Violent Identity: Elite Manhood and Power in Early Barbados

Simple item page
dc.contributor.advisorRomero, R. Todd
dc.contributor.committeeMemberClavin, Matthew J.
dc.contributor.committeeMemberPatterson, Catherine F.
dc.contributor.committeeMemberRyden, David B.
dc.creatorMcDonald, Eric J.
dc.date.accessioned2019-09-15T21:09:51Z
dc.date.available2019-09-15T21:09:51Z
dc.date.createdAugust 2019
dc.date.issued2019-08
dc.date.submittedAugust 2019
dc.date.updated2019-09-15T21:09:52Z
dc.description.abstract“Violent Identity: Elite Manhood and Power in Early Barbados” demonstrates that gender is essential to understanding Anglo-American colonialism and plantation slavery. Throughout the seventeenth century, manhood shaped and supported Barbadian planters' strategies for achieving and maintaining power. Violence proved key to performing masculinity. It achieved manly ideals like bravery, valor, duty, and fortitude. Possessing such traits buttressed planter superiority over servants, slaves, and women, while justifying the physical tools used to maintain their authority. Elite Barbadian manhood evolved over the first fifty years of settlement. However, violence remained fundamental to masculinity and power throughout the period. It became part of a unique Atlantic identity and permeated island life for all the island's inhabitants. “Violent Identity” broadens our understanding of the way that gender supported Anglo-American slavery. The study builds on a growing scholarship of gender and violence within early American systems of power. Going beyond the master-slave relationship, this work explains how manhood and violence were foundational to the entire colonial project. A violent masculinity guided planter interactions with the metropole and subject groups from Indians to Africans and the Irish. It helped forge colonial legal and economic institutions, including slavery. Scholars have long demonstrated that Barbados was a world of systemic violence. Rather than just an outgrowth of race and economics, however, this dissertation argues that such violence stemmed from an adapted English manhood.
dc.description.departmentHistory, Department of
dc.format.digitalOriginborn digital
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdf
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10657/4687
dc.language.isoeng
dc.rightsThe author of this work is the copyright owner. UH Libraries and the Texas Digital Library have their permission to store and provide access to this work. Further transmission, reproduction, or presentation of this work is prohibited except with permission of the author(s).
dc.subjectBarbados
dc.subjectManhood
dc.subjectViolence
dc.subjectSlavery
dc.subjectCaribbean
dc.subjectColonial Caribbean
dc.subjectMasculinity
dc.subjectAnglo-America
dc.titleViolent Identity: Elite Manhood and Power in Early Barbados
dc.type.dcmiText
dc.type.genreThesis
thesis.degree.collegeCollege of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
thesis.degree.departmentHistory, Department of
thesis.degree.disciplineHistory
thesis.degree.grantorUniversity of Houston
thesis.degree.levelDoctoral
thesis.degree.nameDoctor of Philosophy

Files

Original bundle

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
MCDONALD-DISSERTATION-2019.pdf
Size:
2.68 MB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Download

License bundle

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
No Thumbnail Available
Name:
PROQUEST_LICENSE.txt
Size:
4.43 KB
Format:
Plain Text
Description:
Download
No Thumbnail Available
Name:
LICENSE.txt
Size:
1.81 KB
Format:
Plain Text
Description:
Download

Collections

Published ETD Collection