Performing Iron in the Black Atlantic World

Washington State University

USA

Performing Iron in the Black Atlantic World

The act of making and forging iron in the Black Atlantic world conveys the historical

ambiguity of contradictory forces at play. The great Atlantic system produced

knowledge and goods, even as it consumed vast resources and enslaved lives. African

ironworkers, who welded and forged the shackles of captives, also wrought the

implements of resistance and hammered the tools for their survival. No other material

captures this “terrible ambivalence” as does iron, leading its metallurgy to be termed by

the historian Cyril Stanley Smith as a “fully human experience.” The ritual embodiment

of iron was an essential component of African technology transfer. The technological

performance of iron involved empowering relationships between the collective past and

individual agency. Its memory in the Atlantic resided on land and at sea, captured in

static and unyielding iron objects, as well as the performed dances of carnival and

African-derived religion that placed the resistance into motion.
This paper will explore the transfer of African iron technology, its performance,

rituals, and beliefs to the Caribbean. The memory of iron – as knowledge – also resides