Female Slave Owners

Abstract

While scholarship on female slave ownership in the Atlantic world pales in comparison with the extensive literature on men’s activities as slaveholders, recent work on the topic has transformed our understanding of who the “typical” slaveholder was, and in turn, how European imperial regimes perpetuated chattel slavery throughout the Americas. Rather than being marginalized or passive, women acted as key agents of colonialism and chattel slavery. They actively participated as buyers and sellers of human beings in local and Atlantic markets; they managed, coerced, and abused enslaved people; and they derived material wealth and social capital from their participation in slavery. The women who acted as slave owners comprised a remarkably diverse group. Christian and Jewish women who migrated to the Americas readily participated in slavery. Women of African, Euro-African, and Amerindian descent living throughout the Atlantic basin were slave owners. Even women who had spent part of their own lives in bondage acquired captives. There were, of course, regional and chronological variations which shaped a woman’s ability to procure slaves, and more work needs to be done which investigates these differences. We still know relatively little about how status, ethnicity, race, and religion shaped female slaveholding patterns in various parts of the Atlantic world. This bibliography has been organized geographically rather than thematically or chronologically, which is a reflection of the relative paucity of literature on the subject. However, geographic boundaries themselves were porous and contested during the era of Atlantic slavery, and female slave owners moved within and between imperial zones—another subject which is in need of further study. The formal abolition of the slave trade with Africa by European empires and the United States in the early 19th century forms the rough chronological end point for this bibliography (Britain, 1807; United States, 1808; Portugal, 1810; Sweden, 1813; France, 1814; Netherlands, 1814; Spain, 1820). The abolition of the slave trade, of course, did not end slavery in the Americas, nor did it limit women’s engagement in slaveholding. However, the abolition of the slave trade officially constricted the Atlantic dimensions of the trade, and hence, the transportation of African captives to the Americas. Female slave owners continued to benefit from unfree labor until, and even after, the abolition of slavery, which occurred at various points in time in different nations and colonies. Female slave owners living in the British empire, for instance, received monetary compensation in return for emancipating their captives. More regional needs to be done which investigates both the differences and similarities in patterns of female slaveholding across imperial and national boundaries. Likewise, we need to understand how the abolition of the slave trade and then the abolition of slavery influenced the lives and the fortunes of female slave owners living throughout the Atlantic world.