This week we are headed to Jamaica to discuss the role of Obeah, a sort of Afro-Caribbean magic practiced there, in the islands history. We'll talk about how English writers used it to justify slavery, how it inspired slaves to rise up in arms, and how an infamous Obeah woman known as Queen Nanny inspired free Black settlements to resist the British Empire.
Sources:
Diana Paton, The Cultural Politics of Obeah. In The Cultural Politics of Obeah: Religion, Colonialism and Modernity in the Caribbean World
Eugenia O'Neal, Obeah, Race and Racism. Caribbean Witchcraft in the English Imagination
Karla Gottlieb, The Mother of Us All: A History of Queen Nanny