Conjuring cane : the art of William Berryman and Caribbean sugar plantations
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This dissertation examines the depiction of sugar plantations in the colonial Caribbean, with a specific focus on Jamaica during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Over the course of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, there were few better examples of modern industrial labor systems than those found on Caribbean slave labor plantations, specifically those that produced sugar. These plantations were the nexus of the slave, sugar and rum trades. Though protected by mercantilist policies, these trade networks, and their arbiters, incredibly wealthy merchants based in the metropole, were capitalist at their core. The very functioning of the sugar plantation, with its state-of-the-art technology, and coordination of an enormous, highly disciplined labor force in the field with a highly skilled labor force the sugar mill under a rigorous, time-sensitive, and detailed schedule, was the epitome of modern labor. In addition to its economic and industrial impacts, the plantation was a site where new cultures were created through the process of what has at times been called creolization, hybridization, or cultural syncretism. Although crucial to modernity, the history of sugar plantations has often been overlooked in its histories in lieu of events like the Industrial Revolution or French Revolution. In this dissertation, I argue that the images produced and widely circulated of West Indian plantations, usually in the Picturesque style, created an impression of the plantation as a pastoral site, which, like the pastoral and Georgic images of rural British estates, not only placed these sites in a distant past, but also extracted them from their modern reality. The theories behind the Picturesque found their roots in the idea of the omniscient eye produced by property surveys, one of the first visual strategies aimed at representing land as privately owned capital. Thus, the Picturesque reinforced and naturalized European ownership and control over plantations at a time when, in many cases, that ownership was in peril. Countering this narrative is the work of artist William Berryman. Although his work has remained relatively unknown, his paintings and drawings of Jamaica in the early nineteenth century present a view of the inner workings of plantation society. This dissertation is the first extensive study of his archive, which contains approximately three hundred images from his eight year sojourn in Jamaica.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2016 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Newman, Rachel Grace |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Art and Art History. |
| Primary advisor | Wolf, Bryan Jay |
| Thesis advisor | Wolf, Bryan Jay |
| Thesis advisor | Brody, Jennifer DeVere |
| Thesis advisor | Marrinan, Michael |
| Thesis advisor | Nemerov, Alexander |
| Advisor | Brody, Jennifer DeVere |
| Advisor | Marrinan, Michael |
| Advisor | Nemerov, Alexander |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Rachel Grace Newman. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Art and Art History. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2016. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2016 by Rachel Grace Newman
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (CC BY).
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