AM420: Space, Place and Movement in Atlantic Slave Societies: Brazil, Cuba,
West Africa, and the US, 1791-1888 (Advanced Option, Yr 3 Undergraduate)
Sample Examination
Students sitting a TWO-HOUR EXAM: Answer ONE question from Section A
and ONE question from Section B.
Students sitting a THREE-HOUR EXAM: Answer TWO questions from Section
A and ONE question from Section B.
Do NOT reproduce material used for your summative long essay or dissertation.
Section A
Refer to AT LEAST TWO different countries or colonies in your answer.
1. “African priorities, not those of Europeans, had the greatest impact on the
transatlantic slave trade.” Do you agree?
2. “Numbers, not qualitative approaches, are the key to understanding the
transatlantic slave trade.” Do you agree?
3. What do historians mean by “the African Diaspora,” and do you think it is a
useful term?
4. What were the consequences of the Haitian Revolution for American slave
societies?
5. How useful is the term “resistance” for understanding enslaved people’s actions in
the Americas?
6. How did internal slave trades shape slave societies in the Americas during the
nineteenth century?
7. Compare the sources available to historians of slavery in nineteenth-century slave
societies and evaluate how they can be used.
8. Was Afro-American culture in the New World the product of African “survivals”
or New World “creolisations”?
9. Should manumission be seen as accommodation,” “resistance,” or neither?
Section B
Answer ONE question.
1. Why did Brazil abolish slavery so late?
2. Why, and with what consequences, did the Atlantic slave trade to Cuba continue
into the 1860s?
3. What explains the apparently lower rate of slave conspiracies and rebellions in the
US south than in other slave societies of the Americas?