Fred Bricknell's Centre for Water Studies Seminar

"Drained of all their capital": People, plantations and environmental transformation in post-emancipation British Guiana, 1834 - 1885.

The Centre for Water Cultures Team invites you to a seminar from Fred Bricknell, University of Hull.

Abstract

The nineteenth-century emancipation of enslaved populations across the 'plantation Americas' brought into question the future of an economic unit, form of labour organisation, and environmental assemblage which had only ever previously been sustained by brutal, unrelenting violence and physical coercion.

This talk will discuss the reasons why British Guiana, a sparsely-populated colony on the coast of South America, maintained a plantation economy of greater extent and productivity than any other British Caribbean colony. On the watery coastal plain of British Guiana, the mid-nineteenth century witnessed successive political struggles over the nature of imperial rule in a post-emancipation environment.

The talk will examine the ways in which drainage crises and the ever-present threat of coastal inundation were turned to the advantage of one of the most hegemonic post-emancipation plantation regimes in the Americas.

Biography

Fred Bricknell is a PGRA at Risky Cities who recently completed his PhD at the Centre for Water Cultures. His research focuses on the environmental history of slavery, indenture, and colonialism in the Caribbean with a particular focus on water management.