This is "Mines": Slavery, Gender, and Reproduction in Barbados and South Carolina, 1650-1715

Jennifer L. Morgan

Slave owners from Barbados were among the initial settlers in the mainland colony of South Carolina. One of the many consequences of this Barbadian influence on Carolina was the immediate assumption that wealth in the mainland colony would be dependent on slave labor. This paper explores the possibility that there was another consequence--the belief that enslaved women were valuable producers and reproducers in a slave society. Among the enslaved, sex ratios in Barbados were uniquely balanced. In no other colonial slave society did the numbers of women equal the numbers of men. Probate records show that South Carolina planters, like their Barbadian counterparts, appropriated women's reproductive potential, linked African women's childbirth to the socioeconomic prosperity of the colony, and thereby suggest a tangible consequence of white slave owners' migration on the enslaved. This paper raises questions about the transposition of a gendered slave-owning ideology, and explores the parameters of life under slavery for women in Barbados and Carolina.

[WP #96017]