When the JCB's fellowship program began fifty-five years ago with just two fellows-in-residence, it must have been difficult to imagine ever reaching 100 fellows, let alone 1,000! This summer, the JCB welcomed Jody Benjamin, Assistant Professor of History at the University of California, Riverside, who joined us as a Ruth and Lincoln Ekstrom Fellow and in doing so became the 1,000th fellow to walk through our doors!

Benjamin's current project, “The Texture of Change: Cloth, Commerce and History in West Africa, 1700-1850” analyzes the consumption of textiles across West Africa in a global historical framework. His project, in his words, shows how “the social life of textiles reveals histories of interconnectivity, cultural adaption and translation, constraint and mutability between western Africans and the outside world.” A recent graduate of Harvard University, Benjamin’s project highlights the broad definition of Americana at the JCB, since the records of Providence-area merchants include not only accounts of local business dealings, but European, Asian, and African connections throughout the eighteenth century. By working at the JCB, Benjamin hopes to “bring early American sources into the mix of European and African sources” with which he is already familiar.

Congratulations to former fellow Jerome S. Handler (John Carter Brown Library Fellowship, 1985-86 and 1988-89) and JCB affiliate Matthew C. Reilly for the recent publication of their article “Contesting ‘White Slavery’ in the Caribbean: Enslaved Africans and European Indentured Servants in Seventeenth-Century Barbados” in the New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids.  Seventeenth century reports at the JCB showcase the suffering of European indentured servants, and the fact that many were transported to Barbados against their wishes. This article examines the socio-legal distinctions between servitude and slavery, and argues that it is misleading, if not erroneous, to apply the term “slave” to Irish and other indentured servants in early Barbados. The authors explore the differences between indentured servitude and forms of chattel slavery that applied uniquely to Africans and their descendants.