Murder at Montpelier: Igbo Africans in Virginia by Douglas B. Chambers. In 1732 Ambrose Madison, grandfather of the future president, languished for weeks in a sickbed then died. The death, soon after his arrival on the plantation, bore hallmarks of what planters assumed to be traditional African medicine. African slaves were suspected of poisoning their master. For Montpelier, his estate, and for Virginia, this was a watershed moment. Murder at Montpelier: Igbo Africans in Virginia explores the consequences of Madison's death and the ways in which this event shaped both white slaveholding society and the surrounding slave culture. At Montpelier, now owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and open to the public, Igbo slaves under the directions of white overseers had been felling trees, clearing land, and planting tobacco and other crops for five years before Madison arrived. This deadly initial encounter between American colonial master and African slave community irrevocably changed both whites and blacks. This book explores the many broader meanings of this suspected murder and its aftermath. It weaves together a series of transformations that followed, such as the negotiation of master-slave relations, the transformation of Igbo culture in the New World, and the social memory of a particular slave community. For the first time, the book presents the larger history of the slave community at James Madison's Montpelier, over the five generations from the 1720s through the 1850s and beyond. Murder at Montpelier revises many assumptions about how Africans survived enslavement, the middle passage, and grueling labor as chattel in North America. The importance of Igbo among the colonial slave population makes this work a controversial reappraisal of how Africans made themselves African Americans in Virginia. Douglas B. Chambers is a professor of history at the University of Southern Mississippi.
Product Identifiers
Publisher
University Press of Mississippi
ISBN-13
9781604732467
eBay Product ID (ePID)
95549700
Product Key Features
Author
Douglas B. Chambers
Publication Name
Murder at Montpelier: Igbo Africans in Virginia
Format
Paperback
Language
English
Subject
History
Publication Year
2005
Type
Textbook
Number of Pages
325 Pages
Dimensions
Item Height
152mm
Item Width
229mm
Additional Product Features
Title_Author
Douglas B. Chambers
Country/Region of Manufacture
United States
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