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Taking as points of inspiration Peter Parish’s 1989 book, Slavery: History and Historians, and Angela Davis’s seminal 1971 article, “Reflections on the Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves...

Rio de Janeiro, 1845: Inacia, an enslaved woman, gives birth to triplets, attended by a white doctor at the request of her slaveholder. All her babies die during their first night.Havana, 1854: a f...

Kingston, Jamaica, 1831: A newspaper published by free men of colour which campaigns for free coloured civil rights publishes a letter attacking free women of colour for their inadequate motherhood...

The assessment of possible genetic relationships between pairs of proposed narrative parallels currently relies on subjective conventional wisdom-based criteria. This essay presents an attempt at categorizing patterns of narrative evolution through the comparison of variants of orally-composed, fixed-text Sanskrit tales. Systematic examination of the changes that took place over the developmental arc of _The Tale of Cyavana_ offers a number of insights that may be applied to the understanding of the evolution of oral narratives in general. An evidence-based exposition of the principles that govern the process of narrative evolution could provide more accurate diagnostic tools for evaluating narrative parallels.

For free black women in the pre-Civil War American South, the status offered by ‘freedom’ was uncertain and malleable. The conceptualization of bondage and freedom as two diametrically opposed conditions therefore fails to make sense of the complexities of life for these women. Instead, notions of enslavement and freedom are better framed as a spectrum. This article develops this idea by exploring two of the ways in which some black women negotiated their status before the law—namely though petitioning for residency or for enslavement. While these petitions are atypical numerically, and often offer tantalizingly scant evidence, when used in conjunction with evidence from the US census, it becomes clear that these women were highly pragmatic. Prioritizing their spousal and broader familial affective relationships above their legal status, they rejected the often theoretical distinction between slavery and liberation. As such, the petitions can be used to reach broader conclusions about the attitudes of wom...

During the antebellum era, especially its latter stages, some Southern state legislatures and county courts received petitions on behalf of free people of colour requesting enslavement. Their reasons for doing so varied, and while these individuals are atypical in the sense that their often desperate actions were not representative of the aspirations of the majority of Southern free blacks, as a group they reveal much about the intersection of race, class and gender during a highly uncertain time in Southern history. These cases offer a fascinating insight into economic conditions and the impact of legislation upon free people of colour, marital and other familial ties across the slave-free divide, relationships across the colour line and the broader pro-slavery defence in the Old South.

This fascinating and concise book sheds new light on divorce patterns in the antebellum South and the impact of wealth, race, slavery, and legal changes upon people seeking to end their marriages. ...

Research into the intimate areas of slaves' lives has proven problematic for historians because the typicality of private sentiments is always hard to establish, and within slave testimony such as the WPA narratives, reference to issues of marital discord, abuse, or adultery is rare. However, the records of slave owners and the disciplinary committees of antebellum biracial churches can prove most fruitful in an investigation into slave marital antagonisms. This evidence, when used in conjunction with limited testimony conveyed within slave narratives and autobiographies for the state of South Carolina, illustrates that the system of slavery led the enslaved towards the creation of clearly defined gender roles. Women were obliged to take care of domestic affairs, while men were expected to act as protectors and providers. It was when a spouse failed to conform to these gendered expectations that marital strife ensued. Understanding the specific duties and obligations of male and female slaves therefore al...

My husband was a slave of de Sloans and didn't get to see me as often as he wanted to, and of course, as de housemaid then, dere was times I couldn't meet him, clandestine like he want me. Us had some grief over dat, but he got a pass twice a week from his marster, Marse Tommie Sloan, to come to see me…Sam was a field hand and drive de wagon way to Charleston once a year wid cotton, and always bring back something pretty for me.George P. Rawick, The American Slave : A Composite Autobiography, Vol. 2, Part 1 (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1972), 300.Historians have found it difficult to assess the extent and nature of slave cross-plantation marriages (that is, where husband and wife lived on different slaveholdings). This is largely because white sources give no basis for estimating their scale or character. Estate papers and business records often list slaves belonging to a particular owner, but such lists give no indication of spouses and other relatives of those slaves who might belong to neighbours. Similarly, except for scattered comments on visiting privileges given to certain slaves, or references to the possible advantages and inconveniences of allowing slaves to marry off the plantation, owners took little interest in the vigour of such unions.

by Carol Wilson, New Brunswick, New Jersey and London, Rutgers University Press, 2007, xi, 158pp., $21.95, ISBN: 0-8135-4058-5 Carol Wilson has written a terrific, gripping book which, once started...