all odds, stoically raising her brood of fatherless children with barely a murmur of complaint. This idealised, one-dimensional image takes scant account of the complexity of the different rankings and functions of enslaved women, much less the range and sophistication of their responses. Like all stereotypes, it relies on a kernel of truth; but by buying into it wholesale, we risk losing sight of many alternative narratives.
With little historical identity beyond these two limited roles, it is small wonder that the nameless female casualties of plantation violence come across as little more than passive onlookers. It’s as if enslaved women were somehow caught up by default in confrontations from which only men could emerge as heroes. With very few exceptions (and we could literally count them on the fingers of one hand), enslaved women who fought back have been relegated to the role of invisible camp followers.
His-story has a convenient and highly selective memory, this much we know, but if we sift through the evidence, a far more complex picture begins to emerge. The canvas may be worn, the paint may be cracked and faded, but there are women in the foreground and they do not look happy. Look closer and you’ll see them more clearly. Their bodies are bent, their feet callused and swollen. They are menstruating, giving birth, collapsing from fatigue and dying from abuse or hideous diseases. Across their backs, thick keloid scars are clearly visible, as are the suppurating wounds left by brandings, collars and leg irons. The few who are clothed sport dark sweat stains under their armpits. Some look half-crazed with the horror of it all, some seem resigned to the prospect of an untimely death. But others are watching, waiting, biding their time, plotting their escape or dreaming of revenge. Occasionally the glint of a weapon or a barely concealed vial of poison hints at more ominous practices.
Against this backdrop of unrelenting misery, some women have found ways to make their lives more tolerable. At first glance, they do not look like women who would willingly trade their bodies for trinkets or treats. Without doubt, there are some favoured concubines among them, women who have learnt to play the few cards they were dealt by opting to collude or comply. They stand haughty and erect, ever mindful of their perilous status. Yet those who seek favour rather than endure the miserable fate of their mothers and grandmothers are in a distinct minority. The numbers speak for themselves, they are the exception to the rule.
Move closer and our picture becomes even more intriguing. Away from the fields, some women can be seen dusting the silver or waiting at table with lowered eyes and pricked ears. Others are busy hauling produce to market or hiring out their skills as cooks, seamstresses, laundresses, nurses and midwives. Their mobility is a godsend, particularly for those with clandestine messages or overheard news to relay. A handful of female entrepreneurs, having acquired or purchased their freedom, have opened lodging houses, supplementing their precarious income by administering to the sick or tending to the needs of passing travellers. With their keen, well-tuned ears, they too have a role to play in this vast, subversive grapevine.
A majority of the women are toiling in the fields and mill-houses. Many have an angry glint in their eyes as they feed the huge rollers or squint skyward at the merciless sun. Beyond them, in the distant mountains and forests, hard to detect in the dense foliage, we may even catch the occasional tantalising glimpse of a female Maroon – proud, ferocious women, so intent on a self-determined life that they prefer the risk of a brutal death to the prospect of recapture.
With this more nuanced image of female resistance in mind, it cannot be right that their historical legacy is so one-dimensional. As the planter ‘Monk’ Lewis observed, black women were ‘kicked in the belly’ throughout the period of slavery. Yet in many ways, these women’s response can be seen as a metaphorical kick in the belly for those who tried and failed to dehumanise them. To deny them their rightful place in history simply adds insult to a 400-year-long injury.
To some, the case for letting sleeping dogs lie must seem quite persuasive, no doubt because the subject of slavery is deemed too uncomfortable to warrant such scrutiny. Whisper the S-word on this side of the pond and, bar a handful of guilt-stricken universities, there is a collective squirm of embarrassment in the national seat. Mention reparations and politicians fudge or grow defensive. African Caribbean pupils have even been known to complain when the subject is brought up in class, suggesting little understanding of their roots, much less pride in their impressive heritage. Meanwhile, most of us turn an indifferent eye to growing evidence that modern-day slavery is alive, kicking and operating under our very noses.
But this is precisely why the subject of slavery and the slave trade remains relevant. Despite the enduring myth of a self-contained ‘black’ history, events in Africa and the Caribbean did not take place on another planet. Nor were the beneficiaries of slavery confined to mainland America, as recent films and much of the available literature tend to suggest. Britain’s imperial past is inextricably linked to the contributions and sacrifices of the enslaved. Her towns and cities are littered with evidence that for hundreds of years, African blood, sweat and tears oiled the wheels of this country’s progress and lined its citizens’ pockets with gold. It was her enslaved and colonised subjects who helped put the ‘Great’ in Great Britain, yet the great British public remains largely in denial.
There are other reasons why the realities of the transatlantic slave trade warrant closer attention. ‘A people without knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots’, to quote Marcus Garvey, and in a society like ours, where home-grown ethnic diversity is increasingly the norm, his argument has never rung truer. Today, with thousands of African women risking life and limb to make the hazardous trek north under conditions not dissimilar to the middle passage, the continuities are stark. So, however painful, however shameful, a better understanding of our shared past is vital to the health of Britain’s evolving multicultural identity.
Stories of how Africans and their descendants survived the experience of enslavement with their dignity and humanity intact provide a vast, untapped source of national pride. Like the survivors of the Holocaust who populated London’s East End or the heroes and she-roes who resisted fascism during the Second World War, their courage and resilience deserve to be honoured, their intrepid acts publicly revered. If even a handful of African Caribbean pupils feel shame or unease at the mention of slavery, something has gone seriously wrong.
The enslavement of Africans by Europeans was, without question, one of the worst crimes ever perpetrated against humanity. Back in 2007, the 200th anniversary of the parliamentary act to abolish the British slave trade provided a rare (and largely missed) opportunity to highlight the role of its victims in bringing about its eventual demise. To have allowed that moment to pass without raising the profile of women was an added travesty. It’s time to place women centre stage where they belong, fist in glove with the men.
It was a long and arduous journey from slavery to freedom, but there is growing evidence to suggest that women were present every step of the way. A cornerstone of the plantation economy and increasingly the very key to its survival, enslaved women’s contribution to its eventual demise remains one of history’s best-kept secrets.
Aside from Mary Prince’s transcribed narrative, which the pro-slavery lobby did everything in their power to discredit,7 enslaved West Indian women had few opportunities to record their stories for posterity. Yet from their dusty footprints and the umpteen small clues they left for us to unravel, there’s no question that they earned their place in history. From Jamaica to Barbados, Haiti to Trinidad, the emerging picture is compelling. Pick any Caribbean island and you’ll find race, skin colour and rank interacting with gender in a unique and often volatile way. Moreover, the evidence points to a distinctly female role in the development of a culture of slave resistance – a role that was not just central, but downright dynamic.
Enslaved women found ways of fighting back that beggar belief. Whether responding to the horrendous conditions of plantation life, the sadistic vagaries of their captors or the ‘peculiar burdens of their sex’, their collective sanity relied on a highly subversive adaptation of the values and cultures they smuggled with them naked from different parts of Africa. By sustaining or adapting remembered cultural practices – be it music, storytelling, preparing food, administering medicines, fixing hair, birthing and naming rites or rituals for burying their dead – they ensured that the lives of chattel slaves