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Their Body Was a Site of Profit; Enslaved Women and the Plantation Economy
Hannel Snell, PhD in History, Keele University
Abstract
Through a spatial analysis, this article utilizes first-person narratives to examine how some slaveholders used the plantation household to exploit enslaved women’ s bodies for profit from 1830-60. A spatial analysis would commonly use archaeology such as maps or material culture to analyse the boundaries and perimeters set out to control enslaved women on the plantation. However, this study uses first-person narratives as they are advantageous when understanding how some slaveholders controlled enslaved women’ s bodies through unwritten rules on the plantation. Slaveholders’ diaries and memoirs inform the historian with fragmented customs, rules, and procedures that were imposed upon enslaved women on the plantation. To fill these gaps, enslaved people’ s narratives are used for much of this study to examine how slaveholders established spaces of control and power over enslaved women’ s bodies to sustain a plantation economy.
Introduction
In 1662 colonial Virginia passed the law Partus Sequitur Ventrem which ruled that enslaved women’ s children would inherit the same enslaved status as their mother. This law was adopted by thirteen colonies in colonial America and continued after independence. For slaveholders who wanted to make life-long investments and profits from the slaveholding business, enslaved women’ s bodies became increasingly more valuable as their children were bound to ownership and the will of the slaveholder. Due to the Native American Removal Act of 1830, there was an expansion of lands for the cotton industry in the South-eastern region of America which meant that the demand for enslaved people experienced significant growth; enslaved women’ s bodies became even more crucial not just for labour but reproductive capacity. Therefore, this research paper employs first-person narratives to understand how