Women and Slavery in the French Antilles, 1635-1848:

239 Pages·2001·2.97 MB·English

by  Bernard Moitt

Women and Slavery in the French Antilles,
1635–1848
blacks in the diaspora
Darlene Clark Hine, John McCluskey, Jr., and David Barry Gaspar,
general editors
Women and Slavery
in the French Antilles,
1635–1848
Bernard Moitt
Indiana University Press
Bloomington and Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
601 North Morton Street
Bloomington, IN 47404-3797 USA
http://iupress.indiana.edu
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© 2001 by Bernard Moitt
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or
by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and
recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association
of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions
constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum
requirements of American National Standard for Information
Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Moitt, Bernard.
Women and slavery in the French Antilles, 1635–1848 / Bernard
Moitt.
p. cm. — (Blacks in the diaspora)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-253-33913-8 (cl : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-253-21452-1
(pa : alk. paper)
1. Women slaves—West Indies, French—History. 2. Women,
Black—West Indies, French—History. I. Title. II. Series.
HT1079 .W48 M65 2001
305.48′9625′09729—dc21
00-143858
1 2 3 4 5 06 05 04 03 02 01
For
Cynthelia (Tia),
Kojenwa,
and
Thandika Moitt,
and
to the memory of Mama
(the late Pearl Agusta Moitt)

Contents
Preface ix
Introduction xiii
1 Black Women and the Early Development of the French Antilles 2
2 The Atlantic Slave Trade, Black Women, and the Development
of the Plantations 19
3 Women and Labor: Slave Labor 34
4 Women and Labor: Domestic Labor 57
5 Marriage, Family Life, Reproduction, and Assault 80
6 Discipline and Physical Abuse: Slave Women and the Law 101
7 Women and Resistance 125
8 Women and Manumission 151
Conclusion 173
Notes 177
Bibliography 199
Index 209

Preface
This book was written with relatively little funding, much institutional sup-
port and goodwill, and assistance and encouragement from friends and col-
leagues in many places. It has not been developed from a Ph.D. thesis. Indeed,
it grew out of my interest in Atlantic slavery and my determination to ¤ll a
signi¤cant gap in the historiography of the French Caribbean. While teaching
Caribbean history at the University of Toronto in the 1980s, I was faced with
the lack of material in both English and French speci¤cally about slave women
and decided to make gender and slavery a major focus of my research. This
was not a dif¤cult decision. The neglect of gender issues in the historical lit-
erature of both Africa (my major ¤eld of specialization) and the Caribbean (a
minor ¤eld) was telling and disturbing, but I considered the lacuna in French
Caribbean historiography particularly urgent, in spite of Arlette Gautier’s
pioneering study in French. After publishing several articles on various as-
pects of slavery in Africa and the Caribbean, some dealing with gender, my
focus on slave women intensi¤ed. To date Women and Slavery in the French
Antilles, 1635–1848 is the primary result of this concentration.
In spite of good intentions, dedication, and hard work, the task of illumi-
nating the role that enslaved black women played in the French West Indies
was dif¤cult, time consuming, and even at times paralyzing. This is mostly due
to the fact that the data are highly fragmented, spotty, and often in poor con-
dition. Since gender was not a preoccupation of slaveowners, French adminis-
trators, and contemporary observers, research on slave women entails looking
in every nook and cranny for information about their lives, which I did. Also,
the archival sources are hard to read and decipher, especially the seventeenth-
and eighteenth-century manuscripts on micro¤lm. Consequently, I spent hours
on end (often with the aid of a magnifying glass) poring over illegible words
and phrases, even paragraphs and pages written in arcane French, so as to get
at the speci¤city of the slave woman’s condition and not misrepresent her ex-
perience. In probing this experience, I hope that I have done justice to the
multitude of women whose lives were shaped by slavery, but who responded,
at every turn and in multidimensional ways, to the assault it unleashed on
them with vigor, fortitude, a sense of self, and a will to prevail over adversity.
ix