the dismantlement of the slave system by the slave women

1. CARIBBEAN EXAMINATIONS COUNCIL
CARIBBEAN HISTORY (SBA)
RESEARCH PROPOSAL
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3. TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction and Research Question/Topic
Resistance:
2. Roles of the Slave Women on the Plantation Estate
i.) Causes of Female Slave Resistance:
ii.) Key Forms of Resistance Practiced by Female Slaves
A. Physical Resistance
B. Cultural Resistance
C. Sexual Resistance
Rebellion:
iii.) Rebellion
iv.) Chief Female Participants Responsible for the Rebellion and Exposure in the
Dismantlement of Caribbean Slavery
Redemption:
v.) An Overview of The Role Played by the Enslaved Females in the Caribbean
vi.) References

4. Introduction and Research Question/Topic
Topic: The Forgotten Role of Enslaved Women in Caribbean Slavery: Resistance, Rebellion &
Redemption.
ResearchQuestion: Is it true to say that the enslaved women played a minor role in the
dismantlement of the Caribbean Slave System?
The male domination of Caribbean History disallows for the recognition of female
accomplishments and leadership at all levels of slavery. Women, although rarely looked upon as
smart, were the powerhouses, strongholds and foundations for the men and their new ideas and
endeavours. Decentralised from the spotlight; women were the core and the main perpetrators in
the planning of rebellions and uprisings. Subsequently, they served as the ultimate purpose for
my SBA.

5. Roles of the Slave Women on the Plantation Estate
Main Jobs of Female Slaves were categorized as follows:
 Field Labour
i.) Driveresses.
ii.) Diggers and Cane-cutters and other minor fieldwork.
 Domestic Workers/House Slaves
i.) Nannies/Mammies
ii.) Cooks
iii.) Maids
iv.) Mistresses

6. Resistance:
Causes of Female Slave Resistance
1) The desire for freedom which came after the harsh treatment by slave masters and their
wives (physically, mentally, sexually).
2) Dislike of their master’s decision to separate them from their husbands and children.
3) Restriction or complete disallowance in some islands; of slaves practicing African
religion to create sacred remedies during menstruation, conception, sickness in female
slaves or for praise and worship.
4) The fact that on many plantations, female slaves were either taken advantage of for
profitable gain other than working the fields or in the Great House for prostitution or
“loaning-out” by their masters or used as mistresses for sexual desire of their masters.

7. 5) The character of the white population on the plantation (mainly wives towards women
they felt threatened by; like mistresses or house servants that they believed were
partaking in romantic affairs with their husbands). They tended to be smug, arrogant,
cruel and inefficient in provision of basic necessities to slaves in which they disliked.
Key Forms of Resistance Practiced By Female Slaves
(1) Non-Insurrectionary resistance/ Passive resistance – Non-violent or individual
actions that were used to slow-down or stop productivity on the plantation.
Methods of Resistance by enslaved women included;
Physical Resistance
Malingering, skylarking or wasting time in the field or otherwise when overseers were not
looking to talk and disturb progress.
E.g. A slave owner, Matthew Lewis wrote that in the slave hospital on his plantation there were
over thirty slaves of whom there were only four real cases of sickness. Many slaves came to him
complaining of little pains here and there and subsequently only came to the hospital to chat the
time away with their friends. (Mathurin Mair, Lucille, 14)

8. Faking Illnesses or deliberately prolonging a real illness after recovery. For example slaves
would continue to lie in hospital long after they had recovered. Women especially would
exaggerate menstrual difficulties and they would also breast feed their children for as long as
possible to keep from doing hard work.
E.g. Matthew Lewis went on again in his journal to describe to situation with a slave girl named
Jenny whose hands were bitten and lay in the hospital for well within a week. The doctoress
informed Jenny not to go to work and she continued to do so against the doctoress’s wishes;
further prolonging her illness by continuing to do hard work as a means to return to the hospital.
In the end, when her hands were almost healed and well, she tied packthread on them so as to cut
into them deeply and rubbed dirt into the wounds; subsequently producing a mortification on one
of her fingers. (Mathurin Mair, Lucille, 15)

9. Stealing; Some slaves would steal from the plantations in order to improve their standard of
living (such as food, jewelry, clothing) but mostly to reduce the economic success of their
masters.
E.g. In a diary written by Thomas Thistlewood, he paints a portrait of a slave girl who he had
frequent sexual encounters with named Sally as being a thief, stating: “Sally steals everything
left in the cook room and eats it if it’s eatable…” and gives us a background on Sally when she
first arrived at his estate, stating that she was frequently flogged for stealing and eating estate
poultry and also for unauthorized visits to the kitchen’s storeroom. (McD Beckles, Hilary, 54)

10. Domestic female slaves were sometimes able to poison their slave owners (especially those
women who were cooks).
E.g. A vindictive cook could use her position as an advantage to poison her owners and
overseers. One such case of this was in Barbados in the 18th century, where three slaves were
executed for an unsuccessful attempt to poison their owner; whom of which included one female
slave who was a cook and two male butlers. (Mathurin Mair, Lucille, 26-27)

11. Infanticide; a few slave mothers would kill their babies as soon as they were born or if they
(their mothers) contract any detrimental diseases they would pass on the diseases to their
children so that they would not live to become slaves, experience the pain that they encountered
for many years and to cease or slow down the prosperity and production of the planter.
E.g. Matthew Lewis wrote; “I have, to this day, never seen such a monstrosity where mothers
deliberately inflict diseases upon their children as a means to get out of doing work to mind
them. Their intention is to slow down the process of work and to eliminate the next working
generation of the plantation …but I shall not allow any time of mine to be lost in their absence .”
This was an extract of his diary where slave mothers deliberately infected their young children
and infants with yaws (Mathurin Mair, Lucille, 16)

12. Cultural resistance
Mothers would pass on African traditions to their children although the slave masters
forbade it. Their knowledge of herbs that could have been used for harm and stories of
folklore from their various native lands were passedon through generations.
E.g. The slaves were stripped of all family ties. Mothers from their children at most times, but at
any time when she was able to speak to them, she would pass on the legends, songs, dances,
rituals, religion of their ancestors and the use of medicinal plants to her children. This knowledge
was passed down to them orally from their countries of origin to the new generations of the new
world and were used as a means to secure the identities of the children and to show that although
they were now slaves; they came from rich, diversified cultures that were affluent in customs and
knowledge. (‘Caribbean Oral Traditions’, Van Marissing Méndez, Neeltje, December 20, 2011,
www.encyclopediapr.org )

13. Enslaved women also use dress as a form of resistance. Their imitation of the white women
was intended to show that they were just as equal to these women. They also tied their heads in
ways that were symbolic to slaves alone and in doing so were able to carry messages. This was
especially prevalent in the French islands.
E.g. Dress as a form of masking that contained subtexts was expressive yet unknown to by the
whites. They were used to carry out a discreet message of resistance. Female slaves would come
face to face with their owners or enslavers and they (enslavers) would not know of a female
slave’s thoughts or motives. Due to the lack of knowledge of African culture of the whites, they
were able to hide their message in plain sight with their portrayal of headdress and other
accentual features of their overall dress. The different ways of dress were not only used as forms
of resistance, but to attain specific advantages or to show different levels of status among the
slaves. (O. Buckridge, Steeve, 108-109)

14. Running away and joining Maroon settlements.
Thomas Thistlewood recorded in his diary about the slave girl Sally who expressed her hatred
and disgust of him by stealing (as seen in a previous point) and running away after every sexual
encounter with him. In each case she was captured and brought back to the plantation and
collared or flogged. And thus began a sequential cycle of events: sex, flight and flogging. In turn,
he writes that; ‘Sally has the clap very badly…’ a venereal sexually transmitted disease that was
commonly spread around the plantation thus causing her to run away again. (McD Beckles,
Hilary, 54)

15. Use of Obeah and Spiritual rituals to benefit them by wishing or putting bad luck on their
overseers and owners.
It was a great claim that African people were experts in the various herbs, bushes and their uses.
Their Obeah men and women were supposed to especially skilled in the practice and use of
magic and poison and in numerous ways able to cast spells or evil spirits on people. (Mathurin
Mair, Lucille, 26)

16. Sexual Resistance
Concubinage; Some slave women would use their sexuality and their bodies to get into romantic
relationships with their overseers and owners as a means to uphold status among the other slaves,
freedom for her mixed children, better living conditions and better dietary measures. And in
doing so; take advantage of their concubine status to undermine the white wife as a means to tell
her that she was on par to that of the female slave and to threaten her position in the household.
(Resistance of Slavery by the enslaved Africans, https://missmango.com)

17. Rebellion
According to the Webster’s Dictionary;
A rebellion is a violent organized action by a large group of people who are trying to
change the way things are usually done to benefit themselves in the long run.
“As long as slavery existed, there were always slaves who defied the master by running away.”
(Lucille Mathurin Mair, The Rebel Woman: in the British West Indies during Slavery, 31)
From the very beginning of English settlement in the Caribbean in the seventeenth well before
there was an ever prosperous and booming sugar industry in the British Caribbean Islands,
whites that owned and controlled slaves were always faced with the challenge of them running
away…History has neglected the presence and role played by the women in the dismantlement
of the Caribbean Slave system and ceased to record their accomplishments. Women such as
Nanny and Cubah of Jamaica were the most prominent. Nanny became a leader in the maroon
war and fought in 1831; as well as women on the sidelines who supplied the men with comfort,
food and fought alongside them in the war. (Mathurin Mair, Lucille, 31, 62)

18. Chief Female Participants Responsible for the Rebellion and Exposure
in the Dismantlement of Caribbean Slavery
Granny Nanny/ Queen Nanny: The Jamaican Maroon Leader; 1680?-1750?
As mentioned previously, as long as there was slavery, there were slaves who resisted servitude.
As seen before, there were many ways in which female slaves resisted and multitudes of
rebellions and insurrections formed. These rebellions, controlled by slaves were either successful
or detrimental to their lives. They still took great risks in order to free themselves, their families
and their people from colonialism from the seventeenth century well into the birth of
Emancipation.
The most feared and dreaded for the whites in Jamaica would have been Maroons and their
villages set up in the depths of disparity, wild forests and death traps of ‘Me No Sen, You No
Come’*, places of refuge for slaves that escaped colonial society.
Maroon is a corruption of Cimarrón which means wild, untamed and reckless. Many of these
maroon villages that were close in proximity to large colonial plantations took to their advantage
the presence of food, animals, arms and the ability to liberate other slaves who would soon join
their settlements. The majority of slaves liberated were female and this gave them the
opportunity to grow to become leaders in the maroon community.
In 1690, when war against the British broke out and continued into a guerilla war well into 1724;
the Maroons practiced frequent attacks and organized seizures of the now fragile and frightened
British colonists alongside ferocious, elder leaders, many of whom were women.

19. The most renowned of these female heroes was Nanny; who some describe in many ways to be
not human. Her incomplete life story serves as reference to this myth and still remains one of the
most mysterious leaders of the Maroon war. In truth and fact, there is little written history to
summate the life she lived previously. What was her life like before the Maroon war? Some say
she was of noble blood derived from present day Ghana, Some say she was a free black woman
that dwelled in Jamaica, waiting for her opportunity to eliminate colonialism and free all blacks,
Some say she escaped the ship that transported her to Jamaica as soon as it docked but what we
know for sure is that she was the leader of the Windward Maroon group and they called her
Queen Nanny. It is said that she was married to a man named Adou and was also said to be the
sister of another maroon leader Cudjoe.
Another thing we know for sure is that she was a resilient, military leader whose tactics and
African culture was an instrumental part in her being able to conquer many sub-wars and attain
freedom and legalization for her people. She was most recognized for her use of camouflage and
the abeng (cow horn that symbolized Maroon resistance) that could signal another maroon group
that were stationed near to the British soldiers to ambush them in an element of surprise. Some
legends even portray her as being bulletproof; being able to ricochet bullets away from herself,
back to the very soldiers and kill them.
The superstitious practice of Obeah, a mixture of magic and religion, gained her so much
appreciation and recognition by her people that they named their town after her: Nanny Town.
One Captain Stoddart was able to get onto the mountains above the town and burn huts and kill
many villagers. Since that incident, the survivors moved to a new village they called Moore
Town and their lineages continue.

20. After the Maroon war ended in 1739, she was given 500 acres of land by the English king for
herself and her people. Nothing else of much significance was heard about her after this except
that Cuffee claimed he killed her in 1733, six years before the king granted her the land. This has
presumably been believed to be a lie. She was assumed to be dead in the 1750s, but is still
remembered by her people for her heroic, military tactics and her believed supernatural powers.
In 1976, she was named a National Hero in Jamaica and is celebrated on Heroes’ Day on the
island where all the children and grandchildren of her maroon counterparts celebrate her with the
drums and the abeng horn. Further recognition was given to her when the Jamaican government
placed her on their five-hundred dollar bill. ( Ferguson, James, 5-6) (Shepherd, Verene A., 62-
63) (Mathurin Mair, Lucille, 47-52)

21. Nanny Grigg: The Barbadian/Bajan Maroon Leader
Nanny Grigg a main conceptualizer of the 1816 slave rebellion gained historical prominence as a
one of the leaders at the forefront of the rebellion. She is described as the person who helped in
the developmental cause of the Haitian Revolution and manipulated thousands of slaves into
carrying out its ideas. A slave named Robert who testified against Nanny Grigg before the
committee set up by the Government in Barbados related that she said thatthey were all fools to
continue working when she was going to make sure that they attained their freedom and the only
way to do it was to set fire as did in St Domingue. Nanny and a near one thousand slaves
perished along with her in the fight for freedom from the whites and the survivors executed by
British soldiers and planter militia. She was also described as a literate, knowledgeable woman
who believed that in order to free her people she needed to mirror the rebellion of that of St
Domingue in Haiti and also held a great deal of political authority over male slaves and swayed
them to the armed solution to their problem. (Beckles, Hilary, 163, 185)
The tale of the two Nannys turned out to be particularly informative in the way they idealized
Caribbean heroic feminism beyond what is expected of tradition. (Beckles, Hilary, 185)

22. An Overview of the Role Played by the Enslaved Females in the
Caribbean
Enslaved women brought about a culture of adamancy in relation to them doing work as they ran
away from their plantations, intimidated whites wives and households with the actinic
experiments and engendered the inability to give birth to a new slave generation at the alarming
rate wanted by their white owners as to spite them, operated as husksterers, slept with white men
as to improve their social, economic and physical condition of themselves and their mulatto and
did whatever else that came to mind to extinguish the harshness of the effects of slavery on them.
‘Women helped to generate and sustain the general spirit of resistance’(Bush)
While the evidence of this does not come down in favour of women’s inequality under the whip
because of their adamant reputations of being the unmanageable elements of the workforce, it
does indicate an importance for women in the creation of turmoil and the articulation of protest
on plantations and islands in the Caribbean region. (Beckles, Hilary, 163,185).

23. References
Mcd Beckles, Hilary. Centuring Women: Gender Discources in Caribbean Slave Society:Ian
Randle, October 1, 1998. Print. pgs. 54, 62, 63, 163, 185
Mair, Lucille Mathurin., AND Dennis Ranston. The Rebel Woman in the British West Indies
during Slavery. Kingston, Jamaica: Institute of Jamaica Publications, 1995. Print. Pgs.
14,15,16,26,27,31,47,52,62.
Shepherd, Verene. Women in Caribbean History: the British-colonised Territories. Kingston,
Jamaica: Ian Randle, 1999. Print. Pgs. 62, 63.
Ferguson, James. Makers of the Caribbean. Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle,2005.Print. pgs. 5, 6.
Van Marissing Méndez, Neeltje, ‘Caribbean Oral Traditions’. December 20, 2011,
www.encyclopediapr.org
Buckridge, Steeve O. The Language of Dress: Resistance and Accomodation in Jamaica, 1760-
1890. Kingston, Jamaica: U of the West Indies, 2004. Print. Pgs. 108,109.
Resistance of Slavery by the enslaved Africans, https://missmango.com
Sandler, Nigel. “Women and Their Forgotten Role in Slavery.”
www.sandsoftimeconsultancy.com. Web.