How could a non-European in the “contact zone” negotiate the encounter with colonial authority?

 

Many Africans in the North American colonies – along with, but even more strongly than the many white “loyalists” in America at this time –wished for the British to stay in power rather than supporting American independence. Why?

 

Even as pro-independence Americans used the rhetoric of oppression and tyranny and metaphors of slavery to protest British colonial administration (see the Declaration of Independence), American colonial laws, as distinct from British laws, confirmed, supported, and extended the institution of race-based slavery.

 

Thus, from the perspective of Wheatley and other Africans in the American colonies, Britain was more likely to treat Africans as human. This was confirmed by the 1772 Somerset case that de facto eliminated slavery on British home soil, tho not in colonies. Pro-British sentiment in both abolitionist literature and African-American culture continues through 19 th century.

 

Wheatley’s poems addressed to the British authorities allude to her own enslavement and claim, in effect, that her NON-METAPHORICAL experience of slavery and oppression give her GREATER AUTHORITY to speak out against political oppression and tyranny.

 

Africans in the North American colonies negotiated the practical politics of the period effectively in literary texts. As War of Independence unfolded, Wheatley wrote a poem to Washington as agent of liberation and opened a correspondence with him.

 

Similarly, the “Petition of an African Slave, to the Legislature of Massachusetts” (dated 1782, published 1787 in a literary collection) draws on anti-British sentiment to argue that the new American government should pay an impoverished slave a pension out of the confiscated estate of her former owner, a Loyalist named Colonel Isaac Royall (perfect name for her case!).

Rhetorical strategies:

Africa = pastoral / Edenic scene , where gold is literally dust. Disrupted by barbarous European slavers who destroy families for profit. Slave ship as magical and nightmarish experience. In new world, servitude for an ignoble master and people who adore “the dust trodden underfoot in her native country.”

 

Now, Great Britain (where Royall fled during Revolution) and monarchy as agents of tyranny: “where lawless dominion sits enthroned, pouring blood and vengeance on all who dare to be free.” By contrast, Mass. legislators (“your honors”) are men of virtue who will correct the injustices of slavery, linked with British sympathizers.

 

These texts suggest the many variations in how people of various backgrounds, ethnicities, and experiences answered the question “What is an American?” and “Am I an American?” in the later 18 th century.