Women And Slavery ─ The Modern Atlantic

Campbell (Indian Ocean world history, McGill), Miers (history, Ohio University) and Miller (history, University of Virginia) study the history of the enslavement of women in the Americas in their second volume devoted to women and slavery. In North America, slavery was known as the "peculiar institution" and some of the essays describe how plantation slavery differed from that in other parts of the world. One difference was that in the Caribbean and in Brazil there was more opportunity for a slave to buy her own freedom. However, the determination of women not to leave their children behind gave slave owners a weapon to keep women from leaving. Other authors treat the condition of women after emancipation in the Caribbean and the southeast of the United States. Again, the drive to protect their children at all costs made the women vulnerable. However, many women managed to use their skills to create small businesses and succeed. The introduction points out that under the law in the 18th and 19th century, all women were subjugated to men and that emancipation for female slaves did not get them rights that were given, at least on paper, to their brothers. Annotation c2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Gwyn Campbell, Canada Research Chair in Indian Ocean World History at McGill University, is the author and editor of many works, including Abolition and Its Aftermath in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia and An Economic History of Imperial Madagascar. Suzanne Miers is professor emerita of history at Ohio University. She is the author of Slavery in the Twentieth Century and coeditor of The End of Slavery and other books. Joseph C. Miller is the T. Cary Johnson, Jr. Professor of history at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Kings and Kinsmen, Way of Death, and works on the world history of slavery.