Between Ship and Sea and Shore: Spatial Practices from the Black Pacific

Abstract

This article describes Black spatial practices of Black mariners involved with merchant and colonial activities in the Pacific during the Age of Sail and shortly thereafter. Building from a Black geographies framework we map a critical geography, which we summarize as the Black ship, the Black sea, and the Black shore. This analysis highlights how many of these mariners deployed spatial knowledges to turn spaces of seeming enclosure into vehicles of agency and opportunity. We then close with a provocation, considering whether a critical architecture can make transparent the sometimes colluding, sometimes colliding, often contradictory authorities over Black life.