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8. Childhood, Colonialism, and Nation-Building: Child Labor in Virginia and New York
- University Press of Florida
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8 Childhood, Colonialism, and Nation-Building Child Labor in Virginia and New York Autumn Barrett This study investigates the role of childhood labor in Virginia and New York during the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. Free and enslaved children comprised part of the labor forces that built the economies and stability of these former European colonies and, later, the nation-state. Childhood and adulthood, as conceptual products of the European enlightenment, were employed by European colonizers to justify exploitation. Europeans defined colonial subjects as perpetual children, devoid of full rationality and, therefore, in need of rule (Baker 1998; Mehta 1997). Childhood, within the European colonial project, served as a metaphor for formative and cultivable terrain, complementing McClintock’s (1995) analysis of colonial territories as “empty” frontiers. Within colonies and nations, childhood became a site for intervention, a space for enculturating colonial and national subjectivities and reproducing unequal power relationships (Davin 1997; Stoler 1997, [1995] 2000, 2002). While the European and “Western” infantilizing of adult colonial subjects has been much discussed (see Baker 1998; Nandy 1983), this study focuses on the European constructions of childhood and privilege as they were enacted by adults in relationship to children in the British colonies of Virginia and New York. Europeans justified colonization and exploitation through a “civilizing mission,” posited as aiding colonized peoples never able to reach rational adulthood and always in a state of perpetual childhood . However, actions surrounding developing individuals, subadults, demonstrate that non-elite developing individuals did not experience the privilege accorded by “childhood” to their elite counterparts, and these experiences were further patterned by constructions of race and gender. This study investigates the contexts within which subadults were identified and 160 · A. Barrett treated as children, or not; by whom and for whom these distinctions were made; and the material realities shaped by these distinctions. The European “Discovery” of Childhood Ariès (1962) argues that childhood, as a separate and distinct time of life, began to emerge in Europe after the thirteenth century, becoming fully conceptualized during the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Childhood became a special and morally innocent period of life, whereas, previously, European children had been viewed as small adults (Ariès 1962). Children, within this framework, required distinct care and preparation through “coddling,” moral discipline, and education in order to prepare them for adulthood (Ariès 1962). Childhood as a special period of life was first embraced by the upper classes but spread over time to encompass all classes in European and “Western” societies (Ariès 1962; Stephens 1995). Education and scholastic endeavors began to replace apprenticeship as the focus of preparation for adulthood. Ariès (1962) argues that the first part of the nineteenth century may have experienced a “regression” due to the employment of children in the textile industry. Within Europe, labor became acceptable for lower-class children, while education and “breeding ” were the occupations deemed appropriate for privileged children (Locke [1693] 2007; Mehta 1997). Examples from Virginia and New York demonstrate how these European distinctions were enacted within North American Colonial and early national contexts. The documentary record provides evidence of the cultural ideologies that informed European practices within the metropole and colony. Indenture contracts demonstrate how adult actions patterned access to resources among indentured children. From a biocultural perspective, these documentary sources sketch the sociocultural and ideological contexts in which indentured and enslaved children labored within Colonial and postColonial Virginia and New York. The material implications of European cultural constructions of childhood, class, race, and gender are borne out in the lives of non-elite children. Europeans and European Americans justified slavery by claiming the inhumanity of Africans (Blakey 2001, 2009; Douglass 1854). The remains of enslaved men, women, and children within New York’s African Burial Ground (NYABG) bear witness to the African lived experience of European and European American dehumanizing practices , of slavery, and of forced labor. Colonial laws restricted the movement of Africans and African Americans, including prohibitions on gathering [44.212.50.220] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 12:13 GMT) Childhood, Colonialism, and Nation-Building · 161 together to bury their dead. In this context, the African Burial Ground is a testament to the risk Africans took to bury their loved ones (Blakey 1998; Medford 2009; Perry et al. 2009). The act of burial and the care with which each individual was interred were acts of defiance, asserting their own humanity and the humanity of their dead, the majority of whom were children (Blakey and Rankin-Hill 2009). Childhood...