What Role Did Women Play In The Slave Trade Essay

The slave trade was a controversial issue for many people and still is even today. However, many of the leaders of European countries at the time of the slave trade were considered Enlightened Despots due to their reforms set in place to actually help the people and the betterment of the country. Also most of the writing at this time was observing treatment of slaves and most of the people in the world had accepted Enlightenment ideals or traditional christian values wherein both, everyone deserved rights. This is why it can be inferred that during the 17th to 19th c. there was not an absence of humanitarian concern for slaves when it came to the slave trade, but instead it was individuals who lacked humanitarianism while the rest of the world

The terms, Jezebel and Mammy, were created to explain or rationalize the treatment of the female slave. The Jezebel was considered a loose, ungodly, and over sexualized slave women who seduced the slave owners and a Mammy was a matronly, virtuous female slave who was superior as a homemaker and nurturing maternal figure. The Jezebel was despised and the Mammy was revered. According to the reading material, the young Jezebel used her sexuality to gain favor of the slave owner. In contrast, the elderly Mammy was asexual and served her master because she loved them as family.

Expounding on Scott’s gender analysis are Theda Perdue and Jennifer Morgan who focus specifically on the bodies of Indian and black women. For both Cherokee and black women, they are often overshadowed by men, their stories eclipsed due to the assumption that under the institution of slavery, women’s experiences were not much different than men. Perdue and Morgan challenge this notion, demonstrating that the lives and experiences of black and Cherokee women were different than black and Cherokee men. In placing black women and Cherokee women at the center of the narrative, Perdue and Morgan seek to enhance understanding the functions Cherokee and black women played in colonial America and how they responded to the gendered roles they were expected

Christian masters and mistresses believed they were ultimately accountable for both the substantial and spiritual wellbeing of their slaves and servants. Servants and slaves were believed to docile and obedient. For women who aspired to become “ladies” their quest for gentility led to certain ideologies. “Ladies” were to possess matriarchy and maternalism. In Lowcountry some of the prevalent slaveholders were women.

As Glymph notes, during the Civil War the option of resorting to male power was less available”.3 This means that the white women had to come out of their gender prescriptions to take over the responsibilities of the plantation although they were still expected to observe the patriarchal hierarchy. Wives were like ‘slaves’, for their husbands expected them to be subordinate. Therefore, their use of violence to manage the plantations may be explained by the responsibility they had to take and their need to use slavery to exercise power, and elevate their position in the society. Plantation mistresses assume a special place in the institution of slavery although history is relatively silent in documenting their role in the Antebellum Era. They proved to be quite valuable to the plantation economy of the South for they took up the organizational roles upon themselves.

Typically, female slaves had roles in caregiving and raising the children of the plantation owners, this motherly relationship gave women the opportunity to conquer the divide between black and white. While there are cases of this happening, since black women were viewed as property, not as human, this relationship could be disregarded (West, 58) (Jacobs, 1). Often slave masters raised children that were the same age as their slaves, (these children often were half siblings as a result of the masters rape of female slaves) this means that the women grew up together and were given the opportunity to form strong relationships, however with their growth the two women would face very different fates. Slave masters “granted them (young slaves)

The use of slaves has always been present in the world since the beginning of civilization, although the use and treatment of those slaves has differed widely through time and geographic location. Different geographies call for different types of work ranging from labor-intensive sugar cultivation and production in the tropics to household help in less agriculturally intensive areas. In addition to time and space, the mindsets and beliefs of the people in those areas affect how the slaves will be treated and how “human” those slaves will be perceived to be. In the Early Modern Era, the two main locations where slaves were used most extensively were the European dominated Americas and the Muslim Empires. The American slavery system and the

The process of black slavery taking route in colonial Virginia was slow. Black slavery mostly became dominant in the 1680s. Slaves became the main labor system on plantations. The amount of white indentured servants declined so the demand for black slaves became necessary in the mid-1660s. The number of white indentured servants that Virginia had up until the mid 1660s, was enough to meet white peoples labor needs.

Early American social hierarchies differed markedly for women of color—whether free or enslaved—whose relationships to the white regimes of early America were manifold and complex. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, women in the colonies of the English West Indies and Carolinas, particularly women of color, were seen as subordinate by white male slave owners because of race and shared oppression of the female gender. However, these women were a means of economic gain for white slave owners. Taken from Africa to the New World as slave laborers, white slave owners valued these women for their ability in domestic work and fieldwork where they performed primarily unskilled agricultural tasks, as well as their potential to bear children. White slave owners of the Early Americas, driven by greed and opportunism, used political laws, physical characteristics of women, and social constructs of gender roles to appropriate

The first colony was founded at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. Many of the people who settled in the New World came to escape religious persecution and various other reasons. In this paper we will explore the many roles both male and female colonists as well as Native Africans played. In the colonies gender played a large role in everyday life.

This paper uses a historical and sociological lens to examine how the ways in which the slavery experience differed based on gender. This paper argues that the slave experience varied greatly on the basis of gender. More specifically, how the experiences portrayed in two different narratives reveal different elements of the slave experience. Ultimately, this paper reveals how female slaves were more likely to be subjected to sexual harassment and emotional distress, meanwhile male slaves were more likely to receive physical punishments. For male slaves, the idea of resistance and eventual escape was much more tangible than it was for their female counterparts.

Chapter two examines slave traders when they weren’t trading people. Johnson looks at the other roles and jobs they filled. He also examines the sense of community among enslaved persons that developed during slave markets. Johnson differentiates between the stakes held by auctioneers versus those held by traders, for

One of the reasons slavery was worse for women was the sexual exploitation that they were put through. Men saw slaves as their own property and they took great advantage of their power over them. They believed that they had both power over her actions and her body. Starting at very young ages some women were harassed by their masters for sex, and obeyed because of the terrible consequences of denying them. Masters were allowed to rape their slaves and didn’t get into any trouble for doing so.

White women in slaveholding families in the south were one of the main forces behind the oppression of African American men and women. In society these white women held no real power but in the comfort of their domestic domains they were granted more power; so, these women took power where they could and became mistress to a slave. At a young age, they were taught how to manage slaves as well as being their master. In one case, a mistress had full power over the estate and managed it on her own without her husband’s help . Consequently, she held the power that she would not have had outside of the home.

Women who could afford slaves had a life of more leisure, but the less fortunate women in both regions had to prepare their own food, clean their houses, and wash their clothes (Watterson