Women and Slavery in the French Antilles, 1635-1848 (review)

This book closely follows a number of volumes about Caribbean slavery published during the last ten years that have focused on black women's labor and resistance.¹ It argues that "the fortunes of the slave plantations were accumulated largely on the backs of enslaved black women who performed a disproportionate amount of hard labor. As this labor was sometimes (though not always) gender specific, women's roles often permitted them to engage in [gender] specific forms of resistance (xiv)." Moitt, like others before him, details the activities of bondswomen in the field, in household service, within their families, and in the larger community, both as they conformed to their masters' expectations and as they rebelled against their condition. The French case, however, affords him the opportunity to explore particular variations of the master-slave relationship that might not be familiar. The book sheds much-needed light on the connections between other labor systems and slavery, on the process of manumission, and on the use of legal instruments for redress by slaves themselves.

Moitt's first chapter covers the early period of slavery and indentured servitude, a rare peek into the early years of unfree labor. It relies on careful analysis of available census data and colonial legislation to trace the efforts of the first colonists on various islands to work the land with any type of available labor, preferably white. More than proving that "the African alternative was cheaper, but not inevitable (18)," Moitt offers an unusual glimpse of settlers' views over the first fifty years of colonization, and black women's unsteady position in these nascent socie-ties and economies. Likewise, the chapter on manumission, in which he details the workings of the categories of libre de savane and libre de fait, along with the possibility of obtaining free status through legislative acts, litigation, and rachat (redemption, purchase), traces changes through time that were a function of attitudes toward race, the law, and human nature. The chapter on physical abuse is similarly rich. Far from being an inventory of planters' sadistic practices, it is testimony to women's indefatigable efforts to denounce them, despite their repeated failures to obtain justice. This type of detective work and an engaging narrative style make this book a pleasure to read.

To quibble, the absence of a comparative framework outside of the Anglophone islands is regrettable. Although this volume uncovers aspects of slavery that will be new even to experienced scholars of other areas, it would benefit immensely from locating processes and events within a wider geographical and temporal scope. Rich comparisons exist between, say, provisions for manumission in the French and the Spanish islands, but the complexity of these issues will be lost if historians do not consciously expand their historiographical reach.

In addition, Moitt and others would do well to embrace fully, within the framework of oppression and resistance, other forms of domination to which black women were exposed (Moitt mentions patriarchy, chauvinism, and racism on page 36) and their efforts to oppose them. Incorporating explanatory schemes from other fields (gender studies, ethnic studies, and cultural studies) would add much to historical studies of slavery. Another possibility is to go outside the framework of oppression and resistance—outside the master's domain, so to speak—and examine slave culture and leisure—a real challenge so far as sources are concerned.