part of the exhibition on #slavery where I got the book details the involvement in the #slave trade: 140 ships in the “long” 18th century before abolition 1822, 50 000 African men and women enslaved, shackled and transported. From one small port in Normandy of then ~9 000 population.
Show threadRobert HeinzeAug 9, 2023

Several Honfleurians involved in the #slave trade also bought plantations and even settled down on the #Antilles, in Saint Domingue (#Haiti) especially. There is also an #African presence in Honfleur.

So many obscure relays tying us to the tremor of the world.

Show threadIan HuntAug 11, 2023
@rheinze Thanks for this thread. Here is a page from Malcom Ferdinand's remarkable and important book Decolonial Ecology: Thinking from the Caribbean World. Each chapter begins with an evocation and reimagining of the voyages taken by certain ships, mostly from French ports - here the 'Justice'
Show threadRobert HeinzeAug 11, 2023
@ianhunt @ianhunt @ianhunt Beautiful Text, thanks for sharing! That must have been one of the first vessels from LH
Show threadNodamiAug 8, 2023
@rheinze alt Text: Photo of the sea. Stairs finishing at the sea