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History Below the Waterline: Enslaved Salvage Divers and the Hinterseas of Plantation Slavery, by Kevin Dawson (UC Merced)

"History Below the Waterline" examines how enslaved salvage divers in the English Atlantic were informed by the human tides and cultural currents of the Atlantic slave trade, colonialism, and commercial capitalism.  Even as global forces uprooted Africans and transplanted them in the Americas, enslaved divers leveraged their exceptional African-derived abilities to quickly salvage significant quantities of gold, silver, and other goods from sunken Spanish treasure galleons to gain unique privileges.  This talk considers how African underwater diving abilities produced capital for slaveholders, colonies, and the English Empire, helping to finance plantation slavery and colonization.

Kevin Dawson is an associate professor of history at U.C. Merced.  He received my Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 2005.  He was a 2004-2005 Ford Dissertation Fellow and his article "Enslaved Swimmers and Divers in the Atlantic World” received the 2005 Louis Pelzer Memorial Award from the Organization of American Historians.  

Undercurrents of Power: Aquatic Cultures in the African Diaspora (University of Pennsylvania Press: 2018).
“Enslaved Swimmers and Divers in the Atlantic World” in The Journal of American History (March 2006), which received the 2005 Louis Pelzer Memorial Award from the Organization of American Historians.

“Enslaved Ship Pilots in the Age of Revolutions: Challenging Perceptions of Race and Slavery Between the Boundaries of Maritime and Terrestrial Bondage” in The Journal of Social History, (Fall, 2013).