Mancala ( Arabic : منقلة manqalah ) is a family of two-player turn-based strategy board games played with small stones, beans, or seeds and rows of holes or pits in the earth, a board or other playing surface. The objective is usually to capture all or some set of the opponent's pieces.
94-589: Krur (also spelled Crur ) is a traditional mancala game played by the Hassaniya people in western Sahara , along the border of Nigeria and Mauritania , in southern Morocco , in Algeria , in northern Senegal , in Mali and in Niger . It is a children's game, very close to other simple African mancala such as Layli Goobalay ( Somalia ) and Nsa Isong (Nigeria). The game of Krur
188-519: A board of 160 (4×40) holes requiring 320 seeds, and En Gehé ( Tanzania ), played on longer rows with up to 50 pits (a total of 2×50=100) and using 400 seeds. The most minimalistic variants are Nano-Wari and Micro-Wari, created by the Bulgarian ethnologue Assia Popova. The Nano-Wari board has eight seeds in just two pits; Micro-Wari has a total of four seeds in four pits. With a two-rank board, players usually are considered to control their respective sides of
282-416: A common gameplay. Players begin by placing a certain number of seeds, prescribed for the particular game, in each of the pits on the game board. A player may count their stones to plot the game. A turn consists of removing all seeds from a pit, "sowing" the seeds (placing one in each of the following pits in sequence), and capturing based on the state of the board. The game's object is to plant the most seeds in
376-475: A continuum of total institutions , the concentration camp is far removed from the Southern plantation." According to Blassingame, the goal of the irrationally organized and understaffed plantation was not the systematic torture and extermination of its laborers, who were "worth more than a bullet". In The Slave Community , Blassingame uses psychologist Harry Stack Sullivan 's interpersonal theory to interpret
470-649: A game called qarqis, a term used in Geʽez to refer to both Gebet'a (mancala) and Sant'araz (modern sent'erazh , Ethiopian chess ). Evidence of the game has also been uncovered in Kenya. The games have also existed in Eastern Europe . In Estonia , it was once very popular (see " Bohnenspiel "), and likewise in Bosnia (where it is called Ban-Ban and still played today), Serbia, and Greece ("Mandoli", Cyclades). Two mancala tables from
564-414: A lap ends just before an empty hole. If a player ends their stone with a point move they get a "free turn". Depending on the last hole sown in a lap, a player may capture stones from the board. The exact requirements for capture, as well as what is done with captured stones, vary considerably among games. Typically, a capture requires sowing to end in a hole with a certain number of stones, ending across
658-452: A large number of Southern newspapers". A primary source that Blassingame did not consult in his study was the WPA slave interviews. While he admits that "slave interviews rival autobiographies in their revelations about the internal dynamics of bondage, ... the heavy editing of the WPA interviews makes them far more difficult to utilize than black autobiographies." He elaborates on his criticism of
752-598: A review in the William and Mary Quarterly , George Mullin is especially critical of Blassingame's use of psychology, stating that Blassingame "reduc[es] slave behavior and culture to a question of roles and psychological characteristics". He concludes that an " E. P. Thompson for the American Black community during slavery is still off-stage", and that the topic needs exploration by a social or economic historian. Rawick states that Blassingame's "first major error lies in adopting
846-404: A seed is put into a hole of the opponent and it comes to a collection of four seeds and it is marked. If the last seed of the collection on a turn is dropped into an occupied hole, the player must pick up all the contents and continue until the last seed is dropped into an empty hole. When a seed is put into a hole, the term is called "sowing." Sowing cannot begin from a captured hole. The game
940-432: A time in different holes reflects the physical act of sowing . If the sowing action stops after dropping the last seed, the game is considered a single lap game. Multiple laps or relay sowing is a frequent feature of mancala games, although not universal. When relay sowing, if the last seed during sowing lands in an occupied hole, all the contents of that hole, including the last sown seed, are immediately re-sown from
1034-406: Is role theory . According to this theory, "a person's behavior is generally determined by the socially defined roles or the behavioral patterns expected of him in certain situations." Blassingame asserts that through applying interpersonal and role theory to the fugitive slave narratives, historians can determine "the extent to which slaves acted the way their masters expected them to behave" and how
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#17328489225021128-516: Is a classification or type of game, rather than any specific game. Some of the most popular mancala games (concerning distribution area, the numbers of players and tournaments, and publications) are: Although more than 800 names of traditional mancala games are known, some names denote the same game, while others are used for more than one game. Almost 200 modern invented versions have also been described. Like other board games , mancala games have led to psychological studies. Retschitzki has studied
1222-508: Is complete once seeds no longer remain in play. The winner of the game is the player who has captured more seeds than his opponent. This game -related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Mancala Versions of the game date back past the 3rd century and evidence suggests the game existed in Ancient Egypt . It is among the oldest known games to still be widely played today. According to some experts,
1316-519: Is incomplete in its presentation of a different and more complex scene" even though he "effectively shows the difficulties of the concentration-camp image and the Sambo myth". Historians criticized Blassingame for dismissing the WPA slave interviews and relying solely on fugitive slave narratives. In the Journal of American History , Willie Lee Rose writes that Blassingame's use of the fugitive slave narratives
1410-816: Is known as "ouril". It is played on the Islands and was brought to the United States by Cape Verdean immigrants. It is played to this day in Cape Verdean communities in New England. Historians may have found evidence of Mancala in slave communities of the Americas . The game was brought to the Americas by enslaved Africans during the trans-Atlantic slave trade . The game was played by enslaved Africans to foster community and develop social skills. Archeologists may have found evidence of
1504-403: Is marred by his neglect of the WPA interviews. Kenneth Wiggins Porter regards Blassingame's dependence on printed sources as a "major weakness" and believes he does not use enough white sources like plantation records and travel narratives, particularly Frederick Law Olmsted 's account of life in the antebellum South. According to George Rawick, "We desperately need work that depicts and analyzes
1598-646: Is overwhelming evidence, in the primary sources, of the Negro's resistance to his bondage and of his undying love for freedom." Blassingame outlines efforts of slaves to run away and rebel, particularly the Stono Rebellion of 1739, Charles Deslondes 's revolt in 1811, Nat Turner's revolt of 1831, and the participation of fugitive slaves in Florida fighting with Seminoles during the Seminole Wars . Blassingame concludes that
1692-464: Is self-esteem. Blassingame explains, "Our sense of self-esteem is heightened or lowered by our perception of the images others have of us." Interpersonal behavior revolves around the dominant-submissive axes: "One form of behavior tends to elicit its complement: dominance leads to submission and vice versa. The extent of submissiveness often depends on the structure of the group to which the person belongs." Another psychological theory used by Blassingame
1786-547: Is the Ewe story of "Why the Hare Runs Away", which is a trickster and tar-baby tale told by southern slaves and later recorded by writer Joel Chandler Harris in his Uncle Remus stories. Southern slaves often included African animals like elephants, lions, and monkeys as characters in their folk tales. As Christian missionaries and slaveowners attempted to erase African religious and spiritual beliefs, Blassingame argues that "in
1880-432: Is usually called a match. The board has two rows with four holes in each row. At the beginning of each game, each hole start off with four seeds. Each player controls their side of the board with the four holes on their side. On the players turn, they pick up the contents of one of the holes and puts them in each hole in an anti clockwise direction. The turn ends once the seed is put into an empty hole. The turn also ends if
1974-423: The Journal of Negro History that Blassingame had a tendency to overgeneralize and make "unsubstantiatable claims to originality and uniqueness". In the Journal of Political Economy , economic historian Stanley L. Engerman complains that the book is not "written by or for economists " and makes "limited use of economic analysis". He continues, "Given the concern with the 'personal autonomy' and culture of
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#17328489225022068-904: The Washington Post that Blassingame's study comes "closer than any previous study to answering the question 'what was it like to be a slave?'" Still, Blassingame's conclusions, methodology, and sources received substantial criticism from historians. Marian DeB. Kilson's review in the American Historical Review described Blassingame's aims as "imperfectly realized" because he "lacks a clear analytical perspective". She found his discussion of slave personality types "fascinating" and "his methodological aims ... important" but "not systematically pursued". Kilson believes that Blassingame ultimately failed in his analysis because "his intellectual integration of social and psychological orientations has yet to be fully achieved." Orville W. Taylor contends in
2162-637: The Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History and in 1979 published a revised and enlarged edition of The Slave Community . Despite criticisms, The Slave Community is a foundational text in the study of the life and culture of slaves in the Antebellum South . Ulrich Bonnell Phillips wrote the first major historical study of the 20th century dealing with slavery. In American Negro Slavery (1918), Phillips refers to slaves as " negroes , who for
2256-562: The Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History met in Chicago and held a session on The Slave Community . Panelists included Mary Frances Berry , Herbert Gutman, Leslie Howard Owens, George Rawick, Earl Thorpe, and Eugene Genovese. Blassingame responded to questions and critiques from the panel. The discussion led to the publication of an anthology edited by Al-Tony Gilmore called Revisiting Blassingame's The Slave Community : The Scholars Respond (1978). The book includes essays by
2350-405: The judgment of God against slaveowners. Slave marriages were illegal in southern states, and slave couples were frequently separated by slaveowners through sale. Blassingame grants that slaveowners did have control over slave marriages. They encouraged monogamous relationships to "make it easier to discipline their slaves. ... A black man, they reasoned, who loved his wife and his children
2444-554: The 'invisibility' of slave religion with irony: it is the neglect of slave sources by historians which has been the main cause of this invisibility." Raboteau credits Blassingame and others for demonstrating the value of slave sources. Historian Charles Joyner's influential study Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community (1984) is reinforced by the findings of The Slave Community and relies on similar evidence. Historian Deborah Gray White builds on Blassingame's research of
2538-513: The 19th century fugitive slave narratives as unreliable and biased because of their editing by abolitionists . Scholars also ignored the 2,300 interviews conducted with former slaves in the late 1930s by the WPA Federal Writers' Project . As historian George P. Rawick points out, more weight was often given to white sources: the "masters not only ruled the past in fact" but also "rule its written history ." The 1970s, however, witnessed
2632-568: The Antebellum South (1978). One of the more controversial of these studies was John W. Blassingame's The Slave Community . In The Slave Community , Blassingame argues that "historians have never systematically explored the life experiences of American slaves." He asserts that by concentrating on the slaveowner, historians have presented a distorted view of plantation life that "strips the slave of any meaningful and distinctive culture, family life, religion, or manhood." Blassingame outlines that
2726-498: The Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1794). Rather than accepting the fugitive slave narratives without question, Blassingame admits to scrutinizing his reading of the texts. He notes that arguments against the use of these autobiographies used by historians revolve around reliability: "Many historians refuse to use these accounts because they have felt the fugitive, as
2820-537: The Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South (1988). She notes that The Slave Community , like other historiography produced in the 1960s and 70s, "did not directly address women's history , even though many of the historians were sensitive to women's experience. Most of the male authors had done a large part of their work before the development of women's history as a discipline, and even
2914-536: The Sambo and Nat stereotypes "were real." He explains, "The more fear whites had of Nat, the more firmly tried to believe in Sambo in order to escape paranoia." Blassingame concludes that there were a variety of personality types exhibited by slaves positioned on a scale between the two extremes of Sambo and Nat. He argues that variations present in plantations, overseers, and masters gave the slave "much more freedom from restraint and more independence and autonomy than his institutionally defined role allowed. Consequently,
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3008-468: The Sambo figure evolved from white Americans' attitudes toward Africans and African Americans as innately barbaric, passive, superstitious, and childlike. Southern writers felt a need to defend slavery from allegations of abuse and brutality leveled by northern abolitionists, so Sambo became a common portrayal to justify and explain the need for plantation paternalism. Finally, slaveowners used the Sambo stereotype to alleviate their own fears and anxieties about
3102-428: The Sambo, Jack, and Nat personality types can be misleading. Blassingame contends that historians have "deliberately ignored" autobiographies of ex-slaves, particularly the fugitive slave narratives. "Consequently", argues Blassingame, "a great deal of emphasis has been placed on non-traditional sources in this study in an effort to delineate more clearly the slave's view of bondage and to discover some new insights into
3196-459: The Stono Rebellion (1974), Leslie Howard Owens's This Species of Property: Slave Life and Culture in the Old South (1976), Herbert G. Gutman 's The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750–1925 (1976), Lawrence W. Levine 's Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom (1977), and Albert J. Raboteau 's Slave Religion: The "Invisible Institution" in
3290-429: The United States involved the mutual interaction between two cultures, with Europeans and Africans borrowing from each other." Blassingame asserts that the most significant instance revolved around Protestant Christianity (primarily Baptist and Methodist churches): "The number of blacks who received religious instruction in antebellum white churches is significant because the church was the only institution other than
3384-451: The United States, many African religious rites were fused into one— voodoo ." Voodoo priests and conjurers promised slaves that they could make masters kind, harm enemies, ensure love, and heal sickness. Other religious survivals noted by Blassingame include funeral rites, grave decorating, and ritualistic dancing and singing. Slaveowners and state governments tried to prevent slaves from making or playing musical instruments because of
3478-776: The acculturation of African American slaves in the American South, African slaves in Latin America , and European slaves in North Africa and the Ottoman Empire . He compares the conversion of slaves in the southern states to Protestant Christianity, European slaves in North Africa to Islam , and African slaves in Latin America to Catholicism . Blassingame addresses the historiography of slavery published between 1972 and 1978 in
3572-465: The bank. This leads to the English phrase "count and capture" sometimes used to describe the gameplay. Although the details differ greatly, this general sequence applies to all games. If playing in capture mode, once a player ends their turn in an empty pit on their own side, they capture the opponent's pieces directly across. Once captured, the player gets to put the seeds in their own bank. After capturing,
3666-512: The beginning of a player's turn, they select a hole with seeds that will be sown around the board. This selection is often limited to holes on the current player's side of the board, as well as holes with a certain minimum number of seeds. In a process known as sowing , all the seeds from a hole are dropped one by one into subsequent holes in a motion wrapping around the board. Sowing is an apt name for this activity, since not only are many games traditionally played with seeds but placing seeds one at
3760-448: The behavior of slaves on antebellum plantations. Sullivan claims that "significant others", persons with the most power to reward and punish individual behavior, were primarily responsible for determining behavior. Interpersonal theorists argue that "behavioral patterns are determined by the characteristics of the situation, how the person perceives them, and his behavioral dispositions at the time." The most important component of personality
3854-524: The benefits of a paternalistic master–slave relationship on southern plantations . Using psychology, Blassingame analyzes fugitive slave narratives published in the 19th century to conclude that an independent culture developed among the enslaved and that there were a variety of personality types exhibited by slaves. Although the importance of The Slave Community was recognized by scholars of American slavery, Blassingame's conclusions, methodology, and sources were heavily criticized. Historians criticized
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3948-434: The board called stores , are used for holding the pieces. Playing pieces are seeds, beans, stones, cowry shells, half-marbles or other small undifferentiated counters that are placed in and transferred about the holes during play. Board configurations vary among different games but also within variations of a given game; for example Endodoi is played on boards from 2×6 to 2×10. The largest are Tchouba ( Mozambique ) with
4042-428: The board from stones in specific configurations or landing in an empty hole adjacent to an opponent's hole that contains one or more pieces. Another common way of capturing is to capture the stones that reach a certain number of seeds at any moment. Also, several games include the notion of capturing holes, and thus all seeds sown on a captured hole belong at the end of the game to the player who captured it. The name
4136-473: The board, although moves often are made into the opponent's side. With a four-rank board, players control an inner row and an outer row, and a player's seeds will remain in these closest two rows unless the opponent captures them. The objective of most two- and three-row mancala games is to capture more stones than the opponent; in four-row games, one usually seeks to leave the opponent with no legal move or sometimes to capture all counters in their front row. At
4230-425: The book had to be revised because of George Bentley, an enslaved, pro-slavery Primitive Baptist minister from Tennessee who pastored a white church in the 1850s. Blassingame wanted to "solve the myriad dilemmas posed by George Bentley", but he also wanted to answer the questions, challenges, and critiques raised by scholars since the publication of The Slave Community . Blassingame explains that he incorporated
4324-797: The book was considered the authoritative text on slavery in America until the 1950s. Phillips's interpretation of slavery was challenged by Kenneth M. Stampp in The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South (1956) and Stanley M. Elkins in Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (1958). Stampp's study lacks the racist interpretation found in American Negro Slavery and approaches
4418-474: The brutal treatment received at the hands of slaveowners and overseers. Elkins compares the process to the infantilization of Jews in Nazi concentration camps . Like Phillips, Stampp and Elkins relied on plantation records and the writings of slaveowners as their main primary sources . Stampp admits that "few ask what the slaves themselves thought of bondage." Historians dismissed the written works of slaves such as
4512-488: The brutality of the plantation. When children understood that they were enslaved (usually after their first whipping), parents dissuaded angry urges to run away or seek revenge. Children observed fathers demonstrating two behavioral types. In the quarters, he "acted like a man", castigating whites for the mistreatment of himself and his family; in the field working for the master, he appeared obedient and submissive. According to Blassingame, "Sometimes children internalized both
4606-527: The cognitive processes used by awalé players. Some of Restchitzki's results on memory and problem solving have recently been simulated by Fernand Gobet with the CHREST computer model. De Voogt has studied the psychology of Bao playing. Several groups of Mancala games have their own tournaments. A medley tournament including at least two modalities has been part of the Mind Sports Olympiad , including in
4700-518: The control of whites." Blassingame notes that many of the folk tales told by slaves have been traced by African scholars to Ghana , Senegal , and Mauritania to peoples such as the Ewe , Wolof , Hausa , Temne , Ashanti , and Igbo . He remarks, "While many of these tales were brought over to the South, the African element appears most clearly in the animal tales." One prominent example discussed by Blassingame
4794-542: The data bases to evaluate the conclusions based on them. Whether compiled by planters, doctors, clergymen, army officers, or census takers, statistics on slavery mean little until combined with literary material. The dry bones of historical analysis, statistics acquire life when filtered through the accounts left by eyewitnesses. Reviewing the revised edition in the Journal of Southern History , Gary B. Mills suggests, "All controversy and revision aside, The Slave Community remains
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#17328489225024888-517: The early 18th century are to be found in Weikersheim Castle in southern Germany. In western Europe, it never caught on but was documented by Oxford University orientalist Thomas Hyde. In the United States a traditional mancala game called Warra was still played in Louisiana in the early 20th century, and a commercial version called Kalah became popular in the 1940s. In Cape Verde , mancala
4982-480: The fact that many masters recognized the male as the head of the family. He observed that during courtship men flattered women and exaggerated their prowess. There was, however, little discussion of the reciprocal activities of slave women." She concludes that Blassingame "described how slave men gained status in the family, but he did not do the same for women." Elizabeth Fox-Genovese makes similar observations in Within
5076-657: The family life of the slaves in Ar'n't I a Woman?: Female Slaves in the Plantation South (1985). Her argument is similar to Blassingame's: "This present study takes a look at slave women in America and argues that they were not submissive, subordinate, or prudish and that they were not expected to be so." White discusses the Mammy and Jezebel stereotypes often applied to African American women by white Americans. She calls The Slave Community "a classic" but remarks that "Blassingame stressed
5170-419: The family was broken it was primarily responsible for the slave's ability to survive on the plantation without becoming totally dependent on and submissive to his master." He contends: While the form of family life in the quarters differed radically from that among free Negroes and whites, this does not mean it failed to perform many of the traditional functions of the family—the rearing of children being one of
5264-659: The few Africans enslaved in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century America appear to have survived their traumatic experiences without becoming abjectly docile, infantile, or submissive" and "since an overwhelming percentage of nineteenth-century Southern slaves were native Americans, they never underwent this kind of shock [the Middle Passage ] and were in a position to construct psychological defenses against total dependency on their masters." Blassingame asserts that historians have discussed "what could be generally described as slave 'culture,' but give little solid information on life in
5358-573: The first studies of slavery from the perspective of the slave was recognized by historians. The book nonetheless received heavy criticism by academics who disagreed with Blassingame's conclusions, methodology, and sources. Historian George P. Rawick noted in 1976, however, that the criticism "should not obscure the fact that [Blassingame's] book was of such merit as to warrant spending our time criticizing it four years after its publication. Yet, like many good books, it should have been better." In The History Teacher , Keith Polakoff comments that "only with
5452-579: The game Mancala played in Nashville, Tennessee at the Hermitage Plantation . Recent studies of mancala rules have given insight into the distribution of mancala. This distribution has been linked to migration routes, which may go back several hundred years. The word mancala ( Arabic : مِنْقَلَة , romanized : minqalah ) is a tool noun derived from an Arabic root naqala ( ن-ق-ل ) meaning "to move". Most mancala games have
5546-705: The game are fragments of a pottery board and several rock cuts found in Aksumite areas in Matara (in Eritrea ) and Yeha (in Ethiopia), which are dated by archaeologists to between the 6th and 7th centuries AD. The oldest mention of the game is in the " Kitab al-Aghani " (" Book of Songs ") of the 10th-century, attributed to Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani . The game may have been mentioned by Giyorgis of Segla in his 14th century Geʽez text Mysteries of Heaven and Earth , where he refers to
5640-499: The hole. The process usually will continue until sowing ends in an empty hole. Another common way to receive "multiple laps" is when the final seed sown lands in your designated hole. Many games from the Indian subcontinent use pussakanawa laps . These are like standard multi-laps, but instead of continuing the movement with the contents of the last hole filled, a player continues with the next hole. A pussakanawa lap move will then end when
5734-404: The human race." Therefore, Blassingame concludes: Like most personal documents, the autobiography provides a window to the larger world. In this sense, the slave writers present a participant observers' comments on the larger slave society. As an eyewitness, the autobiographer brings the historian into contact with almost all kinds of slaves. When the autobiographies are accepted both as records of
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#17328489225025828-532: The in-person event and the online Grand Prix. The Slave Community The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South is a book written by American historian John W. Blassingame . Published in 1972, it is one of the first historical studies of slavery in the United States to be presented from the perspective of the enslaved. The Slave Community contradicted those historians who had interpreted history to suggest that African-American slaves were docile and submissive " Sambos " who enjoyed
5922-420: The interviews in a 1975 article in the Journal of Southern History . He describes how white interviewers often deleted material contrary to the paternalistic image of the antebellum South which they wanted to present. Blassingame concludes, "Uncritical use of the interviews will lead almost inevitably to a simplistic and distorted view of the plantation as a paternalistic institution where the chief feature of life
6016-471: The issue from the position that there is no innate difference between blacks and whites. He questions the reality of plantation paternalism described by Phillips: "the reality of ante-bellum paternalism ... needs to be separated from its fanciful surroundings and critically analyzed." Elkins also dismisses Phillips's claim that African American slaves were innately submissive "Sambos". He argues that slaves had instead been infantilized, or "made" into Sambos, by
6110-442: The literature of the antebellum south: Directly challenging Elkins's infantilization thesis, Blassingame argues that historians have focused too much on the Sambo personality type and the role of paternalism. "The Sambo stereotype was so pervasive in antebellum Southern literature that many historians, without further research, argue that it was an accurate description of the dominant slave personality." According to Blassingame,
6204-486: The lives of black women under slavery. We have had very largely a male-dominated literature about slavery." He notes, "Blassingame, unfortunately, does not help us at all in this task." Rawick surmises that if Blassingame had consulted the WPA slave interviews, he would have developed a picture of the "heroic struggles of black women on behalf of themselves and of the whole black community". Historians exhibited varying responses to Blassingame's use of psychological theory. In
6298-441: The most important of these functions. Since slave parents were primarily responsible for training their children, they could cushion the shock of bondage for them, help them to understand their situation, teach them values different from those their masters tried to instill in them, and give them a referent for self-esteem other than the master. Blassingame asserts that slave parents attempted to shield infants and young children from
6392-491: The most part were by racial quality submissive rather than defiant, light-hearted instead of gloomy, amiable and ingratiating instead of sullen, and whose very defects invited paternalism rather than repression." American Negro Slavery is infused with racial rhetoric and upholds perceptions about the inferiority of black people common in the southern United States at the time. Although African American academics such as W. E. B. Du Bois criticized Phillips's depiction of slaves,
6486-424: The most sensitive were hampered by a paucity of sources and by unfamiliarity with the questions feminists would soon raise." After the 1976 Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History meeting and the publication of Revisiting Blassingame's The Slave Community in 1978, Blassingame produced a revised and enlarged edition of The Slave Community in 1979. In the new preface, Blassingame asserted that
6580-495: The oldest discovered Mancala boards are in 'Ain Ghazal, Jordan in the floor of a Neolithic dwelling as early as ~5,870 BC although this claim has been disputed by others. More recent and undisputed claims concern artifacts from the modern-day Israel in the city of Gedera in an excavated Roman bathhouse where pottery boards and rock cuts that were unearthed dating back to between the 2nd and 3rd century AD. Among other early evidence of
6674-405: The opponent forfeits a turn. Equipment is typically a board, constructed of various materials, with a series of holes arranged in rows, usually two or four. The materials include clay and other shapeable materials. Some games are more often played with holes dug in the earth, or carved in stone. The holes may be referred to as "depressions", "pits", or "houses". Sometimes, large holes on the ends of
6768-477: The panelists as well as James D. Anderson, Ralph D. Carter, John Henrik Clarke , and Stanley Engerman. Blassingame's essay, "Redefining The Slave Community : A Response to Critics" appears in the volume. Since its publication in 1972 and revision in 1979, The Slave Community has influenced subsequent historiographical works on slavery in the United States. In a 1976 edition of Roll, Jordan, Roll , Eugene Genovese explains that Blassingame's book "demonstrates that
6862-496: The plantation which played a major role in acculturating the slave." Christianity and enslaved black ministers slowly replaced African religious survivals and represented another aspect of slave culture which the slaves used to create their own communities. While ministers preached obedience in the presence of the slaveowners and other whites, slaves often met in secret, "invisible" services unsupervised by whites. In these " invisible churches ", slaves could discuss freedom, liberty, and
6956-550: The potential rebelliousness of their slaves. Blassingame remarks, "In this regard, Nat, the actual and potential rebel, stands at the core of white perceptions of the slave. With Nat perennially in the wings, the creation of Sambo was almost mandatory for the Southerner's emotional security. Like a man whistling in the dark to bolster his courage, the white man had to portray the slave as Sambo." Despite slaveowner paternalism and charges of submissiveness, Blassingame contends, "There
7050-481: The primary sufferer in the institution, was unable to give an objective account of bondage." Still, Blassingame defends his reliance on autobiographies, noting, "The portrait of the institution of slavery which emerges from the narratives is not the simple picture of hell on earth that most historians have led us to believe they contain. Instead, the fugitives' plantations are peopled with the same range of heroes and villains, black and white, which one generally finds in
7144-491: The publication of Blassingame's work do we obtain for the first time a detailed examination of the daily lives of the slaves on large plantations, with some intelligent speculation about the forces to which they were subjected. David Goldfield writes in Agricultural History that the book was the most impressive and balanced attempt to understand the slave's responses to plantation life to date. Carl N. Degler writes in
7238-637: The publication of revisionist studies that departed from the traditional historiography of slavery . Focusing on the perspective of the slave, new studies incorporated the slave narratives and WPA interviews: George Rawick's From Sunup to Sundown: The Making of the Black Community (1972), Eugene D. Genovese 's Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (1974), Peter H. Wood , Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 Through
7332-528: The published accounts of runaway slaves can be illuminating". The authors of Reckoning with Slavery (1976) use Blassingame's findings to challenge the assertions of Robert William Fogel and Stanley Engerman in Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (1974). In Slave Religion: The "Invisible Institution" in the Antebellum South (1978), Albert J. Raboteau comments, "We should speak of
7426-408: The quarters." He argues that culture developed within the slave community independent of the slaveowners' influence. Blassingame notes, " Antebellum black slaves created several unique cultural forms which lightened their burden of oppression, promoted group solidarity, provided ways for verbalizing aggression, sustaining hope, building self-esteem, and often represented areas of life largely free from
7520-596: The reliance on planter sources led historians like Elkins to mimic planter stereotypes of slaves such as the "submissive half-man, half child" Sambo. Noting the agency slaves possessed over their lives, he contends, "Rather than identifying with and submitting totally to his master, the slave held onto many remnants of his African culture , gained a sense of worth in the quarters, spent most of his time free from surveillance by whites, controlled important aspects of his life, and did some personally meaningful things on his own volition." According to Blassingame, African culture
7614-648: The revised edition. For instance, he challenges Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman's economic and statistical study of slavery in Time on the Cross . Blassingame writes: Contemporaries often have a greater appreciation of the strengths and weaknesses of statistics than do the scholars who utilize them decades after they are compiled. 'Numbers' and 'accuracy' are not two interchangeable words: Statistical truths are no more self-evident than literary ones. In fact, statistical analyses rely so heavily on inferences that one must carefully examine
7708-475: The same conclusions from the sources without the use of psychology "because the historical evidence as seen through an unadulterated commitment to the struggles of the slaves and an equally uncompromising hostility to the masters would have led him there." On the other hand, Eugene D. Genovese and Earl E. Thorpe praised Blassingame for his use of psychological theory, but admit they prefer Freudian and Marxist interpretations over Sullivanian theory. In 1976,
7802-479: The slave did not have to be infantile or abjectly docile in order to remain alive." Blassingame compares slavery on southern plantations to the treatment of prisoners in Nazi concentration camps in an effort to demonstrate that "the most important factor in causing infantilism, total dependency, and docility in the camps was the real threat of death which left few, if any, alternatives for the inmates." He remarks, "Placed on
7896-444: The slave, much of the book is devoted to the African heritage; to slave music, religion, and folklore; and to the discussion of the slave family and other personal relationships." Engerman concedes that The Slave Community "is a book written at a time of transition in the interpretation of slavery and black culture", but "the author at times seems unsure of the direction in which he is pointing." He concludes that Blassingame's "analysis
7990-582: The suggestions published in Revisiting Blassingame's The Slave Community "without long protestation or argument". The most significant changes made to the text involve further discussion of African cultural survivals, slave family life, slave culture, and acculturation. Blassingame added a chapter titled "The Americanization of the Slave and the Africanization of the South" where he draws parallels between
8084-551: The true personality traits and the contradictory behavioral patterns of their parents." He believes that children recognized submissiveness as a convenient method to avoid punishment and the behavior in the quarters as the true behavioral model. Blassingame concludes, "In [the slave father's] family, the slave not only learned how to avoid the blows of the master, but also drew on the love and sympathy of its members to raise his spirits. The family was, in short, an important survival mechanism." Blassingame identifies three stereotypes in
8178-602: The unique experiences of each individual author and as eyewitness accounts of several slave communities, they are clearly "representative". Besides fugitive slave narratives, Blassingame uses abolitionist periodicals such as The Liberator , National Anti-Slavery Standard , Pennsylvania Freeman , Anti-Slavery Bugle , and Genius of Universal Emancipation . According to Blassingame, these periodicals printed slave interviews, letters, and autobiographies, but "gave even more coverage to white Southerners than to slaves and frequently reprinted articles, letters, and proceedings from
8272-625: The use of drums to signal the Stono Rebellion in 1739. Blassingame, however, points out that in spite of restrictions, slaves were able to build a strong musical tradition drawing on their African heritage. Music, songs, and dances were similar to those performed or played in Africa. Instruments reproduced by slaves include drums, three-stringed banjos, gourd rattles, and mandolins . Still, Blassingame concludes that cross-cultural exchanges occurred on southern plantations, arguing that " acculturation in
8366-473: The use of slave narratives that were seen as unreliable and biased. They questioned Blassingame's decision to exclude the more than 2,000 interviews with former slaves conducted by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the 1930s. Historians argued that Blassingame's use of psychological theory proved unhelpful in his interpretation. Blassingame defended his conclusions at a 1976 meeting of
8460-412: The very questionable deterministic social psychological role theories associated with ... Erving Goffman and Harry Stack Sullivan ." He complains that it "parodies the basic complexity of the 'psychology' of the oppressed who simultaneously view themselves in socially negative terms while struggling against the view of themselves and their behavior". Rawick is convinced that Blassingame would have reached
8554-614: The workings of the system." He relies heavily on narratives by Henry Bibb , Henry Clay Bruce, Elizabeth Keckley , Samuel Hall, Solomon Northup , Charles Ball , Jermain Wesley Loguen , William Wells Brown , John Brown , Robert Anderson, William Grimes, Austin Steward , and Frederick Douglass . Blassingame's discussion of the African slave trade , Middle Passage, and African culture is based on Olaudah Equiano 's The Interesting Narrative of
8648-443: Was less likely to be rebellious or to run away than would a 'single' slave." Blassingame notes that when a slave couple resided on the same plantation, the husband witnessed the whipping and raping of his wife and the sale of his children. He remarks, "Nothing demonstrated his powerlessness as much as the slave's inability to prevent the forcible sale of his wife and children." Nevertheless, Blassingame argues that "however frequently
8742-605: Was mutual love and respect between masters and slaves." Blassingame builds on the historiography of Phillips, Stampp, and Elkins, but he acknowledges the influence of Charles S. Sydnor's Slavery in Mississippi (1933), Orville W. Taylor's Negro Slavery in Arkansas (1958), Eugene D. Genovese's The Political Economy of Slavery (1961), and Ann J. Lane's anthology of essays The Debate Over Slavery: Stanley Elkins and His Critics (1971). The importance of The Slave Community as one of
8836-419: Was not entirely removed from slave culture through the process of enslavement and "was much more resistant to the bludgeons that was slavery than historians have hitherto suspected." "African survivals" persisted in the form of folk tales, religion and spirituality, music and dance, and language. He asserts that the retention of African culture acted as a form of resistance to enslavement: "All things considered,
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