Female Slave Owners
- LAST REVIEWED: 18 November 2022
- LAST MODIFIED: 25 September 2019
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0321
- LAST REVIEWED: 18 November 2022
- LAST MODIFIED: 25 September 2019
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0321
Introduction
While scholarship on female slave ownership in the Atlantic world pales in comparison with the extensive literature on men’s activities as slaveholders, recent work on the topic has transformed our understanding of who the “typical” slaveholder was, and in turn, how European imperial regimes perpetuated chattel slavery throughout the Americas. Rather than being marginalized or passive, women acted as key agents of colonialism and chattel slavery. They actively participated as buyers and sellers of human beings in local and Atlantic markets; they managed, coerced, and abused enslaved people; and they derived material wealth and social capital from their participation in slavery. The women who acted as slave owners comprised a remarkably diverse group. Christian and Jewish women who migrated to the Americas readily participated in slavery. Women of African, Euro-African, and Amerindian descent living throughout the Atlantic basin were slave owners. Even women who had spent part of their own lives in bondage acquired captives. There were, of course, regional and chronological variations which shaped a woman’s ability to procure slaves, and more work needs to be done which investigates these differences. We still know relatively little about how status, ethnicity, race, and religion shaped female slaveholding patterns in various parts of the Atlantic world. This bibliography has been organized geographically rather than thematically or chronologically, which is a reflection of the relative paucity of literature on the subject. However, geographic boundaries themselves were porous and contested during the era of Atlantic slavery, and female slave owners moved within and between imperial zones—another subject which is in need of further study. The formal abolition of the slave trade with Africa by European empires and the United States in the early 19th century forms the rough chronological end point for this bibliography (Britain, 1807; United States, 1808; Portugal, 1810; Sweden, 1813; France, 1814; Netherlands, 1814; Spain, 1820). The abolition of the slave trade, of course, did not end slavery in the Americas, nor did it limit women’s engagement in slaveholding. However, the abolition of the slave trade officially constricted the Atlantic dimensions of the trade, and hence, the transportation of African captives to the Americas. Female slave owners continued to benefit from unfree labor until, and even after, the abolition of slavery, which occurred at various points in time in different nations and colonies. Female slave owners living in the British empire, for instance, received monetary compensation in return for emancipating their captives. More regional needs to be done which investigates both the differences and similarities in patterns of female slaveholding across imperial and national boundaries. Likewise, we need to understand how the abolition of the slave trade and then the abolition of slavery influenced the lives and the fortunes of female slave owners living throughout the Atlantic world.
General Overviews
Because the topic of female slave owners is relatively new, no general collections which focus specifically on this subject have been published. While the majority of the volumes which have been included in general overviews focus on enslaved women, a few of the collections include essays which refer to female slave owners. Some of the essays in Gaspar and Hine 2004, for instance, explore the lives of free women of color, including their participation in slavery. Likewise, the edited collection Campbell, et al. 2007, which focuses primarily on enslaved women, also includes evidence of women’s activities as slave owners in its introduction and in one essay. The remaining selections, Brereton 2013 and Byfield, et al. 2010, do not investigate women’s activities as slave owners. However, Brereton’s overview of the Anglophone Caribbean archives, which have been used in relation to the study of women and gender, is a useful starting point for future research on the topic. The collection of essays in Byfield, et al. 2010 relate to gender and slavery and cover a wide range of subjects and time periods. A few of the pieces in Part 2 of the volume may refer to female slaveholders.
Brereton, Bridget. “Women and Gender in Caribbean (English-speaking) Historiography: Sources and Methods.” Caribbean Review of Gender Studies 7 (2013): 1–18.
An overview of scholarship that has been produced on the British West Indies, including Jamaica, Trinidad, Tobago, Barbados, and Guyana, over the past thirty years. Anyone interested in conducting historical research on women and gender in the Anglophone Atlantic will find descriptions of the variety of archival sources to be useful.
Byfield, Judith A., LaRay Denzer, and Anthea Morrison. Gendering the African Diaspora: Women, Culture, and Historical Change in the Caribbean and Nigerian Hinterland. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010.
This collection uses gender as a lens to explore the connections between the Caribbean, Africa, and Britain. The essays in Section 2, including the ones by Linda Sturtz and Antonia MacDonald-Smythe, may be of particular interest to scholars who are interested in female slave ownership.
Campbell, Gwyn, Suzanne Miers, and Joseph C. Miller, eds. Women and Slavery: Africa, the Indian Ocean World, and the Medieval North Atlantic. Vol. 1. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2007.
While the essays in this edited collection primarily study the lives of enslaved women, the introduction and a piece by Philip j. Havik entitled “From Pariahs to Patriots: Women Slavers in Nineteenth-Century ‘Portuguese’ Guinea,” both refer to female participation in slave ownership.
Gaspar, David Barry, and Darlene Clark Hine, eds. Beyond Bondage: Free Women of Color in the Americas. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2004.
Collection explores how race and gender shaped the lives of free women of color who lived throughout the Americas. While female slaveholding is not the focus of the work, several of the essays refer to free and freed women of African descent who were slaveholders.
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- 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
- Atlantic Biographies
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- Atlantic History and Hemispheric History
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- Atlantic Trade and the British Economy
- Atlantic Trade and the European Economy
- Bacon's Rebellion
- Baltic Sea
- Baptists
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- Barbary States
- Benguela
- Berbice in the Atlantic World
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- Bolívar, Simón
- Borderlands
- Brazil
- Brazil and Africa
- 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
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- Chocolate
- Church and Slavery
- Cities and Urbanization in Portuguese America
- Citizenship in the Atlantic World
- Class and Social Structure
- Climate
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- 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
- 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 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, Javanese and African and Indentured Servitude in...
- Evangelicalism and Conversion
- Female Slave Owners
- Feminism
- First Contact and Early Colonization of Brazil
- Fiscality
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- Food
- Forts, Fortresses, and Fortifications
- France and Empire
- France and its Empire in the Indian Ocean
- France and the British Isles from 1640 to 1789
- Free People of Color
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- French Army and the Atlantic World, The
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- Gardens
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- Germans in the Atlantic World
- Giovanni da Verrazzano, Explorer
- Glasgow
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- Great Awakening
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- Guianas, The
- Haitian Revolution, The
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- 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)
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- Itinerant Traders, Peddlers, and Hawkers
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- Jefferson, Thomas
- Jesuits
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- Language, State, and Empire
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- Letters and Letter Writing
- Lima
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- Literature, Slavery and Colonization
- Liverpool in The Atlantic World 1500-1833
- Louverture, Toussaint
- Loyalism
- Lutherans
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- Manumission
- Maps in the Atlantic World
- Maritime Atlantic in the Age of Revolutions, The
- Markets in the Atlantic World
- Maroons and Marronage
- Marriage and Family in the Atlantic World
- 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
- 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
- Piracy
- Plantations in the Atlantic World
- Plants
- Political Participation in the Nineteenth Century Atlantic...
- Polygamy and Bigamy
- Port Cities, British
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- Portugal and Brazile in the Age of Revolutions
- Portugal, Early Modern
- Portuguese Atlantic World
- 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, 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 Atlantic Creole A...
- South Carolina
- Sovereignty and the Law
- Spain, Early Modern
- Spanish America After Independence, 1825-1900
- Spanish American Port Cities
- Spanish Colonization to 1650
- Subjecthood in the Atlantic World
- Sugar in the Atlantic World
- Technology, Inventing, and Patenting
- Textiles in the Atlantic World
- Texts, Printing, and the Book
- The American West
- The French Lesser Antilles
- The Fur Trade
- Theater
- Time(scapes) in the Atlantic World
- Tobacco
- Toleration in the Atlantic World
- Transatlantic Political Economy
- 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
- Wine
- Witchcraft in the Atlantic World
- Women and the Law
- Women Prophets