Ploughshares into Swords
Race, Rebellion, and Identity in Gabriel's Virginia, 1730–1810

Sidbury focuses on the history and perspectives of enslaved blacks to develop 'Gabriel's Virginia' as a counterpoint to 'Jeffersonian Virginia.'

James Sidbury (Author)

9780521598606, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 13 October 1997

308 pages, 5 b/w illus. 5 maps 6 tables
22.7 x 15.3 x 2.1 cm, 0.42 kg

"...a valuable new study of black identity in the Atlantic world." The Journal of Southern History

During the summer of 1800, slaves in and around Richmond conspired to overthrow their masters and abolish slavery. This book uses Gabriel's Conspiracy, and the evidence produced during the repression of the revolt, to expose the processes through which Virginians of African descent built an oppositional culture. Sidbury portrays the rich cultures of eighteenth-century black Virginians, and the multiple, and sometimes conflicting, senses of identity that emerged among enslaved and free people living in and around the rapidly growing state capital. The book also examines the conspirators' vision of themselves as God's chosen people, and the complicated African and European roots of their culture. In so doing, it offers an alternative interpretation of the meaning of the Virginia that was home to so many of the Founding Fathers. This narrative focuses on the history and perspectives of black and enslaved people, in order to develop 'Gabriel's Virginia' as a counterpoint to more common discussions of 'Jeffersonian Virginia'.

Introduction
Acknowledgments
Prologue: from blacks in Virginia to black Virginians
1. The emergence of racial consciousness in eighteenth-century Virginia
Part I. Cultural Progress: Creolization, Appropriation, and Collective Identity in Gabriel's Virginia: 2. Forging an oppositional culture: Gabriel's conspiracy and the process of cultural appropriation
3. Individualism, community, and identity in Gabriel's conspiracy
4. Making sense of Gabriel's conspiracy: immediate responses to the conspiracy
Part II. Social Practice: Urbanization, Commercialization, and Identity in the Daily Life of Gabriel's Richmond: 5. The growth of early Richmond
6. Labor, race, and identity in early Richmond
7. Race and constructions of gender in early Richmond
Epilogue: Gabriel and Richmond in historical and fictional time
8. Gabriel's Conspiracy in memory and fiction
Appendix
Notes.

Subject Areas: Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], History of the Americas [HBJK]