Jones, Cecily. (2007) “If this be living I'd rather be dead”: enslaved youth, agency and resistance on an eighteenth century Jamaican estate. History of the Family, Vol.12 (No.2). pp. 92-103. ISSN 1081-602X

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Abstract

By the late eighteenth century, enslaved children and young adults had become vital components in the reproduction of Caribbean slavery. Yet the experiences of enslaved children and adolescents have rarely been the focus of scholarship. Indeed, the near-absence of scholarship on enslaved children and youth within the historiographies of slavery, childhood and family history is striking. While we know much about the structure of family life, gender roles, courtship, marriage, and parenting among the enslaved, we know far less about the material worlds of enslaved youth and adolescents. Childhood and adolescence represented critical stages in the lives of enslaved children for it was during these life-stages that young people were inculcated with the racialised ideologies of the wider social order, gained insight into the value systems of their society, were socialized into acceptance of their status as unfree peoples, and prepared for their future roles as labourers. Hence, their experiences of slavery were qualitatively different from those of adult slaves.

This paper explores some aspects of adolescent life on the Jamaican estate of Thomas Thistlewood in the late decades of the eighteenth century. Thistlewood, manager of a slave-pen, early recognised the importance of young people in furthering his ambitions to become master of his own estate, and his purchases of young people reflect that market-rational strategy. Thistlewood’s preference for a youthful labour force stemmed from his conviction that young people could be more easily made to submit to his authority than adult slaves. Yet, Thistlewood’s belief in the greater tractability of enslaved youth was often undermined, as his adolescent labour force frequently and forcefully tested the limits of his mastery and asserted their rights to freedom. Thistlewood’s journal not only offers rich insights into the processes of transformation of enslaved children to adolescents and mature adults, but it also sheds light on enslaved youth and their negotiations with, manipulations of, and resistance to the master–slave relationship. This paper argues then, that far from being the passive objects of planter mastery, enslaved youth were active agents in the shaping of their own histories. In exploring these issues, this paper reveals much of the contradictions and ambiguities of enslaved childhood, youth and adolescence.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform
Divisions:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Sociology
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Child slaves -- Jamaica, Slavery -- Jamaica -- History -- 18th century, Slaves -- Social conditions
Journal or Publication Title:	History of the Family
Publisher:	Elsevier
ISSN:	1081-602X
Official Date:	22 October 2007
Volume:	Vol.12
Number:	No.2
Page Range:	pp. 92-103
Identification Number:	10.1016/j.hisfam.2007.08.002
Status:	Peer Reviewed
Access rights to Published version:	Open Access
References:	Trevor Burnard (2004), Mastery, Tyranny and Desire: Thomas Thistlewood and his slaves in the Anglo-Jamaica world, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill. Paul Edwards, ed. (1967), Equiano’s Travels: His Autobiography – The Interesting Narrative of The Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavas Vassa The African, Written by Himself. London: Heinemann. Douglas Hall (1989), In Miserable Slavery: Thomas Thistlewood in Jamaica, 1750-1786, Macmillan Caribbean/Warwick University Caribbean Studies Cecily Jones (2006), “Suffer the Little Children’: Setting a research agenda for the study of enslaved children in the Caribbean colonial world”, Wadabagei: a journal of the Caribbean and it’s Diasporas, (vol.9, issue 3) Wilma King (1995), Stolen Childhood: Slave youth in Nineteenth Century America, Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianopolis Moira Ferguson, ed. (1997), The History of Mary Prince: A West Indian Slave, related by herself. Rev. ed. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Inniss, Tara. A. (2005), Children, Sexuality and Sexual Abuse during Slavery and the Apprenticeship Period, 1790-1838. (Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Caribbean Studies Conference, Newcastle). Salih, Sarah. ed. (2000). The History of Mary Prince. London: Penguin Classic.
URI:	http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/596

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