The Politics of Reproduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Paugh
Keyword(s):  
Labor Force ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Her Family ◽  
Three Generations ◽  
Caribbean Women ◽  
Slave Society ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Atlantic Slave Trade

This book examines the history and politics of childbearing in the British Empire during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. British politicians became increasingly concerned to promote motherhood among Afro-Caribbean women during the era of abolitionism. These politicians hoped that a homegrown labor force would allow for the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade without any disruption to the pace of labor on Caribbean plantations. The plans for reform generated by British politicians were shaped by their ideas about race, medicine, demography, and religion, and so the book explores these fields of comprehension as they related to reproductive reform. While making a broad survey of the politics of reproduction in Atlantic world, the book also focuses in on the story of a Barbadian midwife and three generations of her family. The experiences of Doll and her female kin illustrate how the campaign to promote fertility affected Afro-Caribbean women, and also how they were able to carve out room to maneuver within the constraints of life in a Caribbean slave society.

“Choicest of the Cargoe”

2020 ◽  
pp. 145-157
Author(s):  
James F. Dator
Keyword(s):  
Atlantic World ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
African Slave ◽  
Leeward Islands ◽  
Eastern Caribbean ◽  
Atlantic Slave Trade ◽  
Over Time

This chapter discusses the African slave trade to Antigua, one of the Leeward Islands in the Eastern Caribbean. It examines the large-scale contours of the trade to Antigua over time. It also pays particular attention to the role of the Codrington family in the sale and distribution of enslaved Africans to Antigua and other parts of the Atlantic world. As this chapter illustrates, enslaved persons brought to the Leeward Islands by the Codringtons were enmeshed in a larger, interisland trade that linked Antigua to other plantation colonies in the region. Moreover, the Atlantic slave trade to Antigua was much larger than previously thought.

Slavery and Antislavery, 1760–1820

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Leslie Brown
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Revolutionary Era ◽  
African Slaves ◽  
History Of ◽  
Moral Critique ◽  
Atlantic Slave Trade

In 1760, the ownership of African slaves was common across the Americas, ubiquitous in Atlantic Africa, and tolerated if not always officially permitted in much of Western Europe. By 1820, a new moral critique of colonial slavery and the Atlantic slave had led to the first organised efforts for their abolition. It would seem that the revolutionary era brought with it the beginning of the end for slavery in the Atlantic world. Yet, at the same time, there had never been more slaves in the Americas than there were in 1820. The expansion of the Atlantic slave trade and its increasing concentration on Brazil had profound consequences for the peoples and societies of West Africa. The Age of Revolutions was an era of spectacular growth in the institution of slavery in the Americas, when considered from a hemispheric perspective. This article suggests that the history of warfare has particular relevance to the history of slavery, and, as will become apparent, anti-slavery, in the Atlantic world.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document