Children in Slavery through the Ages (review)

"Blind youngsters display ability before Senate Committee. Washington, D.C. April 9 [1937]. Blind children from the Maryland School for the Deaf, Dumb and Blind coaching Senator Claude Pepper, of Florida, in the art of operating a braille typewriter. The youngsters appeared before the senate subcommittee on education and labor, of which Senator Pepper is Chairman, as an example of what can be done for physically handicapped children if a bill sponsored by the International Society of Crippled Children is passed. The bill provides for the education of all types of physically handicapped children. It appropriates $1,158,000, of which $2,080,000 is an outright grant ($40,000 to each state), and $9,000,000 for matching; and $500,000 for administration of the act by the U.S. Office of Education. In the picture, left to right: Frances Wright, 8 years old, reading a braille book; Andrew Birmingham, 10 years old; Dr. John W. Studebaker, U.S. Commissioner of Education; [ . . . ] Claude Pepper." Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Harris and Ewing Collection, LC-DIG-hec-22529.

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To date, the study of slavery has focused on adults, largely male, with the experiences of women increasingly entering the discussion since the 1990s. Recently, however, historians have started exploring the roles of children in an effort to lend a voice to the smallest of slaves. In Children in Slavery through the Ages, the first book in a two-volume set, authors move the discussion from the familiar venue of plantation slavery in the Atlantic world to more diverse settings by examining the experiences of slave children throughout world history from the ninth to the twentieth century.

From the start, the editors are careful to caution readers that this anthology is merely a sampling of the work yet to be done in this relatively new field of study. Researching children presents its own challenges, but researching slave children can be an especially daunting task. Furthermore, various cultures and time periods define slavery and childhood differently, as the wide range of chapters in this volume ultimately proves. Examining these overlapping themes in social, political, and economic terms creates an even more complex task. This collection forces readers to see slavery and childhood beyond the traditional, albeit stereotypical, definitions.

Divided into three sections, the book takes a thematic rather than a chronological approach. Section one analyzes slave children as traded commodities in the Atlantic and Eastern trade routes, while the role of slave children in social, political, and domestic roles is examined in the second section. In the third and final section, authors investigate children's experiences in commercial slaveries. Undoubtedly, the strongest of these is the second section. What makes this section stand out is its focus on the enslavement of children in the non-Western world, a vastly understudied region in this field. While section two focuses mainly on slave children as domestic laborers, each chapter makes an effort to illustrate the social and political agency of the children examined. Kristina Richardson shows how motherhood elevated the social status of the young qiyan entertainers in the 'Abbasid court, while the Christian boys discussed in Gulay Yilmaz's chapter gained the Sultan's favor through their specialized training as janissaries. Although domestic servitude often conferred better treatment, Pauline Pui-ting Poon's research on Hong Kong's mui tsai proves that this was not always the case. Sold simply to alleviate poverty, these children were true commodities in every sense of the word and experienced a life not unlike Haiti's restavècs. These chapters force the reader to question current definitions of childhood and slavery through their presentations of more complex characterizations of each. Consequently, this section alone succeeds in achieving the editors' ultimate goal of sparking future debate and discussion on these provocative topics.

Sections one and three examine children's experiences in more traditional forms of enslavement...