The Atlantic Slave Trade imported over a million and a half slaves to the French colonies, and half of the slave population was imported to the French colony of Saint Domingo. The institution of slavery was based off a hierarchical society based on race, slaves were the lowest on the social ranking. Understanding the roles of women in Saint Domingo during slavery is essential to understanding the nature of the Black women’s experience in the French colony. The enslaved black women in the French colony of Saint Domingo were subjected to “triple oppression” because of their gender, race, and their social status as being a slave. All of these factors influence the way black enslaved women were treated and it explains the lasting negative
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The presence of women slaves in Saint Domingo went from the minority in 1790 to the majority in a matter of six years. A strong labor force was needed in the French colony, young women slaves had a higher mortality rate than men. Madame Desclos de la Fonchias, a daughter of a sugar plantation owner in 1777, knew purchasing women slaves would be smart economically for their plantation she states “buy them from the Gold Coast, and sure to buy young women”. The surplus of women slaves in the colony served as a hard labor work force. Contrary, to their patriarchal system, women did hard labor and was responsible for majority of the economic growth.
Women slaves held jobs outside of hard labor, many enslaved women acted as midwives and health care providers, such jobs were given to “well-behaved and intelligent women”. The position of being a midwife gave the slave women control over infanticide, many of the slave women would purposely exterminate pregnancies and kill infants as a way of resistance. Due to these acts of resistance low birth rates became a reoccurring and common characteristic among sugar plantations in Saint …show more content…
Black and Mulatto enslaved women’s low social ranking in the colony caused them to be vulnerable to sexual violence against them by their white owners, overseers, and their enslaved male counterparts. Enslaved Mulatto women were often fetishized and were seen only as sexual objects and “pleasure seekers”. Scholar, and Historian Walter J. Pierce, highlights how enslaved women were portrayed in Saint Domingo as hyper sexualized creatures Black women during the colonial period were seen to have a certain sexual power over the white colonist. A plantation owner’s nephew Lory de la Bernardiere sexually exploited the slave women on his uncle’s plantation in Saint Domingo. Bernardiere’s mother gives her description of her son’s interaction with the slave women “he is given to amusement and a life of debauchery, he has fostered a harem of black women who control him and run the plantation”. His mother does not hold him responsible for his corrupt behavior against the slave but blames the women for his behavior, she uses the argument of the slave women controlling him.
Despite the adversities the women faced they became self-sufficient by using a barter system to trade goods, they mostly traded
The presence of women slaves in Saint Domingo went from the minority in 1790 to the majority in a matter of six years. A strong labor force was needed in the French colony, young women slaves had a higher mortality rate than men. Madame Desclos de la Fonchias, a daughter of a sugar plantation owner in 1777, knew purchasing women slaves would be smart economically for their plantation she states “buy them from the Gold Coast, and sure to buy young women”. The surplus of women slaves in the colony served as a hard labor work force. Contrary, to their patriarchal system, women did hard labor and was responsible for majority of the economic growth.
Women slaves held jobs outside of hard labor, many enslaved women acted as midwives and health care providers, such jobs were given to “well-behaved and intelligent women”. The position of being a midwife gave the slave women control over infanticide, many of the slave women would purposely exterminate pregnancies and kill infants as a way of resistance. Due to these acts of resistance low birth rates became a reoccurring and common characteristic among sugar plantations in Saint …show more content…
Black and Mulatto enslaved women’s low social ranking in the colony caused them to be vulnerable to sexual violence against them by their white owners, overseers, and their enslaved male counterparts. Enslaved Mulatto women were often fetishized and were seen only as sexual objects and “pleasure seekers”. Scholar, and Historian Walter J. Pierce, highlights how enslaved women were portrayed in Saint Domingo as hyper sexualized creatures Black women during the colonial period were seen to have a certain sexual power over the white colonist. A plantation owner’s nephew Lory de la Bernardiere sexually exploited the slave women on his uncle’s plantation in Saint Domingo. Bernardiere’s mother gives her description of her son’s interaction with the slave women “he is given to amusement and a life of debauchery, he has fostered a harem of black women who control him and run the plantation”. His mother does not hold him responsible for his corrupt behavior against the slave but blames the women for his behavior, she uses the argument of the slave women controlling him.
Despite the adversities the women faced they became self-sufficient by using a barter system to trade goods, they mostly traded