Synopsis A disturbing, controversial text, whose origins have been disputed, THE WILLIE LYNCH LETTER exposes the motives and methods by which slavery was maintained and the totalitarian methods by which slaves were controlled. William Lynch is said to have been a Caribbean slaveowner who was brought to the Virginia Colony in the early 1700s when there was a strong fear of a slave uprising; in his speech before the assembled slaveowners, Lynch forthrightly lays out his brutal program of physical and mental intimidation, and the "business" reasons in which it is all grounded. THE WILLIE LYNCH LETTER is considered to be first-person evidence of the slave trade's rationale and methods.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1999-08-01 | | Edition Description: | Reprint |
| Size | | Height: | 8.5 in | | Width: | 5.5 in | | Thickness: | 0.2 in | | Weight: | 2.4 oz |
Publisher's Note THE WILLIE LYNCH LETTER AND THE MAKING OF A SLAVE is a study of slave making. It describes the rationale and the results of Anglo Saxon's ideas and methods of insuring the master/slave relationship.
The infamous "Willie Lynch" letter gives both African and Caucasian students and teachers some insight, concerning the brutal and inhumane psychology behind the African slave trade. The materialistic viewpoint of Southern plantation owners that slaver was a "business" and the victims of chattel slavery were merely pawns in an economic game of debauchery, cross-breeding, inter-racial rape and mental conditioning of a negroid race, they considered sub-human.
Equally important is the international nature of the European economic, political and cultural climate that influenced the slave trade. Within the time scale of African History, it was a relatively short period, a mere one and a half centuries--from the most intensive phase of the Atlantic slave trade to the advent of European administration and dominance. Long before that the Slave Coast had been chartered by the Portuguese and the people off the area west of Benin, between the volta River and Lagos, European traders traced a cultural history which linked them with the earliest Yoruba settlements to the north and eastern borders of Africa.
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