EVENT DETAILS

Dr. Kevin Dawson, "History Below the Waterline: Enslaved Salvage Divers and the Hinterseas of Plantation Slavery"

"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.

Professor Dawson is an Associate Professor of History at UC Merced and the author of Undercurrents of Power: Aquatic Culture in the African Diaspora (2018), which just won the Harriet Tubman Prize for the best nonfiction book published in the United States on the slave trade, slavery, and anti-slavery in the Atlantic world.

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