Description
Published in 2005 as "Murder at Montpelier: Igbo Africans in Virginia," this project concentrates on the development of Virginian slave culture in the eighteenth century, expecially the Igbo from present-day Nigeria, to the historical creolization of Afro-Virginian community-culture. In addition to the case study of the Montpelier slave community in Orange County from the 1720s to circa 1820, it also explores the slaves' forging of a regional, African-derived (non-Christian) religion in the eighteenth century. As a whole, the project contributes to the debates among historians (and others, such as historical archaeologists) over the nature of early slave culture and the importance of particular African ethnic groups in colonial Virginia's creolizing slave society.
