The Impact of British Parliamentary Legislations on Enslaved Women of the British Caribbean 1780s–1800s.

Abstract

Colonial slavery contained three interrelated aspects of law that transformed with the introduction of African slavery. Firstly, defining enslaved people as property, secondly, establishing forms of control over enslaved people, and thirdly, developing legal definitions of race, which distinguishes African enslaved people and their descendants from the rest of the population. The introduction of Imperial laws and their transplantation within the relevant island colonies had serious consequences on the enslaved persons therein. However, their impact on enslaved women was far reaching and resonated even within post-emancipation societies. Slavery remained an integral aspect of Western society for so long that its dismantling was not an easy feat. After all, it had been vital to European expansion into the Americas and was therefore deeply embedded into all resultant legal, social, political and economic systems. This paper looks at the introduction of the British Parliamentary laws of the Amelioration Acts and the Emancipation Act within the English-Speaking enslaved person holding Caribbean colonies. These laws were initiated to supposedly alleviate the atrocities of enslavement. In reality, the plantocracy used these legislations to create harsher conditions and mask cruelty which enslaved women felt the major brunt of especially as their health was increasingly compromised. Female enslaved persons' stories are often overlooked therefore, this paper also addresses the plight of enslaved women and tactics they used to protect their bodies within colonial enslavement and in the aftermath of its ending. Ultimately, the paper depicts what this signified for scholarship on the role of enslaved women within colonial Caribbean slavery as a whole.