| Jamaica Ladies: Female Slaveholders and the Creation of Britain's Atlantic Empire Contributor(s): Walker, Christine (Author) |
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ISBN: 1469655268 ISBN-13: 9781469655260 Publisher: Omohundro Institute and University of North C OUR PRICE: $98.01 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: June 2020 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Social Science | Slavery - History | Caribbean & West Indies - General - Social Science | Women's Studies |
| Dewey: 305.409 |
| LCCN: 2019053442 |
| Series: Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American Histo |
| Physical Information: 0.88" H x 6.14" W x 9.21" (1.52 lbs) 336 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - Caribbean & West Indies - Sex & Gender - Feminine |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: 2020 Best Book Award, Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender Jamaica Ladies is the first systematic study of the free and freed women of European, Euro-African, and African descent who perpetuated chattel slavery and reaped its profits in the British Empire. Their actions helped transform Jamaica into the wealthiest slaveholding colony in the Anglo-Atlantic world. Starting in the 1670s, a surprisingly large and diverse group of women helped secure English control of Jamaica and, crucially, aided its developing and expanding slave labor regime by acquiring enslaved men, women, and children to protect their own tenuous claims to status and independence. Female colonists employed slaveholding as a means of advancing themselves socially and financially on the island. By owning others, they wielded forms of legal, social, economic, and cultural authority not available to them in Britain. In addition, slaveholding allowed free women of African descent, who were not far removed from slavery themselves, to cultivate, perform, and cement their free status. Alongside their male counterparts, women bought, sold, stole, and punished the people they claimed as property and vociferously defended their rights to do so. As slavery's beneficiaries, these women worked to stabilize and propel this brutal labor regime from its inception. |
Contributor Bio(s): Walker, Christine: - Christine Walker is assistant professor of history at Yale-NUS College in Singapore. |