African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
388 p, Includes Richard S. Dunn's "Sugar production and slave women in Jamaica"; -- David P. Geggus' "Sugar and coffee cultivation in Saint Domingue and the shaping of the slave labor force"; David Barry Gaspar's "Sugar cultivation and slave life in Antigua before 1800"; Michel-Rolph Trouillot's "Coffee planters and coffee slaves in the Antilles: the impact of a secondary crop"; Woodville K. Marshall's "Provision ground and plantation labor in four windward islands: competition for resources during slavery"; and Dale Tomich's "Une petite guinée: provision ground and plantation in Martinique, 1830-1848"
Examines changes in enslaved women's working lives as planters sought to increase birth rates to replenish declining laboring populations. Establishes that enslaved women in Jamaica experienced a considerable shift in their work responsibilities and their subjection to discipline as slaveholders sought to capitalize on their abilities to reproduce. Enslaved women's reproductive capabilities were pivotal for slavery and the plantation economy's survival once legal supplies from Africa were discontinued.
Based on the correspondence and diaries of three slaveholders in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this article identifies the differences in the attitudes and behaviour of each planter towards his slaves in response to structural constraints or norms. These include political, administrative, civic and religious institutions, but also the economic system, social expectations and cultural norms. The author concludes that, although one can detect degrees of harshness in the treatment of field labourers, sexual exploitation seems constant and intractable in all three cases. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT];
