Gender and Slave Emancipation in the Atlantic World by Pamela Scully

This book provides a comparative perspective on the way ideas of gender relations and identities shaped the struggle over resources, cultural practices, and political rights that followed the end of slavery in the Atlantic world. Throughout the nineteenth century many people in the Atlantic world were involved in the effort to create a new world, one without slavery in which all people were individuals and equal to each other. The contributors to this work argue that in the era of emancipation understanding of freedom and the individual was almost always constructed in gendered terms. Virtually all the regions bordering the Atlantic were re-shaped by participation in the slave trade. The essays examine the process of emancipation throughout the Atlantic world including North America, the British and French Caribbean, Cuba, Puerto Rico, South and West Africa, and parts of Latin America, all of whom had differing influences on slave culture and in turn on slaves' perceptions of gender. Gender was central to enslaved people's understanding of slavery, although the experiences in different parts of the Atlantic world were not identical and often followed the patterns of the slave owners. The expectation of what it meant to be free was often quite different for men and for women, and these concepts shaped many of the struggles over resources, cultural practices, religion and political rights. Gendered assumptions were also part of the vision of abolitionists. The military action that in many cases ended the practice of slavery gave men the advantage of becoming the head of a household so that even in freedom women continued to be subordinate to men. The contributors show that emancipationserved to define the meaning of freedom, although it rarely matched the visions of liberty expected by enslaved people.