Contested Bodies

Turner, Sasha

doi:10.9783/9780812294057

Cited by 396 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…The white men also intervened directly on the latter point, by developing estate nurseries and other arrangements for non-maternal care. 64 But it is clear that practice varied widely. Thus, a witness from Jamaica told a parliamentary committee how morning field labour there might begin as early as 5 o'clock.…”

Section: Determinants Of Creole Reproductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Demographic trends in late‐slavery Jamaica, 1817–32

Ward¹

2022

The Economic History Review

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Early nineteenth-century demographic trends on sugar estates in Jamaica, the most important British Caribbean colony, are examined through the 1817-32 public slave registers. We seek evidence regarding the background to the island's 1831-2 popular insurrection, the immediate cause of the London parliament's vote in 1833 to abolish colonial slavery. Some historians argue that the revolt occurred as 'political' effect from a sudden upsurge of metropolitan anti-slavery activism in 1830-1. They believe the uprising broke out despite improvement in enslaved people's material welfare, favoured by many slaveholders to secure population increase after the closure of the British transatlantic slave trade in 1808. Alternative 'economic' assessments judge that increasing workloads had been aggravating popular unrest before the revolt. Commercial pressures, and the imminent likelihood of emancipation, allegedly outweighed welfare concerns. The excess of slave deaths over births widened between 1817 and 1832. However, the registers show that demographic deficits resulted mainly from the ageing of the last Africa-born cohorts. Jamaica-born enslaved people became self-reproducing. There was no general pre-1831 regime deterioration. Most slaveholders sought to maintain their Jamaican assets for the long term through pro-natalist measures, and did not expect emancipation. The revolt's causes were thus more 'political' than 'economic'.

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Section: Determinants Of Creole Reproductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Demographic trends in late‐slavery Jamaica, 1817–32

Ward¹

2022

The Economic History Review

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“…37 The ordinance represented a rare window where 'enslaved people's interests in healthy pregnancies and babies aligned with those of the slaving class', yet there remained a chasm between Europeans' and Africans' worldviews about and approaches to reproduction. 38 Planters did embrace the policy that encouraged strict monitoring of births; pregnant women were to remain in the care of the midwives, who then reported to overseers, and both women were harshly punished if a stillbirth occurred. 39 Enslaved mothers could not have been entirely optimistic about the conditions under which they bore children since they likely were aware of the type of abuse their daughters would possibly endure.…”

Section: Plantation Sexual Violence and Reproductive Exploitationmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Rejoice! Your wombs will not beget slaves!’ Marronnage as Reproductive Justice in Colonial Haiti

Eddins¹

2020

Gender & History

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This paper explores the possible existence of organic reproductive justice actions among enslaved mothers and pregnant women in colonial Haiti (Saint Domingue) with specific focus on how marronnageescape from slavery-provided them opportunities to exert power over their lives, bodies and biological reproduction. Reproductive justice is defined as the complete well-being of women and girls, based on their human right to decide when and how to have-or not have-children, and to parent existing children in safe and sustainable communities. The conditions of enslavement in Haiti were particularly detrimental to women's control over their fertility and overall reproductive health as birth rates remained so low that the enslaved population could not reproduce itself; however, findings from an underutilized archival roster containing demographic information on the only formally recognized community of maroons from colonial Haiti, the Maniel, indicate that the child-woman ratio among fugitive women was over twice as high as their counterparts who remained enslaved on plantations. Subversive reading of runaway slave advertisements also suggests that choosing to abscond was a rare but effective mechanism for women to achieve reproductive justice by exercising agency over their lives and protecting their childbearing capabilities. By highlighting motherhood during a state of fugitivity in one of the most economically prosperous slave societies in modern history, this paper can help establish historical precedent for contemporary reproductive justice claims. Moreover, maroon mothers' organic acts of reproductive justice have important implications for the study of how black women resist structures of racial capitalism that negatively impact their reproductive health and other areas of their lives.

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“…These included attempts to reduce the period of breastfeeding infants to a maximum of 12 months; monitoring of labour and childbirth through the establishment of lying-in hospitals, the regulation of midwifery, and the introduction of white doctors trained in European medicine; lighter work for pregnant and post-partum women; and rewards for women who had large numbers of children. 32 Mathew Lewis famously introduced a 'scarlet girdle' for women with large numbers of children, as well as rewards at Christmas. 33 These policies are revealed in letters between absentee planters and attorneys as well as the published writings of slaveholders such as Lewis's Journal and advice books such as Gilbert Mathisons's Notices Respecting Jamaica.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Maternal struggles and the politics of childlessness under pronatalist Caribbean slavery

Paton¹

2017

Slavery & Abolition

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Contested Bodies

Cited by 396 publications

References 0 publications

Demographic trends in late‐slavery Jamaica, 1817–32

Demographic trends in late‐slavery Jamaica, 1817–32

‘Rejoice! Your wombs will not beget slaves!’ Marronnage as Reproductive Justice in Colonial Haiti

Maternal struggles and the politics of childlessness under pronatalist Caribbean slavery

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