Caribbean Seminar Series - The Driver’s Story: Labor and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery

Abstract: On plantations across the Americas, enslavers used the so-called “driving system” to solve their fundamental problem: how to extract labour from captive workers who had every reason to resist.  Starting in the seventeenth-century English Caribbean, enslavers appointed enslaved Black men—and sometimes women—to supervise and punish other enslaved laborers. This talk explores enslaved drivers’ complex roles on Caribbean plantations, where they found themselves trapped between the insatiable labour demands of white plantation authorities and the constant resistance of other enslaved people. In this seminar, Browne shows how drivers were at the centre of enslaved people’s working lives, social relationships, and struggles against slavery.

Biography: Randy M. Browne is an award-winning historian of Atlantic slavery who specializes in the British Caribbean. He is the author of The Driver’s Story: Labor and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery (2024) and Surviving Slavery in the British Caribbean (2017), which received the biennial Elsa Goveia Book Prize from the Association of Caribbean Historians. Randy is Professor of History and Director of First-Year Seminar at Xavier University. His articles on slavery and the transatlantic slave trade have appeared in the William and Mary Quarterly, Slavery & Abolition, and the New West Indian Guide. Randy received his B.A. in History and Spanish from Eckerd College and his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.