Slavery and Gender
- LAST REVIEWED: 26 June 2012
- LAST MODIFIED: 26 June 2012
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0083
- LAST REVIEWED: 26 June 2012
- LAST MODIFIED: 26 June 2012
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0083
Introduction
Slavery and gender is a relatively new topic in Atlantic history. Studies of slavery and gender developed somewhat independently from each other until the 1990s. In the emergence of “new social history” in the 1960s with its “bottom-up” approach, historically marginalized groups of people—such as women, slaves, workers, immigrants, and minorities—finally became a legitimate subject of study. Accordingly, studies on slave life, family, community, and culture began to emerge. At the same time, women’s history began to examine the historical importance of womanhood and women’s collective means of social and political empowerment. In such studies, slaves and women came to be depicted respectively as not passive but active participants in history making and agents of social changes despite the “peculiar institution” and/or the odds of patriarchy and sexism in the male-dominant society. In the 1980s, US feminist historians’ major works on slave and elite women during the slavery regime also began to appear. After the publication of Scott 1986 (cited under Reference Works and Bibliographies), “gender” began to replace “women” in the historical vocabulary. This was a reflection of the new paradigm shift in the history profession, as historians began to examine relatedness between opposing “groups” and/or contrasting categories under such terms as gender, race, class, and ethnicity rather than focusing on one group or category of people (such as women or slaves) who have been victimized, oppressed, and/or marginalized in history. Unfortunately, however, some scholars simply used the term “gender” interchangeably with “woman” and/or “sex.” In the late 1980s, and throughout the 1990s, many monographs and anthologies were published on women and slavery. Yet, since the mid-1990s, in accordance of the gradual establishment of “gender history,” scholarly attempts have been made to write gender into the history of slavery and to examine the “gendered” dimension of slavery and emancipation in the Atlantic world, especially in the form of journal articles and book chapters. It is expected that many more scholarly monographs on the Atlantic world will appear in the near future, with a primary focus on slavery and gender. This article includes important works on Atlantic slavery, which deals with women and/or gender. Readers should be aware that “gender” takes on many meanings in the field of slavery.
General Overviews
David Barry Gasper and Darlene Clark Hine have coedited two informative anthologies on slavery and women in the Atlantic world (Gasper and Hine 1996, Gasper and Hine 2004). Terborg-Penn, et al. 1987 may be helpful in understanding women in Africa and the African diaspora. More recently a varied selection of papers presented at an international conference organized by Gwyn Campbell has been published as a two-volume anthology on women and world slavery (Campbell, et al. 2007). Scully and Patton 2005, an edited volume on gender and emancipation in the Atlantic world, is very helpful in understanding how historians have approached gender in their studies of slave emancipation. Eltis and Engerman 2011 offers important information on Atlantic slavery, including its gendered dimensions. In addition, there have been excellent quantitative studies on the demography of enslaved peoples, in relation to sex ratios, fertility, mortality, sexual division of labor, and gender relations in Latin American and Caribbean slavery (Klein 2010, Klein and Vinson 2007). Such quantitative studies have also touched on slave marriage, family, kinship, and community.
Campbell, Gwyn, Suzanne Miers, and Joseph C. Miller, eds. Women and Slavery. 2 vols. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2007.
This is a two-volume anthology on enslaved women in Africa, Asia, and Europe. While the first volume is focused on Africa, the Indian Ocean world, and the medieval North Atlantic, the second one covers the modern Atlantic world. It concludes with two historiographical essays: Claire Robertson and Marsha Robinson, “Re-modeling Slavery as if Women Mattered”; and Joseph C. Miller, “Domiciled, and Dominated: Slaving as a History of Women.”
Eltis, David, and Stanley L. Engerman, eds. The Cambridge World History of Slavery. Vol. 3, AD 1420–AD 1804. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
DOI: 10.1017/CHOL9780521840682
Collection of essays exploring important aspects of slavery in Africa, Asia, and the Americas from the opening of the Atlantic world to the independence of Haiti. Touches on gender, slave resistance, demography, law, and the economics of slavery.
Gasper, David Barry, and Darlene Clark Hine, eds. More than Chattel: Black Women and Slavery in the Americas. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996.
Anthology of fifteen well-researched scholarly essays on slave women, starting with the chapter by the Africanist Clair Robertson: “Africa into the Americas? Slavery and Women, the Family, and the Gender Division of Labor.” Others are focused on enslaved and free women of African descent in Brazil, mainland British America, and the French and British Caribbean.
Gasper, David Barry, and Darlene Clark Hine, eds. Beyond Bondage: Free Women of Color in the Americas. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004.
Collection of fourteen essays centering on maroon, freed, and free-born women of African descent in the Spanish and French Caribbean, Jamaica, the US South, Suriname, Puerto Rico, and Brazil.
Klein, Herbert S. The Atlantic Slave Trade. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Quantitative analyses of the transatlantic slave trade, with reference to sex ratios and gender in relation to labor organization both in indigenous African slave systems and in New World plantation slavery. Useful undergraduate textbook on Atlantic slavery.
Klein, Herbert S., and Ben Vinson. African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Useful textbook with an updated bibliography for undergraduate courses dealing with Atlantic slavery, with a good overview of African slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean from the 16th century until abolition. Provides the reader with basic knowledge on gender and family kinship in Latin American slavery.
Scully, Pamela, and Diana Paton, eds. Gender and Slave Emancipation in the Atlantic World. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005.
Comprises fourteen historical essays with a gendered approach to slave emancipation in the 19th-century Atlantic world, including Paton’s “Bibliographical Essay,” which is an excellent historiography of slavery, abolition, emancipation, in relation to women and gender in the Atlantic world.
Terborg-Penn, Rosalyn, Sharon Hurley, and Andrea Benton Rushing, eds. Women in Africa and the African Diaspora. Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1987.
Collection of essays that examine women in Africa and the African diaspora.
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Article
- Abolition of Slavery
- Abolitionism and Africa
- Africa and the Atlantic World
- African American Religions
- African Religion and Culture
- African Retailers and Small Artisans in the Atlantic World
- Age of Atlantic Revolutions, The
- Alexander von Humboldt and Transatlantic Studies
- America, Pre-Contact
- American Revolution, The
- Anti-Catholicism and Anti-Popery
- Argentina
- Army, British
- Arsenals
- Art and Artists
- Asia and the Americas and the Iberian Empires
- Atlantic Biographies
- Atlantic Creoles
- Atlantic History and Hemispheric History
- Atlantic Migration
- Atlantic New Orleans: 18th and 19th Centuries
- Atlantic Trade and the British Economy
- Atlantic Trade and the European Economy
- Bacon's Rebellion
- Baltic Sea
- Baptists
- Barbados in the Atlantic World
- Barbary States
- Benguela
- Berbice in the Atlantic World
- Black Atlantic in the Age of Revolutions, The
- Bolívar, Simón
- Borderlands
- Bourbon Reforms in the Spanish Atlantic, The
- Brazil
- Brazil and Africa
- Brazilian Independence
- Britain and Empire, 1685-1730
- British Atlantic Architectures
- British Atlantic World
- Buenos Aires in the Atlantic World
- Cabato, Giovanni (John Cabot)
- Cannibalism
- Capitalism
- Captain John Smith
- Captivity
- Captivity in Africa
- Captivity in North America
- Caribbean, The
- Cartier, Jacques
- Castas
- Catholicism
- Cattle in the Atlantic World
- Central American Independence
- Central Europe and the Atlantic World
- Charleston
- Chartered Companies, British and Dutch
- Cherokee
- Childhood
- Chinese Indentured Servitude in the Atlantic World
- Chocolate
- Church and Slavery
- Cities and Urbanization in Portuguese America
- Citizenship in the Atlantic World
- Class and Social Structure
- Climate
- Clothing
- Coastal/Coastwide Trade
- Cod in the Atlantic World
- Coffee
- Colonial Governance in Spanish America
- Colonial Governance in the Atlantic World
- Colonialism and Postcolonialism
- Colonization, Ideologies of
- Colonization of English America
- Communications in the Atlantic World
- Comparative Indigenous History of the Americas
- Confraternities
- Constitutions
- Continental America
- Cook, Captain James
- Cortes of Cádiz
- Cosmopolitanism
- Cotton
- Credit and Debt
- Creek Indians in the Atlantic World, The
- Creolization
- Criminal Transportation in the Atlantic World
- Crowds in the Atlantic World
- Cuba
- Currency
- Death in the Atlantic World
- Demography of the Atlantic World
- Diaspora, Jewish
- Diaspora, The Acadian
- Disease in the Atlantic World
- Domestic Production and Consumption in the Atlantic World
- Domestic Slave Trades in the Americas
- Dreams and Dreaming
- Dutch Atlantic World
- Dutch Brazil
- Dutch Caribbean and Guianas, The
- Early Modern Amazonia
- Early Modern France
- Economy and Consumption in the Atlantic World
- Economy of British America, The
- Edwards, Jonathan
- Elites
- Emancipation
- Emotions
- Empire and State Formation
- Enlightenment, The
- Environment and the Natural World
- Ethnicity
- Europe and Africa
- Europe and the Atlantic World, Northern
- Europe and the Atlantic World, Western
- European Enslavement of Indigenous People in the Americas
- European, Javanese and African and Indentured Servitude in...
- Evangelicalism and Conversion
- Female Slave Owners
- Feminism
- First Contact and Early Colonization of Brazil
- Fiscality
- Fiscal-Military State
- Food
- Forts, Fortresses, and Fortifications
- Founding Myths of the Americas
- France and Empire
- France and its Empire in the Indian Ocean
- France and the British Isles from 1640 to 1789
- Free People of Color
- Free Ports in the Atlantic World
- French Army and the Atlantic World, The
- French Atlantic World
- French Emancipation
- French Revolution, The
- Gardens
- Gender in Iberian America
- Gender in North America
- Gender in the Atlantic World
- Gender in the Caribbean
- George Montagu Dunk, Second Earl of Halifax
- Georgia in the Atlantic World
- German Influences in America
- Germans in the Atlantic World
- Giovanni da Verrazzano, Explorer
- Glasgow
- Glorious Revolution
- Godparents and Godparenting
- Great Awakening
- Green Atlantic: the Irish in the Atlantic World
- Guianas, The
- Haitian Revolution, The
- Hanoverian Britain
- Havana in the Atlantic World
- Hinterlands of the Atlantic World
- Histories and Historiographies of the Atlantic World
- Honor
- Huguenots
- Hunger and Food Shortages
- Iberian Atlantic World, 1600-1800
- Iberian Empires, 1600-1800
- Iberian Inquisitions
- Idea of Atlantic History, The
- Impact of the French Revolution on the Caribbean, The
- Indentured Servitude
- Indentured Servitude in the Atlantic World, Indian
- India, The Atlantic Ocean and
- Indigenous Knowledge
- Indigo in the Atlantic World
- Insurance
- Internal Slave Migrations in the Americas
- Interracial Marriage in the Atlantic World
- Ireland and the Atlantic World
- Iroquois (Haudenosaunee)
- Islam and the Atlantic World
- Itinerant Traders, Peddlers, and Hawkers
- Jamaica in the Atlantic World
- Jefferson, Thomas
- Jesuits
- Jews and Blacks
- Labor Systems
- Land and Propert in the Atlantic World
- Language, State, and Empire
- Languages, Caribbean Creole
- Latin American Independence
- Law and Slavery
- Legal Culture
- Leisure in the British Atlantic World
- Letters and Letter Writing
- Lima
- Literature and Culture
- Literature of the British Caribbean
- Literature, Slavery and Colonization
- Liverpool in The Atlantic World 1500-1833
- Louverture, Toussaint
- Loyalism
- Lutherans
- Mahogany
- Manumission
- Maps in the Atlantic World
- Maritime Atlantic in the Age of Revolutions, The
- Maritime Literature
- Markets in the Atlantic World
- Maroons and Marronage
- Marriage and Family in the Atlantic World
- Maryland
- Material Culture in the Atlantic World
- Material Culture of Slavery in the British Atlantic
- Medicine in the Atlantic World
- Mennonites
- Mental Disorder in the Atlantic World
- Mercantilism
- Merchants in the Atlantic World
- Merchants' Networks
- Mestizos
- Mexico
- Migrations and Diasporas
- Minas Gerais
- Miners
- Mining, Gold, and Silver
- Missionaries
- Missionaries, Native American
- Money and Banking in the Atlantic Economy
- Monroe, James
- Moravians
- Morris, Gouverneur
- Music and Music Making
- Napoléon Bonaparte and the Atlantic World
- Nation and Empire in Northern Atlantic History
- Nation, Nationhood, and Nationalism
- Native American Histories in North America
- Native American Networks
- Native American Religions
- Native Americans and Africans
- Native Americans and the American Revolution
- Native Americans and the Atlantic World
- Native Americans in Cities
- Native Americans in Europe
- Native North American Women
- Native Peoples of Brazil
- Natural History
- Networks for Migrations and Mobility
- Networks of Science and Scientists
- New England in the Atlantic World
- New France and Louisiana
- New York City
- News
- Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World
- Nineteenth-Century France
- Nobility and Gentry in the Early Modern Atlantic World
- North Africa and the Atlantic World
- Northern New Spain
- Novel in the Age of Revolution, The
- Oceanic History
- Oceans
- Pacific, The
- Paine, Thomas
- Papacy and the Atlantic World
- Paris
- People of African Descent in Early Modern Europe
- Peru
- Pets and Domesticated Animals in the Atlantic World
- Philadelphia
- Philanthropy
- Phillis Wheatley
- Piracy
- Plantations in the Atlantic World
- Plants
- Poetry in the British Atlantic
- Political Participation in the Nineteenth Century Atlantic...
- Polygamy and Bigamy
- Port Cities, British
- Port Cities, British American
- Port Cities, French
- Port Cities, French American
- Port Cities, Iberian
- Ports, African
- Portugal and Brazile in the Age of Revolutions
- Portugal, Early Modern
- Portuguese Atlantic World
- Potosi
- Poverty in the Early Modern English Atlantic
- Pre-Columbian Transatlantic Voyages
- Pregnancy and Reproduction
- Print Culture in the British Atlantic
- Proprietary Colonies
- Protestantism
- Puritanism
- Quakers
- Quebec and the Atlantic World, 1760–1867
- Quilombos
- Race and Racism
- Race, The Idea of
- Reconstruction, Democracy, and United States Imperialism
- Red Atlantic
- Refugees, Saint-Domingue
- Religion
- Religion and Colonization
- Religion in the British Civil Wars
- Religious Border-Crossing
- Religious Networks
- Representations of Slavery
- Republicanism
- Rice in the Atlantic World
- Rio de Janeiro
- Rum
- Rumor
- Russia and North America
- Sailors
- Saint Domingue
- Saint-Louis, Senegal
- Salvador da Bahia
- Scandinavian Chartered Companies
- Science and Technology (in Literature of the Atlantic Worl...
- Science, History of
- Scotland and the Atlantic World
- Sea Creatures in the Atlantic World
- Second-Hand Trade
- Settlement and Region in British America, 1607-1763
- Seven Years' War, The
- Seville
- Sex and Sexuality in the Atlantic World
- Shakers
- Shakespeare and the Atlantic World
- Ships and Shipping
- Signares
- Silk
- Slave Codes
- Slave Names and Naming in the Anglophone Atlantic
- Slave Owners In The British Atlantic
- Slave Rebellions
- Slave Resistance in the Atlantic World
- Slave Trade and Natural Science, The
- Slave Trade, The Atlantic
- Slavery and Empire
- Slavery and Fear
- Slavery and Gender
- Slavery and the Family
- Slavery, Atlantic
- Slavery, Health, and Medicine
- Slavery in Africa
- Slavery in Brazil
- Slavery in British America
- Slavery in British and American Literature
- Slavery in Danish America
- Slavery in Dutch America and the West Indies
- Slavery in New England
- Slavery in North America, The Growth and Decline of
- Slavery in the Cape Colony, South Africa
- Slavery in the French Atlantic World
- Slavery, Native American
- Slavery, Public Memory and Heritage of
- Slavery, The Origins of
- Slavery, Urban
- Smuggling
- São Paulo
- Sociability in the British Atlantic
- Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts...
- Soldiers
- South Atlantic
- South Atlantic Creole Archipelagos
- South Carolina
- Sovereignty and the Law
- Spain, Early Modern
- Spanish America After Independence, 1825-1900
- Spanish American Port Cities
- Spanish Atlantic World
- Spanish Colonization to 1650
- Subjecthood in the Atlantic World
- Sugar in the Atlantic World
- Swedish Atlantic World, The
- Technology, Inventing, and Patenting
- Textiles in the Atlantic World
- Texts, Printing, and the Book
- The American West
- The Danish Atlantic World
- The French Lesser Antilles
- The Fur Trade
- The Spanish Caribbean
- Theater
- Time(scapes) in the Atlantic World
- Tobacco
- Toleration in the Atlantic World
- Transatlantic Political Economy
- Travel Writing (in the Atlantic World)
- Tudor and Stuart Britain in the Wider World, 1485-1685
- Universities
- USA and Empire in the 19th Century
- Venezuela and the Atlantic World
- Violence
- Visual Art and Representation
- War and Trade
- War of 1812
- War of the Spanish Succession
- Warfare
- Warfare in Spanish America
- Warfare in 17th-Century North America
- Warfare, Medicine, and Disease in the Atlantic World
- Weavers
- West Indian Economic Decline
- Whitefield, George
- Whiteness in the Atlantic World
- William Blackstone
- William Shakespeare, The Tempest (1611)
- William Wilberforce
- Wine
- Witchcraft in the Atlantic World
- Women and the Law
- Women Prophets