Motherhood, Childlessness and the Care of Children in Atlantic Slave Societies

This book provides critical perspectives on the multiple forms of ‘mothering’ that took place in Atlantic slave societies. Facing repeated child death, mothering was a site of trauma and grief for many, even asslaveholders romanticized enslaved women’s work in caring forslaveholders' children. Examining a wide range of societies including medieval Spain, Brazil, and New England, and including the work of historians based in Brazil, Cuba, the United States, and Britain, this collection breaks new ground in demonstrating the importance of mothering for the perpetuation of slavery, and the complexity of the experience of motherhood in such circumstances. This pathbreaking collection, on all aspects of the experience, politics, and representations of motherhood under Atlantic slavery, analyses societies across the Atlantic world, and will be of interest to those studying the history of slavery as well as those studying mothering throughout history. This book comprises two special issues, originally published in Slavery & Abolition and Women’s History Review.

Introduction Camillia Cowling, Maria Helena Pereira Toledo Machado, Diana Paton and Emily West Part I: Mothers, Masters and the State: Motherhood and Reproduction under Slavery and Freedom1. The Nameless and The Forgotten: Maternal Grief, Sacred Protection, and the Archive of SlaverySasha Turner2. Maternal Struggles and the Politics of Childlessness under Pronatalist Caribbean SlaveryDiana Paton3. "Bad Breeders" and "Monstrosities": Racializing Childlessness and Congenital Disabilities in Slavery and FreedomJenifer L. BarclayPart II: Enslaved Women and the care of white children4. The Enslaved Wet Nurse as Nanny: The Transition from Free to Slave Labor in Childcare in Barcelona after the Black Death (1348)Rebecca Lynn Winer5. Between Two Beneditos: Enslaved Wet-Nurses amid Slavery’s Decline in Southeast BrazilMaria Helena Pereira Toledo Machado6. "[S]He Could…Spare One Ample Breast for the Profit of her Owner": White Mothers and Enslaved Wet Nurses’ Invisible Labor in American Slave MarketsStephanie Jones-Rogers7. Fertility Control, Shared Nurturing, and Dual Exploitation: The Lives of Enslaved Mothers in the Antebellum United StatesEmily West and Erin Shearer8. Black nannies: Hidden and Open Images in the Paintings of Nicolas-Antoine TaunayLilia Moritz SchwarczPart III: Sexuality, Respectability, and Violence9. ‘By her unnatural and despicable conduct’: motherhood and concubinage in the Watchman and Jamaica Free Press, 1830–1833Meleisa Ono-George10. Conceived in Violence: Enslaved Mothers and Children Born of Rape in Nineteenth-Century LouisianaAndrea Livesey11. Mistresses, Motherhood, and Maternal Exploitation in the Antebellum SouthR.J. KnightPart IV: The Geographies of Motherhood12. African Mothers in the City of Bahia, 1734-1799Carlos Eugênio Líbano Soares and Raíza Cristina Canuta da Hora13. The African Women of the Dos Hermanos Slave Ship in Cuba: slaves first, mothers secondAisnara Perera Díaz and María de los Ángeles Meriño Fuentes14. Gendered Geographies: Motherhood, Slavery, Law, and Space In Mid-Nineteenth-Century CubaCamillia Cowling15. Mothering Slaves, Labor, and the Persistence of Slavery in Northeast Brazil: A Non-Plantation View from the Hinterlands of Ceará, 1813-1884Martha S. SantosPart V: Slavery and the Medicalisation of Childbirth16. Midwifery and Childbirth Among Enslaved and Freed Women in Rio de Janeiro in the First Half of the Nineteenth CenturyTânia Pimenta17. Pregnant Slaves, Workers in Labour: Amid Doctors and Masters In A Slave-Owning City (nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro)Lorena Féres da Silva TellesPart VI: Mothering in the Era of Emancipation18. U.S. Slavery, Civil War, and the Emancipation of Enslaved MotherhoodLeslie A. Schwalm19. Bad Mothers, Labouring Children: Emancipation, Tutelage and Motherhood in São Paulo in the Last Decades of the Nineteenth CenturyMarília Bueno de Araújo Ariza20. In Pursuit of Autonomous Womanhood: Nineteenth-Century Black Motherhood in the U.S. NorthCrystal Lynn Webster21. From Free Womb to Criminalized Woman: Fertility Control in Brazilian Slavery and FreedomCassia Roth

Camillia Cowling is Associate Professor of Latin American History at the University of Warwick, UK.Maria Helena Pereira Toledo Machado is Full Professor in the Department of History at the University of São Paulo, Brazil.Diana Paton is William Robertson Professor of History at the University of Edinburgh, UK.Emily West is Professor of History at the University of Reading, UK.