The Faces of Freedom: The Manumission and Emancipation of Slaves in Old World and New World Slavery

THE FACES OF FREEDOM

THE ATLANTIC WORLD Europe, Africa and the Americas, 1500-1830

EDITORS

Wim Klooster (Clark University) Benjamin Schmidt (University of Washington)

VOLUME VII

THE FACES OF FREEDOM The Manumission and Emancipation of Slaves in Old World and New World Slavery EDITED BY

MARC KLEIJWEGT

BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON 2006

Cover illustrations: Fragment of the manumission relief from Mariemont, Belgium, the only possible representation of a manumission ceremony from the Roman world. Copyright: Musée royal de Mariemont (Morlanwelz, Belgique), Inv. Nr. B26. George Duff ’s painting of a Cape Town procession on the anniversary of slave emancipation, 1860s. Cape Archives, Roeland Street, Cape Town. This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The faces of freedom : the manumission and emancipation of slaves in Old World and New World slavery / edited by Marc Kleijwegt. p. cm. — (The Atlantic world, ISSN 1570-0542 ; v. 7) “Originally delivered as papers at the second ICHOS-conference held at the University of Nottingham in September of 2001 under the title Freed slaves: Exclusion or Integration”—Ack. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 90-04-15082-X (alk. paper) 1. Slaves—Emancipation—History—Congresses. 2. Freedmen—Social conditions—Congresses. I. Kleijwegt, Marc. II. International Centre for the History of Slavery. III. Atlantic world (Leiden, Netherlands) ; v. 7. HT855.F33 2006 326’.8—dc22 2005058257

ISSN 1570–0542 ISBN-13: 978-90-04-15082-9 ISBN-10: 90-04-15082-X © Copyright 2006 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill Academic Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

This volume is respectfully dedicated to the memory of Thomas Wiedemann

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ...................................................................... Notes on Contributors ................................................................ List of Illustrations and Tables ................................................

ix xi xv

PART I

EMANCIPATION AND MANUMISSION IN OLD AND NEW WORLD SLAVERY Chapter One Freedpeople: A Brief Cross-cultural History .................................................................................... Marc Kleijwegt

3

PART II

FREEDPEOPLE IN A SLAVE SOCIETY Chapter Two Liberti and Libertas: A Call for Civic Freedom .................................................................................. 71 Valentina Arena Chapter Three Freed Slaves, Self-presentation and Corporate Identity in the Roman World ............................ 89 Marc Kleijwegt Chapter Four Redemption of Slaves in Ancient Sri Lanka ................................................................................ 117 Chandima Wickramasinghe Chapter Five Wealthy Free Women of Colour in Charleston, South Carolina, during Slavery ........................ 137 Rita Reynolds Chapter Six Inheritance Practices among Individuals of African Origin and Descent in Eighteenth-century Minas Gerais, Brazil .............................................................. 153 Mariana Dantas

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contents PART III

FREEDPEOPLE AFTER EMANCIPATION Chapter Seven Coercion and Freedom in the Cape Colony, 1652–1856 ................................................................ Nigel Worden Chapter Eight “We not slave again”: Enslaved Jamaicans in Early Freedom, 1838–1865 .............................................. Swithin Wilmot Chapter Nine Dress: From Slavery to Freedom among Jamaican Colonised Women, 1790–1890 ............................ Steeve Buckridge Chapter Ten After Slavery in French West Africa: The Problem of the Invisible Slave ...................................... Martin Klein

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215

233

265

Index ............................................................................................ 287

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The individual chapters in this volume were originally delivered as papers at the second ICHOS-conference held at the University of Nottingham in September of 2001 under the title Freed Slaves: Exclusion or Integration. ICHOS (International Centre for the History of Slavery; now renamed ISOS) is and will always be remembered as the brainchild of Thomas Wiedemann. He developed the idea that historians of slavery in different periods and on different continents should be in dialogue with each other, attend the same conferences, hear each other give papers and comment on the implications for their own field of research. ICHOS was intended to be the structural forum for these encounters. Everyone attending the first conference in 2000 had to agree that the concept worked. Scholars were passionately exchanging information from slave societies as widely divergent as Anglo-Saxon England, Brazil, South Africa, the Ottoman Empire and ancient Greece and Rome. The second conference continued this pattern of initiating exchanges across the respective fields of research, bringing historians of slavery closer together and stimulating new perspectives on world slavery. The fact that so many scholars are currently studying slavery from a global perspective may not have been directly inspired by Wiedemann’s initiative, but he certainly understood that scholars were moving in this direction and he facilitated the process by presenting a platform for such a dialogue. Wiedemann’s death just a couple of months before the second conference was held came as a great shock to all the participants. His presence and drive were and are sorely missed. The present volume is respectfully dedicated to his memory. The hard work to organize the conference and to make it a success was taken over by Jim Roy and Jane Gardner. They did a great job and in the name of all the participants I wish to thank them here for all their efforts. This volume would not have been produced if it had not been for the patience and persistence of the contributors. I want to thank them for continuing to believe in the eventual completion of the project. The two biggest assets of this volume are the expertise with which they discuss problems in their respective fields of slavery research in combination with the openness with

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which they relate the outcome of their examinations to that found for other slave societies. Furthermore, I wish to thank my colleagues Steve Kantrowitz, Francisco Scarano and Jim Sweet at the University of Wisconsin – Madison for taking the time to read through and comment on the introduction. I am grateful for having been able to tap their expert knowledge and so make the introduction accessible, accurate and understandable. Needless to say, they are not to be held responsible for any remaining errors. September 2005, University of Wisconsin – Madison

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Valentina Arena is lecturer in Roman History at University College London. Her main fields of research are the history of political ideas and practice of politics in the Roman Republic. She is currently working on a book on the intellectual history of libertas from the third to the first century BC and the relationship between the rhetorical use of this political value in public debates and its conceptual changes during this period. Steeve Buckridge was born and raised in Jamaica. He migrated to the USA where he conducted most of his graduate work. He did his BA at Barry University, MA at the University of Miami and his doctoral studies at The Ohio State University. He is currently an Associate Professor of African and Caribbean History at Grand Valley State University. His areas of interests are Pre-Colonial and Colonial Africa, Pre-Colombian and early Colonial Caribbean, Women/Gender History, and Material Culture. His research interest takes him to various places in Africa where he has been studying African customs in dress, textiles, and weaving techniques. He has published and has presented numerous papers on dress customs among Caribbean Slaves. His book, The Language of Dress: Resistance and Accommodation in Jamaican, 1760–1890 was published by the University of the West Indies Press and released in 2004. His current research examines the production of bark-cloth in Jamaica, Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic and its impact on the lives of African slaves. Mariana L. R. Dantas is Assistant Professor of History at Ohio University. Her work and research interests focus on the history of the African Diaspora and African slavery in the early modern Atlantic world. She is the author of “Homens do Ferro e do Fogo: Escravos nas fábricas de ferro de Maryland no período Colonial,” Revista da Sociedade Brasileira de Pesquisa Histórica 17 (2000), 65–79; “‘For the Benefit of the Common Good’: Regiments of Caçadores do Mato in Minas Gerais, Brazil”, Journal of Colonial History and Colonialism (Fall, 2004); and the forthcoming article, “Child Abandonment and Foster Care in Colonial Brazil: Expostos and the Free Population of

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African Descent in 18th-Century Minas Gerais,” in Rosemary BranaShute and Randy Sparks (eds.), From Slavery to Freedom: Manumission in the Atlantic World. She is currently revising for publication her manuscript, “Black Townsmen: a comparative study of slaves and freed persons in Baltimore, Maryland, and Sabará, Minas Gerais, 1750–1810”. Martin Klein is a professor emeritus from the University of Toronto. He is the author of Islam and Imperialism in Senegal: Sine-Saloum, 1847–1914 (Stanford University Press, 1968) and the editor of Breaking the Chains: Slavery, Bondage, and Emancipation in Modern Africa and Asia (University of Wisconsin Press, 1993). He is co-editor, with Claire Robertson, of Women and Slavery in Africa (University of Wisconsin Press, 1983). His latest scholarly work is Slavery and Colonial Rule in French West Africa (Cambridge University Press, 1998). He is now working on a history of global slavery in comparative perspective. Marc Kleijwegt is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is the author of Ancient Youth: the ambiguity of youth and the absence of adolescence in Graeco-Roman Society ( J. C. Gieben, 1991) and he is co-editor, together with Elize Koen and Jeanette Malherbe, of Women, Society and Constraints: a collection of contemporary South African gender studies (UNISA Press, Pretoria, 2001), and, together with Wim Jongman, of After the Past: essays in comparative ancient history in honour of H. W. Pleket (Brill Publishers, 2002). He is currently working on a monograph on the social world of the freedmen in Petronius’ cena Trimalchionis and on a comparative study of freedmen in the Roman world. Rita Reynolds is working on a study of wealthy women of colour in Charleston, South Carolina, during slavery, at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Department of African American Studies. She is a visiting Assistant Professor in Women’s Studies at Old Dominion University. Chandima Wickramasinghe is attached to the Department of Classical Languages of the University of Peradeniya, Faculty of Arts in Sri Lanka. In 2004 she was awarded the doctoral degree by the University of Nottingham for a comparative study on slavery in the Greek city states and in ancient Sri Lanka. She is currently working on a number

notes on contributors

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of publications which derive from her study of comparative slavery. Her thesis entitled Slavery in Ancient Greek Poleis and Ancient Sri Lanka: A Comparison is forthcoming from British Archaeological Reports (BAR). Swithin Wilmot is Head of the Department of History and Archaeology at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica. His main research interests are post-emancipation politics and society. He is co-editor, together with Claus Fullberg-Stolberg, of Plantation Economy, Land reform and the Peasantry in a Historical Perspective: Jamaica 1838–1980 (Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Kingston 1992) and, together with Brian Moore, of Before and After 1865: Education, Politics and Regionalism in the Caribbean (Ian Randle Publishers, Kingston 1998). Nigel Worden is Professor of Historical Studies at the University of Cape Town. He has written extensively on slavery and emancipation in the Cape Colony, including Slavery in Dutch South Africa (Cambridge University Press, 1985) and, together with Clifton Crais, Breaking the Chains: Slavery and Emancipation in the 19th century Cape Colony (Witwatersrand University Press, 1995). He currently leads a research project on social identities in 18th century Cape Town.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND TABLES

Illustrations Fig. 1. Cape slave working under supervision. Source: Pieter Kolb, Caput Bonae Spei Hodiernum (Nürnberg, 1719). Cape Archives, Roeland Street, Cape Town. Fig. 2. Market square and Townhouse, Cape Town, drawn by Johannes Rach in 1762. Two slaves in livery carry a sedan chair while in the background one slave carries water while a female domestic slave in Javanese dress walks towards the houses on the right. The vegetable hawkers were most likely to have been slaves or free blacks. On the left a slave is led away to punishment by a caffir, one of the Asians exiled to the Cape by the VOC some of whom were used as local police. Cape Archives, Roeland Street, Cape Town. Fig. 3. The personal slave of Hendrick Cloete, owner of Groot Constantia wine estate, holds his master’s pipe. The sketch was sent by Cloete to a friend in Holland and the caption reads, ‘Here I am at my table smoking your excellent tobacco’. Drawn c. 1785. Cape Archives, Roeland Street, Cape Town. Fig. 4. Interior of a frontier Cape farmstead, c. 1830, by Charles Bell. The Khoi or slave servants lay the table and prepare to fan their owners. Cape Archives, Roeland Street, Cape Town. Fig. 5. George Duff ’s painting of a Cape Town procession on the anniversary of slave emancipation, 1860s. Cape Archives, Roeland Street, Cape Town.

Tables Table 1. Population of the town of Sabará. Table 2. Social background of spouses in marriage records of Sabará. Table 3. Distribution of inventories by total property value and social background.

PART I

EMANCIPATION AND MANUMISSION IN OLD AND NEW WORLD SLAVERY

CHAPTER ONE

FREEDPEOPLE: A BRIEF CROSS-CULTURAL HISTORY Marc Kleijwegt

In ancient Rome, enslavement automatically wiped out free birth. When the same slave was subsequently manumitted, freedom was awarded, in most cases coupled with full citizenship rights, but free birth was not restored. Freedom in Rome, therefore, entailed a completely fresh start as a human being, not a return to a condition occupied prior to enslavement.1 It required a special legal procedure, called restitutio natalium (‘restoration of free birth’), to render the freed slave with (the legal fiction of ) free birth. However, this could only be done in cases where the original act of enslavement was considered to have been illegal, for example if it was done through kidnapping or through an illegal sale. Restitutio natalium was not a matter to be taken lightly by the Romans for it annulled the patron’s rights over the freed slave and therefore the latter was always consulted.2 In contrast, manumission documents from Brazil contain the standard clause that the act of manumission turned the slave into a free man, “as if free from birth”.3 In Brazil, therefore, the bestowing of freedom upon manumission implied that slavery had never occurred. The contrast between the two societies suggests a different matrix for conceptualising both slavery and freedom.4

1 This suggests that those who had only been provincial subjects at the time of enslavement could now make a rapid promotion towards Roman citizenship. Both literary and documentary sources refer to people offering themselves to an existence of slavery in order to benefit from manumission, cf. Ramin and Veyne 1981. 2 For a literary source adducing the wiping out of free birth upon enslavement, cf. Martial 11, 12. Restitutio natalium: Duff 1958, 86–8; Waldstein 1986, 296–9; Lemosse 2000; Waldstein, 2001, 45–7; Dig. 40, 11, 3; 40, 11, 2, 4–5. It is significant that instances where this legal procedure has been applied are concerned with freed slaves of the emperor, a privileged category, and that no ordinary cases are reported. 3 Mattoso 1986, 156. 4 For the importance of slavery for the definition of freedom, cf. Patterson 1991. The main argument of Patterson’s book is that the origins of the modern concept

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The transition from slavery to freedom commonly produced an ecstatic response, and the emotions unleashed on these occasions provide an intriguing point of departure for weighing the importance of the moment of freedom as well as the experience of slavery. This is how Olaudah Equiano recounts his feelings after receiving word that he would be freed: My master then said he would not be worse than his promise; and, taking the money, told me to go to the Secretary of the Register Office, and get my manumission drawn up. These words of my master were like a voice from heaven to me. In an instant all my trepidation was turned into unutterable bliss; and I most reverently bowed myself with gratitude, unable to express my feelings, but by the overflowing of my eyes, and a heart replete with thanks to God, while my true and worthy friend, the captain, congratulated us both with a peculiar degree of heart-felt pleasure. . . . . . Heavens! Who could do justice to my feelings at this moment! Not conquering heroes themselves, in the midst of a triumph—Not the tender mother who has just regained her long lost infant, and presses it to her heart—Not the weary hungry mariner, at the sight of the desired friendly port—Not the lover, when he once more embraces his beloved mistress, after she has been ravished from his arms! All within my breast was tumult, wildness, and delirium! My feet scarcely touched the ground, for they were winged with joy; and, like Elijah, as he rose to Heaven, they “were with lightning as I went on.” Everyone I met I told of my happiness, and blazed about the virtue of my amiable master and captain.5

Equiano received his freedom by paying his master the sum of seventy pounds in the currency of Montserrat, but it is not his agency which is the focus of his joy but his master’s kindness. Without the master’s willingness to free his slave, one assumes, the issue of manumission would not have been raised at all. Equiano continues to tell that buying his freedom did not award him complete self-authority to move wherever he wanted to go. His own plan had been to travel to London and endorse the cause for the abolition of slavery there, but in the end he was prevailed upon by his former master to reenter his employment, this time as a salaried employee rather than a bound slave. As Equiano explains, his master’s kindness was the key factor in making this decision: of freedom reside in the classical period of Greek history and that it is difficult to understand its meaning without taking into account the outlines of slavery in Greek society. 5 Allison 1995, 119. For Equiano in general, cf. Walvin 1998; for discussion and analysis of his narrative, cf. Marren 1993; Thomas 2004, 226–55.

freedpeople: a brief cross-cultural history

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In short, the fair as well as the black people immediately styled me by my new appellation, to me the most desirable in the world, which was freeman; and at the dances I gave, my Georgia super-fine blue clothes made no different appearance, as I thought. Some of the sable females, who formerly stood aloof, now began to relax and appear less coy; but my heart was still fixed on London, where I hoped to be ere long. So that my worthy captain and his owner, my late master, finding that the bent of my mind was towards London, said to me, “We hope you won’t leave us, but that you will still be with the vessels.” Here gratitude bowed me down; and none but the generous mind can judge of my feelings, struggling between inclination and duty. However, notwithstanding my wish to be in London, I obediently answered my benefactors, that I would go in the vessel, and not leave them; and from that day I was entered on board as an able-bodied sailor, at thirty-six shillings per month, besides what perquisites I could make.6

In Jamaica, at the moment of abolition, thousands assembled in churches and in public squares to celebrate at meetings where the symbols of slavery, chains, handcuffs, iron collars and whips, were buried in ritual ceremonies marking the end of the legalised horrors of slavery. The following extract describes one such gathering at the Salters Hill Baptist Church in the parish of St. James which was in the heartland of the 1831 Jamaica slave rebellion that had hurried the abolition of slavery in 1834. A hymn being sung, preparations were made for the burial of slavery. The whip, the chain, and the shackle, were separately produced, and the question asked, what is to be done with the old slave whip? ‘Cut it up’ was the reply. It was done. What with the chain? ‘Break it’. This was also done. What with the shackle? ‘To be destroyed’. After each was exhibited, three enthusiastic cheers were given, that they were no longer to be liable to the evils of slavery but released from its terrors.7

At a related meeting in Falmouth on 1 August 1838, William Kerr, a black freedman and deacon of the Baptist church spoke movingly and passionately about his new free status: We bless God, we bless the Queen, we bless the Governor, we bless the people of England for the joy we have, Let us remember that we been on Sugar Estate from sunrise a-morning till eight o’clock at night: the rain falling, the sun shining, we was in it all. Many of we colour

6 7

Allison 1995, 120–1. Wilmot 1984, 9. See also Wilmot’s chapter in this volume.

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behind we and many before; we get whip, our wives get beat like a dog, before we face, and if we speak we get the same; they put we in shackle; but thank our heavenly Father we not slave again.8

Equiano’s testimony of his freedom differs markedly from the celebrations of the ending of slavery in Jamaica as singled out by Swithin Wilmot. In the first of the accounts there is a sinister determination to ritually eradicate every visible sign of the instruments of exploitation and physical torture, and this directs and conditions the expression of jubilation and elation. It is quite possible that the abolition of slavery was celebrated with the same ecstatic excitement that was felt and experienced by Equiano, but that is not the sentiment that prevails in this record.9 In the second account the general atmosphere is less aggressive, but even here the joy is mixed with the vivid memories of the whippings and sufferings. All these sentiments are completely absent from Equiano’s account of his manumission. My aim here has been to produce these experiences together in order to raise the issue of their dynamics. Does manumission of slaves produce the same outcome as the abolition of slavery? Is it coincidence that Equiano’s account looks forward to the future and celebrates what freedom has changed him into, a transformed human being, while the other two accounts look back at what slavery did to individuals? The studies assembled in this volume allow the reader to examine to what degree manumission and emancipation can and should be conceptually separated, not only in terms of the response from the victims, but also in their origins and their consequences. In order to do this successfully, the chosen framework is a comparative one. The nine essays which feature here analyse the experiences of freed slaves in eight slave societies on four continents during a total of 2,500 years of slavery. They can be read independently, or they can be examined as parts of a broader, comparative discussion. The purpose of this introduction is twofold. The second part offers a critical survey of past research on freedpeople and raises several issues which need more and careful scrutiny. In the first part, however, I wish to put forward two preliminary statements that illustrate how this volume is constituted. The first point provides a rationale 8

Falmouth Post, 15 August 1838. For surveys of responses to emancipation, cf. Litwack 1979; Berlin et al. 1992. For a detailed examination of the experiences of the first generation of free blacks in a community in Virginia, cf. Engs 1979. 9

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for choosing a broad perspective for the study of freed slaves, while the second point adumbrates the issue of the differences between manumission and emancipation from a theoretical perspective. Worth as much as an entire attic full of plantation records? 10

The comparative method has long been accepted as an integral part of the study of slavery. In fact, there is perhaps no single subject in history where the comparative approach has been such a strong part of the research programme. Notwithstanding the widespread reliance on the approach, there is a pronounced lack of theoretical grounding as to why it should be used, how it should be applied, and what results it may be expected to produce. The key question about the application of the comparative method is whether our knowledge and understanding of slavery or of a particular slave society is enhanced and improved. If this is not the case, the role of the comparative method must be seen as purely decorative, a gimmick aimed to impress rather than to further understanding. This means that inserting comparative information just to add a secondary dimension to the presentation of the primary narrative but without the intention of making a constructive effort to connect the two societies counts as window-dressing, a modern form of antiquarianism. In other words, relying on the comparative approach requires not only the use of evidence from a secondary source, but also a constructive effort to theorise about the consequences of bringing materials from two societies together. The following benefits and advantages of comparative research can be listed. The points are organised in an ascending order of usefulness. Firstly, promoting comparative research can increase our general knowledge about world slavery by setting up a virtual database and by compiling the different shapes and formations of slavery in world history. Secondly, by working on the same topic in two societies the student of slavery is able to map significant differences. This clarity of vision can lead to a better understanding of the way in which each slave society is constituted. Thirdly, use of the comparative method can answer the strong scholarly need to test whether 10 The title of this section is taken from Elkins 1959, 25. The quotation reads in full: “The technique of Slave and Citizen is one which has remained practically unexploited in the work done in American history—the technique of comparison— and there are conceivably problems in which one judicious and intelligent comparative statement can be worth an entire attic full of plantation records.”

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the questions that are put to a particular slave society make sense, as a kind of litmus test for an inherited research methodology. Consequently, it is possible to discover whether the set of research questions that have been standardly applied need to be expanded, modified, or substituted in order to produce more insightful results. Fourthly, and perhaps most importantly, studying parallel events and phenomena in other slave societies allows one to adopt a different perspective to the material that is studied. While acknowledging the validity of specific research principles which are laid down in each separate field within the history of slavery, this volume consciously wants to promote a more unified approach to the study of freedpeople. What this volume wants to achieve is to provide a framework for a discussion of general characteristics that can be found affecting most freedmen in most slave societies. Perhaps the best result and one that is most easily achieved is by shuffling around specific research questions. Research is occasionally undertaken with such inherent tenacity and ferocity that it becomes a self-contained agenda. When research agendas are owned by communities of scholars, their programme is commonly perpetuated beyond their expiration date. Importing questions from a closely related field of history which subscribes to the same scrupulous means of analysing primary and secondary sources and explores the past with the same degree of sensitivity will assist in making the debate less incestuous and more geared towards an international understanding of slavery. Broadening the research programme by incorporating questions tested in other fields of slavery studies would only mean a slight readjustment of the research focus, but the insights gained could be enormous. In the understanding that a much more involved form of comparative research is required, I want to call attention to the following three points. First of all, there is a remarkable difference between how the concept of the manumitted slave is treated by students of US slavery and how it is interpreted by students of other slave societies. For US slavery, scholars as a rule make no distinction between freedpeople and freeborn descendants of slaves. To them, the two groups are basically one and the same.11 For a Roman historian, however,

11 As far as I can see, the only exception is Hershberg 1975. It is interesting that Hershberg’s research demonstrated that those who had gained freedom through

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there is an essential difference between a freed slave and the descendant of a freed slave, and the same idea is prevalent in the study of other slave societies. The freeborn descendants of freed slaves in the Roman world were not legally prohibited from engaging in social mobility, and could merge with the freeborn crowd without raising attention to the fact that their fathers and/or mothers had once been slaves. It is to be assumed that a servile past in the family became progressively less of a handicap with each generation being added to the family tree. Secondly, an international perspective can be of great help in gaining clarity on the frequency of manumission. For the moment, the impression prevails that certain slave societies, notably Rome and Brazil, had a high rate of manumission, while others had a much lower frequency of manumission. This, again, is coupled with notions of humanitarian treatment of slaves and a more generous policy towards the inclusion of freed slaves in a post-manumission society. This book wants to suggest that caution should be observed with regard to the idea that some slave societies had a presumed high rate of manumission. It should be kept in mind that such conclusions are based on impressionistic accounts and are not supported by statistical information. Students of slavery in Brazil are already starting to question the premise that manumission was frequent, and this should serve as a cue for students of other slave societies to refocus their attention on this topic which has become such a minefield of misconceptions.12 In fact, all the evidence at our disposal for the moment prompts us to argue that most large-scale slave societies were predisposed against manumission. Thirdly, what remains an urgent desideratum for any period of slavery is a full-scale study detailing the mental and emotional responses to manumission, and how these influenced subsequent behaviour.13 What is needed above all is a database of documents and oral histories reflecting the personal or quasi-personal perspective of the

their own efforts were more successful than those who had been born free. It is equally interesting to note that no scholar has taken up this issue subsequently. 12 For the comarca of Sabará in the 1730s, the crude rate of manumission has been estimated at less than one-third of one percent per annum, cf. Higgins 1999, 159. 13 Oral and documentary histories of slavery and freedom are most prevalent for the US, cf. Berlin et al. 1992; Berlin and Rowland 1997; Berlin, Favreau and Miller 1998. For Latin America, cf. Krueger 2002.

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enslaved which can be used for comparative research. Did manumitted slaves express guilt, relief, pride, or any other emotion when they were released from slavery? Did manumitted slaves in different slave societies respond to the same phenomena in the same or in different ways? This could be an essential area for study in that it would help us to correct a number of misconceptions about how exslaves tried to adjust to their newly-found freedom. It is opportune to offer a brief sketch detailing how the comparative approach of slavery has taken very different shapes over the past decades. The type of comparison that will be most familiar is the one in which two slave societies are compared directly. The objective of this kind of research is to bring out the unique character of one of two slave societies, and it is especially associated with the work of Frank Tannenbaum.14 Tannenbaum’s research established two things that have had a longstanding impact on the study of slavery. First, he argued that the US was different from other New World slave societies with respect to the relationship between masters and slaves. Manumission was less frequent, institutions that opposed the harsh treatment of slaves were less influential, and manumitted slaves had fewer opportunities to become assimilated to society. Tannenbaum’s research confirmed the idea that it is possible to identify national systems of slavery (Portuguese, Spanish, British, Dutch, etc.), each with their own specific legal framework and peculiar brand of interaction between masters and slaves. The second outcome of his research has been a list of slave societies ranked on the basis of their level of cruelty. Nothing has perhaps been more damaging to the study of slavery and emancipation than the notion that out of all the slave societies in world history the US has been the most cruel in the treatment of its slaves and the least generous in awarding opportunities to ex-slaves to improve upon their political rights and their livelihood. The perception that the US was an exceptional slave society has resulted in a peculiar scholarly attitude which is obsessed with trying to explain the origins and developments of the exceptionality of US slavery. I doubt whether the listing of respective levels of cruelty is a fruitful way of evaluating a system which exploits human beings. 14 Tannenbaum 1946. For other comparisons between different plantation economies, cf. Klein 1967; Klein 1986; Hall 1971. For a comparison between US slavery and Russian serfdom, cf. Kolchin 1987.

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The other types of comparative research which have been applied to the study of slavery are more challenging and their rate of success more difficult to measure. The most common type is the edited volume which examines slavery in a restricted geographical area, or focuses on a common theme within a limited set of slave societies.15 Most of these volumes display a strong desire to keep the playing field level, that is, to create coherence by glossing over any inconsistencies.16 The most challenging type of comparative research is the diachronic study, which examines slavery in a series of historical periods. Due to its objective of tracing a theme through different periods in history, this is perhaps the only type of comparative research which tries to do justice to both the continuities and the changes taking place within the respective periods of history.17 The present volume belongs to none of the above categories. Although it has a common theme like the volumes in the second category, the range of slave societies covered here is much broader, incorporating chapters on Rome, Africa, Sri Lanka, Jamaica, Brazil, and the US. It also features the study of slave societies in different eras, boldly embracing the idea that fruitful comparisons can be drawn over time as well as across continents. In this respect, it aims to match the high degree of quality and coherence which is achieved by Michael Bush’s edited collection on slavery and serfdom.18 Bush consistently utilises a challenging form of comparative approach, both in the works that he edits and in those that he authors himself. Instead of differentiating between various types of slave societies Bush differentiates between various types of slavery—domestic slavery, chattel slavery and state service slavery—which are not tied to any particular geographical area and can be studied across countries.19 There is another similarity in that Bush’s volume is mainly concerned with achieving a more satisfactory definition of two terms—slavery and

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Watson 1980; Reid 1983; Robertson and Klein 1983; Gaspar and Hine 2004. Cf. Reid’s preface to Reid 1983, at xv, where he states that the omission of Vietnam from the collection, despite efforts to recruit a scholar to cover this area, makes it easier to “delineate a Southeast Asian mode of slavery in which debt is the major determinant.” 17 The best example of this type of comparative research is Phillips 1985; cf. also Philips 1996, an illuminating gem of an article. 18 Bush’s volume contains a mosaic of studies on slavery and serfdom from a number of different regions and time periods, including ancient slavery. 19 The three categories are discussed at Bush 1996, 6; cf. Bush 2000. 16

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bondage—which have been commonly confused. This volume tries to do the same by focusing on manumission and emancipation. For the study of freedpeople and their descendants, such a broad comparative perspective is new. One of the advantages of the plurality of slave societies covered here is that it significantly reduces the amount of scholarly manipulation to privilege one or the other society.20 The strength lies in the broad canvas that is offered here, covering freedom and freedman identity in the ancient world, in a number of representative New World slave societies, emancipation in Africa and in Asia. The chapters can be combined and connected in a number of different ways, depending on whether one takes a chronological or a thematic approach. In the past there have been a couple of attempts to study freedpeople in a number of slave societies, but these have been restricted to New World slavery. The volume of essays edited by David Cohen and Jack Greene is the pioneer study in this field and in order to understand the historiography of freedpeople we need to lift out a number of points that were central to the research undertaken more than a quarter of a century ago. The result of a conference held at Johns Hopkins University in 1970, it provides an interesting showcase of what a panel of international specialists believed was relevant with regard to the study of freedpeople.21 In it an overview is given of the status of freedpeople in a specified geographical area. All contributors address general questions without ignoring the specific circumstances of their own areas of research. The essays in Cohen and Greene are mainly concerned with a theme that is hardly raised by the contributors to this volume. Cohen and Greene explore why ex-slaves did not cooperate with slaves more, or to put it more bluntly, why ex-slaves tended to side with the white plantocratic minority rather than with their enslaved brothers and sisters. Cohen and Greene’s volume has had only one successor, the papers edited by Jane Landers for a special issue of Slavery & Abolition.22

20 This means that South Africa could be made part of the dynamics, despite the fact that it is commonly thought to resemble no other slave society. 21 Cohen and Greene 1972. It is instructive to note that in their introduction Cohen and Greene (1972, 17) point out that some of the contributors to their volume did not believe that a cross-cultural approach would be a useful way to proceed when it involved entire units, even within the specific area of New World slavery. 22 Landers 1996.

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Landers’ volume consciously modelled itself on that of Cohen and Greene. There is a strong sense of continuity between the two volumes inasmuch as some of the contributors to Landers were trained by some of the contributors to Cohen and Greene. Consequently, there is a strong emphasis on the idea that the study of free black communities in Senegal, South Carolina, Louisiana, Florida, Cuba, Saint Domingue, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Surinam establishes a solid base of information on the different national systems of slavery.23 The main difference between the volume of Landers and that of Cohen and Greene is that the former does not reprise the central research question of Cohen and Greene, but instead has a much greater emphasis on the personal experience of manumission and freedom by the slaves themselves. The transnational and comparative approach to the study of freedpeople makes it possible to see things that would otherwise have escaped scholarly attention when treated in isolation. Against this background it can be said that Stanley Elkins was not far off the mark when he argued that one insightful comparative statement is worth an attic filled with plantation records.24 Elkins’ reference to Tannenbaum’s research also reveals the essential flaw in the comparative approach: a comparison is most likely to bring out the point that has been selected beforehand; demonstrandum is surreptitiously transformed into demonstratus. If no checks are applied, the comparison is bound to become a distorting mirror rather than a fair research procedure.

Emancipation: manumission on a larger scale? 25 The second feature of this collection is that it incorporates discussion of both manumission and emancipation, two concepts that are 23

Landers 1996, vii. I have no hesitation in labelling Elkins’ statement as questionable as a principle of research (how can its main point be proven or substantiated?). At the time it was made, however, it was a courageous thing to write, for at that time all scholars were still studying plantation records. 25 The title of this section is taken from Thomas Holt’s essay in Cooper, Holt and Scott 2000, at 33. The full quote reads thus: “From the perspective of the twentieth century, emancipation appears as a dramatic historical rupture: beyond slavery lay the transition to a ‘free’ society and the vast social upheavals and transformations that such a transition entailed. From the perspective of earlier generations, 24

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not normally found together in the same volume. Both concepts have their own research traditions and their own historiography. It is interesting to see what can be gained by separating the two concepts and by exploring them in the same volume. The terms manumission and emancipation have generally been used without discrimination to describe the social, economic, and political effects upon freed slaves and their descendants.26 In this volume the term manumission will be used to refer to the freeing of an individual slave or a small group of slaves while slavery continued, whereas emancipation will be used to signify the en masse freeing of slaves as a result of the political decision to abolish slavery altogether. The major differences are to be found in the economic, political, and psychological sphere. Emancipation unleashed a barrage of phenomena including the transition from chattel slavery to wage slavery, the idea of nationhood, and it brought to centre stage the idea of race and racial identity. I am not suggesting that these problems did not exist before, but it can be argued with some justification that they were given a much wider currency and distribution by the phenomenon of emancipation. The adjustments set in motion by manumission presented relatively few economic problems. Most slaves who were manumitted had acquired some skills as craftsmen and since labour was a scarce commodity freedpeople had no problems, at least in the more urbanised areas, to find employment and a market for their products. This is not to say that the process of adjustment played out in similar ways in all areas. What is more, over time the economic position of free black communities weakened because of the increasing influx of European immigrants.27 Emancipation, on the other hand, created huge problems in the economic sphere. The antici-

however, the freeing of slaves had occasioned no such radical break with the past; indeed, slave manumission had long been an integral part of the very management of slave labor. Why could emancipation not simply be manumission on a larger scale?” 26 Brana-Shute 1998, 260. The best example is Nash and Soderlund 1991, which has emancipation in its title but studies manumission. 27 For Philadelphia in the eighteenth century Gary Nash describes a prosperous free black community, but he indicates that opportunities were rapidly decreasing in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, cf. Nash 1988. For Norfolk, Virginia, a much smaller town than Philadelphia, Tommy Bogger has a much bleaker story to tell; here the labour opportunities for freed blacks were consistently curtailed by the influx of white immigrants, cf. Bogger 1997.

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pation of problems arising with the abolition of slavery led to the creation of indentured labour, a form of semi-dependence which effectively made the transition from servitude to freedom more difficult to realise. Significantly, in the words of Rebecca Scott, our interpretation of emancipation has changed considerably over the last couple of decades, from a necessary end to an evil to an incomplete transition towards the creation of a free labour force.28 Emancipated slaves left the plantations in huge numbers, searching for an employer who would be willing to pay the best price for their labour. The economic transformations accompanying emancipation have taken the biggest share of the scholarly attention, but in more recent years there has been a growing interest in the cultural and social adaptations spurred on by emancipation. It is for example evident that due to emancipation changes were taking place to the gender definitions in society. While working the fields as slaves, women were seen as the equal of men, at least as far as work and performance were concerned, but once slavery was abolished the equality was replaced with the inequality brought about by the introduction of more patriarchal definitions of gender relations. In this ironical turn of events, former slaves were quickly and fully assimilated to the world around them.29 In terms of the psychological adjustments to freedom I would say that there is only a minimal difference between slaves’ experiences after manumission and after emancipation, and I also detect no differentiation in the environment’s response to both processes. The major difference, I would argue, lies in the absence of slavery. Through manumission former slaves could choose to identify in a variety of ways, as non-slaves, as, technically, free citizens, and as freed slaves. The en masse emancipation of all remaining slaves automatically pulled down all of them to the level of second-rate citizens. Ironically enough, emancipation in the way it was processed in many slave societies put slaves in a less favourable position than manumission. The historiography of emancipation and post-emancipation societies has not generated heated controversies. There is a sense of agreement among scholars that the process of emancipation followed 28 29

Scott 1987, 565. Cf. Brereton and Yelvington 1999, 9.

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a more or less similar pattern in a number of different slave societies. As the chapters by Wilmot and Worden in this volume demonstrate, there are a number of similarities between the manner in which the process unfolded in South Africa and in Jamaica, or perhaps Wilmot and Worden use the same methodology. This does not mean, however, that these countries followed the same route in their post-emancipation histories, but there is some truth in the fact that the freed slaves experienced more or less the same problems in Jamaica as they did in South Africa.30 Of course, the history of emancipation in the US appears to us as significantly different, because here a war was required to put an end to slavery, even though that war was about much more than about slavery. Consequently, emancipation looms large in the scholarly imagination as a decisive process, until the civil rights movement of the sixties of the twentieth century made clear how incomplete and empty the intial bestowal of freedom had been. The study of emancipation has always welcomed a transnational and interdisciplinary perspective, in a way that cannot be said for manumission.31 Whenever the comparative approach was applied to manumission, it has always been studied as part of a much broader framework, and in that case manumission is viewed as a significant aspect only in so far it can tell us something about slavery itself. In other words, manumission is rarely ever seen as a topic worthy of scholarly analysis in its own right. Especially in the US, the statistical examination of manumission, that is, uncovering the basic facts about who purchased or received freedom, has unfortunately encountered too many technical difficulties. However, as more recent publications demonstrate, the situation is not completely hopeless, even though the archival problems appear almost insurmountable.32 Emancipation has not produced heated debates, but it has almost naturally created a widespread interest in research which is pursued

30

On emancipation in South Africa, cf. now Moses 2003. The classic study is Foner 1983. The best recent example of the enriching quality of comparative research is provided by Rebecca J. Scott’s essay on Louisiana and Cuba in Cooper, Holt and Scott 2000. Cf. also Scott 1987; Scott 1988. The recent publication of Scott, Holt, Cooper and McGuinness 2002 makes available an excellent tool for comparative research. It is to be regretted that a similar tool does not exist for manumission and its impact on slave societies. 32 Recent studies, however, start to develop an interest in statistical analysis of manumission, cf. Olwell 1996; Schafer 2003. 31

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along the lines of a comparative perspective, while manumission has generated a number of controversies (even though always as part of a discussion about the nature of slavery), but this has only occasioned a limited amount of comparative research. It is uncertain how we should explain this discrepancy in research traditions between manumission and emancipation, but it neatly exemplifies a trend which is particularly strong in US scholarship. It is commonly accepted that emancipation can and should be examined across national frontiers to explain the different historical roads travelled by various post-emancipation societies. It is assumed, on the other hand, that manumission should be studied as part of the prevalent local tradition rather than within the tradition of a general history. In this respect manumission has become entrenched in the study of individual communities. In other words, manumission is perceived to have an outcome which varies from one community to the next, while emancipation is assumed to have followed the same pattern in one particular slave society.33 It is crucial to understand that, in contrast to emancipation, the debate on manumission has always been fierce. First of all, it has been largely dominated by emotional arguments that do not prioritise the experiences of the slaves but are much more concerned with the later history of former slave societies. Ever since the research undertaken by Frank Tannenbaum and Stanley Elkins it has been commonly accepted that there exists a close correspondence between the level of cruelty in a given slave society and the rate of manumission.34 Both were struck by the perception that slavery in the US was more cruel than elsewhere in the New World, and they both believed that the high rate of manumission achieved in New World slavery outside of the US contributed to a smoother (and qualitatively more perfect) incorporation of former slaves in post-manumission society.35

33 Studies which deal with emancipation from a regional or local perspective are known for US slavery, cf. for example Evans 1974; Mohr 1986, but not for other slave societies in the New World. There the national approach prevails, cf. Scott 1985. 34 Tannenbaum 1946; Elkins 1959. 35 The following passage may serve as an illustrative example (Elkins 1959, 72): “Neither in Brazil nor in Spanish America did slavery carry with it such precise and irrevocable categories of perpetual servitude, ‘durante vita’ and ‘for all generations’, as in the United States. The presumption in these countries, should the status of

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A second important feature is that over the past decades the debate on freedpeople has moved from a positive to a more negative evaluation of manumission, and that both viewpoints are being expressed in rather absolute and uncompromising terms. For example, the answer to the question what was the most prevalent cause for manumission used to be: the good will and benevolence of slave owners. Nowadays, scholars are more inclined to downplay beneficial motives and to put the emphasis squarely on economic considerations. Manumission now is viewed as a business transaction, a further means of exploitation, and as an instrument to control slaves better. The resourcefulness and hard work of slaves are frequently mentioned but only as secondary factors; they are not considered crucial aspects of the manumission process.

Measuring Manumission Manumission is the process through which an individual slave or a group of slaves receives the ultimate gift, freedom. In the majority of slave societies, manumission is the result of a private arrangement between a master and a slave. The government can only influence this process by implementing laws. More often than not, these laws are intended to make manumission more difficult to achieve, and, occasionally, impossible to realise. To what extent does the implementation of manumission laws determine the process of manumission? Manumission laws should be taken seriously, of course, but their importance should also not be overstated. It is far from certain that the law dictates rather than influences behaviour. Manumission laws provide a benchmark for what is convenient and acceptable in a particular slave-owners’ community, but it remains to be determined whether they also correspond with actual behaviour. This opens up the possibility of leaving manumission laws outside the picture and of understanding manumission as a dynamic process between two individuals who are unevenly balanced in power and political

a colored person be in doubt, was that he was free rather than a slave.” It is striking that in order to illustrate the quality of life achieved by freed slaves both Tannenbaum (1946, 4) and Elkins (1959, 79) rely on the same text by a visitor to Brazil, Thomas Ewbank, who wrote in the 1850s, transmitted through the work of Gilberto Freyre, cf. also note 115 below.

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influence. It should also alert us to the fact that most slave societies have attempted at one point or another to regulate manumission, and that there are no records of slave societies trying to facilitate manumission.36 The latter is not a surprise, of course, but it needs to be stressed seeing that a whole generation of scholars have looked at the combination of government intervention and manumission as a powerful indicator of a particular slave society’s ‘humanity’. While the practical conditions of manumission can easily be understood, it is much more difficult to come to terms with its conceptual dimensions. In other words, it is easier to tabulate the rules of manumission than to understand its symbolic impact. If slavery is a system of exploitation which tends to view its victims as property rather than as human beings, then the introduction of manumission is something which undermines the basic tenets of that exploitation. By allowing for the bond between master and slave to be relinquished, slavery is not only acknowledged to be a state of subjection which is not permanent, it also forces the owner to redefine his slave, whether in retrospect or as an ongoing process, as a human being rather than as property. My argument is based on the fact that manumission is a reward that is potentially available to every slave, even if it is granted only infrequently and therefore possibly a remote prospect to the majority of slaves. The process of manumission heralds the slave as a human being capable of meritorious service or as an economic agent legitimately engaged in the process of accumulating money to buy his or her freedom. The prospect of being freed from bondage not only changes the overall perception of slavery, but also its experience. Manumission imposes new rules for the behaviour of slaves, and defines in a far more rigorous way who is a good and who is a bad slave. The key question regarding manumission has two dimensions. The first part is why a slave-owner would release a slave from bondage, once he or she has accepted that slave-holding was a good thing, socially, economically, and ideologically. Once that first step is taken, for whatever reason (ostentation, labour needs, or an innate desire to dominate), under what circumstances is a master prepared to 36 For coartación, cf. Aimes 1909; Klein 1967, 196–200; Kight 1970, 130–1; Hanger 1997, 42–4. Some have argued that the practice of coartación was a way of facilitating manumission, but it is by no means sure who had access to the procedure.

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relinquish those ties? The second part concerns the behaviour of slaves. How did they try to win their freedom? Did they change their behaviour to accommodate the wishes of the master more fully in the expectation of freedom? How much room was there for the slave to negotiate a deal that was beneficial to him or her?37 In sum, how did manumission work? There is of course no universal script for manumission, no simple set of rules which guaranteed slaves their freedom if only they would do such and such a thing for a number of years. Always the master’s prerogative, manumission was sometimes bestowed on a whim, sometimes on selfish calculations, but it was never a right that could be earned by displaying the required level of subservience; it was always in the master’s power to refuse. The majority of modern scholars in fact argue that the insecurity surrounding manumission represents its core importance. It enhances the master’s power, so it has been argued, and makes possible a better amount of control over slaves.38 This approach tells us how manumission could be manipulated by the slave owner, but it does not show us how it was interpreted by the other party. Manumission is best understood as a dynamic process determined by two important factors, perhaps three depending how one evaluates the impact of laws of manumission. Next we find the unwritten consensus amongst a community of slave-holders as to how and when slaves could be released from bondage.39 This consensus reflects what the slave-owning community itself deemed convenient and acceptable. And, thirdly, there is the individual dynamics between slave and owner. The process of manumission could either be played out by closely following all three areas, or an owner could simply ignore step one and two and make up his or her own decision as he or she would see fit. Or, manumission could be withheld. The study of manumission appears to be divided along two lines.40 One school of thought envisages that the benevolence of the owner

37 It is obvious that masters were commonly ignorant of what their slaves were capable of, in terms of their abilities to generate money. 38 It is impossible to measure whether manumission had this effect, or whether it was actually a necessary component for controlling slaves. It most definitely did not eradicate resistance to slavery or the desire to run away. 39 Planters in the US were occasionally held back from manumitting their slaves by what the community might think of them, cf. Berlin 1974, 141. 40 The best general introduction to the subject is Brana-Shute 1998.

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and the thrust of humanitarian and abolitionist ideas led individual slave-owners to release their slaves. The other school of thought stresses that manumission enhances the master’s power of control and maintains that manumission was ruled by self-interest. The idea of self-interest is exemplified by the categories of slaves which were manumitted and the fact that masters charged a price for the slave’s freedom. Obviously, the master’s willingness to part with one slave is compensated for by his desire to keep his workforce up to an acceptable level. In some slave societies the accepted price was much higher than the current market-value of the slave, thereby capitalising on the desire for freedom. There is a striking correlation between the rate of manumission and the availability of an external supply of fresh slaves, but it is not clear that the correlation is always the same or always has the same effects. For the system of manumission to work efficiently there must also be an acknowledgement that the slave who is to be manumitted has achieved something, be it through meritorious service or through accumulation of capital. Both avenues of manumission recognise the slave’s potential for performance. However, it is meritorious service, not paid compensation, which is the most puzzling motivation for manumission. Freedom in return for meritorious service rewards the slave for doing something which he or she is supposed to have been doing all along, that is, serving the master well. Meritorious service is the implicit acknowledgement that the slave is more than a servant, almost to the point of raising the paradox that the slave could have refused to do the master’s bidding, or do it badly. The concept of meritorious service implies that the slave appears to be doing something voluntarily which it was not in his power to refuse. There is at least the kernel here of a sentiment that the slave has the potential of a human being, an agent, whose performance is dependent on his willingness to put in an effort. This is even more pronounced in the concept of self-purchase. In this type of arrangement, freedom is not the reward for loyalty, but, once translated into material currency, it becomes a matter of economic potential. Manumission reveals the inherent ambivalence operating within the system of slavery, that the slave who is legally an item of property is also a human being. Manumission first became a topic of serious scholarly analysis with the publication of Frank Tannenbaum’s Slave and Citizen, a comparison between the slave societies of the United States and Latin

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America.41 In this influential study Tannenbaum searched for the root causes behind the hostile, negative race relations in the United States and the milder, more relaxed racial interaction prevalent in Latin America. He argued that manumission policy was the key indicator of how various European nationalities perceived the humanity of their slaves, how they treated them, and ultimately how they would deal with the descendants of those slaves in the post-emancipation era. Although not conceptualised by Tannenbaum himself, the final outcome of his approach is a list of nations ranked according to their willingness to manumit slaves. The Romans were overly generous, for whatever reasons (a satisfactory explanation of this phenomenon has yet to be provided), the Spanish and the Portuguese were comparatively generous, while the British, the Dutch and the Americans were the most unwilling to grant slaves their freedom.42 Almost fifty years after its first publication, Tannenbaum’s study reveals itself as an enthusiastic approach to a multifaceted and complex problem. One of the main objections that have been raised against the work is that it puts too much emphasis on the owner’s piety and the role of the Catholic Church in mitigating the effects of slavery in Latin America.43 Furthermore, scholars now assert that the main point of departure for Tannenbaum’s study, that a high rate of manumission is an indicator of a more benevolent slave society, is essentially flawed. If Tannenbaum were right, Rome, which is generally considered to have had the highest manumission rate of all slave societies, should be viewed as a society in which slavery was both short and tolerable. No ancient historian today would be willing to endorse such a close correspondence between Rome’s high rate of manumission and the low level of cruelty towards slaves. Such a theory fails to realise that manumission perpetuated the system of slavery rather than ending it, something which can be observed for Baltimore, where the popularity of manumission went hand in hand with a desire to purchase more slaves.44 Furthermore, it is not always true that humanitarian ideas lead to an increased rate of manumis41

Tannenbaum 1946. Such a list may be found in Patterson 1982, 271–5. 43 This is not the place to give a complete outline of the historiography of the Tannenbaum-thesis. Interesting discussions are the two papers by David Brion Davis in Foner and Genovese 1969 and Genovese’s own contribution to that particular volume. 44 Whitman 1997, 4. 42

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sion. In some areas in the Deep South, the introduction of humanitarian ideas coexisted with a marked unwillingness to release slaves from bondage: here masters developed strong feelings about their role as civilising and Christianising forces toward their slaves.45 Tannenbaum’s work has been enormously influential; it is now even making something of an unexpected comeback.46 His impact on scholarship over the last couple of decades is detected primarily in a series of persistent flaws that he introduced to the general study of slavery and manumission. Firstly, Tannenbaum prefers to focus on the external circumstances of manumission as an important means to determine the level of cruelty prevalent within a specific slave society: “If the Latin-American environment was favorable to freedom, the British and American were hostile.”47 Secondly, this focus has firmly entrenched the notion that manumission in the US was low and high in Latin America. This has very little claim to truthfulness. In fact, Tannenbaum’s description of manumission in Brazil should be approached with caution: In fact, the excuses and the occasions were numerous—the passing of an examination in school by the young master, a family festival, a national holiday, and, of course, by will upon the death of the master. A cataloguing of the occasions for manumission in such a country as Brazil might almost lead to wonder at the persistence of slavery.48

Tannenbaum is certainly not the only one advocating such a point of view. Jérôme Carcopino presents a similar viewpoint for the Roman world: The practical good sense of the Romans, no less than the fundamental humanity instinctive in their peasant hearts, had always kept them from showing cruelty toward their slaves; however far back we go in history we find the Romans spurring on their slaves to effort by offering them pay and bonuses which accumulated to form a nest egg that as a rule served ultimately to buy their freedom. With few exceptions, slavery in Rome was neither eternal nor, while it lasted, intolerable.49 45

Cf. Chaplin 1991. See note 51 below. 47 Tannenbaum 1946, 65. 48 Tannenbaum 1946, 58. 49 Carcopino 1975, 69–70. The first French edition of this influential work was published in 1939; the first English translation appeared in 1941. The uncorrected version is still on sale; the latest edition I have been able to check appeared in 2003 and is published by Yale Nota Bene; it comes with an enthusiastic preface written by Mary Beard. 46

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There is no use in demonstrating at full length the misconceptions and misrepresentations that are being conveyed by these statements. It is evident that they are based on unrealistic preconceived notions about slavery and manumission. But why would scholars overemphasise the conditions of slavery and the ease with which manumission could be achieved? There may be a host of different reasons, none of which can ultimately be verified from the scholars’ writings. Above all, however, it should be kept in mind that both Tannenbaum and Carcopino were writing at a time when the study of slave societies had not yet reached the level of sensitivity to the systematic brutalities perpetrated in the name of slavery that informs modern slavery studies. I believe there is sufficient reason to regard the assumption that Brazil and Rome had a high rate of manumission as too optimistic. For Rome, there is no statistical information and any guess is bound to be inaccurate, but the task of computing manumission in Brazil has already led scholars to question the textbook account of their country as one with an overall high rate of manumission. Until this problem is looked into anew, it is perhaps wise to take as our point of departure the assumption that every slave society is prejudiced against manumission. Despite the persistence of his scholarship, Tannenbaum’s work has not been without its critics, and the most important point of criticism was that he completely ignored economic factors affecting the process of manumission. Carl Degler has argued that the differences between Latin America and the United States have frequently been overestimated, especially where it concerns opportunities for slaves to engage in self-purchase, the right for slaves to own property and the restrictions imposed by manumission laws. Even though he disagrees with Tannenbaum, Degler still maintains that Latin America was more liberal towards the manumission of slaves than the US. He stresses that the reason for the discrepancy lay in economic factors, starting with the different processes of settlement and economic development. From the sugar economy of the northeast in the seventeenth century to the opening up of the gold and diamond mines in Minas Gerais in the early eighteenth, the Brazilian economy was subject to steep fluctuations in prosperity and decline. In times of economic decline masters would manumit their excess labour supply, while in periods of prosperity a sufficient number of jobs could be guaranteed for freed slaves. Degler has to prove, then, that similar economic and demographic developments were absent from the

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US, and he does so by arguing that in the South there were enough white men to perform all the tasks in society with the exception of those of the plantation worker. In short, white labour was plentiful and adequate for the needs of the economy. At no time did the economy of the United States provide a place for those who might be manumitted.50 After having been a disgraced theory for a number of decades, the Tannenbaum thesis recently made a surprising comeback through the initiative of Alejandro de la Fuente.51 It needs to be pointed out that it is only one claim made by Tannenbaum which is revived, that is, the ‘centrality of the law to our understanding of slavery.’ Tannenbaum’s second claim, that the presence or absence of the slave’s moral personality has enormous consequences for the postemancipation histories of many slave societies, is left out of the account. One wonders how it is possible to keep these two arguments separate, and I am not sure whether de la Fuente succeeds in doing this. One scholar who has consistently looked at manumission from the perspective of a power relationship is Orlando Patterson. By applying Marcel Mauss’ concept of the gift to the study of manumission he does well to bring out the owner’s potential for manipulation and abuse by keeping the slave in line, while simultaneously emphasizing the freedman’s gratitude as an integral part of the process. Gratitude is required for making possible the inconceivable transition from slave to free. The ultimate gift would be freedom, the most precious commodity available to man, but manumission does not empower the slave; instead it reduces him to a second-rate citizen, and a product of the white slave-owing elite at that. In other words, Patterson sees manumission as another means to deny slaves their humanity.52 Influenced by Patterson’s work, many scholars have outlined how manumission strengthens rather than weakens the hold of the slaveowner over his slaves. This would offer a plausible explanation for the reason why owners endorsed and accepted the possibility of

50

Degler 1971, 39–47. Cf. the Forum pages of the Law and History Review of the summer of 2004: de la Fuente 2004; 2004a; with critical responses from Diáz 2004 and Schmidt-Nowara 2004. 52 Patterson 1982, 209–96. 51

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manumission, even though it could lead to a reduction of their labour force. The general, intangible benefits of manumission overrode any concerns about economic loss. Put differently, manumission has to be awarded to well-deserving slaves in order to keep the entire slave force under tight control. It is significant to note that this point of view has been adopted by students of such widely divergent slave societies as nineteenth-century Brazil and ancient Rome. For Rio de Janeiro, Mary C. Karasch argues that benevolence played no part in the process of manumission: Rather than being a symbol of benevolence, manumission practices, as they existed in Rio, often acted as only one more powerful lever of slave control. Owners promised freedom to the obedient and denied it to the rebellious.53

For imperial Rome Keith Bradley has studied the phenomenon of manumission from the point of social control: From the point of view of the slave-owning establishment, the dual system of control operated in such a way as to maintain acquiescence among slaves, who did not wish to prejudice their chances of acquiring freedom, and to perpetuate the slave system to its own advantage. Everything combined to produce subordination in the slave to the master during slavery and to create a situation in which total domination over and exploitation of the slave were feasible. The long-term incentive of freedom did not automatically convert itself for the slave into the final reward, and was not necessarily supposed to, so that as with the family lives of slaves, it was the element of uncertainty which surrounded manumission which made freedom an effective form of social manipulation.54

This is, however, not the only valid way to look at manumission. This perspective absolutises the entrenched position of the slaveowner in Rome, just as Tannenbaum absolutised the master’s benevolence and the influence of the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America. Manumission is a multidimensional concept; coming to terms with it engages us in discussion not only of the control it allowed the master to wield over his slaves, but also prompts us to assemble and examine the statistics of manumission: who was manumitted, at what age, why and by what method? It is in this area that students of US slavery have been unable to make significant 53 54

Karasch 1987, 361. Bradley 1984, 111–2.

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contributions. For example, for the study of manumission patterns in Norfolk, Virginia, Tommy L. Bogger has to draw on comparative evidence from Brazil compiled by Stuart Schwartz “in absence of a comprehensive localised study on manumission in the United States.”55 Manumission is commonly treated as part of a broader examination of either slavery or free black communities, but not necessarily as a phenomenon in its own right.56 Surprisingly, although the field has produced many valuable studies devoted to freedmen and manumission, ancient Rome equally lacks a comprehensive survey of the subject. The main focus of ancient historians has been the manumission laws introduced by Augustus, the legal dimensions of the manumission procedure and the relationship between patron and manumitted slave. In other words, there has been a huge amount of interest in the formulaic nature of manumission, but not so much in the dynamic side.57 This apparent lack of interest in the non-legal dimensions of manumission can be attributed to general difficulties in finding reliable statistical information on manumissions. Deeds of manumission are the most direct and informative type of evidence, but the samples are usually very small.58 For ancient Rome, any attempt to assemble reliable statistical information is hindered by the fact that funerary inscriptions, the main evidence for the presence of freedmen in Roman society, tend to over-represent those who were successful in gaining their freedom.59 The slave-holding states in the US may 55 Bogger 1997, 205, note 24. Olwell 1996 is a discussion of 379 deeds of manumission from Charleston, SC, dating to the period between 1737 and 1785. There are, furthermore, a number of books which pay special attention to manumission: Nash and Soderlund 1991; Whitman 1997; Schafer 2003. 56 This is also true of the relevant essays in Cohen and Greene 1972. Some of the essays in Landers 1996 deal specifically with manumission. 57 Treggiari 1969; Fabre 1981. These books deal exclusively with freed slaves in the Republic. Duff 1958 is the only study which focusses on freedmen in the imperial period, a period for which the evidence is both more abundant and more varied, but it urgently requires updating since it was first published in 1928. The best discussion on the psychological effects of manumission, although largely as a restraining force on the behaviour of slaves, is Bradley 1984, esp. 81–113. The recent publication of Ingomar Weiler’s study captures the evidence in a much broader context than has been done so far: Weiler 2003. Weiler should be applauded for his courageous move to write a long first chapter that analyses the problem from a comparative perspective. 58 For the ancient world the number of deeds of manumission which survives is very small, cf. Haslam 1976; Lewis 1981. 59 See Alföldy 1972, and the response by Wiedemann 1985. Most ancient historians find the conclusions drawn by Alföldy too optimistic.

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equally suffer from a lack of statistical information, but here we have the additional circumstance that most scholars are convinced that manumission was a relatively unimportant phenomenon. There is a consensus among scholars that manumission in the slave-holding states of the US declined precipitously after a noticeable upswing due to the Revolution. In the nineteenth century an ever increasing number of slave-holding states imposed restrictions on manumission, or, like Virginia in 1806, introduced a measure that forced manumitted slaves to leave the state.60 Consequently, to most students of slavery in the US manumission is a minor aspect of slavery studies. The slave experience, abolitionism, and the social, economic, and political implications of emancipation have almost monopolised scholarly interest. Manumission is primarily examined either as an epilogue to the sufferings of slavery or as a prequel to the hardship encountered by free blacks or coloureds, eventually leading to the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Examining how and when slaves exited slavery allows scholars to understand better how manumission was achieved and what the outcome of the process was. There are inevitable national and regional differences between and within slave societies, and it is significant to examine which influences were at work in each slave society, but the following issues appear to be the most relevant. Firstly, there are the issues of gender composition and the age at which manumission was bestowed. This topic is still firmly ruled by the notion that slaveowners commonly rid themselves of superannuated slaves, thus benefiting financially by shirking responsibility for feeding and clothing them at the point when their productivity declined or when the cost of medical treatment started to eclipse productivity. Secondly, there is the relationship between urbanisation and manumission; skilled urban slaves are generally considered to have been in a better position to claim their freedom than slaves working on the plantations. Thirdly, the type of manumission, more specifically whether it was achieved by last will and testament of the owner or through self-purchase, and its effects on the individual slave. The best work to date on these problems has been done for Latin America. In the early 1970s Stuart Schwartz initiated a project to

60 Cf. Kolchin 1993, 89–90. For a discussion of restrictions imposed on manumission in the US, cf. Berlin 1974, 138–42.

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systematically examine all of the surviving letters of manumission from Brazil.61 The samples that scholars work with are admittedly small, but at least their study allows them to come to some sort of statistical evaluation of manumission. The majority of slave societies in Latin America and the Caribbean display a strong tendency to manumit women before men.62 In Salvador, Bahia, the colonial manumission records display a constant 2:1 ratio of female to male libertos. Interestingly enough, there was no discrepancy in the rate of manumission between the urban and rural sections of the sample, although the tendency to favour women was slightly elevated in the rural area. It should be emphasised here that females were achieving their freedom at a much greater rate than the statistical expectation.63 In Cuba, the overwhelming majority of coartados (slaves with privileged access to the procedure of coartación) were women: 68 percent of all coartados compared with 50 percent females in the sample studied by Bergad and his co-authors.64 The ratio of 2:1 has been accepted as a benchmark for much of Latin America and the Caribbean. The absence of systematic research makes it impossible to establish whether slave-holding states in the US also showed a natural preference for manumitting women before men. The two cities for which some research has been done are New Orleans and Baltimore. It can clearly be established that due to Iberian influences Colonial New Orleans followed the trend which favoured the manumission of female over male slaves, while in Baltimore an equal number of males and females were released from slavery between 1789 and 1830; in the period between 1801 and 1815 males actually constituted the majority of the manumitted.65 Elsewhere, trends in manumission 61

Schwartz 1974. Students of Brazil also take the lead in studying the ethnic background of freed slaves, cf. Sweet 2003; Nishida 1993; 2003. 62 Cf. Karasch 1987, 350–1; Schwartz 1974, 611–2; Higgins 1999, 152–7; Klein 1986, 277; Johnson 1979, with useful comparative statistics on gender in manumission cases in Latin America at 262. 63 Schwartz 1974, 611. The absence of a discrepancy between urban and rural areas is significant. For Brazil, A. J. R. Russell-Wood has attacked the traditional opposition between a high rate of manumission in urban centres and a low rate for the countryside as too simplistic, cf. Russell-Wood 1972, 86 (= 2002, 32). He would prefer to see an approach that looks at the broader context of opportunity and incentive for manumission present in the different economies of Brazil. 64 Bergad et al. 1995, 124. 65 For colonial New Orleans, cf. Hanger 1997, 28–9; for Baltimore, cf. Phillips 1997, 54.

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in Cape Town, South Africa, seem to correspond with the Latin American/Caribbean model.66 In ancient Rome, even though reliable statistical evidence is not available, it is generally assumed that female slaves were liberated at a higher rate than male slaves.67 Unfortunately, the evidence does not allow us to discern what may have caused the difference between the US and other slave societies, nor is there enough research done to establish whether the discrepancy is only apparent or real. Further research will have to establish whether the US is unique in this respect, but the main question that we will have to address is what the meaning is of this trend. How do we read it? What does it tell us about the nature of slavery and about the various roles of master and slave? Scholars offer a variety of reasons as to why female slaves should have been preferred over males. The explanation that is most frequently offered is the proximity of female slaves to owners as workers in the household. This undoubtedly enhanced their chances of earning their masters’ affection and presented an opportunity for becoming marked out for meritorious service. Another favoured explanation is that female slaves could more easily engage in market activities and had a lower market-price; therefore, in the case of paid manumission, they were able to accumulate the money to buy their freedom at an earlier stage than male slaves.68 Others, however, point out that in slavery there existed strong bonds between mothers and sons, and they argue that many females were bought out of slavery by their immediate family.69 With these different interpretations the perspective shifts considerably, from female slaves as the object of a master’s benevolence and affection, as autonomous economic agents working labouriously towards achieving their freedom and that of 66

Cf. Bank 1994, 94–7. The usual cause for manumitting female slaves was for the purpose of marriage, cf. Weiler 2001; Wacke 2001. It is to be noted, however, that male slaves vastly outnumbered female slaves, even in the domestic service, cf. Treggiari’s conclusions which are based on her research on the slave household of Livia, the wife of the first emperor Augustus: Treggiari 1975. This peculiar phenomenon may be due to a number of factors rather than to be taken as the result of a disproportional ratio between male and female amongst the slave population: reasons of prestige, the desire to humiliate. 68 Higgins 1999, 157, points out that in a mining region where male slaves did most of the hazardous work and the women engaged in market activities the sexual division of labour may have had positive effects on the chances for female slaves to achieve their freedom. 69 Patterson 1982, 263–4. 67

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their kin and relatives, back to their position as objects of affection, but this time from their own families rather than from their owners. It is evident that, in order to understand why females were the preferred category of slaves to be freed in many slave societies, we have to delve deeper into both the specific economic opportunities open to all slaves as well as the politics of affection ruling manumission. In other words, were female slaves passive or active partners in the process of manumission, and how do we explain this? In Sabará, Minas Gerais, in the years 1710–1759, 70 percent of the women who were freed paid for their letters of manumission. Significantly, the prices paid by women were at least as high as those paid by men and clearly reflected market prices for slaves bought in the region. Kathleen Higgins astutely concludes that this “suggests that the motivations of most masters in this period were assuredly not charitable and probably depended on the knowledge that new slaves could be purchased with the funds provided by those manumitted.”70 With affection ruled out as a contributing factor, at least in this case, and the emphasis shifted to the owner’s self-interest, one might justifiably wonder whether considerations to manumit male slaves were different than those for female slaves. It is understandable, however, that male slaves were considered more of a threat than female slaves, and were therefore freed with more reluctance. Manumission in Cuba was mainly limited to an urban environment; the main beneficiaries were slave women who paid cash in exchange for their freedom.71 Manumission practices in Brazil also show an important tendency to manumit children. In Bahia, slaves younger than 14 years constituted almost 45 percent of the total for whom age could be established, and even when the 397 slaves without age designation are added in their entirety to the adult categories, children and adolescents still constitute 29.5 percent (342 cases) of the total.72 For the period between 1710 and 1759 Kathleen Higgins does not record how many children in Sabará were manumitted, but notes that 70 Higgins 1999, 155. She also points out (154) that the terms of the manumission contract “expose the limits of owners’ affection even for those slaves best known to them as they detail the careful attention slave owners paid to protecting their own social and economic positions.” 71 Bergad et al. 1995, 128. 72 Schwartz 1974, 615–6. Sweet 2003 reaches the same conclusions in his research on Rio de Janeiro, although it covers a much shorter period.

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mulatto children were overwhelmingly in the majority, and that girls were manumitted more often than boys. In addition, they were manumitted more often without the owner demanding compensation. Slave-holders admitted to being the parent of the manumitted child in one-third of the cases.73 For nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro, however, Mary Karasch points out that the number of children that was manumitted was small (13%), and that the overwhelming majority were crias de casa (“offspring of the house”), manumitted by their owners/natural fathers out of affection.74 It is significant to note that research from a limited number of distinct geographical areas in Brazil shows three different trends. It serves as a salutary reminder of how complex the history of slavery is and how the same phenomenon may be prominent in one area and insignificant in the next without any clear indication as to why this is so. It prompts us to observe caution when trying to find a comprehensive explanation for a problem for which so many variables are unknown. It is difficult to establish what motivated slaveowners to manumit so many children in one area of Brazil, and so few in another, and it is even harder to decide whether affection or economic motivations were instrumental in providing the opportunity for manumission.75 It is therefore too easy to argue that children were manumitted because owners were most likely to manumit those who were most expensive in terms of upkeep and the length of the envisaged period of servility. The additional factor of affection could have made the decision to manumit more desirable for a category of slaves which had little prospect of showing economic potential in the short run.76 For the US, the evidence for the manumission of children is minimal. The reason is that most states had imposed age requirements for manumission, and this has produced the perception that children were rarely manumitted. Whether this is true or not remains to be explored; it would not be surprising to see that even in this area the

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Higgins 1999, 159–62. Karasch 1987, 346–50. 75 Cf. Sweet 2003. 76 For Bahia, Schwartz concludes that “the high rate of infant mortality probably depressed the value of slave children. This economic consideration, when added to feelings of affection toward children, probably moved slave-owners to manumit slaves at an early age.”: Schwartz 1974, 616. In this form, this view cannot be substantiated. 74

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law was avoided and practice diverged significantly from ideology. Once again, the statistical evidence is not forthcoming because primary source material is either too resistant or non-existent. Evidence from New Orleans, however, demonstrates that owners occasionally petitioned the courts to call for an exemption from the age requirements.77 In Baltimore, in contrast, a complex system operated to keep children and even grandchildren in bondage as part of the conditions of term slavery imposed on individual slaves. Even then, owners could decide to sell the children out of state.78 Overall, one discerns a tendency among scholars to assume that slave-owners manumitted those slaves who were least valuable to the household in terms of generating income. It is quite clear which group did not benefit greatly from the tendency to manumit: adult males. In fact, Mary Karasch estimates that 90 percent of male adult slaves would never receive their freedom. The bias in Brazilian society was evidently not in favour of manumission.79 Such insights into manumission practices are invaluable, and one wonders how this may be related to the notion which is prevalent in most studies of US slavery that low productivity and high expenses determined the calculations of the slave-holders as to who were to be manumitted and when, a notion that is elsewhere associated with sick, elderly and exhausted slaves.80 Students of Brazilian slavery have also maintained that such a pattern existed in Brazil.81 For Bahia, however, Stuart Schwartz has demonstrated that this was not the case.82 Altogether,

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Schafer 2003, 4–5. Whitman 1997, 120–3. Whitman describes one particularly tragic case of a Maryland freedman who was forced to buy his wife and infant child at a public estate sale following the sudden death of her master. Since he had only recently purchased his own freedom, he was obliged to seek credit from two white guarantors. They took title to his wife and baby as security and, when he proved unable to settle his debt, seized his family and sold them to Georgia. 79 Karasch 1987, 361–2. 80 Cf. Berlin 1974, 152–3, who sees it as the result of delayed manumission; Handler 1974, 32, who bases himself on the number of official reports on the frequent problems caused by vagrant blacks, sees the manumission of exhausted slaves as a regular procedure. For similar observations with regard to Brazil, also based on newspaper reports, cf. Degler 1971, 43–4, who persuasively argues that if only the elderly and the diseased slaves would be manumitted, the free coloured population would have been much smaller. 81 Cf. Russell-Wood 1972, 96 (= 2002, 46): “The most cursory glance at the collection of cartas de alforria reveals the frequency of the phrase ‘useless for any form of labor’.” 82 Schwartz 1974, 618: in only 22 instances did the cartas refer to the advanced 78

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manumission in many slave societies is by modern scholars not primarily associated with benevolence and feelings of affection between master and slave; and yet affection was not completely absent, not even from the most business-like transactions. One important aspect that has been systematically underexamined is the effects of manumission on the behaviour of slaves. If anything, one expects that manumission would have instilled more firmly the virtues of obedience and collaboration as the trademark features of the good slave. For the Roman world this is beautifully illustrated in the writings of Valerius Maximus who compiled a catalogue of virtues and vices based on stories gleaned from previous generations of writers.83 It is also to be assumed that manumission introduced a new hierarchy within the slave system, depending on the slave’s chances of being manumitted. The type of manumission is also relevant for the behaviour of the slave to be manumitted. Testamentary manumission was an uncertain affair. The slave would not be familiar with the master’s stipulations in his final will, and when manumission was indeed bestowed it usually came as a complete surprise to the slave and was more dependent on feelings of affection. In contrast, manumission by way of self-purchase presumes that the master and the slave had reached an agreement about the terms.84 It has a symbolic significance which goes far beyond that of testamentary manumission. Most importantly, self-purchase underlines the fact that the slave is an economic agent working for his own freedom or that of his relatives. Freedom, in this perspective, is still to be viewed as a gift, but the celebration of the gift is lessened, if not robbed, from the master by means of self-achievement. Slave societies in which manumission through self-purchase was the dominant age of the slave, and in only six was sickness or infirmity noted. For Surinam, there is no indication that the elderly were an important category in manumissions, cf. Hoefte 1996, 108. 83 Cf. Parker 1998, esp. 156–63. Tales of slaves who stayed loyal in times of crisis or civil war, frequently by impersonating or taking the place of their masters, can be found in Valerius Maximus and other writers of the first century AD. These stories do not simply aim to provide a comfort zone for anxious masters; they also raise the disturbing spectre of the brave, clever, armed, autonomous slave, thus removing the most important distinction between slave and free (Parker 1998, 162). 84 In Cuba this would already start with the paying of the down payment. The size of the down payment had an important impact on the income of the slave. The size of the down payment in relationship to the slave’s original value determined the percentage of the wages that the slave could keep for him- or herself, cf. Bergad et al. 1995, 122.

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mode of manumission were not necessarily more humanitarian, but they implicitly acknowledge the slave as an individual capable of generating capital and consequently he is seen more as an agent of his own destiny than as an inferior being. The importance of selfpurchase was already stressed by Frank Tannenbaum in his study of Latin American slavery: In effect, slavery under both law and custom had, for all practical purposes, become a contractual arrangement between the master and his bondsman. There may have been no written contract between the two parties, but the state behaved, in effect, as if such a contract did exist, and used its powers to enforce it . . . Slavery had become a matter of financial competence on the part of the slave, and by that fact lost a great part of the degrading imputation that attached to slavery where it was looked upon as evidence of moral or biological inferiority. Slavery could be wiped out by a fixed purchase price, and therefore the taint of slavery proved neither very deep nor indelible.85

An even more pertinent interpretation of the effects of self-purchase is given by Sumner Matison: The importance of manumission by purchase cannot be precisely stated due to the lack of definite figures. In at least two ways, however, the self-purchase movement helped to undermine the system of slavery. First, it helped refute the argument that slavery was justifiable and necessary because Negroes were inferior beings and hence incapable of maintaining themselves as freemen. This movement demonstrated that Negroes could not only maintain themselves as freemen but could attain their freedom in the face of overwhelming obstacles. Second, the example of the Negro who had purchased his own freedom served in many instances to arouse the envy and discontent of those who were still slaves. Thus the self-purchase movement helped weaken both the moral and the practical foundations of the slave-system.86

Manumission by self-purchase was the dominant mode of manumission in Latin America and in some parts of the Caribbean.87 On Barbados the practice was so widespread that Carmichael Smyth

85 Tannenbaum 1946, 55–6. It is worth pointing out how much this statement resembles that of Carcopino with regard to Roman slavery, quoted in note 49 above. 86 Matison 1948, 167. 87 It was the dominant type of manumission practice in the haciendas of rural Peru in the nineteenth century, cf. Hünefeldt 1994, 92. Hünefeldt, or her translator, chose to coin this procedure ‘self-manumission’, which incorrectly assigns to manumission a less exploitative dimension.

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(referring to slave mariners) predicted in 1830 that “if the system which at present exists is suffered to continue, they will by degrees all become free without exciting any shock or convulsion in their little community.”88 For Bahia, between 1684 and 1745, 47.7 percent of the manumissions sampled were obtained by payment to the slaveowner or his legal representatives. Thus, not only was the purchase of freedom a “common” form of manumission, but almost one out of every two libertos achieved freedom in this manner.89 In Sabará for the years between 1710 and 1759 65 percent of the male slaves and 70 percent of the female slaves who were freed paid for their own letters of manumission.90 For the US statistical information is unavailable to establish how common manumission by self-purchase was. In one of the few studies which finds the statistical information a point of significant interest, Tommy Bogger concluded, however, that manumission by self-purchase was almost as common in Norfolk, Virginia, as it was in Bahia.91 Manumission is closely related to the practice of hiring out. On Barbados the practice was so common that slaves did not even bother to ask for permission from their masters. In his study of slavery in the Bahamas Howard Johnson makes use of advertisements posted by masters to illustrate the frequency of this practice. In 1795, for example, Maria Woods warned “all Persons against employing or hiring her Negro Wench named Jane” without her consent. In 1808 Alexander Wildgoos complained “that several of my Negro slaves, have at various times been employed without my leave, and used for that purpose materials belonging to me.” In 1831 Thomas Atwell cautioned persons “not to employ Jacob Gibson, a slave, by trade a Ship Carpenter, without written permission from the Subscriber.”92 The relevance of this practice becomes immediately apparent once

88 Johnson 1996, 42. Handler 1974, 34–6, however, asserts that manumission in general and self-purchase in particular were difficult to achieve on Barbados. The contradiction between the two points of view hinges primarily on the traditional distinction between the chances for achieving freedom by old slaves on the one hand and economically valuable slaves on the other. Mariners may be a special category which enjoyed a privileged position. 89 Schwartz 1974, 622–3. Schwartz adds (624) that in 81 percent of the cases it was the freedmen themselves who paid the manumission price. 90 Higgins 1999, 155. 91 Bogger 1997, 14; 205, note 24: 39 percent as opposed to 47.7 percent in Bahia. 92 Johnson 1996, 42–3.

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we realise to what extent slaves were the masters of their own destiny. Slaves bargained with potential employers for wages; managed their money; and arranged for their own food, clothing, and accommodation. Hiring out was widely practised in the US slave-holding states as well, but it has only recently received the attention it deserves.93 The positive effects of self-purchase on the ex-slave’s psychology can clearly be observed in the Roman world, where ex-slaves proudly emphasise the fact that they have purchased their own freedom. In so doing, they frequently list the price they had to pay, as if deriving a sense of self-esteem from the sum their master had originally paid for them, but also to communicate the fact that they had been able to accumulate the necessary capital. The following texts are frequently cited examples: Publius Decimius, freedman of Publius, Eros Merula, clinical physician, surgeon, ocular physician; sevir (priest of the imperial cult). He paid 50,000 sesterces for his freedom. In order to hold the office of imperial priest he paid 2,000 sesterces to the city treasury. He donated 30,000 sesterces for the purpose of erecting statues in the temple of Hercules. He donated 37,000 sesterces to the city treasury for the paving of roads. Before his death he left behind personal property to the value of 800,000 sesterces.94 I’m a man among men, and I walk with my head up. I don’t owe anyone a red cent. No, and I’ve never been sued. No one in the forum has ever told me, “Pay up!” Yeah, I bought some dirt and I’ve got my own dough now. I feed twenty bellies and a dog. I even bought my wife, so no one could wipe his hands on her hair. And I bought my own freedom for a thousand, and I was made a priest of Augustus free of charge. And when I die, I hope I won’t have anything to blush about in the grave.95

93

Cf. Martin 2004. Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum XI, 5400 (Assisi; 2nd century AD); Forni 1987, nr. 41. The text identifies the man as someone in possession of a considerable personal fortune: he owned at least eight times more than was needed to qualify for the local municipal council and twice the amount required for entry into the equestrian order (400,000 sesterces), and very close to that of someone who belonged to the senatorial order (1 million sesterces). As an ex-slave, however, he was technically ineligible to enter these status-groups. To offer a rough perspective on this exslave’s wealth: a common soldier in the second century earned 1,000 sesterces per annum. 95 Petronius, Satyrica, 57, 5–6 (trans. R. Bracht Banham and Daniel Kinney, Berkeley and Los Angeles 1996). For a discussion of this passage and some nonliterary parallels, cf. Kleijwegt in this volume. 94

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Some research has already been done on the attitudes of freed slaves toward their environment on Curaçao, and it is striking to see how in more than one slave society freed slaves are perceived to show a certain amount of arrogance.96 The transition that is commonly known as manumission allows freed slaves to readjust to their new environment and to reinvent themselves, to be proud of their achievements, something which their non-slave environment interprets as ‘not knowing their place’.

Freedpeople in a slave society Freed slaves have been variously labelled as “slaves without masters”, “unappropriated people”, “neither slave nor free”, or “somewhat more independent”.97 These typologies have two important things in common. Firstly, they summarise the position of ex-slaves as an incomplete transition from slave to free, ranging from a slight gain in independence to one of powerlessness despite a rise in status from property to autonomy. Secondly, they all refer to New World slavery as opposed to Old World slavery; with one exception, they refer to slavery in the US rather than to slavery elsewhere in the New World.98 It seems logical to ask how scholars arrive at these judgements. What makes them believe that freed slaves in the New World were an “incomplete category”? Can the conclusions which are drawn with regard to freed slaves in the New World be applied to slavery on other continents and in other periods of history?99 The following two quotes may provide some clarity on the historiography of the issue. The first is taken from one of the pioneering studies on free blacks in the US, the second is from one of the most influential students of ancient slavery: 96

For the attitude of free blacks and mulattoes on Curaçao, cf. Klooster 1994. Berlin 1975; Handler 1974; Cohen and Greene 1972; White 1991. 98 One should now add to this category Zelnick-Abramovitz 2005 on freed slaves in the Greek world. The main title of this work implies that manumitted slaves in Greece were denied full citizenship rights, but what it wants to argue is that legal freedom and citizenship rights were not the same thing. 99 These comments are intended to set out a general framework for the purpose of making discussion possible. Several scholars have justifiably warned against ignoring substantial differences between the fates of freedmen in different slave societies, or even within one particular slave society. 97

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Once free, blacks generally remained at the bottom of the social order, despised by whites, burdened with increasingly oppressive racial proscriptions, and subjected to verbal and physical abuse. Free Negroes stood outside the direct governance of a master, but in the eyes of many whites their place in society had not been significantly altered. They were slaves without masters. . . . Freedom allowed blacks to reap the rewards of their own labor, to develop a far richer social life, and to enjoy the many intangible benefits of liberty. With hard work, skill, and luck, some free Negroes climbed off the floor of Southern society, acquired wealth and social standing. A few masterless slaves themselves became slave masters. In fact, in their own eyes, and finally even in the eyes of whites, free Negroes were not slaves. Yet neither were they free. Instead, Southern free Negroes balanced precariously between abject slavery, which they rejected, and full freedom, which was denied them.100 No matter how many conditions were attached to a slave’s liberation and how much authority his ‘patron’ may have retained by law, at a stroke he ceased to be a property. In juristic terms, he was ‘transformed from an object to a subject of rights, the most complete metamorphosis one can imagine’. He was now a human being unequivocally, in Rome even a citizen. Potentially (italics as in the original, MK) he was also no longer kinless. This is to say, though his (or her) children born prior to the act of manumission might be, and often were, retained in slavery—any children born subsequently were free. That must be understood and registered in the fullest sense. Freedmen in the New World carried an external sign of their slave origin in their skin colour, even after many generations, with negative economic, social, political and psychological consequences of the gravest magnitude. Ancient freedmen simply melted into the total population within one or at the most two generations.101

The contrast between Moses Finley’s comments and those of Ira Berlin is striking. Finley focuses on the immediate rewards of liberty, the most important one being the transition from property to human being, an issue that is only of secondary importance to Berlin. In the latter the issue of liberty is downplayed somewhat by having it mentioned under the umbrella of ‘intangible benefits’ and it follows on his extensive comments illustrating that manumission offered no substantial benefits to freed blacks. Finley acknowledges the benefits of freedom which manumitted slaves received in the ancient world

100 101

Berlin 1975, xiii–xiv. Finley 1980, 96–7.

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even though the bond between master and slave was not totally severed upon manumission; the master still had certain claims over his former property, such as labour requirements and the requisite of deferential treatment. The quotes of Finley and Berlin reveal the shaping of freedom in two different slave societies, and how this freedom is conceptualised by two modern scholars whose respective fields happen to be the history of ancient Rome and the antebellum United States. There appears to be a vast divide between the two interpretations and consequently between the respective situations of freedpeople in the two societies. I wish to demonstrate that it is possible to say something relevant about freedpeople in general, even though the societies in which they exist are so different, as is the case with ancient Rome and the antebellum South. Berlin’s observations make a distinction between the whites’ perspectives of freed slaves and their own perception, between the ideological responses toward their incorporation into society and the increased room for social and economic opportunities which ex-slaves acquired upon manumission. They also highlight the hostility with which freed slaves had to contend, ranging from abuse to oppressive racial laws, as an important factor in evaluating their position. However, Berlin’s statement is also confusing and puzzling. He insists that freedom allowed ex-slaves considerable benefits that were denied to them as slaves, and he stresses that some freedmen acquired wealth and social standing and became slave masters in their own right. In the end, however, he is not prepared to categorise freed slaves in any other way than by a negative qualification: free blacks were not slaves. What is this full freedom that keeps eluding them? From reading Berlin’s book one gets the impression that it is much more than political equality, or the right to vote. What characterises the fate of free blacks is that they received no recognition of their equality as human beings. Many questions remain after reading Berlin’s observations. How do we evaluate the economic success and rise in social standing of individual freedmen if we have to accept at the same time that they were denied access to full freedom? Obviously, the denial of ‘full freedom’ does not exclude the possibility of success on a number of important levels of advancement. The most important part of Finley’s comments is his final observation that ancient freedmen had no outer marks of their former servility and therefore could disappear into the population within

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one or at the most two generations.102 By introducing the comparison with New World slavery in order to illustrate the devastating after-effects of slavery Finley focuses on the fate of the freeborn descendants of ex-slaves rather than on the ex-slaves themselves. In doing so the focus is shifted away from any significant problems which the first generation of freedmen may have had to face. It is important to realise that these problems were far from insignificant. Because of their lack of free birth freedmen were prohibited from entering any of the three important status-groups in Roman society—the senate, the equestrian order, and the municipal aristocracy—even though they might have accumulated sufficient capital to make the census-criterion for each one of them. Because of their servile past Roman freedmen were also not eligible to fight in the army. It is true, formally manumitted freedmen acquired full political rights after manumission, but even under the Republic this did not amount to much, at least in political terms,103 and what significance it may have had completely evaporated under the Principate when elections for senatorial offices were transferred from the people to the senate. In this period, citizenship still had great significance in that it bestowed important juridical and financial benefits which noncitizens did not have, but it did not make one an independent agent. In fact, the growing number of new citizens in the first and second centuries AD produced a counter trend in that the elite received a more privileged status in the criminal justice system. Freedmen were not included in this top category of citizens, although their descendants could be.104 The major difference between the two societies, as Finley understood it, is not in the effects of manumission, but in what happened to the generations after freedom was bestowed. In Rome, the descendants of freedmen, if freeborn, would not normally encounter any

102 It is worth pointing out that in the ancient world blacks were held as slaves, but that they shared this fate with other non-Roman peoples. The existence of blatant racism, in the modern sense of the word, has always been denied for the ancient world. This is the viewpoint put forward by Snowden 1970, but see now Isaac 2004. 103 The issue of the equal distribution of freed slaves (= recently enfranchised citizens) over all electoral tribes of the Roman tribal assembly is discussed in detail by Arena in this volume. 104 This development is studied in detail by Garnsey 1970.

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significant problems in trying to realise their social ambitions, even though there would still be a hostile response to the rapid advancement of sons of freedmen.105 This was, however, a minor ripple compared to the hostilities which free blacks continued to face in the New World, especially in the US. The process was to be repeated with each new generation entering freedom, but, and this is the essential point, for the individual freedperson the process was discontinued once the next freeborn generation took over.106 In other words, although riddled with limitations, being a freedman in Rome was a temporary status, and it did not transfer to the next freeborn generation. In the New World, on the other hand, the stigma of slavery could not be eradicated, because it was inscribed on the skin of its victims. It is common for students of US slavery to make no distinction between freed slaves and freeborn blacks, because it is automatically assumed that both groups were subjected to the same kind of oppression and discrimination. To them it is therefore less useful to single out the specific problems faced by the first-generation freedman. For students of Roman slavery, however, it is freedpeople who face limitations and discrimination, not their freeborn descendants. Summing up, Finley glosses over the problems encountered by freedmen, while Berlin does not sufficiently focus on the specific problems encountered by freedpeople as opposed to free blacks. Berlin and Finley should have kept the two processes of integration distinct, one involving freed slaves, the other one involving the free descendants of the manumitted. As the following pages aim to show, it is imperative to keep the two distinct to do justice to the different dynamics that affected ex-slaves and their freeborn descendants. I would contend that for the first generation of slaves entering freedom the circumstances were not that different between the New World and the ancient world. Freedmen and freedwomen in Rome were faced with limitations as serious and severe as anything encountered by freed

105

This can be seen, for example, in the verbal taunts which were used against the poet Horace, who was the son of a freedman and became a member of the equestrian order. See Kleijwegt in this volume. 106 As Martin Klein makes clear in his contribution to this volume, stigmatization of slaves and descent from slaves is still a present force in contemporary West Africa.

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slaves in the New World.107 Furthermore, the general hostility and distrust towards freedmen were equally severe.

Exclusion or Integration The questions surrounding the adaptation of freed slaves to society are commonly explored with the aid of a series of binary opposites. The selected values are either exclusion versus integration, or a wide range of possible variations on these (such as assimilation, acculturation etc.), or closed versus open systems of slavery. Both choices, and any other possible choices for that matter, require extensive discussion with regard to the consequences for the way in which the topic is studied. The idea that slave societies can be subdivided into closed and open slave societies is commonly attributed to James Watson who defined and analysed the concepts systematically in an edited volume of studies on African and Asian systems of slavery.108 In turn, Watson’s discussion originated as a response to Miers and Kopytoff ’s dissatisfaction with the application of the term slavery to the infinite gamut of statuses of dependence which they observed in Africa.109 They argued that in Africa slavery was not only a system of exploitation but also a means by which outsiders were incorporated into the prevalent kinship system. It was Watson who took the important step of naming societies where such a process of incorporation could be observed open slave societies, and labelling those where it was absent closed. It is evident that within this perspective only a few slave societies can be ranked as open, while the overwhelming majority will have to be classified as closed. There is an alternative tradition, however, which promotes a much broader use of the terms open and closed systems of slavery. In order to put an end to the confusion a brief discussion of this tradition

107 It is striking to see that, in contrast to the history of freedpeople in the ancient world, circumstances grew considerably worse for free blacks over time, while the first generations of freedmen were benefiting from a relatively mild reception towards their freedom. The growing number of manumissions and the geographical mobility of free blacks produced fears in the white population. In Rome such fears were mainly associated with the number of slaves, not with those of freedmen. 108 Watson 1980, 1–16; cf. Reid 1983, 156–82. 109 Miers and Kopytoff 1977.

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seems to be in order. Stanley Elkins already used exactly the same concepts in his famous book on slavery as an institutional and intellectual problem in American history, but he did so in a markedly different sense: In this sense American slavery operated as a “closed” system—one in which, for the generality of slaves in their nature as men and women, sub specie aeternitatis, contacts with free society could occur only on the most narrowly circumscribed of terms. The next question is whether living within such a “closed system” might not have produced noticeable effects upon the slave’s very personality.110

It will not come as a great surprise that the slave society with which the US is most frequently contrasted, also by Elkins, is that of Latin America: In Latin America, the very tension and balance among three kinds of organizational concerns—church, crown, and plantation agriculture— prevented slavery from being carried by the planting class to its ultimate logic. For the slave, in terms of the space thus allowed for the development of men and women as moral beings, the result was an “open system”: a system of contacts with free society through which ultimate absorption into that society could and did occur with great frequency.111

Needless to say, the concept of kinship incorporation plays no part in these observations; the terms open and closed have been reduced to their natural positive and negative connotations and are here used to classify slave societies in general. It will cause no great surprise that it is Elkins’ definition of the terms open and closed systems of slavery which prevails in modern discussion of slavery rather than the more specific definition which seems to be mainly applicable to the slave societies in Africa and Asia. This alerts us to the fact that the discussion is less specific than the use of the concepts initially presumes. What we are talking about then, in fact, is a subjective measurement for improvements in status, and, in its wake, a ranking of slave societies based on subjective impressions rather than on statistical and scientific grounds. The key question, therefore, is whether freedpeople can be observed to have improved in status after the acquisition of freedom, whether they can make any gains on the economic and social front. In open

110 111

Elkins 1959, 81–2. Elkins 1959, 81.

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slave societies ex-slaves are presumed to have been accepted as regular members of society, while in closed societies they remained second-rate citizens. In this respect, ancient Rome and the antebellum South, as laid down in the quotes by Berlin and Finley, are usually perceived as diametrical opposites when measured by the number of opportunities given to ex-slaves and the ease with which their freeborn descendants were absorbed into society. Things are not as simple as that, however, and it may even be said that from the slave’s perspective the terms open and closed slave societies are virtually meaningless. Their use suggests that freedmen in open slave societies encountered no limitations on their social and economic aspirations, while it is simultaneously suggested that ex-slaves in closed societies had no opportunities for assimilation. The same problem attaches to the use of the terms exclusion and integration—the original title for the conference out of which the papers collected in this volume originated. This raises another part of the problem attached to a comparative examination of freedpeople from the vantage point of binary opposites. If we put our faith in the concepts integration and exclusion, how are we going to measure whether the one or the other is more correct? The numbers game is as unsatisfactory here (how many successful freedpeople do we need in order to speak about successful assimilation?) as it is in determining whether we are dealing with a slave society or a society with slaves. Which economic, social, and political criteria do we apply, and, even more importantly, whose criteria are they? Are we sufficiently aware from whose perspective, that of ex-slaves or the freeborn, the judgements are made? To put the matter in terms of integration or exclusion feeds off the official vantage point of established society, or it may cater to the current social and political trends in historical research; the recently freed may have had a different perception of their situation, and it is important to record how they evaluated themselves. On the other hand, the hostility expressed by the freeborn, a pattern followed as a guideline by many scholars, may not be a secure vantage point from which to estimate the position of freedpeople if we wilfully exclude their own thoughts and strategies from the equation. Instead of using the concepts of open and closed slave societies or the terms integration and exclusion, I prefer to use an altogether different approach. I shall choose two points of departure to provide an alternative to the prevalent strategy in terms of binary opposites.

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Firstly, I shall advance the notion that manumission creates problems of absorption in any slave society, and that a general overview of the factors influencing their situation would provide a good starting-point for a better understanding of freedpeople; this would subsequently allow the listing of all those factors of more national and regional importance. Secondly, I wish to stress and examine the fact that in many slave societies freedmen managed to become successful despite the large number of limitations imposed upon them and the hostility they had to face. There are numerous examples attesting to this phenomenon in ancient Rome, but we also find evidence for this in the slave societies of the New World. It is worth noting that emancipation has not produced such a distinguished group of achievers, whatever the implications of this fact may be. Assimilation is never fully completed in the first generation after manumission. In every large-scale slave society the moment of integration always remained elusive. It is as if the process of turning a slave into a freedman is a transition which cannot be accomplished without considerable shock to the community. The transition is simply too eventful to be smoothed over in one generation. In this way it is akin, but not similar, to immigration which also requires the immigrant to make an extra effort to prove him- or herself worthy of citizenship. Even with the administrative process completed, the new immigrant will feel most acceptable to those coming from the same ethnic background who have made the same step. An even more telling comparison would be with the process of prisoners being reintegrated into society after they have finished their jail-sentence. The comparison here is particularly poignant in that the ex-prisoner and the ex-slave share the burden of a past that cannot be eradicated. Of course, slaves cannot be considered guilty of the creation of their servile experience in the same sense as convicted criminals are deserving of jail-time. The best comparison, therefore, would be with people wrongfully condemned to jail or to political prisoners in totalitarian regimes. In sociological terms the adjustment to society bears numerous similarities in that past experience is considered to have a perceived influence on the transition period. In other words, the slave after manumission still has to battle the perception that his slavery was somehow deserved. What ancient historians generally call the stigma of slavery, and what historians of New World slavery identify as racism, is nothing

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less than the outcome of a transition period rife with tension. For modern scholars, it is a means to come to terms with the way in which each slave society integrated its freed slaves, and to explain why the assimilation of ex-slaves was an incomplete process. The integration of freedpeople is a complex phenomenon in any slave society, even in the absence of complicating factors such as race. Arguing from a comparative perspective I would venture the assertion that the transition from slave to free is one that always raises issues of absorption and separation. No society can absorb freed slaves into its midst without creating serious ruptures that involve both the slaves and the environment in which they are being absorbed. In this light it is perhaps to be preferred to refrain from using the terms open and closed society, for they both raise the expectation that a complete transition was somehow possible. What is a more feasible prospect is to look at various slave societies and to determine in what areas they were prepared to allow for the participation of ex-slaves, on an equal basis with the freeborn, and in what areas not. Every slave society developed its own limitations to the transition process, but the process as such is a constant. As far as the adaptation by freed slaves is concerned, there is a choice of perspectives available from a number of alternatives. One of them holds that the transition from slave to freed slave was an inconsequential one since freedpeople were moved from one subordinate group to another, both based on racial ancestry: The change in status from slave to freedman was a shift from one subordinate group to another, both based on racial ancestry. It is likely that many of those who were freed became incorporated into the lower stratum of the free coloured community. Although an important change occurred in legal status and group affiliation, the freed slave could expect to find significant continuities of colour, cultural patterns and, if an ex-town slave, little change in environment. Given the network that existed between the slaves and the freedmen, the freed slave was likely to have been very familiar with the free coloured social and cultural life even as it changed, especially when, as must often have been the case, there were parents, children, other relatives, and friends among the freedmen. It is unlikely, then, that the change in status from slave to freedman involved a set of unfamiliar institutions and cultural understandings. The freed slave was a source of stability and continuity, for the movement of freed slaves into the freed coloured group meant an infusion of Afro-creole life-ways. The transition for the freed slave was relatively simple, causing little personal or group

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The article from which the above quote has been lifted deals exclusively with freedpeople in the Caribbean, but Sio’s conclusions about the general economic fate of the majority of freedpeople and their cultural stability are widely shared by historians of New World slavery. It is striking to see the enormous shift in perspective from that adopted by Ira Berlin in 1975. While the latter stressed the incompleteness of the transition from slave to free man, Sio moves on to a completely different vantage point by eliminating the issue of political rights. The smooth transition Sio is talking about is not concerned with the acquisition of political rights and economic empowerment, but with the transition from one subordinate position to another; freedom, in other words, does not involve the ex-slave in a process of empowerment since the group of the freed is equally disempowered. The only thing that counts from Sio’s perspective is the issue of cultural continuity, a phenomenon which smoothes over the transition from enslaved to freed. Sio’s views do not exist in a vacuum; they are a response to a rather more positivistic trend which marks out the success story as the benchmark of the post-manumission experience, the personal experiences of Andrew Durnford, James Thomas, James Forten, Thomy Lafon, Marie Metoyer, William Ellison, Free Frank, William Johnson and others.113 The objection raised by Sio to this type of research is that it focuses too narrowly on a small minority of individuals who were extremely successful after their manumission or as descendants of manumitted slaves, which results in a skewed picture of the economic circumstances of freedpeople as a whole.

The Successful Freed Slave One of the factors which Frank Tannenbaum considered to be extremely relevant in describing and analyzing the differences between 112

Sio 1991, 152–3. Most of these have received serious scholarly attention: Mills 1977; Whitten 1981; Schweninger 1984; 1990; Winch 2002; Johnson and Roark 1984a; 1984b; Walker 1983; Davis and Hogan 1977. It is of considerable importance that all these individuals have benefitted from manumission, and there is no equivalent list of individuals who have done well after emancipation. 113

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the slave societies of Latin America and the US was the economic success of freedpeople and the apparent ease with which they were integrated into society in the one but not in the other.114 The discrepancies are indeed striking. In Brazil Thomas Ewbank observed that a coloured managed to become governor of a province, and Gilberto Freyre stipulates that elsewhere Ewbank points out that gentlemen of dark colour achieved the dignity of president of the cabinet under the emperor.115 In the US, on the other hand, blacks were politically marginalised. Yet Tannenbaum’s comparison is also flawed. Firstly, by focussing on the most spectacular cases of social advancement he made the contrast between the two societies more dramatic, while he refrained from investigating what circumstances were conducive to the elevation of free blacks to cabinet posts in Brazil.116 The phenomenon of freed slaves or their descendants being elevated to prestigious political positions is not unique to Brazil; where it occurs, it can be explained from the political constellation which favoured members of an outsider group to counter or reduce the influence of another group.117 Secondly, at the time Tannenbaum was writing not much research had been done on wealthy people of colour in the US. Thanks to a series of excellent recent studies there is now much more information available on spectacular cases

114 For this type of analysis Tannenbaum relied heavily on the writings of Gilberto Freyre from whom he quotes the examples of prominent free blacks, cf. Tannenbaum 1946, 4. The essential examples ultimately come from the account of Thomas Ewbank, a visitor to the country in the 1850s who is generally regarded as a good source, despite the fact that as a Protestant he did not like (and did not understand) Catholicism, cf. Karasch 1987, 259, n. 4. 115 Cf. Freyre 1945, 101. It is impossible to establish whether Ewbank and Freyre were thinking in terms of freed people of colour, that is, descendants of slaves, or freed slaves. 116 Russell-Wood 1972, 112–3 (= 2002, 71), however, arrives at a completely different interpretation of the evidence. First of all, a black parish judge was elected in Ouro Blanco because in many parishes white candidates had refused to hold these posts. In other cases a shortage of whites made the election of mulattos easier to achieve. Secondly, Russell-Wood asserts that there were only two persons of mixed racial parentage who achieved high office in government or in one of the religious orders. 117 In similar manner Roman historians fail to do justice to the history of freedmen by focussing exclusively on freedmen who were used to run the administration of the Roman Empire. The emperor’s reliance on freedmen was brought about by the need to counter the influence of the Senate. In any case, it was a shortlived phenomenon. For a brilliant analysis of status dissonance as an important factor in sealing the ascendancy of eunuchs, the majority of which were slaves, in the later Roman Empire, cf. Hopkins 1978, 172–97.

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of economic success. The myth that free blacks in the US were unsuccessful economically and socially can be laid to rest. What remains true, however, is that they were always a small minority, but in Brazil the situation was no different. Once it has been accepted that it was only a small minority of freed slaves who carved out extraordinary careers for themselves, it is appropriate to raise the question as to why research should be focussed on them. It is evident that if ex-slaves had the opportunity to accumulate wealth and property and adopt a lifestyle that came close to emulating that of wealthy whites, assimilation may have been within easy reach for them. There is the undeniable fact that some freedpeople did manage to capitalise on the social and economic opportunities that were available at the time of their manumission, and that for some those opportunities were larger than for others. It is the historian’s task to examine what factors brought about this divergence without losing sight of the fact that the successful were always in the minority. The wealthy freedman or—woman has become the focus of renewed attention in modern research on slavery. In the past three decades more evidence has been uncovered with regard to successful freedpeople and free blacks. Our fascination with black achievers is undoubtedly influenced by our admiration for achievements produced under the most difficult of circumstances. One pioneering study in this field is aptly entitled The Forgotten People, and it is a reasonable guess that there is much more to be uncovered.118 The evidence now covers Brazil, Surinam, and the US.119 In this volume the chapters by Dantas and Reynolds draw attention to the phenomenon, and it is interesting to note that in the majority of the cases the individuals standing out for their wealth, persistence, and ingenuity were women.120 In her essay Reynolds sets out to describe how historians of US slavery and of women’s studies have largely ignored the existence of free wealthy women of colour. She explains that this group has been largely overlooked because of the historians’ preference to focus on 118

Mills 1977. For a detailed examination of the story of a successful freedman in Brazil, cf. Frank 2004. The main character of Frank’s investigation is Antonio José Dutra, a former slave who owned thirteen slaves. Most of these he used in his barbershop, but they also doubled as a musical band which was available for hire. 120 Cf. the excellent overviews in Gaspar and Hine 2004. 119

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slaves and on free males; she calls for renewed efforts to focus on these forgotten people as a crucial component of both gender and slavery studies. That her criticism is to the point is confirmed by the case of Elisabeth Samson, undoubtedly the wealthiest free black woman living in Surinam in the second part of the eighteenth century, and surpassing quite a few white plantation owners in the process. Although some details of her circumstances had been known for a long time, a reconstruction of her remarkable life was not attempted until Cynthia McLeod took up her case and spent many long, hard hours of research in the archives.121 Apparently, previous generations of historians found her case insufficiently interesting. The focus on wealthy freedmen and—women in current scholarship has brought to light much new evidence on their lives, their social and economic circumstances, and their personal struggles. The prevalence of wealth among the freed or free blacks is still largely obscured by the lack of personal documents which allow more insight into their world and their choices. It was the chance discovery of 37 letters written by and to the Ellison family that allowed Michael Johnson and James Roark to reconstruct the life of William Ellison and his family.122 Ellison was one of the wealthiest free persons of colour in the South before the advent of the Civil War. He was a cotton gin maker who owned a large cotton plantation and 63 slaves. Caution is required when we evaluate these success stories. We need to keep in mind that the majority of freedpeople did not do well after gaining their freedom and had to struggle to make a living. Focussing only on the more successful careers may produce the skewed impression that freedom was a benefit which could be easily extended into a successful entrepreneurial career, and that those who did not only have themselves to blame.123 It hardly needs an exhaustive exposition here that success stories attract more attention than the thousands of others, mostly nameless, or at least faceless, individuals who did not succeed. It needs to be pointed out, however,

121

The case of Elisabeth Samson is also briefly discussed by Hoefte 1996. The letters are edited and commented upon in Johnson and Roark 1984a. The story of the Ellison family is further examined in Johnson and Roark 1984b. 123 It is worth pointing out that McLeod emphasises that much of the fortune that Elisabeth accumulated over the years was not inherited but was due to her own business acumen. She uses the example of Elisabeth to argue that in the slave society of Surinam money could and did erode the sentiments of racial superiority as entertained by the Dutch elite, cf. McLeod 2000, 8. 122

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that Elisabeth Samson’s case was virtually unknown until Cynthia McLeod did her own detective work in the archives and recreated her life, both in scholarly publications and in fiction. One can hardly argue that her case has been exploited to argue a certain point. The evidence McLeod has uncovered is both revealing and disconcerting, and presents numerous problems to the modern reader. Can we acclaim this life a success story when it involves someone who employed slave labour on her plantations and went to great lengths to make her ultimate wish come true, to marry a white settler? Perhaps, what the modern reader thinks about her case now does not matter so much as what she was trying to accomplish. Her story needs broader exposure, not in order to be judged for what she did not do, but in order to better understand the psychology of a free black in a slave society. Certainly, Elisabeth Samson failed to accomplish a racial front in a society where black was equivalent to slavery, and white was synonymous with slave-holding. Is it legitimate to fault her for that? The choices she made in her life were undoubtedly influenced by what she thought was right. We might be inclined to see her quest for the approval of her marriage to a white settler as looking for trouble, but to her it was a struggle for a right, and in order to get that right she even spent two years in a country that was not her own. Against the contemporary background she must be seen as somewhat of a rebel, trying to achieve what no black woman had tried to achieve before her.124 Trends in the study of slavery have obviously made a sharp turn, when even only thirty years ago freedpeople were looked upon as a low priority on the research agenda. Even in publications devoted to them they were mainly singled out as individuals who missed the opportunity to form a combined front with slaves in order to combat the evils of slavery. Studying successful freedpeople raises a number of issues which are bound to upset modern sensitivities. One of the more sensitive issues is that of slave-holding. The influence of the Carter Woodson thesis of nominal slave-holding has long been instrumental in glossing over the economic importance of slaveowning by freed blacks.125 The publication of Larry Koger’s study 124 For a broad historical background against which Samson’s desire to establish marriage rather than be content with a partnership like so many other black and coloured women, cf. Hoefte and Vrij 2004. 125 In the older literature there is a lot of confusion as to the relationship between

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on slave-owning by blacks in South Carolina, referred to in this volume by Rita Reynolds, makes unmistakably clear that free blacks owning blacks as slaves for commercial purposes was much more prevalent than has been thought so far.126 However, proving that slave-owning by blacks was not nominal is only the first step in coming to terms with this phenomenon. It seems the time has come now when we no longer need to condemn freed slaves for the actions they undertook or did not undertake, but that we make an attempt to understand why they made the choices that they did. Michael P. Johnson and James L. Roark address the issue in the following way: “By today’s standards, he [William Ellison] may be considered among the worst, not the best, of men. But his values and his choices originated in his world, not ours. . . . Although we have our own opinions and have made no attempt to hide them, we consider our primary task to explain what Ellison and other free Afro-Americans did, not what they should have done.”127 Slave-owning by freed slaves existed also in Brazil and Surinam. In all cases the number of slaves held by freedpeople was never high, usually running into single digits, and only occasionally reaching triple figures when the slave-owner owned a plantation. In ancient Rome, however, the phenomenon was undoubtedly more widespread and the numbers involved much higher. In his testament of 8 BC the freedman Caius Caecilius Isidorus stated that, although he had lost a great deal in the civil wars, he left 4,116 slaves, 3,600 pairs of oxen, 257,000 other animals and 60,000,000 sesterces in coined money. He subsequently ordered that 1,1 million sesterces should be spent on his funeral (Plin. NH 33, 47, 134).128 Isidorus’ accumulation of assets appears in a passage where Pliny decries the wealth of freedmen, some of whom, like the imperial freed slaves Callistus, Pallas and Narcissus, superseded the vast riches of the late Republican senator Crassus. It appears, therefore, as if Isidorus, even though he nominal slave owning and regular slave owning, cf. John Hope Franklin in the preface to Whitten 1981, x: “There is no doubt that most of the free blacks who owned slaves did so for humanitarian reasons . . . There is no doubt that some free blacks owned slaves for the same reason that whites owned them: to use their perpetual labor for their own gain.” 126 Koger 1985. 127 Johnson and Roark 1984b, xv. 128 The text is reproduced and translated in Wiedemann 1981, 99–100 and Eck and Heinrichs 1993, 225. It is likely that Pliny derived his information from Isidorus’ funerary monument which had (part of ) his testament inscribed on it.

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was not an imperial freedman himself, is quoted by Pliny as the earliest reliable example of a phenomenon which had reached disgusting proportions in his own lifetime. It is difficult to maintain, however, that freed slaves turned slaveowners were driven by economic needs alone. An equally powerful motive to turn to slave-owning may have been the desire to acquire recognition from the freeborn population, more specifically the upperclass segment of society. In the Roman world, at least, ex-slaves showed no inhibitions to own slaves, and this is understandable in a society rigorously divided along lines of property-owners and nonproperty-owners. Similar motives to distance themselves from the slave segment in society, in as blatant a way as possible, may have been the norm in other slave societies. It is surprising to see how infrequently this explanation is expressed in the scholarly literature.129 In most slave societies, whether they are regarded as open or closed, slave owning symbolised membership of a superior group, and it was therefore not seen primarily as a moral problem. There is an interesting conundrum for ancient historians here. The ease with which freed slaves turned to slave-owning in the Roman world has never been examined by ancient historians and one may conclude that it does not upset modern sensitivities to the same degree as in New World slavery. Evidently, it is less problematic to envisage freed slaves of, let us say, Greek descent, enslaving their compatriots than it is when freed Africans enslave other Africans. It is obviously less upsetting to identify with the slave-owning classes in Roman society, while in New World slavery the natural focus is with the victims of slavery, not with those who perpetuated the system. It does not come as a surprise, therefore, that ancient historians have mainly focussed on the most powerful and most prosperous freedmen. From a sociological perspective, however, the relevant point of departure is the study of the motivations for freed slaves to turn to slave-holding, not our moral indignity. Money and friendly interaction with the established freeborn community signified an element of success, but it almost never translated

129 Slave-owning by freed slaves was seen by the white elite as an instrument of racial policy. According to the Charleston Courier in 1835, “it identified his [the free person of color] interests and his feelings . . . with those of the white population.”; quoted in Powers, Jr 1994, 59.

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into social respectability.130 Following up on my comments with regard to the problems raised by the practice of manumission, I would argue that social respectability remained elusive to even the most successful freedmen in any slave society. If anything, ex-slaves invited more severe forms of acrimonious behaviour because of their success, raising questions about the honesty with which it had been achieved. This is perfectly illustrated by an anecdote which survives in the encyclopaedia of Pliny the Elder: Caius Furius Chresimus had been set free from slavery; when he started getting much larger harvests from a fairly small farm than his neighbours did from very large ones, he became highly unpopular and was accused of abstracting other people’s crops by sorcery. He was afraid that he would be found guilty at his trial before the Curule Aedile Spurius Albinus; so when the tribes were about to cast their votes, he brought all his farm equipment into the Forum and brought along his slaves, who were all healthy and well looked-after and well dressed (so Piso tells us), and his well-fashioned iron tools, heavy hoes and ploughshares, and well-fed oxen; and then said, ‘Here, Romans, is my sorcery, though I can’t show you or bring into the Forum all the work I’ve put in at night and my early mornings or how I’ve sweated.’ As a result they acquitted him unanimously. (Pliny the Elder, Natural History, 18, 8).

It is not uncommon for Roman writers to praise traditional virtues in individuals who were not Roman by birth, or in those of low status, such as gladiators. However, I believe that some details in the story, especially the parading of the slaves as evidence that he knew how to look after his ‘equipment’, suggest that Chresimus consciously modelled himself on the idealtype of the peasant farmer. He knew what was required to convince a Roman audience that he was no sorcerer. Unfortunately, the story does not allow us to gauge whether Chresimus felt that as an ex-slave he had to work harder than his neighbours.

130 Johnson and Roark 1984b, xii, argue that “elsewhere in the New World money sometimes whitened.” This may be compared to the comments of Gomes Freire de Andrade, governor of Rio de Janeiro, 1733–1763, and governor of Minas Gerais, 1735–1763, who noted that wealth rather than colour was the chief criterion for political office. In addition, Rugendas, an artist who visited Brazil in the nineteenth century, reports that a mulatto who was asked if the local capitãomor was a mulatto, answered: “He was, but is not any more.” For these two quotes, cf. Russell-Wood 1972, 113 (= 2002, 72).

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Notwithstanding the legal limitations that were imposed upon them in most slave societies a number of individual freedmen gained economically from their manumission. Such cases deserve to be studied for the important information it can offer on the society in which the manumitted slave entered for the first time as a free man. I am not trying to breathe new life into the theory that manumission is somehow an indication of the cruelty or non-cruelty of a particular slave society, but I wish to stress the significance of this phenomenon because it might lead us to draw important conclusions on the permeability of society and the skills, determination, and hard work of ex-slaves. What are the necessary conditions for achieving success? In no other slave society do we observe so many freedmen reaching important political positions and accumulating capital and property in commerce and entrepreneurship as we see in ancient Rome. It is to be noted, however, that the political prominence of freedmen in the imperial period was the result of specific circumstances, and should not be taken as an index of the success of freedmen overall. The success of freedmen in the economic sphere was partly made possible by the fact that these were areas which were despised in the official ideology of the established elite as being below their dignity. However, the existence of an ideology which aimed to dissociate the elite from direct participation in economic affairs other than landownership hardly explains why freedmen were so successful in trade and commerce. It also implies that they were more successful than the freeborn lower and middle classes in making use of the opportunities available to them. A more plausible explanation is offered by the assumption that freedmen had been already active in these spheres as slaves, as agents working for their masters, and that they continued to use the expertise they had acquired as slaves to enrich themselves once they had been manumitted. In other words, trade and commerce had always been fields dominated by slaves and freedmen. Our estimation of the economic prominence of freedmen is obscured somewhat by the fact that the surviving evidence is prejudiced in favour of success stories. Those who failed miserably and went bankrupt in the process did not record their lack of success on their tombstones. The most famous freedman of Rome is a fictional character, Trimalchio, who appears in Petronius’ Satyrica. The unsolvable problem regarding Trimalchio is how to decide whether he can be said

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to reflect a historical phenomenon. The odds against this appear to be insurmountable. The novel is clearly of satirical intent and was written by a member of the upper classes. Trimalchio’s success story is too good to be true. Inheriting a fortune from his childless master and mistress, he turns to trading, and, despite some initial setbacks, he manages to make a profit of 10 million sesterces on a single trip transporting vegetables, ham and slaves to Rome. In a momentous turn of events he disengages himself from commerce, and decides to live the life of a rentier landowner. Trimalchio’s wealth is mainly represented in the many estates and in the number of slaves he owns. Unfortunately, it is impossible to arrive at a reliable estimate of his possessions, since he clearly exaggerates these to the point where they become incredible. However, the type of the wealthy and socially ambitious freedman does not stand or fall with the reliability of Petronius’ portrayal. There have been attested numerous other cases of wealthy freedmen, some of which have already been referred to in the previous pages of this chapter. In order to gain a better understanding of the transnational history of freedpeople it seems appropriate to formulate some general criteria with regard to social and economic opportunities available to freed slaves. Favourable or unfavourable circumstances depended on the skills they had acquired as slaves, the number of job opportunities related to the size and the location of the city in which they resided, and on the economic trends affecting the state or the country at large (competition with immigrants). Individual freedpeople who prosper after manumission are a particularly complex phenomenon, mainly from an emotional perspective, inasmuch as they try to the best of their abilities to find their place in a society that might not be hostile, but may be called at least suspicious of their background. In this process they occasionally make personal choices that are sometimes difficult to understand from a modern perspective. The quest for respectability and the desire to be judged on universal human qualities rather than by racial stereotype were deeply ingrained in the minds of freedpeople and directed their every thought and movement. In any slave society there is a natural tendency for freedpeople to represent themselves in tripolar fashion depending on the environment in which they found themselves: by asserting that they were not slaves, by striving to be equal to the freeborn, and, finally, by stressing that they belonged to a unique group in society,

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those who managed to exit slavery.131 Thirdly, even for those who were successful in realizing their ambitions there were severe limitations on their freedom of movement. The history of wealthy freedman “discloses the thin line separating freedom from slavery, even for those at the pinnacle of worldly success.”132 In sum, our main objective should be to identify the factors ruling the lives of freedpeople in post-manumission societies, ranging from the opportunities of advancement to the limitations imposed on them. How the dynamics played out varies from one slave society to the next. In a number of cities manumission created a relatively wealthy segment of freed slaves. In the cities mentioned above freedpeople managed to have access to jobs which required a high level of expertise and training. Freed slaves found employment as carpenters, stevedores, coopers and blacksmiths. In Charleston, Jehu Jones, a free black, ran a hotel that was generally regarded as the best in the city. He was a man of property and was valued at 40,000 dollars when he died.133 In addition, the city had a number of qualified schoolteachers. In Philadelphia at least one free black managed to become an attorney. In general, however, freedwomen stood a better chance of entering the job market and to generate wealth, not only through wages but also through inheritances. In some cities they completely dominated the trade of seamstresses and domestic jobs. However, this initial period of opportunities, although it was always limited by the availability of educational facilities, did not last. In Philadelphia and Charleston freed slaves encountered increasing hostility from whites who came to regard the presence of a large workforce of freed slaves as a threat to the existence of slavery itself. These sentiments became more pronounced in the wake of a crisis, such as the slave ‘conspiracy’ led by Denmark Vesey in 1822 or the advent of the Civil War, when relations between the white population and the free black community became largely estranged.134 Freed

131 The best proof of this is the length to which William Ellison was prepared to go to rid himself of the name April which he resented as a typical slave name, cf. Johnson and Roark 1984b, 3–30. 132 Johnson and Roark 1984b, xii. 133 Powers, Jr 1994, 43–4; 47. 134 Denmark Vesey and his insurrection are a controversial issue. Cf. Egerton 2000 for a detailed examination of the conspiracy and Johnson 2001 for the argument that the conspiracy never took place. Cf. also the articles by various authors published in the William & Mary Quarterly 58 (2002), 137–203.

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slaves always had to contend with hostility of lower-class whites who were particularly angered by the access of freed slaves to skilled jobs. Most of the lower-class whites were immigrants from Germany or Ireland. In Charleston some members of the white elite regarded them as a worse threat to the stability of social and economic life than the free black and coloured communities, but in other places immigrants, infuriated by what they regarded as unfair labour competition, managed to press for legislation that would improve their access to the job market and gradually took over jobs that had been the almost exclusive preserve of freed slaves a generation before. Even more interesting than the social behaviour of a small group of wealthy ex-slaves is the particular behaviour of freedpeople as a group. I will identify two related problems as subjects worthy of further analysis. The first issue is one that has attracted much of the attention in a growing number of monographs published since the 1980s, that is, the forging of communities by free African Americans which ultimately resulted in the establishment of separate religious, educational and social facilities. The importance of this development can either be viewed as the result of failed integration or as the outcome of the persistence and determination displayed by freed slaves in achieving their specific social and economic objectives. The main question is to determine whether or not freed slaves developed an independent identity, informed by their peculiar social status, and whether this must be seen as a positive—the retention of cultural roots and traditions—or as a negative development—the lack of assimilation. The second issue concerns the relationships and forms of interaction between the various social groups in slave societies, including the slaveholders and the enslaved. These factors are helpful in establishing the social position of freed slaves and their descendants. To what degree did freed slaves remain a marginalised group in society, and, more importantly, what criteria do we use to establish this? One of the central concerns of the papers edited by David Cohen and Jack Greene was the lack of solidarity between the freed and the free on the one hand and the slave population on the other. In their introduction it is stressed that the “free coloured resisted opportunities to form a common racial (italics as in the original, MK) front with the slaves, typically the majority group in a slave society.”135 135

Cohen and Greene 1972, 15.

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Elsewhere the verdict is mitigated somewhat by the admission that freedpeople sometimes took the initiative in political action against the colonial authorities: To say that free persons of colour generally acquiesced in the slave system, identified with the whites, and gave aid and comfort to the plantocratic regimes is not to say that their role in political stirrings taking place in these societies in the eighteenth century was inert. . . . Though a variety of conditions made direct alliance with slaves unlikely, the unfree blacks became conscious of world issues of which their status and conditions were a part.136

Just as freed slaves-turned-slave-holders represent a development that is unpalatable to the majority of modern scholars, the failure to build up a racial front against the system of slavery is an accusation which is formulated by modern preconceptions about slavery, not by contemporary perceptions. It is imperative that we try to understand why freedpeople made the choices they made, not question the morality of their choices. It is too simplistic to fault freed slaves for not putting up a racial front against slavery, and with the benefit of hindsight it appears that the research focus has changed considerably. Even if the overthrowing of slavery by the combined efforts of the enslaved and the recently freed had been an option, there is a much more important question that needs to be addressed, that is, why freedpeople chose to act in support of the establishment. Do freedom and a stake in the establishment override matters of race? The reasons for this behaviour are complex and unravelling them might produce some welcome new perspectives on the position of freed slaves within a slave-holding society. The problem can be divided in a number of separate but related issues. Firstly, what was the relationship like between the free and the freed on the one hand and the enslaved on the other hand? Secondly, what sort of relationship existed between the freeborn and freed segments of the population? I strongly believe that a predominant characteristic of any postmanumission society is a psychological desire to eradicate the most visible traces of past servility, starting with the name that was given to a slave by his master. This psychological need for distance even extended to a denial that any form of solidarity could exist between slaves and freedpeople, given the two groups occupied such different

136

Cohen and Greene 1972, 16.

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social, legal, and economic statuses. It may be the case that in any slave society relations between the enslaved and the freed were naturally strained, with the possible exception of those freedpersons who had living relatives and kin among the still enslaved. It is instructive to note that in ancient Rome there are no recorded instances of solidarity between the enslaved and the freed. In contrast, we know of at least one instance from the first century AD when the lower classes vociferously expressed their sympathy towards some four hundred urban slaves threatened with execution. The most logical explanation for this event would be that members of the lower classes and slaves worked side by side in the same jobs.137 It is perhaps more difficult to claim that it is to be expected that solidarity between different groups in a pre-industrial society would develop along economic lines and not on the basis of a shared experience in slavery, because of the absence of skin colour as a primary trademark of slavery. Prior to the abolition of slavery free blacks began to develop their own churches, their own educational facilities, and their own social gatherings, producing, as it were, a community within the community. Although this process has become the main interest of monographs written in the past two decades, we need more specifics on this particular process than scholarship has put forward so far. When does the process actually start, and under what circumstances? Is the size of the freed community an important factor? Is it true that free blacks started to build their own institutions as a matter of choice, or were they forced to do so because they were excluded from existing institutions? Does the establishment of a separate community within the existing community mean that henceforth contacts would be limited to those of similar status? Does this mean that assimilation was a complete failure, or perhaps that it was never even attempted? Detailed research undertaken in recent decades has suggested that the respective relationships between freed blacks and whites and between freed blacks and slaves are far more complex than had been realised. It is undoubtedly true that freed slaves occasionally expressed sentiments that illustrated their unwillingness to associate with slaves, at least on certain issues, or that showed their commitment to the 137 Tacitus, The Annals of Imperial Rome, 14. 42–5; the explanation which is offered here is the one reached by Finley 1980, 102–3.

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status quo in society, but this is not the whole story.138 It is now apparent, thanks to a number of excellent recent studies, that freedpeople did entertain relationships with slaves (and not only as slaveowners). Slaves and freedpeople lived in the same neighbourhoods, had close social and economic contacts, and attended the same churches together. Obviously, there is one thing that the freed slave community did only rarely, that is, to show directly and unequivocally their support in favour of the slave population because they discovered a racial solidarity with the enslaved population. The reasons for this are complex and may vary from place to place, but they need not necessarily be sought only in a lack of identity building on the part of the freed population, as Cohen and Greene argue. It is perhaps instructive to point out that in ancient Rome there are no recorded instances of shows of solidarity between the enslaved and the freed. If anything, it may be argued that freed slaves came to be identified as more cruel masters than the freeborn, perhaps a psychological response to a perceived weaker authority and the need to enforce authority along more strict lines. Obviously, in certain areas skin colour was of central concern, a legacy of white manumission practices through which the offspring of miscegenation and those generally of lighter skin were more easily released from slavery than blacks. In certain slave societies, most notably the Caribbean and certain areas in Brazil but also in a number of cities in the US, such as Charleston, this almost produced a three-tier society, with whites at the top and slaves at the bottom. In Charleston, especially, the coloured were proportionally over-represented among the freed population. By demonstrating their fidelity, and by acquiring wealth, literacy, and, in some cases, slaves, members of the free brown elite hoped to carve out a special niche for themselves. To a certain extent, they were successful, and in lower South cities, such as Charleston, something approaching a three tier model of racial stratification developed. In this model—a model that typified Caribbean slave societies—whites

138 Cf. the remark made by a free man of colour in Charleston responding to the fact that it was often the poorest educated free blacks were regarded as the representatives of the entire race. Michael Eggart, the incoming vice president of the Friendly Moralist Society, stated in 1848 that if the poor blacks could be educated, “how much more vivid how much brighter would the line of separation be between us and the slaves, it [sic] would be so bright that it would Eventually triumph over the prejudices of the white man”; quoted by Powers, Jr. 1994, 58.

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occupied the top of the hierarchy and black slaves the bottom. Free persons of color (who were often mulatto) occupied a position intermediate between the others and were accorded special privileges. In various ways, whites bolstered this intermediate position to secure the loyalty of free persons of color.139

They designed an identity based exclusively on colour and in 1794 founded the Brown Fellowship Society, a club which had as its specific aim to establish and develop the interests of free coloured people. Its counterpart, the Humane Society, did the same for free blacks. It is to be noted that membership in both societies was exclusively restricted to males.140

Epilogue Needless to say, this volume is not an exhaustive study, nor does it attempt to cover all slave societies in a comprehensive fashion. No single volume can do full justice to the complexities of slavery and the various ways in which those who were released from its suffering tried to build their lives, to find a home for their expectations and ambitions, and to map all the obstacles that they had to face. Individually and collectively, ex-slaves made different choices and decisions to cope with the aftermath of slavery. Rather than to track down all the possible variations, this volume tries to offer insight into a number of important patterns and trends. Sometimes, similar trends can be observed in different slave societies, sometimes not. It is hoped that in the end there will be found a balance between the local and the universal.

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—— and Thomas C. Holt, Frederick Cooper, and Aims McGuinness (eds.) 2002. Societies after Slavery, A Select Annotated Bibliography of Printed Sources on Cuba, Brazil, British Colonial Africa, South Africa, and the British West Indies, Pittsburgh. Sio, Arnold A. 1991. ‘Marginality and free coloured identity in Caribbean slave society’, Hilary Beckles and Verene Sheperd (eds.), Caribbean Slave Society and Economy, New York 1991, 150–60; originally published under the same title in Slavery & Abolition 8 (1987), 166–82. Snowden, Frank M. 1970. Blacks in Antiquity, Cambridge, Mass. Sweet, James H. 2003. ‘Manumission in Rio de Janeiro, 1749–54: an African perspective’, Slavery & Abolition 24, 54–70. Tannenbaum, Frank 1946. Slave and Citizen: The Negro in the Americas, New York. Thomas, Helen 2004. Romanticism and Slave Narratives: Transatlantic Testimonies, Cambridge. Treggiari, Susan 1969. Roman Freedmen during the Late Republic, Oxford. —— 1975. ‘Jobs in the household of Livia’, Papers of the British School at Rome 43, 48–77. Trouillot, Michel-Rolph 1982. ‘Motion in the system: coffee, color, and slavery in eighteenth-century Saint-Domingue’, Review 5, 331–88. Wacke, Andreas 2001. ‘Manumissio matimonii causa. Die Freilassung zwecks Heirat nach den Ehegestezen des Augustus’, Heinz Bellen/Heinz Heinen (eds.), Fünfzig Jahre Forschungen zur antiken Sklaverei an der Mainzer Akademie 1950–2000, Stuttgart, 133–59. Waldstein, Wolfgang 1986. Operae libertorum, Stuttgart. —— 2001. ‘Zum Menschsein von Sklaven’, Heinz Bellen/Heinz Heinen (eds.), Fünfzig Jahre Forschungen zur antiken Sklaverei an der Mainzer Akademie 1950 –2000, Stuttgart, 31–51. Walker, Juliet E. K. 1983. Free Frank: A Black Pioneer on the Antebellum Frontier, Lexington. Walvin, James 1998. An African’s Life: The Life and Times of Olaudah Equiano, 1745–1797, London and New York. Watson, James L. 1980. ‘Slavery as an institution, open and closed systems’, Watson (ed.), 1–16. —— (ed.) 1980. Asian and African Systems of Slavery, Berkeley and Los Angeles. Weiler, Ingomar 2001. ‘Eine Sklavin wird frei. Zur Rolle des Geschlechts bei der Freilassung’, Heinz Bellen/Heinz Heinen (eds.), Fünfzig Jahre Forschungen zur antiken Sklaverei an der Mainzer Akademie 1950–2000, Stuttgart, 113–33. —— 2003. Die Beendigung des Sklavenstatus im Altertum: Ein Beitrag zur vergleichenden Sozialgeschichte, Stuttgart. White, Shane 1991. Somewhat More Independent: The End of Slavery in New York City, 1770 –1810, Athens and London. Whitman, T. Stephen 1997. The Price of Freedom: Slavery and Manumission in Baltimore and Early National Maryland, Lexington. Whitten, David O. 1981. Andrew Durnford: A Black Sugar Planter in Antebellum Louisiana, Natchitoches. Wiedemann, Thomas 1981. Greek and Roman slavery, London. —— 1985. ‘The regularity of manumission at Rome’, Classical Quarterly 35, 162–75. —— and Jane Gardner (eds.) 2002. Representing the Body of the Slave, Special Issue of Slavery & Abolition 23. Wilmot, Swithin 1984. ‘Not “full free”: the ex-slaves and the apprenticeship system in Jamaica, 1834–1838’, Jamaica Journal 17, 2–10. Winch, Julie 2002. A Gentleman of Color: The Life of James Forten, New York. Zelnick-Abramovitz, R. 2005. Not Wholly Free. The Concept of Manumission and the Status of Manumitted Slaves in the Ancient Greek World, Leiden.

PART II

FREEDPEOPLE IN A SLAVE SOCIETY

CHAPTER TWO

LIBERTI AND LIBERTAS: A CALL FOR CIVIC FREEDOM* Valentina Arena

According to Cicero, writing in 56 BC, in the Roman state ‘there have always been two categories of men who have endeavoured to participate in public affairs and in doing so to distinguish themselves in them. Of these two categories, one desired to be deemed—and actually to be—populares (‘Friends of the People’); the other, optimates (‘The Best’). Those who wished their words and deeds to be agreeable to the masses were considered populares; however, those who conducted themselves so that their policies might win the approval of the best citizens were considered optimates.’1 From 70 BC, when the tribunate of the plebs, the magistracy traditionally used by the populares to obstruct the senate’s supremacy of the optimates, reacquired its full powers, the tug-of-war between those defending the status quo and those demanding for change newly invigorated. During this political battle, the populares revived one of their traditional political claims concerning the distribution of freedmen throughout the Roman thirty-five tribes. As in the previous centuries, they encountered strong opposition from the optimates. The issue at stake was the measure of the political inclusion of freedmen in the civic community. It was one of extreme importance since the re-distribution of freedmen would have altered the composition of the voting units in Roman assemblies. In the first century BC freed slaves made up a considerable percentage of the Roman population * I would like to thank Michael H. Crawford for his constant interest in my research and for useful discussions on this topic and William Stenhouse for reading this manuscript. References to the primary ancient sources in the footnotes follow the traditional rules of classical scholarship. For the convenience of the general reader the abbreviations are resolved and translated at the end of this chapter. 1 Cic. Sest. 96. The populares and the optimates shared the same social background: the ancient sources identify as populares those members of the ruling class who opposed the self-defined optimates. About the optimates’ and populares’ nature and characteristics see Tatum 1999, 1–16, and most recently Suárez Piñeiro 2004.

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and some of these were men of great wealth. By allowing them to vote in the tribe in which their former owners were registered, they could upset the carefully crafted supremacy of the senate as a whole. The risk of the senate losing control of the voting process was too much to bear for the optimates. If, on the other hand, the voting of freedmen could be maintained to the four urban tribes, their political influence would continue to be of little impact. Since the voting system required a victory in a majority of the thirty-five tribes, the preponderance of freedmen votes in the four urban tribes would never give them enough leverage to carry through one of their political objectives.2 Although scholarly interest has primarily focused on the political impact of this reform on the Roman Republican system, the political ideas professed in order to sustain or to oppose this measure have been largely neglected.3 It is extremely important to note that in advocating the freedmen’s distribution throughout the thirty-five tribes not only did the populares claim to be acting in the name of the democratic concept of libertas (‘freedom’), but also, more interestingly, that the optimates, in fiercely opposing this proposal, professed the same principle. The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the nature of the connection between the optimates’ claim in support of the political value of freedom and their actual opposition to the distribution of freedmen throughout the thirty-five Roman tribes. It will focus on the period between 70 BC, when the tribunes of the plebs regained the power of proposing legislation, and 52 BC, the date of Pompey’s consulship sine collega (‘without a colleague in office’), which in many ways signals the actual end of the Roman Republic.4 The facts, as far as we can reconstruct them, are as follows: at the end of 67 the tribune Cornelius handed over one of his politi2 For the economic conditions of freedmen see Dio 51, 10, 4; Appian, BC 4, 34, 146; examples in Treggiari 1969, 239f. See also Brunt 1971, 121f.; Wiedemann 1985, 168; Patterson 1991, 235–6. The enrolment of freedmen in only four of the thirty-five tribes strongly reduced, or at least so it was thought, their influence in the comitia tributa (‘tribal assembly’). As for the controversial matter of the freedmen’s inscription in the centuriae see Ross Taylor 1960, 132–149; Treggiari 1969, 166–7; Brunt 1971, 24, n. 2; Nicolet 1980, 227–230; Fabre 1981, 134–138; Mouritsen 2001, 94, n. 9. In any case, the comitia centuriata (‘centuriate assembly’) were probably affected in some ways by a reform which, from the third century BC, correlated centuriae and territorial tribus (‘tribes’). 3 Amongst the few exceptions are Brunt 1988, 338–342; Wiseman 1994, esp. 337 f. 4 For my methodological approach I follow Skinner 2002.

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cal projects to C. Manilius, who would be entering his tribunate on December 10.5 This project was the restoration of P. Sulpicius’ law (repealed by Sulla) of allowing freedmen to vote in the tribe of their patron, rather than being confined to the four urban tribes.6 Thinking to exploit the absence of consular opposition, Manilius, as soon as he entered his office, pushed through the bill regarding freedmen’s votes. In order to achieve his aim, not only did he pick as the day for the vote the festival of the Compitalia, when, according to Roman law, no voting assemblies could meet, but also did he not allow the full statutory period to elapse between the promulgation of the law and the voting on it.7 The Compitalia usually saw the participation of many slaves and freedmen, so it is not difficult to believe the ancient sources when they report that a crowd of slaves as well as freedmen supported Manilius’ proposal and blocked off access to the Forum.8 Violence begets violence and the new quaestor felt entitled to repress the uprising with a gang of his own, killing many adherents of Manilius who were, in the eyes of everyone, in the wrong.9 On the first day of the new year the senate, as soon as it was informed of the event, declared the law invalid.10 Manilius, left on his own, tried to blame Crassus or some other well-regarded politician for the tactical fiasco and, in order to regain his popularity, turned towards Pompey by proposing to grant him the command of the war against Mithridates.11 In the end the optimates took their revenge: as soon as Manilius left his office, they tried him for extortion.12 Immediately after, they also accused Cornelius, the tribune of 67 and closely connected with Manilius and the proposal of freedmen’s distribution, of treason for offences committed during his tribunate.13 In this way the first populares’ attempt, after Sulla’s resignation as dictator in 79, to distribute the freedmen throughout all the tribes found its inconclusive end.

5

Cic. Corn. I, fr. 14Cr. Dio 36, 42, 2. 7 Cic. Corn. I, fr. 15Cr.; Ascon. 65C. 8 Ascon. 45C. On the Compitalia, cf. Dion. Hal., Ant Rom. 4, 14, 4; Fraschetti 1990, 192–250. 9 Ascon. 45C; cf. Cic. Mil. 22. 10 See Heikkilä 1993, 139. 11 Ascon. 65C; Dio 36, 42, 3–4. 12 On the vexed question of Manilius’ trials see Crawford 1994, 33–38. 13 For the charge of maiestas minuta populi Romani (‘diminution of the majesty of 6

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Although the state of the ancient evidence makes it very difficult to recover the exact appeal to political ideas made by the optimates in their opposition to this measure, the fragments of Cicero’s orations delivered in defence of Cornelius offer an opportunity to identify some themes and outline their use.14 To a certain extent, the political debate was transferred to the courts. Cicero tried to convince the jurors that Cornelius had fulfilled the exacting duties of a tribune wisely and responsibly, to the benefit of the res publica (‘the commonwealth’). The members of the jury, therefore, should not let themselves be drawn into hatred for the tribunate only because of the temeritas (‘temerity’) that characterised Manilius’ tenure of the office.15 His client Cornelius, Cicero says, did not have anything in common with Manilius: He [the prosecutor] says that Cornelius gave out to C. Manilius the law on the franchise of sons of freedmen. “Gave out”? Does it mean “brought forth”, “proposed”, “supported”? To mean brought forth seems silly, as if it were a law difficult to write or requiring great intellectual effort: in fact this law was both set down and passed during these few years.16

It was simply ridiculous, runs Cicero’s defence, to charge Cornelius for his alleged involvement in the formulation of the law on freedman suffrage presented later by Manilius. As Asconius explains in his commentary on this passage, anyone who wanted to propose such a law would not have found it difficult either to formulate it or to bring it forward since he could simply have followed Sulpicius’ project of 88.17 At the same time the position in which Cicero found himself was not an easy one: he himself had given strong support to the law proposed by Manilius which conferred special powers on Pompey in the war against Mithridates in the East and, although with some reluctance, he had agreed to defend Manilius. Cicero was walking on delicate ground, trying to condemn the most seditious and therefore unacceptable acts carried out by Manilius, and with which the Roman people’), which could be deployed against any form of treason, revolt, or failure in public duty, see Bauman 1967. 14 Not much can be inferred from the Ciceronian pro Manilio whose only line is preserved by Nonius (de comp. doctr. 700.22L). 15 Cic. Corn. I, fr. 47Cr. 16 Cic. Corn. I, fr. 14Cr. 17 Ascon. 64C.

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Cornelius had nothing to do, and at the same time to avoid dismissing Manilius’ tribunate in its entirety. Cicero’s argument was as follows: there was some good in Manilius’ tribunate, which deserved attention and also praise, but this was accompanied by other policies which were extremely detrimental to the Republic, such as the disruption of the courts and the distribution of freedmen throughout the thirty-five tribes, from which both Cicero and his client were clearly distancing themselves.18 It was because of Manilius’ conduct during his tribunate that people now looked with suspicion on this office. Cicero argues, instead, that the tribunate was an institution of great benefit to the state, subject to the wisdom of the politician in whose charge it was. Cornelius had been a very good tribune and to be a very good tribune meant to support libertas and to act in its name.19 The jurors, in fact, were urged to choose libertas and not to abandon Cornelius to the hatred of a few, which would have meant abandoning not only the ex-tribune, but themselves and the entire Republic, to the most cruel and miserable tyranny.20 Thus, throughout the entire peroratio the underlying notion is present that not only Cornelius’ liberty was at stake, but the freedom of the Roman people themselves.21 To defend this liberty meant to vote in favour of Cornelius, who, as Cicero had shown, had been a wise and competent tribune. He had nothing in common with the controversial tribune Manilius, who dared to re-propose the same seditious law on libertinorum suffragium (‘the voting rights of freedmen’) brought forward by Sulpicius in 88.22 To oppose Manilius’ tribunate, 18

Cic. Corn. I, fr. 17Cr; Ascon. 65C. Sall. Hist. 3, 48, 12M: vis tribunicia telum a maioribus libertati paratum (‘the tibunician power, a weapon fashioned by our ancestors to defend freedom’); Cic. leg. ag. 2, 15: tr. pl. quem maiores praesidem libertatis custodemque esse voluerunt (‘a tribune of the plebs, a magistrate whom our ancestors intended to be the protector and guardian of liberty’); Liv. 3, 37, 5: tribuniciam potestatem munimentum libertati (‘the tribunician power (their bulwark of liberty’); Diod. Sic. 12, 25, 2: ‘In the end all were won over and a mutual agreement was reached as follows: that ten tribunes should be elected who should wield the highest authority among the magistrates of the state and should act as guardians of the freedom of the citizens’. 20 Cic. Corn. II fr. 12Cr.: quam diligentes libertatis vos oporteat esse; Cic. Corn. II fr. 10Cr.: si vos huius fortunas paucorum odio adiudicaveritis; Cic. Corn. II fr. 11Cr.: ad miserrimum crudelissimumque dominatum dedi patiamini. 21 Kumaniecki 1972, 32–33, points out that Cicero does not use this argument only in the pro Cornelio II. In the final part of the oration pro Murena (83) he similarly argues that the safety and the preservation of the Republic was in the jury’s hands, on which the future of the state was dependent. 22 Ascon. 80C. 19

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or at least this part of his policies, was an act of liberty, as it was an act of liberty to support Cornelius. Thus, although none of the preserved fragments directly indicates it, it is possible to infer that Cicero and the numerous optimates who supported Cornelius at the trial (who was eventually acquitted by a large majority) presented fierce opposition to the measure on the distribution of freedmen in the name of libertas.23 This is not the same as to argue that Cicero firmly believed in what he said, and even less that Cornelius’ trial worked as a stage on which a battle of political ideas was fought out. This is a trial of which only the defence speeches have survived; their author was the advocate whose principal aim was, of course, to win his case and obtain the acquittal of his client. But the point is that exactly for this reason Cicero had to use arguments which were considered believable, were common currency and could, in the end, attain consensus. Although twisted according to the speaker’s needs, during Cornelius’ defence political principles were in action. According to these principles, to defend Cornelius was an act of libertas. Analogously, it was an act of libertas to oppose what Cornelius had rejected, or had, at least, been unconnected with: the proposal for the distribution of freedmen throughout the thirty-five tribes. Two other attempts to re-propose this reform, mentioned in modern accounts, seem in reality to be quite doubtful. The first one, dated to 63 BC, was allegedly proposed by Servius Sulpicius Rufus.24 Unfortunately, the only reference to this measure derives from a corrupt passage in the pro Murena, a speech delivered by Cicero in 63. Cicero, addressing Sulpicius who had accused Murena of bribery, says: You demanded a random order of voting for centuries . . . of Manilius’ law, the equal distribution of influence, prestige, and voting-power (confusionem suffragiorum flagitasti, † praerogationum legis Maniliae, † aequationem gratiae, dignitatis, suffragiorum). Men of standing, influential in their neighbourhoods and towns, objected to a man such as you fighting to remove all distinctions of prestige and influence.

Some codices report prorogationem as a correction of the manuscripts’ praerogationum. This reading has been followed by Zumpt who takes

23 24

Ascon. 61C. Cf. Cic. Vat. 6. Meloni 1946.

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it to mean an extension of time of the application of the Manilian law on freedmen, originally passed for only one day. Mommsen proposed the currently most accepted emendation perrogationem, suggesting that the reading of the manuscripts is the result of an interpolation by a scholiast.25 After Nicolet’s study on the confusio suffragiorum (a random ballot order of the voting units of the centuriae), modern accounts tend to assume that what Cicero’s passage implies is that Sulpicius Rufus, concerned with curbing bribery, not only re-proposed the Gracchan project of changing the criteria by which the centuriae were chosen and tried to guarantee the prosecutors the right of selecting jury panels, but also brought forward a revival of Manilius’ attempt of distributing the freedmen throughout the thirty-five tribes.26 On the contrary, according to Ferrary, it seems impossible to imagine that Sulpicius proposed to re-enact a law that had been annulled by the senate after only one day and that would have contributed nothing to Sulpicius’ main concern, the fight against corruption.27 Although there have been various suggestions, a wider consensus has now formed around the impossibility of reconstructing the text and on an interpretation of praerogationum as a corrupted reference to the praerogativa centuria, the first centuria to cast the ballot and whose vote was usually wanted by candidates ready to use bribery to achieve their aims.28 The second doubtful attempt to re-propose the distribution of freedmen throughout the thirty-five tribes is dated to 58 BC. It is based on Asconius’ comment on a passage from the pro Milone.29 There Cicero praises Domitius Ahenobarbus for the contempt that he had always shown towards the populares since his youth: ‘he [Cicero] is referring to the firmness shown by Domitius in his (ms.) praetura. At the time, the tribunus plebis (ms.) M. Manilius, supported by a squad of freedmen and slaves, was proposing a deplorable bill to 25 Mommsen in the apparatus of the Orelli-Baiter-Halm edition (1854). Cf. Val. Max. 1, 2, ext. 1; 8, 6, 4: legem . . . perrogavit. 26 Nicolet 1958, 266–268; Nicolet 1959, 160–162. With extreme caution Gruen 1974, 221. See also Bauman 1985, 19. 27 Ferrary 2001, 178. However, it seems possible to assume that the distribution of freedmen over all thirty-five tribes, the voting-unit in some way connected with centuriae by the first century BC, would have some impact on the voting system, and consequently on the practice of bribery. 28 The connection between praerogationum and praerogativa was first seen by A. C. Clark in the apparatus of his edition (Oxford, 1905). Contra Ryan 1994. 29 Rotondi 1912, 398.

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distribute freedmen’s votes throughout the tribes; there was some disturbance, and Manilius occupied the Capitoline Hill. Then Domitius broke up this gang with many deaths among Manilius’ supporters. These deeds antagonised the mob and gave Domitius much prestige in the senate.’30 Domitius was praetor in 58. Therefore, it seems logical to infer from this passage that a certain M. Manilius, whose name sometimes varies according to the manuscripts, proposed the same law on freedmen voting rights in 58 that was brought forward nine years earlier by another tribune, C. Manilius, who happened to have such a similar name to his. The matter is highly suspicious. P. Manutius, who was the first to recognise the odd coincidence, proposed the correction of praetura in quaestura, an error which could have been due to the confusion between the abbreviations q. = quaestor and pr. = praetor.31 If we accept this emendation, the events to which Asconius is referring have to be ascribed to 67/66, since this was the year in which Domitius would have been quaestor if he held this office when required by law. This reading of the passage would fit well with Cicero’s remark that Domitius had given proof of his disregard towards the populares since he was young (iam ab adulescentia; ‘from his early youth’), given that in 67 Domitius was thirty-one and Cicero, defending Milo in 52, was referring to events of fifteen years earlier.32 Thus, it seems that the hypothesis that this measure on freedmen voting rights was revived in 58 should be rejected. The next project concerning the liberti was part of a well-publicised programme of popularis legislation that Clodius, candidate for the praetorship of 52, was ready to enact as soon as he had entered office.33 The plan seems likely to be the same as the one proposed and actually realised for only one day by Manilius almost fifteen years earlier: to allow freedmen to vote throughout the thirty-five tribes, most probably in the same tribes as their patrons.34 Once again, feelings ran high. In 58 Clodius had passed a law establishing free grain distributions and this measure had caused a great increase in the rate of manumission, since patrons preferred to let 30

Ascon. 45C. Clark 1895, 20. 32 Cf. Badian 1964, 143, according to whom the reference in Asconius’ text was to Cicero’s praetorship which was held in 66. 33 Cic. Mil. 24; Ascon. 30–31C; Sch. Bob. 172St. 34 Cic. Mil. 33. See Treggiari 1969, 50. 31

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the state feed their ex-slaves, of whose services they could still take advantage, rather than waste their own money on their subsistence.35 The four urban tribes were now even more crowded than before with obvious consequences for the political weight of those who had to vote in them. Thus, the political rights of even more people were being unjustly violated. Still, the optimates did not seem to be prepared to grant any concession on this matter. ‘You will not give the right to vote to the people to whom you promise it’, says Cicero to Clodius, neither will you be able to donate ‘that impious liberty’ that you have been flaunting.36 This law, Cicero continues, constitutes such a threat to the res publica that even its refutation would be full of danger.37 Concentrating on Clodius’ actions against the state, Cicero managed to exacerbate even more, if possible, the already bitter political climate. The result was the murder of Clodius by Milo and his gangs before the election for the praetorship was held. Tried for this murder, Milo was defended by Cicero. In doing so, he did not deny that a murder had been committed, but argued that Clodius’ death was deserved and willed by the gods.38 And, of course, he denounced Clodius’ well-known political programme. He depicted as unacceptable the laws that Clodius was planning to implement once in office, ‘if laws they should be called, and not rather firebrands for the city’s doom and plagues for the scourging of the commonwealth, that laws which he intended to inflict upon us, and with the mark of which he hoped to brand us all [as if we were slaves]’39. These laws would have actually made Cicero, the jurymen, his listeners and all the people like them, slaves; they would have forced them to loose their liberty. Cicero goes further in his attack, saying that ‘even then, laws were being engraved at his [Clodius’] house which were to make us over to our slaves (incidebantur iam domi leges, quae nos servis nostris addicerent).’40 Asconius, commenting on this passage, gives his view on 35 Dio 39, 24, 1; cf. Appian, BC 2, 17, 120; Dion. Hal., Ant. Rom. 4, 24, 5; see Brunt 1971, 379–81; Rickman 1980, 174 f.; Flambard 1977. 36 Cic. de aere alieno Milonis, ffr. 17–18 Cr. 37 This fragment, quoted by the scholiast (Sch. Bob. 173St.), is usually not included in the reconstruction of the speech on the ground that it belongs to the delivered speech rather than its published version. Part of it is also quoted by Quint. Inst. 9, 2, 54. Cf. Crawford 1994, 284. 38 Cic. Mil. 72–91. 39 Cic. Mil. 33. 40 Cic. Mil. 87.

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what Cicero is referring to: ‘I think I have mentioned that among Clodius’ proposed legislation there was one measure: this provided that freedmen who hitherto voted in only four tribes should be permitted to vote in the rural tribes also, these being the preserve of freeborn men.’41 To be made slaves of your own slaves, the most degrading of the losses of freedom, was certainly part of the rhetorical exaggeration used by Cicero to impress his audience. Most probably, what Cicero meant was that enrolling freedmen in all the thirty-five tribes, and probably in the same tribes as their patrons, would have subjected him and people like him to be politically controlled by their own freedmen, which meant, in the final analysis, to be outvoted by them in the voting system.42 Clodius, and his followers after his death, pretended to set themselves up as the real wardens of the res publica, holding their legislation as the precious image of Minerva for the preservation of the state.43 Nothing worse, Cicero goes on to argue, could in reality have happened if Clodius’ political programme had been passed: ‘your free constitution would be today a thing of the past.’44 To oppose Clodius’ project of distribution of freedmen throughout the thirty-five Roman tribes was, therefore, an act of liberty; and it was in its name that Cicero and the optimates carried out their policy against the voting rights of Roman citizens. It has been argued that, from the time of the Gracchi, the optimates tried to neutralise every attack made against their supremacy by reacting on a constant basis to the policies elaborated by the populares, but a closer analysis of republican politics reveals that it is possible to draw a more nuanced picture.45 It is not, in fact, quite accurate to say that the optimates opposed any popularis measure that was put forward by their enemies. Numerous instances of agreement or silent acceptance of populares measures on the part of the senate are preserved in our sources.46 Thus, it is important to note that

41

Ascon. 52C. Treggiari 1969, 50. 43 Cic. Mil. 33. 44 Cic. Mil. 89. 45 Serrao 1970, 530. 46 Cornelius’ law on the praetor’s edicts in 67 (Ascon. 59C), Manilius’ law on Pompey’s command of the war against Mithridates in 66 and Cato’s lex frumentaria (‘grain law’) in 62 (Plut. Cat. Min. 26, 1; Caes. 8, 4) are only few amongst numerous examples. 42

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amongst the whole range of different matters raised by the populares there were some issues that consistently recurred in optimates’ defence of their supremacy, and the freedmen enrolment throughout the thirty-five tribes was one of them. Although the reconstruction of the political debate concerning this measure is quite difficult, it is possible to assert not only that during the first century BC the optimates followed a specific policy of opposition to the freedmen’s distribution, but also that they did so consistently through advocating, or at least referring to, the principle of libertas. This was an extremely positive value to apply to anyone’s behaviour and one with a clear, although rather articulated, meaning.47 Adopting the famous terminological distinction introduced by Berlin between positive and negative freedom, it is possible to assert that for a Roman citizen—and a freedman at Rome was a Roman citizen48—libertas involved in the first place the negative notion of freedom from personal abuse ( provocatio and ius auxilii ) and the positive notion of civic freedom to participate in the political life of the community.49 None of the populares did accept the optimates’ profession of liberty, but they all agreed on the meaning of the term in its positive connotations. They all agreed that libertas was a fundamental tenet of the identity of the Roman republic, shared by all its members: ‘justice, law, liberty, and the republic must be ours to use in common; glory and honour belong to each man who has won them,’ said Cato less than one hundred years prior to the events under consideration.50 Along the same lines, Cicero could assert ‘it

47 The difficulty of defining ancient libertas has often resulted in the assertion of its vagueness (from Syme 1939, 155 to, more recently, Mouritsen 2001, 12). On the contrary, some modern scholars such as Ferrary 1982, 764–5 and Perelli 1990, 76, have reached the conclusion that there existed, on the two sides of the political battle of the first century BC, two different concepts of libertas, one optimate and one popularis. In any case, the search for the meaning of libertas should be analysed in its specific socio-political context; working on the assumption that the political debate was sensible and effective, the different actors must have shared a common understanding of libertas. 48 Freedmen could be affected by some legal disabilities, but this did not diminish their status as citizens. For a succinct but comprehensive list of such disabilities see Borkowski and du Plessis 2005. 49 Berlin 1969, 118–172. On provocatio (‘the right to appeal a decision of a magistrate when that decision has a negative impact on a citizen’) and ius auxilii (‘the right to protect the plebs from arbitrary decisions reached by magistrates’) see Brunt 1988, 330–334. 50 Malcovati 1955, 96.

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is to glory and to liberty we were born’; and later ‘other nations can endure slavery: the assured possession of the Roman people is liberty.’51 Livy remarked: ‘only those who took no thought for anything save liberty were worthy of becoming Romans’52 and ‘the Roman people does not exist under a tyranny but in liberty.’53 By refusing the right to vote to the liberti throughout all the Roman tribes, the optimates could not deny that they were committing a patent injustice, acting against one of the people’s rights: the positive liberty which included the ius suffragii.54 This political behaviour would have well deserved the label of dominatio, the most common accusation addressed by populares against the optimates.55 Dominatio was a very negative accusation, and conveyed the notion of the power of a factio, a group of politicians primarily interested in achieving their own interests. To be accused of establishing a dominatio meant to be accused of imposing the will of own one’s group, that is, to behave in such a way that the interest of a sectarian part of society would prevail over others. This political behaviour was considered immoral, almost of doubtful legality and, above all, potentially disruptive for the existence of the republic itself. The corruption of government, introduced by the optimates’ factional lead of the state, would have inevitably led to the corruption of society, of its justice and its mutual advantage for all its components. The optimates were aware of this and did not immediately try to deny being engaged in a political course of action that could ‘rightly’ be described as imposing dominatio. This accusation, although it did not mean the establishment of an oligarchic form of government, was certainly a very negative notion, and was perceived as such by all politicians.56 It was therefore essential for the optimates to try to offer a different spin on their political behaviour in an attempt to legitimate their obstruction to the distribution of the freedmen throughout the thirty51

Cic. Phil. 3, 36; 6, 19. Cf. Cic. Verr. 2, 5, 163. Livy 8, 21, 9. 53 Livy 2, 15, 3. 54 In 169 BC a plan to remove the freedmen from all the tribes and thus deprive them of the vote was abandoned on the objection that it was tantamount to taking away their citizenship as well as their liberty, cf. Livy 45, 15, 3–6. For libertas in the sense of voting rights cf. Cic. Rep. 1, 43; 47. On the voting rights of the freedmen, see Millar 1995. 55 Hellegouarc’h 1972, 562–3. 56 Wirszubski 1950, 17–24; Hellegouarc’h 1972, 99–109. See also Arena forthcoming. 52

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five Roman tribes. The tactic adopted by the optimates was to refer to an already accepted political principle as an alleged motive for engaging in this political battle and, at the same time, as mark of their own opposition. In attempting to do so, Cicero and the other optimates recurred to the principle of libertas. They referred to this widely accepted political concept, a central value of Roman identity, to re-describe in positive terms their political behaviour, in order to confer it legitimacy. Thus, the optimates tried to exhibit a plausible relationship between the political principle of liberty and their actual course of political actions, even if they were not really motivated by, and did not really believe in it at all. What was essential for the optimates was to make it plausible that their apparently immoral and dangerous opposition was in reality motivated by the value of liberty, and as such could be properly presented as an act in its name. If they were successful in this operation, they could then hope at least to override the unfavourable interpretation given to their opposition to the freedmen’s distribution in all the tribes. No one of the Roman politicians, not even one of the populares, would have dared to rank the temporary prevalence of the interest of a sectarian part of society higher than the preservation of Roman liberty, that is to say no one would have dared to rank the confinement of the freedmen in the four urban tribes higher than the preservation of the state itself.57 It is in this choice that the optimates’ master-stroke lies. It was the appeal to this political value that allowed them to show that the populares, bringing forward the proposal regarding the freedmen’s distribution, were acting against liberty. This policy, according to the most democratic beliefs that formed part of the political thought of the first century BC, could be represented as jeopardising Roman libertas. If, therefore, according to popularis tradition about political liberty, the populares’ proposal could be made to look like a threat to libertas, the optimates could claim that opposing it was an act in defence of liberty. The most important years for the formation in Rome of democratic ideas about political liberty were those of the last quarter of the second century BC.58 Originated in Greece, the idea of liberty 57 On the coincidence between libertas and res publica, cf. Wirszubski 1950, 3–6. I am deeply indebted to Skinner 2002. 58 Cf. Ferrary 1982, 765.

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triumphed in Rome thanks to two essential phenomena: the re-development of the conditions that initially generated freedom, large-scale slavery, and the cultural influence of Greek views on liberty.59 The diffusion in the second half of the second century of the philosophical ideas of the so-called early Stoa had a strong influence in the democratic elaboration of the notion of political liberty. Widely spread amongst the members of the Roman elite, it seemed to have substantiated the more radical ideological tradition behind the Gracchan reforms.60 It was from this political and ideological experience that the democratic idea of liberty was re-shaped and transformed into the special conception of freedom held by the populares in the first century BC.61 This is not the place to discuss the existence of popularis ideology.62 It is, however, possible to assert that philosophy played an active role in the life of Roman politicians through the language in which political choices were analysed and justifications were framed. ‘The doctrines of the dogmatic sects were too complex to provide definite directives on particular occasions. But they provided the moral vocabulary for weighing alternatives and justifying decisions.’63 Given the state of our evidence, to trace the history of this popularis libertas by which the optimates justified their opposition to the equalising of freedmen’s voting rights is a very difficult, but not an impossible, task. According to Chrysippus, one of the most authoritative representatives of the Early-Stoa, only the wise, who are free and know what is good and what is bad, can be the holders of public offices, judges and orators. Thus, once the notion of inherited exclusiveness of virtue was removed (since it was possible to acquire such virtue through training), this view was able to support a brand of radical politics which advocated the removal of the fools in control of the body politic, and encouraged the destruction of the traditional system. What was essentially implied was that if the wise were the free, all the unwise and wicked were the real slaves. ‘That is, the Cynics and

59 On the relevance of slavery for the formulation of the concept of freedom see Pohlenz 1966; Raaflaub 2004. 60 Patterson 1991, 264–290. On the influence of Stoicism on the political reforms enacted by the Gracchi, cf. Dudley 1941; Nicolet 1965. 61 Patterson 1991, 270. 62 Martin 1965, 216f.; Vanderbroeck 1987, 32; Mackie 1992; Pina Polo 1994; Tatum 1999, 7–11. 63 Griffin 1989, 36.

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Stoics used the concept of freedom to propose and recommend an alternative ground of moral and social distinction and not as a means of abolishing all distinctions between people.’64 This is explicitly stated in Chrysippus’ work On Zeno’s proper use of terminology: ‘only he [the wise man] is free, but the inferior are slaves. For freedom is the power of autonomous action, but slavery is the lack of autonomous action. There is also a different slavery which consists in subordination, and a third consisting in possession as well as subordination.’65 Therefore there existed a type of slavery that was different from being owned and signified a ‘subordinate’, inferior position in society. This is further clarified by Chrysippus in book 2 of his work On concord: ‘there is a difference between a slave and a servant: freedmen are still slaves, but those who have not been released from ownership are servants.’66 And Zeno was strongly criticised for ‘presenting only virtuous people in his Republic as citizens, friends, relations and free.’67 According to this brand of Stoicism, which constitutes the main core of the popularis conception of libertas, political liberty is assured if the wise are in power, since they are free, because they themselves are the divine spirit, the essence of living according to nature. The freedmen, instead, are slaves, and as such they have a subordinate position in society. To subvert this natural order, as the populares were trying to do with their proposals on the distribution of liberti throughout all the tribes, would have meant to act against liberty itself. The freedmen were not slaves any more, after all they were cives Romani (‘Roman citizens’), but their subordinate position in society should have left them confined to the four urban tribes regardless of their place of domicile. Thus, having highlighted that according to the political tradition inherited by the Roman politicians on popularis libertas, the changing of freedmen’s voting system could be presented as jeopardising the value of liberty itself, it is possible to trace out the nature of the 64

Mulgan 1984, 10. Diog. Laert. 7, 121–2, quoted from Long and Sedley 1987, vol. I, 430–1, and commentary ad loc. 66 Athenaeus 267B, quoted from Long and Sedley 1987, vol. I, 431 and commentary ad loc. 67 Diog. Laert. 7, 32–33, quoted from Long and Sedley 1987, vol. I, 430 and commentary ad loc. 65

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connection between the principle of libertas for the sake of which the optimates claimed to be acting, and the actual political action of opposing the distribution of the liberti in all the thirty-five tribes. Firstly it is possible to explain why the optimates consistently opposed this political reform. According to the political theory inherited by the populares, one of the policies most liable to undermine political liberty was to allow the inferior to be free, to have an equal position in society and eventually, in the most unfortunate cases, to hold some offices (although this was not allowed to the freedmen of the first generation). The optimates chose to focus on opposing this proposal because they perceived that this would make it possible to imply that what the populares were doing or hoping to do in distributing the liberti in all the tribes could be described as a case of destroying liberty by giving power to inferiors. Secondly, it is possible to explain why it was the principle of libertas that was professed by the optimates. They advocated this political value so as to imply to the populares that their own policy on the liberti was one of those reforms known to every politician as liable to endanger the concept of popularis libertas. Therefore it was consequential that opposing this specific policy was to be for the preservation of libertas, and by this principle the optimates could then assert to be genuinely motivated in their political action. This claim provided them with the justification that they needed if they wanted to be able to pursue ‘constitutionally’ dangerous policies such as depriving Roman citizens (because this is what freedmen were at Rome) of equal voting-rights to any other citizens.

Abbreviations of ancient authors and their works Appian, BC = Appian, The Civil Wars. Ascon. = Asconius, Commentaries on five speeches of Cicero, edited with a translation by Simon Squires, Wauconda, Ill. 1990. Athenaeus = Athenaeus of Naucratis, The Deipnosophists [‘The Philosophers at Dinner’]. Cic. de aere alieno Milonis = Cicero, Speech in defence of Milo on borrowing money. Cic. Corn. I = Cicero, Speech in defence of Cornelius I, cf. Crawford 1994. Cic. Corn. II = Cicero, Speech in defence of Cornelius II, cf. Crawford 1994. Cic. Leg. ag. = Cicero, Speech on the agrarian law. Cic. Mil. = Cicero, Speech in defence of Milo. Cic. Phil. = Cicero, Philippics. Cic. Rep. = Cicero, De republica [‘On the state’]. Cic. Sest. = Cicero, Speech in defence of Publius Sestius. Cic. Vat. = Cicero, Speech against Vatinius.

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Cic. Verr. = Cicero, The Speeches against Verres. Dio = Dio Cassius, Roman History. Diod. Sic. = Diodorus Siculus [Diodorus the Sicilian], World History. Diog. Laert. = Diogenes Laertius, On the lives of the philosophers. Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. = Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities. Liv. = Livy, The History of Rome from its Foundation. Non. de comp. doctr. = Nonius Marcellus, de compendiosa doctrina per litteras ad filium [‘A brief outline in letters to his son’]. Plut. Caes. = Plutarch, Life of Caesar. Plut. Cat. Min. = Plutarch, Life of Cato the Younger. Quint. Inst. = Quintilian, Institutio oratoria [‘The training of the orator’]. Sall. Hist. = Sallust, The Histories. Sch. Bob. = Scholia Bobiensia. Val. Max. = Valerius Maximus, Memorable Deeds and Sayings.

Bibliography Arena, V. forthcoming. Libertas and the Practice of Politics in the Late Roman Republic. Badian, E. 1964. Studies in Greek and Roman History, Oxford. Bauman, R. A. 1967. The Crimen Maiestatis in the Roman Republic and Augustan Principate, Johannesburg. —— 1985. Lawyers in Roman transitional politics: A Study of the Roman Jurists in their Political Setting in the Late Republic and Triumvirate, Munich. Berlin, I. 1969. Four Essays on Liberty, London/Oxford/New York. Borkowski, A. and P. du Plessis 2005. Textbook on Roman Law, rev. 3rd ed. Oxford. Brunt, P.A. 1971. Italian Manpower, 225 BC–AD 14, Oxford. —— 1988. The Fall of the Roman Republic, Oxford. Clark, A. (ed.) 1895. M. Tulli Ciceronis Pro T. Annio Milone: ad iudices oratio (with introduction and commentary), Oxford. Crawford, J. 1994. M. Tullius Cicero. The Fragmentary Speeches, Atlanta. Dudley, D. R. 1941. ‘Blossius of Cumae’, Journal of Roman Studies 31, 92–9. Fabre, G. 1981. Libertus. Recherches sur les rapports patron-affranchi à la fin de la république romaine, Rome. Ferrary, J.-L. 1982. ‘Le idee politiche a Roma nell’epoca repubblicana’, L. Firpo (ed.), Storia delle idee politiche economiche e sociali, Turin, vol. I, 723–95. —— 2001. ‘La législation ‘de ambitu’ de Sulla à Auguste’, Iuris Vincula: Studi in onore di Mario Talamanca, Naples, 159–198. Flambard, J.-M. 1977. ‘Clodius, les collèges, la plèbe et les esclaves. Recherches sur la politique populaire au milieu du Ier siècle’, Mélanges de l’école française de Rome: Antiquité 89, 115–156. Fraschetti, A. 1990. Roma e il principe, Bari-Roma. Griffin, M. 1989. ‘Philosophy, politics, and politicians at Rome’, M. Griffin and J. Barnes (eds.), Philosophia Togata. Essays on Philosophy and Roman Society, Oxford, 1–38. Gruen, E. S. 1974. The Last Generation of the Roman Republic, Berkely, Los Angeles, London. Heikkilä, K. 1993. ‘Lex non iure rogata: senate and the annulment of laws in the Late Republic’, U. Paananen, K. Heikkilä, K. Sandberg, L. Savunen, J. Vaahtera (eds.), Senatus Populusque Romanus: Studies in Roman Republican Legislation, Acta Instituti Romani Finlandiae 13, Rome, 117–42.

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Hellegouarc’h, J. 1972. Le vocabulaire latin des relations et des partis politique sous la république, Paris, 2nd ed. Kumaniecki, K. 1970. ‘Les discours égarés de Cicéron pro Cornelio’, Mededelingen van de Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, 32, 4, 3–36. Long, A. A. and D. N. Sedley (eds.) 1987. The Hellenistic Philosophers, 2 vols., Cambridge. Mackie, N. 1992. ‘Popularis ideology and popular politics at Rome in the first century BC’, Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 135, 49–73. Malcovati, H. 1955. Oratorum Romanorum Fragmenta Liberae Rei Publicae, Turin/Milan, 2nd edition. Martin, J. 1965. Die Popularen in der Geschichte der späten Republik, Freiburg. Meloni, P. 1946. ‘Servio Sulpicio Rufo e i suoi tempi’, Annali della Facoltà di Lettere, Filosofia e Magistero della Università di Cagliari 13, 67–245. Millar, F. 1995. ‘The Roman libertus and the civic freedom’, Arethusa 28, 99–105. Mouritsen, H. 2001. Plebs and Politics in the Late Roman Republic, Cambridge. Mulgan, R. 1984. ‘Liberty in Ancient Greece’, J. Gray and P. Z. Pelczynski (eds.), Conceptions of Liberty in Political Philosophy, London, 7–27. Nicolet, C. 1958. ‘Le sénat et les amendements aux lois à la fin de la République’, Revue historique de droit français et étranger 36, 260–75. —— 1959. ‘‘Confusio suffragiorum’. A propos d’une réforme électorale de Caius Gracchus’, Mélanges de l’école française de Rome: Antiquité 71, 145–210. —— 1965. ‘L’inspiration de Tibérius Gracchus’, Revue des études anciennes 67, 142–58. —— 1980. The World of the Citizen in Republican Rome, London. Patterson, O. 1991. Freedom in the Making of Western Culture, London. Perelli, L. 1990. Il pensiero politico di Cicerone, Florence. Pina Polo, F. 1994. ‘Ideología y prática política en la Roma tardorrepubblicana’, Gerión 12, 69–94. Pohlenz, M. 1966. Freedom in Greek Life and Thought: The History of an Ideal, Dordrecht. Raaflaub, K. 2004. The Discovery of Freedom in Ancient Greece, revised and updated edition, Chicago-London. Rickman, G. 1980. The Corn Supply of Ancient Rome, Oxford. Ross Taylor, L. 1960. The Voting Districts of the Roman Republic, Rome. Rotondi, G. 1912. Leges Publicae Populi Romani, Milan. Ryan, F. X. 1994. ‘Cicero, Mur. 47: text and meaning’, Gymnasium 101, 481–482. Serrao, F. 1970. ‘I partiti politici nella repubblica romana’, in Ricerche in memoria di C. Barbagallo, Naples, vol. I, 503–37. Skinner, Q. 2002. ‘Augustan party politics and Renaissance constitutional thought’, Id. (ed.), Visions of Politics, vol. 2, Cambridge, 344–367. Suárez Piñeiro, A.M. 2004. La crisis de la República Romana (133–44 a. C.): La alternativa politica de los populares, Verín-Santiago. Syme, R. 1939. The Roman Revolution, Oxford. Tatum, W.J. 1999. The Patrician Tribune Publius Clodius Pulcher, Chapel Hill and London. Treggiari, S. 1969. Roman Freedmen during the Late Republic, Oxford. Vanderbroeck, P. J. J. 1987. Popular Leadership and Collective Behaviour in the Late Roman Republic (ca. 80–50), Amsterdam. Wiedemann, T. 1985. ‘The regularity of manumission at Rome’, Classical Quarterly 35, 162–75. Wirszubski, C. 1950. Libertas as a Political Idea at Rome during the Late Republic and Early Principate, Cambridge. Wiseman, T. P. 1994. ‘The senate and the populares’, Cambridge Ancient History, vol. IX, London, 327–367.

CHAPTER THREE

FREED SLAVES, SELF-PRESENTATION AND CORPORATE IDENTITY IN THE ROMAN WORLD Marc Kleijwegt

When a Roman citizen freed one of his slaves it was the rule that, barring certain circumstances, the latter automatically acquired Roman citizenship.1 Thus, through a simple act a slave was transformed from property to a subject of rights.2 This custom stood in strong contrast to the procedure adopted in the Greek world, where slaves became ‘metics’, that is, foreigners, rather than citizens.3 Understandably, the Roman attitude toward manumission astounded Greek writers, and the latter felt compelled to represent it as a process that was quickly spinning out of control.4 Furthermore, manumission in the Roman world was a common occurrence, although it is not easy to quantify the frequency of the phenomenon.5 In contrast to New World slavery, Roman slavery was not exclusively based on skin colour. To 1

Finley 1985, 97; Gardner 1993, 7–52. For my present purposes it hardly matters that not all freedmen received full citizenship rights; what is important is that all categories of freed slaves were automatically granted the right to wear the Roman toga, the ultimate mark of a Roman citizen. For manumitted slaves who did not receive full citizenship, cf. Weaver 1990. 3 This had important implications, and not only in the political sphere. Metics could not own property or land, although this did not stop some of them from becoming wealthy. In the long run, however, the legal disabilites of the metics could only be overcome if they managed to be awarded citizenship for their services to the state. The privilege was and remained rare. For the position of metics in Athenian society, cf. Whitehead 1977; for freedmen in Classical Greece, cf. Klees 2000; Zelnick-Abramovitz 2005. 4 The attacks themselves have not survived but their nature can be inferred from the way in which Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Roman Antiquities 4, 24), who wrote and lived in Rome under the emperor Augustus, felt compelled to defend the Roman point of view. He deplores the contemporary trend of manumitting slaves indiscriminately, thus adding to the criminal character of Rome, but finds the practice just if it is the reward for good conduct. 5 Cf. Alföldy 1972; 1981; Wiedemann 1985. Wiedemann appears to be correct in his assertion that the epigraphic evidence tends to over-represent freed slaves who had strong reasons to engage in self-commemoration. Consequently, epigraphy is not a reliable statistical guide to the frequency of manumission. 2

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freed slaves this presented the fortunate corollary that they did not stand out in a crowd and could escape detection while merging with the freeborn population. For most Roman slaves, however, freedom came only late in life, and when it came it was filled with ambiguity.6 The ultimate reward of freedom turned ex-slaves into Roman citizens, but also imposed on them a set of obligations towards their former owners. These could take the form of a stipulated number of days to provide labour, or restraints on the choice of a marriage partner.7 Or, in the specific case of slaves trained as physicians, the stipulation could be added to move to another town so as not to provide competition for the patron.8 The most important restriction, however, was in the field of testamentary freedom. Here the number of (freeborn) children determined how much of his property the freedman had to leave to his former owner, or his/her heir(s).9 Given the fact that, once manumitted, freedmen were in their thirties or older, the possibility of raising a family of three or more freeborn children seems limited (but not impossible), especially since most ex-slaves had partners whom they had met in slavery and to whom they remained faithful. Freed slaves, moreover, had very few possibilities for social advancement. All status-groups as well as the most prestigious state priesthoods were closed to them. They were prohibited from serving in the Roman army and could only enlist with the vigiles, the firebrigades of seven thousand men formed in AD 6 by the emperor Augustus.10 In the communities of the Roman West their only oppor-

6 The minimum age for lawful manumission was thirty for the slave and twenty for the manumitter, cf. Gaius, Inst. 1, 17; 1, 36–8. This does not mean that slaves below the age of thirty could not be manumitted. The procedure did require proof of just cause for manumission and manumission by vindicta in order for the slave to acquire Roman citizenship; otherwise only freedom would be acquired, cf. Watson 1987, 30. Situations which would qualify for such a procedure were close personal service, blood relationship, or an intention on the part of the master to marry his freedwoman, cf. Gardner 1993, 39–41. It is assumed that the majority of freedmen were much older than thirty when they were freed. 7 Cf. Waldstein 1986; Andreau 1993, 181–2. 8 Dig. 38, 1, 26 (Alfenus Varus); cf. Andreau 1993, 181. 9 If a freedman owning more than 100,000 sesterces had only one child, he had to leave one half of his property to his patron, or his heir; if he had two sons, then the amount was reduced to one third. Only in the case that the freedman had three or more freeborn children was his property exempt; cf. Gaius, Inst. 3, 39–76; Andreau 1993, 183. 10 Dio Cassius, Roman History, 55, 26; cf. Sablayrolles 1996.

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tunity for gaining public status was by serving as priests of the imperial cult, known as the Augustales.11 Freedmen, then, found themselves in a privileged position vis-àvis non-citizens, but were nevertheless not completely on a par with freeborn citizens because of their obligations to their former owners. Their lack of free birth, moreover, denied them any possibility to move upwards in society. The only hope of improving their status was by accumulating property and transferring as much as possible of it intact to their freeborn off-spring. The latter encountered no legal impediments to social mobility, even though the existence of social codes made the rapid rise of freedman’s sons undesirable.12 The above paragraphs summarise the most salient factors affecting the lives of the majority of freedmen in the Roman world and suggest that their fate was not automatically much better than that of manumitted slaves in other slave societies. Based on the assumption that most freedmen were awarded full citizenship rights the conclusion is usually far more positive. The ambivalent position described above suggests that many freedmen did not automatically join the ranks of the freeborn, but ended up in an intermediate position. In terms of their social aspirations, they were now pulled in a positive (freedom), then in a negative direction (the lack of opportunities for social mobility). This chapter wants to examine how freed slaves constructed their identities in response to their past servile experience and the period after manumission as newly enfranchised citizens. I will start out by examining the assumption that freedmen in the Roman Empire felt embarrassed about their servility and attempted to obscure their origins. Subsequently, I shall explain my dissatisfaction with this theory and discuss a number of texts which demonstrate that some freedmen were evidently unburdened in talking about their servility. This is not to say that servility was a common topic of discussion, but it underlines that in their attempts at self-presentation slaves show pride in having escaped slavery rather than embarrassment about having been enslaved. In order to undertake such an investigation we need to know how freedmen viewed themselves and the social environment in which

11 For the Augustales and the reasons why the majority of them were of servile stock, cf. Duthoy 1978; Ostrow 1985; Abramenko 1993. 12 Cf. Gordon 1931; Garnsey 1975; Lo“ 1996.

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they operated. The number of sources which feature the perspective of freed slaves is far more limited for Rome than it is for other slave societies. There exist, for example, no slave narratives from the ancient world, a medium which has proved such a rich source of information on the slave experience in the New World.13 As Moses Finley has pointed out, ancient writers with a known background in slavery as a rule failed to disclose their personal feelings on their period in servility or on their status as freedmen.14 And when they express an opinion on slavery they seem to betray no more sympathy towards the fate of those who remained in slavery than the average author of free birth. Publilius Syrus, an ex-slave and a writer of mimes, who lived in the first century BC, has the following to say on the matter of a slave complaining about his fate: “If you don’t like being a slave, you will be miserable; but you won’t stop being a slave.”15 Epictetus, the slave of a freedman of the emperor Nero, offers slaves the signal consolation that there exist different types of slavery and that even the powerful are the slaves of their ambitions.16 That the expression of opinions on slavery did not include the slave’s perspective or a sympathetic response to the slave’s suffering is no cause for surprise. In a society in which the continued existence of slavery is not questioned there is no room for such perspectives. It is a bit naïve to expect authors who had either experienced slavery directly or indirectly, through family members, to come out and con-

13 For slave narratives and the kinds of information which can be extrapolated from them, cf. Thomas 2004. 14 Finley 1980, 117: “Even the few writers who had a personal background of enslavement show no influence of that experience, emotional or intellectual, in their surviving works, nothing to distinguish them from writers who lacked that peculiar background.”; cf. 177. Horace vividly describes how he was humiliated in his hometown of Venusia by being called the son of a manumitted slave (libertino patre natus: Sat. 1, 6, 6; 45; Ep. 1, 20, 20). In recent studies doubts have been expressed as to whether this was true, cf. Williams 1995; Anderson 1995. In the footnote accompanying his argument Finley refers to a work on famous slaves in the area of culture by the ex-slave Hermippus of Berytus. Finley is right in arguing that we know nothing about this monograph and therefore should be cautious in our approach to it. He asserts that it is not a very interesting piece of evidence. I beg to disagree. I believe that the fact that such a work was written with the specific emphasis on ex-slaves suggests that at least one ex-slave was in the habit of thinking of culture not in terms of an abstract concept but as an imagined concept loaded with considerations of status. 15 Quoted from Wiedemann 1981, 77. 16 Epictetus, 4, 1, 33–40. A discussion of Epictetus’ thoughts on slavery may be found in Hershbell 1995.

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demn the system, or at least to speak differently about it than those who lacked such an experience.17 The lack of such primary sources is regrettable, but it only means that we have to look harder at what is there. The fact that Roman freedmen did not choose to write down their life stories in the form of literary narratives does not mean that they held no views on their servility and on their current position as ex-slaves. It also does not mean that the voices of the freed have been silenced beyond recovery. In what follows I want to bring out some of these responses. Some conform to expectations, while others may cause a surprise. For some of my examples the importance lies not in how widespread the evidence is, but in the uniqueness of the phenomenon, startling us into realizing that such a sentiment was ever expressed. These expressions prompt us to realign Roman society in a different way and to rethink its parameters. One of the most revealing features of the humiliating experience of slavery can be found in the naming process for slaves. Upon enslavement, the individual’s original name is removed, thus obliterating the slave’s identity, and he or she is given a name which is invented by the owner.18 In most cases the name was given to deliberately cause psychological and mental anguish.19 One of the first things that a slave is thought to have done after manumission is to change his or her name, thereby removing one of the more humiliating aspects of slavery.20 In Rome, the freed slave was by law required to carry the first name ( praenomen) and family name (nomen) of his former owner, while keeping his slave name as his cognomen or nickname. The latter was particularly important because this was the name by which every Roman was known in everyday society. The majority of freedmen were easily identifiable because their nicknames were either Greek in origin or had overall lower-class associations. 17 It is difficult to imagine how such writers would promote a different interpretation of slavery than the standard one promoted by the slave-owning elite. 18 This is part of the process which Orlando Patterson labelled social death, cf. Patterson 1982, 55–6. 19 This observation does not require ample demonstration for any slave society. It is to be noted, however, that in the Roman world some owners gave their slaves the name of Ingenuus, freeborn, which must have caused considerable psychological frustration. It is not certain whether this was done to slaves who were indeed freeborn and had ended up in slavery through misfortune or through self-sale rather than those who were born in slavery. 20 For the Antebellum South the process is briefly described in Berlin 1975, 51–2.

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No ex-slave could avoid a confrontation with his servile past when giving his name as Syrus (the ‘Syrian’), Thrax (the ‘Thracian’), Melissus (‘Bee’) or Pardalus (‘Panther’). In addition, freed slaves were required to supply in official documents the first name of their former owner together with the abbreviation l. for ‘libertus’ or ‘liberta’ in the case of a woman. Thus, for example: Marcus Tullius, Marci libertus, Tiro would be the full name of Tiro, the freedman and secretary of the orator Cicero. Where freeborn Romans would put their filiation, freed slaves, who in legal terms had no parents, had to put their patron, thus establishing a type of fictional kinship with their former owner. Funerary inscriptions erected by and/or for freed slaves increasingly show no sign of the abbreviation l. (for ‘libertus’) together with their former owner’s first name in the genitive.21 Others changed a Greek nickname, representing a former slave-name, to a more conventional Roman one.22 All this was done, it must be assumed, to remove the most visible traces of a servile past so as to blend in with the freeborn population, and it presupposes that ex-slaves entertained life-long concerns with the symbols of their suffering. That, at least, is the standard view. I am not contesting the possibility that freed slaves undertook such actions, or that a certain amount of shame about their servility lay at the origin of this. What I am trying to establish is that freedman behaviour toward their past is much more complex than the simplified equation hostility (on the part of the freeborn) leading to shame (on the part of the freed slave). One of the grammar-teachers discussed by Suetonius in his Lives of Famous Grammarians allegedly changed his name from Pansicles to Pansa, a name borne by an illustrious family that supplied a string of magistrates to the state. It is now understood, however, that Pansicles was the man’s original name before he became a slave, which he subsequently retained as a slave and as a freedman. His subsequent desire to change it after his manumission may not have been directly inspired by his servile experience. Another favorite example quoted by many scholars is that of Publius Decimius Eros Merula, a wealthy 21

Cf. Taylor 1961. For the possibility that this was done to hide servile origins: Bodel 1984, 54. For a different view: Christes 1979, 69ff. Cf. Kaster 1995, 198–9; Wiseman 1985. For another case of a name change, mentioned (or invented) by the poet Martial, cf. Biville 2002. Of course, this does not detract from Martial’s acquaintance with the phenomenon and its historical reality. 22

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freedman from Assisi who worked as a physician (CIL XI, 5400). The name Eros immediately evokes a servile past, and it is assumed that he added the loftier Roman name Merula to counter the nefarious effects of this servile name.23 Scholars fail to explain, however, why he did not simply substitute Merula for Eros, but added the name to the three names which he already possessed. Something more complex than a name change due to post-servility stress is at work here. There are two main reasons why this type of research fails to produce the necessary insights into the psychology of the slaves and former slaves. Firstly, it is difficult to establish the frequency of name changes for the simple reason that attempts to hide servile origins can only be identified as such if the attempt is unsuccessful or if the phenomenon is exposed by an ancient source. Secondly, there is no automatic correlation between the level of social and economic success and the perceived shamefulness of memories of servility. Numerous other freedmen who were successful in commerce, society or the arts did not feel the urge to change their names. The assumption that freed slaves felt embarrassed about their servility and would not like to be reminded about their unfortunate past is supposed to be reflected in the following funerary inscription (CIL XIV, 2298) which was found along the Appian way on the territory of Alba Longa. M(arcus) Aurelius Cottae/Maximi l(ibertus) Zosimus/accensus patroni/ libertinus eram fateor/sed facta legetur/patrono Cotta nobilis umbra mea/qui mihi saepe libens census donavit/equestris qui iussit natos/ tollere quos aleret/quique suas commisit opes/mihi semper et idem dotavit/natas ut pater ipse meas/Cottanumque meum produxit/honore tribuni quem fortis/castris Caesaris emeruit/quid non Cotta dedit qui nunc/et carmina tristis haec dedit/in tumulo conspicienda meo/Aurelia Saturnina Zosimi.

Marcus Aurelius Zosimus, the freedman of Cotta Maximus, and personal assistant to his patron. I was a freedman, I admit it, but read on and you will discover that, although deceased, I was ennobled by my patron Cotta, who gave me 23 Cf. Duff 1958, 54: “Eros was the commonest Greek name among slaves and freedmen, and the vanity of Decimius revolted against it. He did not succeed in suppressing altogether his slave name, but he added the fine-sounding Roman cognomen Merula to his name.”

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marc kleijwegt many times the census-criterion for a Roman knight [= 400,000 sesterces]. He commanded me to raise my children, so that he could feed them. He always made me share in his wealth, and he gave my daughters a dowry as if he were their father. For my son Cottanus he managed to acquire the post of a military tribune, a position on which he showered honour in the army-camp of the emperor. Is there anything which Cotta did not bestow? Even at this moment he sadly despatched these lines, which can be read on my funerary tomb.

Aurelia Saturnia, wife of Zosimus. The text ostensibly starts as a personal reflection on the position of being a freed slave and then goes on to list all the benefactions which the patron bestowed on the deceased and his family. However, the image of self-expression crumbles as soon as we learn from the final line that the inscription was not composed by the freedman himself but by his master, Marcus Aurelius Maximus Cotta Messalinus, one of the consuls for the year AD 20. This makes it more difficult to assess the sentiment expressed in the first line. Did Cotta sincerely aim to project the feelings of his freed slave or was it mentioned just to show how Cotta managed to elevate his former slave’s family to the second highest order in the Roman Empire?24 How did Zosimus himself feel about his status as a freedman, about his son’s career, about the marriages which Cotta arranged for his daughters? Would he have been happy to see that even in death he lived on as the appendage of his master? If Zosimus entertained any thoughts about his self-value, the opportunity for expressing them was taken away from him by his former master, now his patron. Any identity that Zosimus may have claimed is completely overwritten by that of his overbearing patron; even his son is not his own, but the mockdescendant of the consul, as exemplified in his name Cottanus. A different perspective is presented in another funerary inscription, from Brixia (Brescia): M(arcus) Hostilius/Dicaeus/veni in hanc civitat(em)/ann(orum) XIIII in qua domu(!)/[v]eni neq(ue) domum neq(ue)/dominum mutavi nisi/

24 Eck and Heinrichs 1993, 215, do not wish to exclude the possibility that the words are a genuine reflection of the sentiments of the freed slave. The point is hard to prove or disprove. A comparable juxtaposition of former servility and high status, this time encapsulated in one and the same person, can be found Statius’ encomium of Claudius Etruscus (Silvae 3, 3). Here the subject’s low status is subsequently overruled by proximity to the emperor and marriage to a freeborn woman of high status, cf. Lotito 1974–1975.

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hanc aeternal(em) vixi ann(os)/LXX in ius me vocavit/nemo ad iudicem nemo/tu qui stas et legis si hoc optimum/non est dic quid melius sit/ Clodia Paullina Optuma/locum dedit.25 Marcus Hostilius Dicaeus. “I came to this city when I was fourteen years old. In the household in which I arrived I stayed; never did I change to another household or master except for this, my eternal home. I have lived for seventy years. No-one called me before the praetor, no-one sent me to a judge. You, who stand here and read this, if this is not the best of things, tell me, what is better?” Clodia Paullina, the best (of wives?), gave this burial-place.

Although the text does not say so explicitly, the wording and the name Dicaeus (the Romanised form of the Greek word for ‘just’) suggest that the deceased had been a slave.26 What is striking about this funerary text is that, even though the deceased bears the three names of a Roman citizen, and therefore must have been freed by his owner, his manumission is not the main focus. The main theme is that of Dicaeus’ loyalty, ostensibly demonstrating that he never gave his master any reason to sell him. It is uncertain at what point he was manumitted, but it is implied that he continued to serve his former master as a freedman, and that he continued to reside in his patron’s house. This is not uncommon in the Roman world, although it is not entirely clear how many freedmen decided to follow the same course, and whether this happened as a matter of personal choice.27

25 The text was first published by Novellone 1973; it was republished in IIt X, 5, 1, 330; AE 1980, 503. Novellone’s discussion is mainly concerned with the formula domum . . . aeternalem, which appears in funerary inscriptions only in the fourth century AD, mainly emanating from a Christian milieu. She subsequently suggests that Dicaeus was a Jew, a view which is endorsed by Barbieri 1975, 343–8 and Gregori 1999, 308. 26 For Dicaeus as a typical slave-name, cf. Solin 2003, 788. The name is attested twenty times at Rome. Ten individuals can be positively identified as slaves or freedmen, while the other ten are listed as incerti, which means that the inscriptions offer no clues as to the legal status of the individuals. Thus far, no single individual bearing the name has been positively identified as a freeborn Roman. They seem to have avoided choosing this cognomen. 27 When Pedanius Secundus, prefect of the city under Nero, was murdered by one of his slaves in AD 61, all the slaves living in the household, numbering 400 in all, were executed (Tac., Ann. 14, 43, 3). The freedmen who were living under the same roof (qui sub eodem tecto fuissent) were not executed together with the slaves, but instead were under threat of being deported from Italy, a proposal that was vetoed by Nero (14, 45, 2). For ex-slaves living with their patrons, cf. Dig. 21, 1, 17, 5 (Ulpian).

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There is no indication in the inscription as to what sort of slave Dicaeus might have been. Was he a cook, a steward, or perhaps a litter-bearer? The composer of the text obviously found this of very little importance. And yet it is possible to say something about Dicaeus’ position in his master’s household. First of all, the woman who bought the burial-site deserves some examination. She does not mention her relationship to Dicaeus, but the word ‘optuma’, ‘the best’, is usually reserved for wives.28 Her name Clodia Paullina suggests two things. First of all, the family name Clodius implies that she cannot have been a former slave in the same household as Dicaeus, for he bore the family name Hostilius.29 Secondly, Paullina is not a very plausible slave-name.30 Dicaeus, then, was most likely married to a woman of freeborn status, a signal distinction for a man who came from a servile background. The union, if correctly inferred from the evidence, makes it possible to suggest that Dicaeus was no ordinary slave. Very few freeborn women would deign to enter into marriage with a cook or a litter-bearer. I want to hazard the conjecture, and in the absence of any markers in the text it can be nothing more than this, that Dicaeus was a slave with financial responsibilities. Dispensatores (stewards), procuratores (business agents) and the like, were in charge of the household’s financial department, and they were the only slaves to authorise and issue payments.31 Because of their far-reaching responsibilities, financial slaves as a rule were only manumitted late in life and hardly ever left the household. In return they received a number of important privileges, such as their own personal slaves and the right to choose a slave partner and to

28 Optimus or Optima is very rare as a common name, cf. CIL II 2796; ILS 4243; CIL X, 3011; CIL V, 3001; CIL III, 5521; CIL VI, 5054; 11602. In some of these cases optimus could also have been used as an adjective. 29 The family of the Hostilii appears in several inscriptions from Brescia: CIL V, 4427; 4228; 4429. However, there is no evidence to link Dicaeus with any particular influential family from the city. Dicaeus himself may appear in another text from Brescia which names a Dicaeus who has been a sevir Augustalis. On the Augustales in Brescia, cf. Mollo 1997; 2000. 30 Novellone 1973, 514, argues that Clodia Paullina was the wife of Dicaeus’ patron. The family of the Clodii has been attested at Brescia in a number of inscriptions dating from the second century AD onwards: CIL V, 4485; 4368; 4407. The latter text records a P. Clodius Sura who had been a duovir quinquennalis and a priest of the deified Trajan. 31 On dispensatores see Herrmann-Otto 1994, 369–99; Treggiari 1973; 1975. Bedon 1996 examines the profile of the dispensator Cinnamus in the fictional household of the freedman Trimalchio; on Trimalchio’s domestic staff, cf. further Baldwin 1978.

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live a quasi-married life.32 Arguably, Dicaeus did even better than this and managed to acquire a freeborn wife.33 From Paullina’s perspective, Dicaeus must have appeared like an attractive partner for marriage. He held a prominent position in his master’s household and must have made quite a lot of money. Dicaeus is speaking to us directly, which makes the information that he cares to share with us personal and gives it the ring of authenticity. The effect would have been completely different if Clodia Paullina had composed it from her own, more detached, perspective. Reformatted along the lines of a typical Roman funerary inscription it would have read thus: To the Spirits of the Dead. Dedicated to Marcus Hostilius Dicaeus, who lived for seventy years. Clodia Paullina, his most devoted wife, paid for the tomb and the inscription. May the earth rest lightly on you.

Because of the first-person perspective Dicaeus is able to draw attention to the way in which he wished to be remembered: as a slave, but not as an ordinary one. Without revealing his actual duties he has left enough markers of his status in the text to allow the reader to conclude that he was not kept in slavery until his death. The three names of the Roman citizen are mentioned in the opening two lines of the text and they stand out by being inscribed in a larger format than the rest of the inscription. Subsequently, Dicaeus claims that he has not left the household of his master. This can be interpreted in two ways. Firstly, this suggests that he wanted to advertise his loyalty towards his master. The loyal slave was a prominent idealtype in the literature of the Roman world and in replicating it in his funerary text Dicaeus is clearly aiming to meet a social expectation. Secondly, by emphasizing his loyalty Diceaus also makes clear that he was not kept in slavery as punishment for having been a bad slave. Note also that Dicaeus is careful not to make any reference to the fact that he was a victim of slavery. From our perspective,

32

Trimalchio’s dispensator has his own slave, cf. Petr., Sat. 30, 7. The vast majority of dispensatores found in inscriptions was not yet manumitted, despite their sometimes advanced age, cf. AE 1942–1943, 61 (Sitifis): an actor ex dispensatore (that is, an estate-administrator who had moved up from having been a steward) who died at the age of seventy, still a slave. As for marriage, there is the example of Felix, an imperial dispensator who was commemorated by his wife (coniugi ) Aviena Procula (AE 1983, 61): Dis Man(ibus)/Felicis Imp(eratoris) Aug(usti)/ disp(ensatoris) Aviena/Procula/coniugl(!)/bene merenti/t(estamento). 33

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slavery was an exploitative, cruel and dehumanising system, and we would like to find confirmation that ancient slaves agreed with this viewpoint. They probably did, but they did not express this in public. And yet Dicaeus cannot be qualified as a meek individual with a dehumanised personality.34 He craftily employs a personal style of expression that argues for the complete opposite. Dicaeus’ way of saying that he never moved to another household or to another master, although ostensibly intended to disarm the accusation that he had been a bad slave, is represented as a matter of personal choice: in qua domu [v]eni, neq(ue) dominum mutavi nisi hanc aeternal(em). Admittedly, the Latin is clumsy, but we cannot fail to capture the emphasis on the first person singular: I came to this house and I did not change masters. Especially the latter remark sounds more like the arrogant freedman than the meek slave speaking to us. He furthermore states that he came to the city of Brescia at the age of fourteen. This is a peculiar way of expression, especially for someone, who, in all probability, was taken to Italy as a slave, and then sold to a master in Brescia. We notice the same claim to independence made by one of the freedmen in Petronius’ Cena Trimalchionis. Hermeros says (57, 10): “I came to this colony when I was a longhaired boy” (‘et puer capillatus in hanc coloniam venit’), while Trimalchio asserts (75, 10): “I came from Asia when I had the same height as this candelabrum”, ‘tam magnus ex Asia veni quam hic candelabrus est’). In sum, despite the first impression of Dicaeus as a subjected personality meeting an essential upper-class code with regard to how slaves were supposed to behave, the freedman Dicaeus is able to reclaim his individuality. In actual fact, I have little hesitation in regarding this inscription as a subversion of a widely acknowledged code and as far more confrontational than is usually perceived. There are other freedmen who felt no compunction about advertising their freed status with pride. A most interesting case is that of Sevius Nicanor, whose career is described by Suetonius in his Lives of Famous Grammarians (Suet. De gramm. 5, 1).35 Sevius Nicanor 34 A different strategy of self-presentation has been selected by a freed slave from Ravenna (CIL XI, 137 = Eck and Heinrichs 1993, nr. 38). C. Iulius Mygdonius asserts that he was a freeborn Parthian, who was captured and taken to Roman territory in his youth. He eventually acquired Roman citizenship, aided by fate (‘iuvente fato’). 35 Cf. Kaster 1995, 107–10. Cf. Brewster 1915 for an attempt to extrapolate literary information from the passage in Suetonius.

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was the author of a satire in which he proclaimed himself to be a freedman. It is unfortunate that the satire itself has not survived and that as a consequence we are unable to judge how Nicanor used the theme in his writing. However, the fact that Suetonius regarded it as a key element in Nicanor’s authorial self-presentation is sufficient proof that some freedmen were confident enough to raise the issue of their origins. It is quite extraordinary that this is taking place in a genre, satire, which was accompanied by claims from its practitioners that it aimed to do full justice to reality, including the most sordid details.36 The most explicit evidence for this self-confidence comes from Petronius’ novel Satyrica, where the freedman Hermeros has the following reply to the condescending laughter of the freeborn: Forty years, boy and man, I spent as a slave, but no one could tell now whether I was slave or free. I was just a curly-headed kid when I came to this place. The town hall wasn’t even built then. But I did everything I could do to please my master. He was a good man, a real gentleman, whose fingernail was worth more than your whole carcass. And there were some in the house who would have liked to see me stumble. But thanks to my master I gave them the slip. Those are real trials, those are real triumphs. But when you’re born free everything’s as easy as saying, ‘Hurry on down.’ (Petr., Sat., 57, 9–11)

Some freedmen undoubtedly tried to move anonymously and melt in with the freeborn population, while others, like Hermeros, were proud of their escape, and contrast the honest struggles of a slave for freedom with the easiness of being freeborn.37 In the remainder of this chapter I shall discuss a number of cases which demonstrate that freed slaves could and did operate as a corporate group. According to some, the adoption of a corporate identity by freedmen reveals an essential weakness in the attempts of freedmen to assimilate. In the words of Jean Andreau, “the existence 36 The claim to write a form of poetry which was inspired by what could be simply observed on a Roman street corner is made most emphatically by Juvenal. On the theory of realism in literature in general and in satire in particular, cf. Freudenberg 1993, 120–4. 37 Plaza 2000, 134, demonstrates that we may interpret Hermeros’ words on two different levels. On the first the central focus is on his genuine honesty and pride in having achieved freedom despite encountering many obstacles. On the second level we must assume that the very same thing that makes Hermeros feel proud about his achievements makes him look ridiculous in the eyes of the freeborn guests. As such, his words here serve as the complete opposite of an aristocratic ideology.

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of a milieu of freedmen, of libertini, which we might even call an ordo libertinorum, was an obstacle to the rapid and complete social integration of the freedmen themselves, albeit not to that of their descendants (Andreau 1993, 197).” Associations in the Roman world engaged in two main activities: communality and political leverage.38 Most of the associations or guilds (collegia) that we know consist of people holding the same occupation who meet at regular intervals to enjoy each other’s company at communal feasts. An additional activity may have been to ensure burial for their members, although this cannot be ascertained for the majority of the collegia.39 Membership of an association also enabled individuals to seek representation. Where one individual stands isolated, the bargaining powers of a group are more difficult to ignore and this made it possible to acquire certain privileges, such as assemblyhalls and a bigger share in benefactions than as mere members of the populace. It was also far easier for a corporation than for an individual to enlist the support of socially superior and politically influential patrons. As I shall attempt to show, associations of freedmen were voluntary associations whose existence was fully recognised by the community. What makes them especially interesting is the fact that its members chose not to hide under the umbrella of a religious club or a professional association. The groups that I shall be discussing make no attempt to hide the fact that they consisted of freed slaves. In one of the election posters painted on the walls of the houses of Pompeii Fabius Eupor endorses the candidature of Caius Cuspius Pansa for the office of aedile, one of two junior magistrates concerned with the overseeing of the market and the maintenance of public buildings (CIL IV, 117 = ILS 6419g).40 Numerous such posters have been found, supplying us with a vivid image of municipal political life during the final seventeen years of the city’s existence.41 38 For the collegia in general, cf. Waltzing, 1895–1900; De Robertis 1971; Cracco Ruggini 1971; 1973; Patterson 1994. 39 On funerary activities of collegia, cf. Ausbüttel 1982; Flambard 1987; Patterson 1992. 40 For this individual, cf. Andreau 1974, 175, nt. 3; 267; Castrén 1975, 119. It was Ginsburg 1934, who convincingly demolished G. B. De Rossi’s theory that Eupor was the head of the local Jewish synagogue. De Rossi’s theory was re-submitted by della Corte 1949–1950, but has found very little support in more recent scholarship. 41 On the programmata (election posters), cf. Franklin 1980; Mouritsen 1988; Chiavia 2002; Biundo 2003. Serious doubts have been expressed as to whether the

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Among these, the poster of Fabius Eupor is of special significance because while endorsing the candidature of Pansa he calls himself ‘princeps libertinorum’. As the lawyer Ulpian makes clear, ‘libertinus’ indicates a freed slave who had become a Roman citizen.42 As such it should be sharply distinguished from the more common term for a freed slave, ‘libertus’, which is used to refer to the relationship with his former owner, now his patron.43 ‘Princeps’ is an informal term for a president of an association.44 Eupor, therefore, must be identified as the president of a club of freedmen, and even though this is the only piece of evidence from Pompeii which attests to their existence, its implications for the study of freed slaves in the Roman world are far-reaching. The fact that freedmen displayed a public corporate identity as well as that they did so by openly drawing attention to their juridical status run counter to everything that Roman social historians have assumed about the impact of slavery for the subsequent behaviour of those who managed to escape from it. Fabius Eupor was in all probability a wealthy wine merchant, something which can be inferred from the fact that his name has been found on amphora stamps.45 His title suggests that he was a election posters reflect a system of political campaigning, cf. Mouritsen 1999. The issue does not affect the conclusions I want to draw from one particular poster. Canvassing is supposed to have been a neighbourhood affair, and it is commonly accepted that programmata were put up in areas and on buildings where the individual candidates and their supporters resided. See, however, Allison 2001, on the difficulties of identifying house-owners on the basis of the programmata. 42 Dig. 40, 14, 6: ‘libertinum quidem se confitetur, libertum autem Gaii Seii se negat’ (‘he admits that he is a freedman, but he denies that he is the freedman of Gaius Seius’). The jurist Gaius states that ‘libertini’ are those manumitted from lawful slavery (‘qui ex iusta servitute manumissi sunt’; Gaius, Inst. 1. 11). Libertini are here defined as a subcategory of the free (liberi ) standing in opposition to ingenui (‘freeborn’): ‘Rursus liberorum hominum, alii ingenui sunt, alii libertini. Ingenui sunt, qui liberi nati sunt’ (Inst. 1. 10). According to this definition, everyone who had been lawfully enslaved and subsequently manumitted was deemed a libertinus. The qualification iustus derives from the fact that only foreigners could be held as slaves; cf. Gardner 1993, 17. 43 The distinction holds firm even though the term has been surrounded with a certain amount of confusion because a celebrated passage in Suetonius’ Life of Claudius (24, 1) argues that in the days of Appius Claudius ‘libertinus’ was used to indicate the son of a freedman. For discussion, cf. Treggiari 1969, 53; Haley 1986; Kaster 1995, 109. Cels Saint-Hilaire 1985, argues that ‘libertinus’ could indicate any recently enfranchised citizen. She bases her view on a number of passages in second century BC Roman history described by Livy, but her argument does not affect the viewpoint that over time it became a term exclusively reserved for freedmen. Cf. also Cels Saint-Hilaire 2002. 44 For discussion, cf. Ausbüttel 1982, 85. 45 Andreau 1974, 267; Jongman 1988, 358.

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pompous man, but there is also some objective evidence to show that he was a man of some clout.46 Assuming that there is more than a statistical relevance to the connection between the endorser and the political candidate, it is perhaps important to note that the Cuspius Pansa that Eupor is supporting was a member of one of the most esteemed families in Julio-Claudian Pompeii.47 Their apogee can be measured from the stature of Caius Cuspius Pansa, the homonymous grandfather of Eupor’s candidate for the aedileship, who had been duovir (‘mayor’) four times and was elected praefectus iure dicundo, quite possibly in the aftermath of the earthquake of AD 62.48 The grandson should be assumed to have stood for the office at minimum age, for in another poster he and his running-mate, L. Popidius Secundus, are recommended as iuvenes probos dignos rei publicae (‘upright young men who are worthy of the commonwealth’; CIL IV, 785a). His career was probably cut short by the eruption of Vesuvius, for there is no further trace of him in the surviving evidence. Even if we may not be able to discover the social and economic foundations that lay behind Eupor’s claim, it is possible to say something about its resonance. We can assume that his support for Caius Cuspius Pansa had some meaning, and that his pre-eminence was not imaginary. Being the president of the freedmen must have meant something even to people who were not themselves freedmen, for otherwise calling attention to it would have been without

46 Ginsburg 1934, 206, while admitting that the title is pompous, calls Eupor “a man whose opinion carried great weight among his fellow-townsmen, for his name and his recommendations appear in several election notes.” This is somewhat misleading. I have been able to trace his name in only two election posters. Moreover, frequent canvassing for various candidates may not be a very reliable index of a man’s stature in society. The stature of the candidates that he is canvassing for, however, is clearly revealing of considerable standing. The title is called ‘altisonante’ in Chiavia 2002, 167, nt. 292. 47 The second electoral poster in which Fabius Eupor appears, CIL IV, 120, is in support of Cerrinius Vatia as a candidate for the aedileship. The Cerrinii were an upwardly mobile family of the Flavian period and Vatia may have been the son of an Augustalis, cf. Franklin 2001, 179–80; 203–4. 48 ‘Praefecti’ were elected in cases where a municipal office was gracefully offered to (and accepted by) a member of the imperial family, in which case a replacement took over the real duties, or in cases of emergency, when experienced magistrates were called upon to serve their city once more. The earthquake of AD 62 destroyed much of Pompeii, and parts of the city had not been restored at the time when it was finally destroyed in 79. The family’s involvement in local politics may have gone as far back as the early days of the colony, cf. Castrén 1975, 161; Franklin 2001, 149–51; 172.

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purpose. What that specific meaning could have been it is no longer possible to establish. It seems to have been used to add extra force to Eupor’s recommendation, and it does suggest that the ‘libertini’ were not a discrete and socially invisible group. The evidence for the existence of organised groups of freedmen is not confined to the city of Pompeii alone. Lucius Urvineius Philomusus, freedman of Lucius, is recorded as leaving by testament a number of benefactions to the city of Praeneste (CIL XIV, 3015 = ILS 6256).49 It is a traditional feature of the urban elites in the GrecoRoman world to use their private fortunes to embellish the city by engaging in building activities or to give away money at communal banquets.50 It is evident, however, that, despite his great wealth, Philomusus was not a member of the local aristocracy—his freed status prevented him from entering the municipal council. The only official function that Philomusus held is that of mag. conl. libert. It is obvious that the abbreviation mag. stands for magister, a title for a leading official attested for the Augustales and some professional guilds. The main difficulty lies in explaining the rest of the abbreviation. Rendered in the ablative, it is usually resolved as mag(istro) conl(egii) libert(orum), implying that Philomusus had been the president of an association of his patron’s freedmen.51 What speaks against this is that it seems a point of little merit if in an inscription which highlights his benefactions to the community Philomusus would simply be referred to as the president of the freedmen from his master’s household. In any case, there is no parallel for such a position. There seems to be little doubt, therefore, that

49 L(ucio) Urvineio, L(ucii) l(iberto), Philomuso,/mag(istro) conl(egii) libert(inorum),/publice sepulturae et statuae in foro locus/datus est quod is testamento suo lavationem populo gratis/per triennium gladiatorumque paria X et Fortunae Primig(eniae)/coronam auream p(ondo) I dari idemque ludos ex HS (quadraginta milibus) per dies V fieri iussit./Philippus l(ibertus) monumentum de suo fecit. 50 Veyne 1976 is a superb study on the phenomenon in both the Greek and the Roman world. A slightly abridged version is available in English: Veyne 1990. 51 This is the case in CIL, Dessau’s edition for ILS, Marucchi 1932, 119, as well as in modern anthologies in which the text has been included, cf. Eck and Heinrichs 1993, nr. 344, pp. 226–7; Forbis 1996, nr. 85, pp. 126–7. Ginsburg 1934, at 205, nt. 35, already suggested that Philomusus should be identified as the leading magistrate of a collegium libertinorum. The reading libert(inorum) is also preferred by Fora 1996, nr. 19, p. 52. It should be pointed out, however, that it is through comparison with the electoral programme of Fabius Eupor that Ginsburg and Fora have decided to adopt that conclusion rather than an independent argument. However, they fail to capitalise on the important implications of their choice.

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the correct reading should be libert(inorum), not a group of freedmen belonging to the same patron, but a guild of freedmen of citizen status. When Philomusus died he was awarded a public funeral and a statue which was to be erected in the forum: ‘publice sepulturae et statuae in foro locus/datus est, quod is testamento’ etc. Philomusus’ testament included the following acts of generosity: bathing free of charge for the populus for a period of three years; 10 pairs of gladiators (presumably to fight at his funeral); a golden wreath, weighing one pound, to be donated to the famous temple of Fortuna Primigenia; an amount of 40,000 sesterces to pay for ludic games spread out over five days, presumably also in connection with his funeral. The total outlay for Philomusus’ posthumous benefactions is difficult to calculate, especially the expenses necessary to pay for the first item, but his overall wealth is not in doubt. We may in fact assume that he was wealthy enough to join the ranks of the local councillors, that is, if he had been of free birth. At any rate, he appears to have amassed sufficient social capital to earn him a public funeral.52 In the eyes of his fellow-citizens, Philomusus, therefore, was not a socially marginal figure, but a man of some standing. An inscription found in Ostffyasszonyfa, on the territory of Brigetio (Pannonia), records the dedication of an altar or a building to Jupiter Optimus Maximus and the Numen Augusti by one Lucius Caecilius Viator.53 Viator subsequently presented the structure to a collegium libertin(orum), that is, a guild of freedmen, and this time there can be no doubt about how the abbreviation should be resolved. There are other problems, though. The donation is made ob honorem (in exchange for the holding of a particular office), but the only office

52 In most cases, the motivation for the awarding of a public funeral is not spelled out, and we have no way of establishing why the privilege was not only granted to people of high status, but also to individuals of servile descent and even freedwomen. There is simply no way of telling why certain individuals were marked out for such an honour, while others, who belonged to the same class or had made benefactions to the community on a comparable scale, were not. Wesch-Klein 1993, 77–8, has argued that benefactions alone may not have been sufficient for clinching the issue whether a public funeral was to be awarded or not; status may have been of greater significance. This is obviously not the case with Philomusus. His legal and political status is low, but his benefactions are substantial. 53 AE 1984, 723: [I(ovi)] O(ptimo) M(aximo)/[nu]mini Aug(usto or -i)/[L(ucius) C]aecilius Viator/[au]g(ustalis) mun(icipii) Brig(etionis) col/[leg]io libertinor(um)/[ob] honore(m) CENTE/[. . .]RIA d(ono) d(edit).

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that Viator lists is that of an Augustalis in Brigetio. Alternatively, ob honorem must be assumed to stand by itself, without a reference to an office. The main problem obscuring a satisfactory understanding of the inscription is the crux CENTE/[. . .]RIA. The most likely solution is that it is the object of dono dedit (‘he has given as a gift’). The commentary in L’année épigraphique suggests that it should be taken as the plural of centenarium (‘inn’). There are a number of objections to this. It is hard to imagine how the building of two or more inns would have had any relevance to a group of freedmen. It is equally difficult to explain the dedication of a secular commercial building within a religious format which involves the supreme god of the Romans and the imperial cult. It is worth pointing out that the term centenarium only appears in three late inscriptions from Roman Africa and that, although it can be established that the term denotes a building of some sorts (cf. CIL VIII, 9010), it can by no means be secured that it was an inn.54 One of the texts (CIL VIII, 8713) refers to a centenarium Solis, which presupposes a religious building of some sorts, Sol being one of the solar deities worshipped by the Romans. If centenaria is indeed the correct reading, we must surely think of assembly-halls for religious purposes. Alternatively, one could suggest reading cenatoria, ‘dinner-dresses’, attested in Petronius (21, 5), Martial (10, 87, 12; 14, 135), and in the Digest (32, 2, 34). It has so far not been attested in inscriptions, as is the case with cenatorium in the sense of ‘dining-room’. Both dinner-dresses and dining-halls, however, would fit the context of a collegium better than ‘inns’. At the bottom of the stone fourteen names are listed, which, it is safe to assume, are the names of the individual members of the collegium libertinorum. Two of these have been identified as belonging to members of the Augustales. Iulius Primio was an Augustalis at Brigetio (RIU 692) and . . . tinius Trophimus has been identified with Catinius Trofimus, an Augustalis at Savaria (CIL V, 1011). In addition, one of the other individuals appearing in the list, Caecilius Viatorianus, may be the son of the dedicator of the altar, Caecilius Viator, who was himself an Augustalis at Brigetio. This implies that at Brigetio the collegium libertinorum was not made up of freedmen of lesser status, while the wealthy members of the class chose to join the ranks of the priests of the imperial cult. The two bodies are certain to have

54

Cf. DizEp sv centenarium.

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co-existed and to have overlapped to a certain degree, although it is at present impossible to tell whether more members of the collegium libertinorum held the rank of Augustalis. Another association of libertini has recently been discovered in the town of Carsulae in Umbria with the publication of two new inscriptions in honour of C. Tifanus Agricola:55 C(aio) Tifano Agricolae/aedil(i), (quattuor)viro/populus Cars(ulanorum) ex ae/re conlato, cuius (dedicatione)/dedit dec(urionibus) cenam et/ sportul(as) popul(o) crust(um) et/mulsum et (denarios quinque) seviris/ iuvenib(us) colleg(iatis) (denarium unum) mulie/ribus matron(is) et libertin(-)56 aere s(uo) l(oco) d(ato) d(ecreto) d(ecurionum) C(aio) Tifano Agricol(ae)/aedil(i), (quattuor)viro, munere s(uo)/matronae et libertin(-)/ex aere conl(ato), quibus/ob ded(icationem) aepulantibus/ dedit in public(um) (denarios tres) decur(ionibus)/(denarios tres) sexvir(is) (denarios tres) iuvenib(us)/(denarios duo) colleg(iatis) (denarios duo) populo (denarium unum)/l(oco) d(ato) d(ecreto) d(ecurionum)

Agricola presumably belonged to a prestigious family, for a C. Tifanus Cilo held the highest civil and religious offices in his hometown, that of quinquennalis and augur, after his discharge from military service as a sergeant in the Roman army ( primipilus) (CIL XI, 4573). Agricola himself was already known from a fragmentary inscription found at Carsulae (CIL XI, 4587). The new inscriptions reveal that Agricola was a generous benefactor to his hometown, and the honour of being awarded two statues testifies to the fact that various groups within the community were happy to acknowledge and publicise his status as a benefactor.57 In all likelihood, the awarding of the statues was

55 Bruschetti 2000. For the texts of Tifanus Agricola, cf. 264–9. The inscriptions are by no means new discoveries. They are already mentioned as inedita in Ciotti 1976; cf. Bruschetti, 265; 266; 268; Morigi 1997, 11. Two improvements to the texts as published by Bruschetti have been made in L’Année Épigraphique of 2000 (nrs. 531; 533). On the basis of CIL XI, 4589 the reading colleg(iatis) instead of colleg(iis) is suggested. Study of the photograph of the second inscription, moreover, has revealed that munere s(uo) should be changed to mulieres. 56 Bruschetti, the original editor of the text, has libertinis, implying the existence of a group of male freedmen. Mireille Corbier, in AE 2000, contests this and suggests that they were freedwomen. I want to return to this issue in a future publication, but whether we are dealing with freedmen or with freedwomen does not change my generic conclusions on the visibility of freed slaves in society. 57 Both texts specify that the money was raised by means of individual contributions (ex aere conlato). For the practice, cf. Ferguson 1917–1918; Mrozek 1982. Mrozek, at 162, argues that the expression ex aere conlato refers almost exclusively to the dedication of statues. The mechanics of the operation are outlined by an

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motivated by one and the same benefaction, which, unfortunately, is not mentioned in the surviving inscriptions. Agricola responded to these honours by distributing amounts of cash and by organizing banquets on the days on which the statues were dedicated. The groups that benefited from his generosity provide an interesting crosssection of Carsulan society in the late second or early third century AD:58 the decuriones (the municipal councillors), the seviri (the priests of the imperial cult), the collegia (the professional guilds), the iuvenes (the young men), the populus (the people), and the mulieres matronae (the married women, or, if we assume two separate groups, the women and the married women) and the libertin(-). The first three groups are regularly included in this type of benefaction, as is the populus as a whole. The iuvenes are an occasional inclusion in the cities where they have been attested.59 Inscriptions recording distributions of money and/or food to various groups in the communities of Roman Italy reveal two essential items of information for the social historian.60 Firstly, they clearly show how rank and status were maintained by letting the amount of money or the quality of the meal correspond with the prestige of the recipients. In the majority of the cases, the members of the local municipal council—the decuriones—receive more money and a better quality meal than the Augustales, the collegia or the common people. inscription from Veii (CIL XI, 3809), which states that the money was collected from those sitting in the orchestra during a celebration of public games, cf. Ferguson 1917–1918, 516. We only have the evidence for the statues set up by the people and the combined effort of the mulieres matronae et libertin(-), but we should perhaps assume that Agricola was awarded statues by the other groups involved in his benefactions as well. 58 The commentary in AE puts the emphasis on the fact that both inscriptions attest the signum Habentius for Agricola, which would put the texts in the third century AD at the earliest. However, this is in conflict with the use of technical vocabulary in the inscriptions. The term sportula becomes fashionable around AD 165 and continues to be used until AD 259, while crustulum et mulsum is current in epigraphy until AD 173, cf. Mrozek 1987, 23–4. This would make a date somewhere in the second part of the second century a distinct possibility. 59 A third text published by Bruschetti is an honorific inscription dedicated by the collegium iuvenum in gratitude for Agricola’s spell in office as their arcarius (treasurer). The iuvenes in Carsulae are known from a number of inscriptions. In 4580 we encounter an editor Iuvenalium who is also a patron of the iuvenes. In 4579 we come across a procurator iuvenum, while in 4589, dated to AD 270, the iuvenes are once again included in a distribution of food or money. For the role of the young men in the cities of the West, cf. Kleijwegt 1994. 60 The classic study of this phenomenon is Mrozek 1987. Cf. Slater 2000; Donahue 2004.

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This trend is only slightly modified when a benefactor has a specific reason, for example the presidency of a guild, to allow a particular group a bigger share in his distribution.61 We must also envisage that the circumstances which made the benefactor decide to stage a distribution, in most cases the awarding of a specific honour, encouraged him to lift one group to a more favourable status within the distribution. The decuriones are always included in the distributions, with the notable exception of distributions that favour one specific group. Secondly, and from a slightly different angle, these inscriptions show how the benefactor, by staging a distribution, has the power to establish his or her own map of relevant political and social groups in the community. The benefactor possesses the power to include and to exclude groups from his benefaction. Groups that were usually excluded from distributions were slaves and common residents who did not possess citizenship of the town in question. Therefore the overriding framework was one of membership of the community based on legal rights. Within the citizen community, however, there was a large potential for corporate identity, based on religious, regional and professional affiliations. The surviving inscriptions provide a static image of honour, but it is to be assumed that behind the scenes there was a lot of scrambling for groups to be included. To be acknowledged as a separate group in a distribution was a much sought-after honour, even though the same group would have been included under a more general umbrella all the same. We must in fact assume that separate mention was considered to be more honourable than to be included as part of a larger contingent. Each inscription reveals a unique way of imagining the community for a specific distribution corresponding to the considerations of the individual benefactor. Consequently, even though each distribution falls into a general mould, each distribution is also a unique record of how each benefactor shaped his or her society of honour. This chapter has made an attempt to use a number of primary sources to examine the self-fashioning and self-presentation of freed slaves in Roman society. It proved possible to extrapolate information about how freedmen viewed the world from funerary inscrip61 Cf. for example CIL IX, 3842 (Antinum); CIL X, 451 (Eburum); CIL XI, 4580 (Carsulae); CIL XIV, 2804 (Bovillae).

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tions. The number of texts which lend themselves to such an approach is admittedly limited, but there is a large pool of metric funerary inscriptions which can supply important information. The evidence on corporate identity showed that freed slaves had a much more visible presence in the urban community than has been assumed. The freedpeople whom we encountered in a number of cities in the western part of the Roman Empire were not overly concerned with attempts to hide the fact that they had been slaves. This is all the more interesting seeing that there was no outward mark of their past slavery (unless we include those that had been branded or tattooed in punishment) on their body). In addition, most guilds of artisans and craftsmen show a mixed membership of freed and freeborn. Consequently, we must assume that there was also no social code which excluded the recently freed from the social networks that existed in Roman society, at least on the level of society which was dictated by work and religious affiliation. The fact that freedmen are observed adopting a corporate identity as freed slaves does not necessarily mean, as Jean Andreau has argued, that the assimilation of freedmen was not successful. There is an even more intriguing alternative. Those former slaves who assembled themselves as the corporate freedmen of the city must be assumed to have been the wealthiest representatives. This is confirmed and supported by what evidence is available from inscriptions from Italy and Pannonia. The inscription from Ostffyasszonyfa shows that at least three members of the libertini in Brigetio were also Augustales in a number of different cities. Philomusus in Praeneste and Eupor in Pompeii were both respected and wealthy members of their communities. Since the Augustales are known to have been the wealthiest representatives of the freedmen society, it can be assumed that the libertini were of equal status. It is therefore understandable that the libertini were not ashamed of their past servility, and that can only be explained by the fact that they were proud of having escaped slavery.

Abbreviations AE = L’Année Épigraphique (Paris 1888–) CIL = Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (Berlin 1863–) Dig. = Digest (The Digest of Roman law).

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DizEp = E. de Ruggiero, Dizionario epigrafico di Antichità romane (Rome 1895–) Hor., Ep. = Horace, Epistles. Hor., Sat. = Horace, Satires. IIt = Inscriptiones Italiae (Rome 1931–); vol. X, 5, 3 vols., ed. A. Garzetti, Rome 1984–1986. ILS = H. Dessau, Inscriptiones latinae selectae (Berlin 1892–1906) Inst. = Gaius, The Institutions of Roman Law. Petr. Sat. = Petronius, Satyricon, New York 1983, transl. William Arrowsmith. RIU = László Barkóczi and Andreas Móczy, Die römische Inschriften Ungarns (Budapest 1972–) Suet. De gram. = Suetonius, De grammaticis et rhetoribus (‘On grammar-teachers and teachers of public speaking’), ed. R. Kaster, Oxford 1995. Tac. Ann. = Tacitus, Annales (‘Annals of Imperial Rome’), Harmondsworth 1956, trans. M. Grant.

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—— 1973. ‘Domestic staff at Rome in the Julio-Claudian period, 27 BC to AD 68’, Social History/Histoire Sociale 6, 241–55. —— 1975. ‘Jobs in the household of Livia’, Papers of the British School at Rome 43, 48–77. Veyne, Paul 1976. Le pain et le cirque: sociologie historique d’un pluralisme politique, Paris. —— 1990. Bread and Circuses: Historical Sociology and Political Pluralism, transl. Brian Pearce, London. Waldstein, Wolfgang 1986. Operae libertorum: Untersuchungen zur Dienstpflicht freigelassener Sklaven, Stuttgart. Waltzing, J. P. 1895–1900. Étude historique sur les corporations professionelles chez les Romains, four volumes, Brussels/Louvain. Watson, Alan 1987. Roman Slave Law, Baltimore. Weaver, P. R. C. 1990. ‘Where have all the Junian Latins gone? Nomenclature and status in the early Empire’, Chiron 20, 275–305. Weber, Ekkehard 1988. ‘Freigelassene—eine diskriminierte Randgruppe?’, I. Weiler (ed.), Soziale Randgruppen und Außenseiter im Altertum, Graz, 257–67. Wesch-Klein, Gabriele 1993. Funus publicum: Eine Studie zur öffentlichen Beisetzung und Gewährung von Ehrengräbern in Rom und den Westprovinzen, Stuttgart. Whitehead, David 1977. The Ideology of the Athenian Metic, Cambridge. Wiedemann, Thomas 1985. ‘The regularity of manumission at Rome’, Classical Quarterly 35, 162–75. Williams, Gordon 1995. ‘Libertino patre natus: true or false?’, S. J. Harrison (ed.), Homage to Horace, Oxford, 296–313. Wiseman, T. P. 1985. ‘Who was Crassicius Pansa?’, Transactions of the American Philological Association 115, 187–196. Zelnick-Abramovitz, R. 2005. Not Wholly Free. The Concept of Manumission and the Status of Manumitted Slaves in the Ancient Greek World, Leiden.

CHAPTER FOUR

REDEMPTION OF SLAVES IN ANCIENT SRI LANKA1 Chandima Wickramasinghe

Amongst the wealth of research on slavery, both ancient2 and modern, slavery in Ancient Sri Lanka during the pre-colonial period has been much neglected, and even the few scholars who have dealt with the subject have just flipped through several points.3 Still, the effort of studying slavery in Sri Lanka is well worth making, not only because it makes a valuable contribution to the history of slavery in general, but also because it makes accessible evidence from a part of the world where the study of slavery comprises largely unwritten territory. Making this material available will allow scholars to draw up a range of parallels and dissimilarities, first of all with slavery and manumission in other parts of Asia and subsequently with other slave societies, in the New as well as in the Old world.4 This chapter examines the evidence on the manumission of slaves in Ancient Sri Lanka during the monarchical period, more precisely

1 I am thankful to the audience at the ICHOS-conference held in 2001 in Nottingham for their comments and suggestions that induced me to improve on the original argument. Also, I am very grateful to Drs. Jim Roy (my supervisor) and Marc Kleijwegt for their valuable comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this chapter. Any remaining errors are my own. 2 For Graeco-Roman slavery, cf. Wiedemann 1981; Garlan 1988; Bradley 1994; Fisher 1995; Schumacher 2001; Thompson 2003. 3 Gunasinghe 1960 and Wijesekara 1974 are the only two articles so far available on ancient Sri Lankan slavery. The story of Dutch slavery on the island is more familiar than that of indigenous slavery, but even for this subject there is no modern study available. For this period the standard work remains Arasaratnam 1958; cf. also Winius 1971. 4 The study of bondage and slavery in Asia has attracted less attention than slavery in the Atlantic world. For useful collective studies, cf. Reid 1983; Watson 1980. For the persistence of slavery in Asia and Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries, cf. the essays in Klein 1993. For slavery on the Indian subcontinent, cf. Patnaik 1985. For a recent introduction to the study of slave societies in the Indian Ocean area, cf. Campbell and Alpers 2004. For discussion of abolition in Indian Ocean, Africa and Asia, cf. Campbell 2005.

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the long period running from the third century BC to 1815, the year the monarchy was discontinued by the British. To choose such a long span for study may appear counterproductive, but it is a matter of necessity, because the evidence for slavery is so widely scattered. The obvious drawbacks of attempting to draw general conclusions over such a long span of time are eased by the apparent absence of radical changes in social conditions within the period, with the exception perhaps of the Kandyan period (1529–1815), which stood under greater South Indian and European influence.5 However, I would like to stress that, since the evidence is very scanty and sometimes difficult to interpret, my conclusions must remain preliminary. As slavery in Ancient Sri Lanka will be largely unfamiliar to many, a brief introduction to the main outlines of the institution will be in order. The main issue of note is that despite the fact that English terms like ‘slavery’ and ‘slaves’ are being used to translate indigenous terms such as dàsa, vahal and vaharala etc., none of these local terms seem to designate just one group of unfree persons on the island. For instance, evidence shows that group(s) denoted by the terms dàsa, vahal and vaharala were bought, sold or gifted away as chattel slaves6 and they were also attached to the land7 which they worked for the master. Moreover, some unfree groups thus called were bonded for the non-payment of debts.8 Due to this complexity and to show that these terms do not stand for one particular unfree group on the island I choose to use the terms slave or slavery, where applicable, within inverted commas.9 Furthermore, ‘slavery’ in ancient Sri Lanka appears to have been mild, although

5 Although there might be differences in the social system and in the types of servitude in the Northern provinces, our knowledge of this is very skimpy. With regard to slavery the available detail is limited to the Nàgà story (before Kandyan times) and to the brief account of Pridham (1849, 224), (after Kandyan times) who reports that there were three types of slaves: covias, nalluas, and pallavas, and that their total was 20,000 besides the 2,000 domestic slaves (Pridham 1849, 229). 6 Eg. dàsa: EZ 8: 65 = EZ 6: 124; EZ 3 no. 35: 325–331. Vahal: EZ 4, no. 25: 196–212; Mv. 49, 62. Vaharala and its variant forms appear to be the earliest form of the term vahal as the term vahal does not appear before 12th century AD and the use of vaharala is confined to the period between the fourth and the eight century AD. 7 Eg. dàsa: EZ 3 no. 27: 260–269; EZ 1, no. 15: 182–190; EZ 6, no. 8: 39–58. Vahal: EZ 1, no. 14: 176–182; EZ 6, no. 27: 126–134. 8 Eg. dàsa: Sihalavatthu 62; vaharala: EZ 4: 132–133. 9 The complexities with regard to the status of the servile groups found in the local sources is discussed at length in Appendix 1 of my thesis.

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occasional harsh treatment may not have been altogether absent.10 ‘Slaves’ worked mostly in agriculture, cultivating lands belonging either to temples or to rich individuals. For instance, certain monarchs and their officers are known to have granted whole villages to temples together with hundreds of ‘slaves’.11 These ‘slaves’ probably lived together with their families on plots which they cultivated for their masters while being expected to use the same piece of land to feed their families.12 The sources of ‘slaves’ on the island are the same as that for any other slave-holding society.13 They consisted of enslaved captives of war, purchased ‘slaves’, those reduced to ‘slavery’ for unpaid debts, penalty restitution, or for adultery, those who inherited ‘slavery’ from their mothers.14 A special category of slaves is formed by people of

10 D’Oyly 1929, 120, speaks of mild treatment of slaves. Robert Knox, who lived in Kandy as a ‘free prisoner’ of the Kandyan king Rajasinhe II for almost 20 years from 1660 (1911, xxix, 64, 69–70 and passim), speaks of better treatment of ‘slaves’. These references are from the Kandyan period, which probably continued a trend from earlier times. A further reason for mild treatment could be the influence of Buddhism which instructs masters to treat their ‘slaves’ well to obtain a good service from them (Dìgha Nikàya (PTS ed. 1911) 3: 191). For a full discussion on the condition of ‘slavery’ in ancient Sri Lanka, see my thesis. 11 King Mahàdatthika Mahànàga (AD 66–78) built a temple and gave lands to it (Mahàvamsa (henceforth Mv.) 24, 92); a Tamil officer of the king Agghabòdhi IV (seventh century AD) erected some buildings for a monastery and granted it a tank and two villages filled with slaves (Mv. 46, 19–21); Queen Kalyànawathi built a monastery and granted it villages and ‘slaves’ of both sexes among other many material offerings (Mv. 80, 35–36); Ayasmantha the General of this queen also built a monastery and supplied it with lands and ‘slaves’ of both sexes (Mv. 80, 40). The slab inscription of Queen Lilavathi (end of the 12th and beginning of the 13th century AD) mentions that the queen built a temple in Anuràdhapura and granted it ‘slaves’, cattle and land (EZ 1: 179). The Gadaladeniya rock inscription of Dharmmakìrthi thèra (monk) of the 14th century AD mentions that king Buvanekabhàhu IV granted lands and ‘slaves’ to the temple of Gadaladeniya (EZ 4: 104). Another inscription (14th century AD) mentions that an individual called SènaLankà-Adikàra granted lands and 200 male and female ‘slaves’ to the Lankàtilaka royal temple (tr. of Paranavitana, quoted in Evers 1972, 209). 12 Làhugala inscription (EZ 6, ins. no. 27: 126–136) also refers to grant of lands to slaves in the Buddhist monastery by this name (1153–1186); Galapàta inscription (EZ 4, ins. no 25: 196–211), mentions about 88 ‘slaves’ living in families who were sold to the temple of Galapàta by an officer of a king along with portions of land (12–13th century AD). 13 Samanthapàsàdikà (PTS ed.) 747, Sumangalavilàsini (PTS ed.) 168, (dating to the 5th century AD) compiled by the monk Buddhagosha during his sojourn on the island and Niti Niganduwa 7–12 (late 17th century AD) include all these types of ‘slaves’. [Henceforth Spdika, Svini, NN respectively]. 14 The evidence for these cases comes mostly from Kandyan sources. Debt: Lawrie Mss, 3: 293. Penalty: Lawrie Mss, 3: 290, 291, 299. Adultery: NN 7, 9. Lawrie

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high social ranks who submitted to ‘slavery’ voluntarily in quest of merit.15 It seems that inheritance was the main source of slaves, with capture coming in as a close second, while purchase, when it occurred, may at best have recycled the existing number of ‘slaves’. The other modes of acquisition may have occurred at various intervals depending upon the circumstances of the affected individuals. ‘Slaves’ were clearly available in large numbers since evidence reveals that multitudes of ‘slaves’ were granted to temples by kings and royal officers. There is also evidence that members of royal families possessed a huge number of ‘slave’ attendants.16 In their brief articles on ‘slavery’ in ancient Sri Lanka, Gunasinghe and Wijesekara mention that the most common method of manumission was that initiated by the master himself,17 either by granting freedom for performing all the household chores, such as drawing water and hewing wood, or by accepting the value of the ‘slave’ in cash in return for his or her freedom.18 Unfortunately, it is not quite clear on what basis they have reached this conclusion because they do not cite any source in support of their view. Nevertheless, it is possible that masters may have released their faithful domestic ‘slaves’ either by accepting the necessary value to replace them or perhaps even without being reimbursed, at least after a prolonged time of service, partly due to the religious background of the time and partly out of gratitude for their loyal service.19 The sum of money required to pay for the manumission of the ‘slave(s)’ could be provided either by the ‘slave’ him/herself, or by a relative, or even by an individual totally unrelated to the ‘slave’.

Mss, 3: 290, Lawrie 1896, 297. Inheritance: NN 10, D’Oyly 1929, 26, 119, 190, Lawrie Mss, 3: 286–288. 15 Due to the special nature of this type of enslavement, which was immediately followed by manumission, this will be discussed separately, cf. infra pp. 130 and 131. 16 The Sihalavatthùpakarana [henceforth Sihalavattu] 33, mentions that king Saddhàtissa granted hundreds of male and female ‘slaves’ to Hankàla to raise her position to that of his daughter, in order to honour her pious deed. This implies that the daughter of this king had hundreds of ‘slaves’ serving her. Apart from this, Mv. 17, 9, too presents kings and their relatives with retinues of hundreds of maidens. For instance, Queen Anulà was presented with 500 maidens (and 500 women of the harem). 17 Gunasinghe 1960, 58; Wijesekara 1974, 10. 18 Wijesekara 1974, 11. 19 It is also not surprising to see that certain masters allowed their old ‘slaves’ to gain manumission as a profitable means of disposing of unwanted ‘slaves’.

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A total of 31 inscriptions20 datable from the fourth to the eighth century AD from a variety of geographical areas, such as Anuràdhapura, Kurunegala, Hambantota, Màtale, Dambulla and Puttalama districts, reveal that ‘slaves’ could and did purchase their own freedom.21 The evidence seems to suggest that ‘slaves’ legitimately engaged in commercial transactions and that self-purchase, after having saved up enough money to pay the manumission fee, was an accepted way of exiting ‘slavery’.22 The rock inscription from Nilagama23 royal temple (ca. AD 537)24 of Dala Mugalan or Moggallàna II (AD 531–551) from the Kurunegala district registers that eight ‘slaves’ bought their freedom by paying one hundred kahapana each.25 An inscription from Dangollägama (fifth-sixth century AD), also in the Kurunegala district, records that a bricklayer bought his freedom for one hundred kahapana.26 The same is indicated in an inscription from Ridivihàra (fourth-fifth century AD),27 a slab inscription from Sasèruwa (fifth-seventh century 20 All these inscriptions are engraved on granite stones, a common medium for the island’s inscriptions for the recording of important religious and secular matters. Other than this, writings on gold and copper leaves were also used to record grants of lands to individuals by monarchs. Palm leaves appear to be the main writing-material used by common people. 21 The reading of the term vaharala (and its variant forms) and the accompanying verbs (eg. cidavi ), have become points of intense scholarly debate. S. Paranavitana (SP), 1941 first translated the phrase ‘cidavi vaharala’ and its variant forms as “freeing from slavery” (EZ 4: 128–136). D. J Wijerathne (DJW) was the first scholar to criticize SP’s reading and to propose a new reading ‘cutting timber’ (1952, 103–117). But DJW’s theory was criticized and rejected by SP himself (EZ 5: 35–65). Rev. M. Wimalakitti (Rev. MW) holds a different notion and translates the phrase ‘cidavi vaharala’ as ‘caused monastic tickets to be issued’ (Silalekana sangrahaya 5: 88–99). The next critic, W. S. Karunàrathne (WSK) 1984, translated the same phrase as ‘caused a vihàra to be made’ (EZ 7: 117). S. Ranawala (SR), 1991 criticized all existing interpretations but expanded the reading of Rev. MW (EZ 6: 168–172). M. Dias (MD), 1991, read the phrase as ‘caused to be made free from the compulsory service of the monastery’ and J. Uduwara ( JU), (1991 EZ 6: 124) accepts the reading of SP. I myself consider SP’s reading to be the most sensible one since it matches all the available records with this phrase. For this reason, his interpretation and translation have been adopted in this text where suitable. Cf. Appendix 1 of my thesis for a detailed discussion why all other readings are unsatisfactory. 22 Knox 1911, 69–70, provides evidence supporting the notion that masters allowed their ‘slaves’ to improve their wealth. 23 EZ 4: 294–295. 24 EZ 4: 294–295. The script is early Brahmi but the language is old Sinhalese. 25 Kahapana was a type of currency used in ancient Sri Lanka. These were copper coins. But there were gold coins, which were called Suvanna, and silver coins called Rajata as well, cf. Geiger 1960, 84. 26 EZ 6: 173. 27 MD 1991, 80.

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AD),28 a rock inscription from Periyakadu vihàra (sixth-seventh century AD),29 three fragmentary rock inscriptions from Sangamu vihàra, (sixth-seventh century AD),30 and a fragmentary inscription from Kasagal vihàra (sixth-seventh century AD) in Kurunegala.31 The fourth record in the inscription from Vessagiriya32 (ca. AD 526–552) in Anuràdhapura mentions that two ‘slaves’ bought their freedom for one hundred kahapana. The Nuvaraveva inscription (fifthsixth century AD), also from Anuràdhapura, provides further proof of this.33 A short record (sixth-seventh century AD) from Mulkirigala vihàra in the Hambantota District also attests to an act of selfpurchase by a ‘slave’.34 A further example is available from an inscription from Situlpavuva in the same district (sixth century AD).35 An inscription from Kumbukkandana in Màtale records a further four cases of self-purchase by ‘slaves’.36 A further eight records from Dambulla (fifth-sixth century AD) seem to carry evidence of the manumission of ‘slaves’, that is, if we follow M. Dias’ interpretation.37 Further evidence can also be seen in records unearthed from Puttalama district, while two fragmentary records from Mullègama of the sixth century AD mention that some ‘slaves’ bought their release from ‘slavery’ in the temples.38 28

MD 1991, 71. MD 1991, 82. 30 MD 1991, 83. 31 MD 1991, 87. 32 EZ 4: 132–133. The inscription of Vessagiriya contains four short manumission records. 33 EZ 6: 168–172. I translated ‘vahara la cidavaya’ which is a variant form of ‘vaharala cidavi ’, as ‘freed from slavery’, following the critical reading of SP. SR reads this as caused monastic tickets to be issued, while MD reads it as made free from the compulsory service in the monastery; MD 1991, 33. The script is later Brahmi and the text is in the Sinhalese language of the fifth-sixth century AD. 34 Both MD and SK translated the same record with their interpretations. Transliteration: a) Hidila salihi cidavi vaharala. b) Pohopava Padapagana cadavi vaharala. MD 1991: 34 read: a) Hidila-Salihi made [himself ] free from slavery. b) Padapagana of Pohopava made [himself ] free from slavery. SK read ‘cidavi vaharala’ as ‘made a vaharala’ implying a small building of a vihàra [temple]. EZ 7: 118–119. 35 MD 1991, 92. 36 MD 1991, 86. 37 These records are very fragmentary and contain the verb ‘sadava’ and thus the phrase ‘sadava vaharala’ which MD considers as a variant form of the verb ‘cadava’ and thus of the phrase ‘cadava vaharala’, cf. MD 1991, 95–98. 38 While the first record is too fragmentary, the second record, which is fairly 29

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In all these records of self-purchase it is remarkable that the ‘slaves’ appear to be adult males and that they obtained freedom from ‘slavery’ in temples. This suggests that temple ‘slaves’ in the island were allowed to buy their freedom, and apparently they were allowed to accumulate their manumission fee. At any rate, in a number of inscriptions,39 it is clearly mentioned that particular ‘slaves’ who obtained release paid their own manumission fee, and the amount in question is cited specifically.40 There were also some ‘slaves’ who required and received external financial assistance to obtain their release. In these cases it was either a relative or a non-relative who provided the manumission fee. However, when compared to the instances of self-purchase by ‘slaves’, the evidence for manumissions caused by relatives or nonrelatives is very thin. Nevertheless, the first three cases in the Vessagiriya inscription from Anuràdhapura furnish good examples of this procedure.41 The first case mentions that a wife was freed from ‘slavery’ in the monastery by her husband: Latakalata (hi) oluvadu Puyagonu | lami B(o)ya-opulavana-kasapi-ga- | -ri-rajamaha-vahere siya-agana vahara- | -la cidavi ma-pala sava-satanata. (I, Puyagonula, the bricklayer of Latakatala, caused my wife to be freed from ‘slavery’ in the royal monastery of Boya-Opulavana-Kasapa-gari. [May] the fruit of this [action be] for the benefit of all beings).

The second and the third records inform us that children were freed from ‘slavery’ in the same monastery by their fathers. The second one reads: Si Durusava vasana uluvadu Boya-gonulami | Daruyana cidavi veherala pala | Sava-satanata vayavaya | rici Budu-bava vayavaya. (Hail! I, Boyagonula, the bricklayer residing in Durusava, caused [my] children to be freed from ‘slavery’. May the fruit [of this action] be for the benefit of all beings. May there be Buddhahood as desired).

well preserved, mentions two cases of self-redemption, cf. MD 1991, 99. These records are inscribed in the old Sinhalese language of the fifth-sixth century AD, but the script is later Brahmi. 39 It should be mentioned that some records are fragmentary and obstruct further observation. 40 E.g. Nilagama inscription (EZ 4: 294–295), Dangollagama inscription (EZ 6: 173), Nuvaraveva inscription (EZ 6: 168–172). 41 EZ 4: 132–133.

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And the third record reads: Si Abagamayahi vasana Patisalalami daru- | -ya cidavi veherala pala savasatanata rici Budu-bava | veyavaya. (Hail I, Patisalala, residing at Abayagamaya, caused [my] child to be freed from ‘slavery’. [May] the fruit [of this action be] for the benefit of all beings. May there be Buddhahood as desired).

Further evidence is furnished by a single-lined inscription from the Medagama vihàra in Kurunegala (seventh-eighth century AD)42 which informs us that a father caused the manumission of his daughters: ‘Mihidala Simi dariyana sidava veheralaya.’ (I, Mihidala Si, caused my daughters to be freed from ‘slavery’ ).

The most likely context for relatives causing the manumission of their kith and kin is that parents had been forced to pledge their children or spouses to ‘slavery’ as security for money borrowed in difficult circumstances, and had been successful in petitioning their owners for their release when they could afford to pay back the money. Ancient literary sources provide numerous examples of such cases.43 The first three manumission inscriptions from Vessagiriya could very well reflect some such financial crisis which forced the women and children into ‘slavery’.44 This can further be extrapolated from the low professional status of the individuals who had

42 This record is edited under ‘seven Sinhalese inscriptions’ in the EZ 4: 144 ed. & tr. by SP. However, the other inscriptions were found in different places, and even their content differs from one another. Among this group only one other fragmentary inscription (half a line) refers to ‘slavery’. This record from Madagama vihàra was engraved in transitional Brahmi script, but the language is old Sinhalese. 43 Sihalavattu 45, mentions that a poor farmer pawned his daughter for eight kahapana during a famine; ibid., 55, a couple pledged their daughter to ‘slavery’ during same circumstances as the security for the 12 kahapana which they borrowed; ibid., 62 parents pledged their own daughter to ‘slavery’ also during a famine as the security for the 40 kahapana which they borrowed; ibid., 33 parents being in extreme poverty pledged their elder son to ‘slavery’ and bought a cow and a calf. Moreover Rasavahini 2: 32 mentions an incident where a son was pledged to ‘slavery’ as security for an amount of eight kahapana which the parents had borrowed. 44 The conception of women as inferior is well illustrated in literary sources such as Sddharmalankàraya (363, 437) and Saddharmarathnàvaliya 763, which convey ideas such as ‘women belong to every one irrespective of caste, creed or social status’ (Ariyapàla 1956, 301–302) and confirm male dominance in ancient Sri Lankan society. These circumstances may have allowed a husband to pledge or even to sell his wife into ‘slavery’ to obtain money if he so desired.

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been instrumental in obtaining manumission for their relatives: in the first two they were ‘bricklayers’ and the person in the third record and in the Madagama record may also have belonged to the same social and economic level. Sihalavattùpakarana mentions in one instance that parents pledged their daughters to slavery as security for money they borrowed due to their miserable conditions, thinking “we’ll liberate her later, after giving money.”45 This supports the assumption that some people ended up in ‘slavery’ because their relatives traded them over as security for money, which they borrowed during hardships with the intention to release them subsequently. Alternatively, the individuals who managed to arrange manumission for their relatives were themselves ex-slaves who had bought their freedom in the past and were now manumitting other members of their family.46 In three instances of manumission no family ties can be established between the ‘slaves’ and the individual who paid for their release. The record at Kotakanda Ätkanda vihàra (fifth-sixth century AD) mentions that a certain individual initiated the manumission of two persons. The amount paid is stated as one hundred kahapana, but it is uncertain whether it is meant as a joint fee for both or a fee of one hundred kahapana for each. The record from Murutàwa (AD 508–516) in the Kurunegala district mentions that an officer had manumitted “all children” from ‘slavery’. It is hard to say whether these were child ‘slaves’ who belonged to a monastery or to a household since no ancient structures were found in the neighbourhood where the inscription was discovered.47 The likelihood is that he freed all child ‘slaves’ in his possession without demanding a sum of money in exchange. The plausibility of this assumption is enhanced by the fact that the person, Abi Mihi Dala, who undertook the task under Dalana’s command could be identified as his wife or some female relative with responsibility in his household.48 The third piece of evidence is the Kudàrathmale rock inscription (ca. AD 571–604).49 It should be noted that this is a peculiar case 45

Sihalavattu 56. Since ‘slaves’ of both sexes were granted to temples together with lands and villages, which were cultivated by them, there would have been slave communities, which is furthermore confirmed by the Galapàtha record EZ 4: 25. 47 EZ 5: 27. 48 'Abi"is a title for high-ranking women (royal), cf. Perera 2001, 31. 49 EZ 5: 30–34, ed. and tr. by SP. The text was written in Later Brahmi script and in old Sinhalese language. 46

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because it registers the manumission of a clergyman ( päviji ), named Sidhatta, for a payment of one hundred kahapana.50 Paranavithana, the editor of the inscription, mentions that this is the only documented instance in which a Buddhist monk is known to have been enslaved. He refers to Samanthapàsàdikà, where a Buddhist monk who had entered the order unaware that he was born a ‘slave’ was anxious to make his ordination valid by redeeming himself from those who might claim him as a ‘slave’, because the vinaya regulations prohibit a ‘slave’ from entering the order.51 It may be argued that the context for the above record is similar to the incident cited in the Samanthapàsàdikà. Literary sources, too, provide evidence for ‘slaves’ freed by nonrelatives. For instance, Sihalavatthùpakarana mentions that a certain woman called Nàgà from Nàgadipa borrowed a sum of 60 kahapana and became a ‘slave’ of a rich family, and later she borrowed another 60 kahapana and became a female ‘slave’ working in the night.52 She remained in ‘slavery’ until the king redeemed her.53 Another incident where a girl was released from ‘slavery’ is recorded in Sihalavattùpakarana. Here parents pledged their daughter to ‘slavery’ as security for the 12 kahapana which they borrowed due to their miserable condition during a famine. Later the father of the girl earned 12 kahapana to redeem her but spent all that money on a meal for a Buddhist monk who was about to miss his lunch. When King Saddhàtissa (77–59 BC) was informed of this meritorious deed, the girl was redeemed by the king and was kept in his house as his grand-daughter as a testimony to the meritorious deed of the father.54 Although these are folk-tales, they may contain some truth, revealing that ‘slaves’ received support to gain manumission not only from their relatives but also from non-relatives. Out of a total of 52 recorded cases of manumission, 13 are much too fragmentary to establish whether a manumission fee was paid or not.55 Of the remainder, 21 records do not refer to a precise sum,

50

EZ 5: 34. EZ 5: 34. 52 Sihalavatthu 62. 53 Rasavàhini 2: 17–18. 54 Sihalavattu 56. 55 Here I have counted the individual records of manumissions separately although they may occur in one inscription. For instance, the four records mentioned in the Vessagiriya rock inscription (EZ 4: 132–133) are counted as four different cases. 51

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although they hint that a manumission fee was paid. The remaining 18 cases explicitly mention the sum paid by the ‘slaves’ to obtain their release. Out of these, 12 records clearly mention that the manumission fee for an adult male ‘slave’ was one hundred kahapana. In five cases, however, mention is made of the same amount of money, but more than one person appears to have been freed. For instance, the fourth case of the Vessagiriya inscription mentions: Sahasavarala Dalameya Sakanakana | Vesiminiya Aba Kasaba-giriye va- | -hara sayaka kahavana di vaharaliya cidava- | -yaha maha pala sava-satanata. (Sahasavarala Dalameya and Sakanakana Vesiminiya Aba gave a hundred kahapanas to the Kasabagiriye monastery and freed [themselves] from ‘slavery’. May the fruit of this [action] be for the benefit of all beings).56

Similarly, the Kotakanda Ätkanda vihàra record which is also fairly well preserved mentions that one hundred kahapana was paid and two persons were freed: Sidam vaduka maravila vi siyaka ka- | -havani diya de vaherila cidi- | -vi ico vakigala gabataki ico | mahamadi- (i)ca mahapala sa(va). (Hail! Maravila Visa, the carpenter gave hundred kahapanas and freed two persons namely, Gabataki of Vakigala and . . . mahamadi—from ‘slavery’. May the great fruit [of this action be for the benefit of all beings]).57

Some confusion, therefore, remains as to whether the sum of one hundred kahapana was paid for each slave or whether it was the total amount paid for the release of more than one individual.58 Judging from the cases already discussed, one hundred kahapana is likely to have been the standard amount paid to free one ‘slave’. In a couple of other cases the fragmentary nature of the records makes it impossible to determine how many ‘slaves’ were involved. For instance, the Sangamu vihàra rock inscription,59 and the two records from 56 EZ 4: 132–133. The original script was Transitional Bràhmi but the language was Sinhalese of the sixth century AD. The other three cases will occur where relevant in the discussion. 57 EZ 6: 121–124. 58 Eight cases in the Nilagama inscription, one case each in Kudàrathmale record, Nuvaraveva record, Dangollägama record and a slab inscription of Anuràdhapura: (EZ 4: 285–295; 5: 30–34; 6: 168–172; 6: 173 & MD 1991, 33 respectively). It should also be remembered that Nilagama record mentions that eight ‘slaves’ paid one hundred (kahapana) each to gain release from ‘slavery’. 59 [. . . . . . . . . nayanivi ] . . . . . . . . . . . ., sayaka kaha(va) . . . . di cidavi vaharala sava . . . . . . . . (. . . . . . . . . of [. . . . . . . . . . . . nayanivi], gave one hundred kahapana and freed [. . . . . . .] from ‘slavery’. All. . . . . .). Cf. Dias 1991, 83.

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Dambulla mention a sum of one hundred kahapana as the manumission fee, but the fragmentary nature of the records does not allow further examination.60 The remaining record, out of the 12 cases which mention manumission prices, is from Dambulla and refers to a sum of fifty kahapana.61 But, the fragmentary state of this record makes it difficult to get further detail as to the age of the ‘slave’ manumitted. Despite some uncertainty, the manumission fee for adult male ‘slaves’ seems to have been set at a standard amount of 100 kahapana. However, it is difficult to accept that this was valid for all manumissions. It is to be presumed that manumission fees varied according to gender, age and talent of the particular ‘slave’, but this is impossible to verify since no information is available for the manumission prices of child ‘slaves’ or female ‘slaves’. The surviving records do not refer to any skill or profession of the manumitted ‘slaves’, with the exception of the Dangollägama inscription, which mentions that the ‘slave’ who obtained his freedom was a bricklayer.62 It is worth pointing out, however, that the manumission fees paid by those who pledged themselves or their children as security for money borrowed

60

(1) 1 2 3 4

[Siddham] Mugalana maharaja . . . . . . . . . . . . . sagi . . . . . . . . . saya, -ka kahavana [di . . . cadava vaharala] . . . . . . pala sava sata . . . . . . pati.

([prosperity]. . . . . . [in the reign] of the great king Mugalan . . . gave one hundred kahapana to the Sangha [of this monastery and freed [ [. . . .] from ‘slavery’ ]. The merit of this action is given to all beings. (2) 1 2 3 4

.................. .................. . . . . . . ganaha sayaka kahava-na di sadava vaharala.

(. . . . . . gana gave one hundred kahapana. . . . . . freed [himself ?] from ‘slavery’. These are the two records out of the 14 fragmentary records from Dambulla: MD 1991: 95–96. 61 1. Mahapalihathala malana 2. (Dasi . . . . la) panasa (di ) (ca) dava vaha 3. ralaya. (Dasi . . . . . la, brother of Mahapalihathala . . . . . gave fifty . . . . . . and freed [himself ] from ‘slavery’. MD 1991: 97–98. From a collection of ten records, written in later Brahmi script and old Sinhalese language of fifth-sixth century AD. 62 Cf. EZ 6: 173.

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should not be considered as the standard manumission fee for child or for female ‘slaves’, since these sums may represent the amounts these individuals were allowed to borrow or the sums they required in desperate circumstances. For instance, as mentioned above, Nàgà from Nàgadipa borrowed 60 kahapana and become a ‘slave’ working during the day, and then borrowed another 60 and became a ‘slave’ working in the night (ratti-dàsi ) and she ultimately had to pay 120 kahapana to buy her freedom.63 Wijesekara, however, mentions that the usual redemption price for a ‘slave’ was 60 kahapana, but since he does not provide any evidence for this or indicate the sources from which he gathered his information, we do not know on what basis he came to this conclusion.64 In any case, the price suggested as the standard amount by Wijesekara does not match that of adult male ‘slaves’, which in most cases was one hundred kahapana, at least during the time between the fourth and the eighth centuries AD. Some idea regarding the prices of ‘slaves’ can also be obtained from Kandyan times (c. 1522– 1815), thanks to the evidence assembled by Lawrie. The denomination mentioned in these cases is not kahapana but ridi and the evidence is slightly beyond our time frame. For instance, a letter dated to 17.9.1829 mentions values of ‘slaves’ at the rate of ‘100 ridies for every female and 50 for every male without reference to age.’65 Though we do not know whether it reflects an increase or decrease compared to the period before 1815, it firmly establishes that prices for female ‘slaves’ were higher than those for males. It would also be interesting to know whether manumission was conditional, or whether every ‘slave’ obtained immediate and complete freedom. The manumission records discussed above reveal that the recipients received their full freedom. However, it can be gleaned from Samanthapàsàdikà that conditional manumission existed as well.66 The account mentions that, “masters of ‘slaves’ sometimes give a ‘slave’ to a bhikkhu [monk], saying “Let this person be admitted to the Order, should he take delight in the religious life, he will become free,67 if not, he will revert to us as a ‘slave’.” But Kurundi labels 63

Cf. note 52 above. Wijesekara 1974, 11, unfortunately again does not cite his source. 65 Lawrie Mss. 3: 289. 66 Spdika 1001. 67 According to vinaya regulations, ‘slaves’ were not admitted to the order of monks unless they obtained freedom. Cf. note 51 above. 64

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such a person as ‘a temporary one’ and opposes their admittance to the order.68 The above information indicates, however, that despite the ban reported in Kurundi the masters continued to free their ‘slaves’ on the condition that they became monks and devoted their lives to religion, at least during the time when Samanthapàsàdikà was composed—the later half of the fifth century AD. Other than this there is no recorded evidence for the existence of conditional manumission in ancient Sri Lanka. It is a peculiar feature of ‘slavery’ on ancient Sri Lanka that certain monarchs and their families voluntarily entered ‘slavery’ in Buddhist monasteries. They subsequently purchased their freedom by paying a substantial sum of money to the monks. For instance, king Mahadattika Mahànàga (first century AD) offered himself, his queen, and his two sons to the order of Buddhist monks to be their property, and he redeemed himself and his family members by bestowing rich offerings on both male and female orders of Buddhist monks.69 King Aggabòdhi VIII (AD 804–815) asked his mother to offer himself as a gift to the order of monks, and having paid a sum of money equal to his value he became a free man once again.70 Aristocratic families seem to have copied this behaviour. A son of a Lambakanna family (Lambakannas were aristocrats) offered his wife, his daughter, and finally himself to the order of Buddhist monks in order to emulate king Vessanthara (a ruler who makes his appearance in one of the Jàtaka stories).71 Although the account fails to disclose whether he redeemed himself and his family, judging from parallel incidents, we may presume that he released himself and the rest of his family by donating money to the order of monks. Another piece of evidence comes from Polonnaruwa ‘Galpota’ slab inscription, which mentions that the king Nissankamalla (AD 1187–1196) granted his son and daughter to the Tooth and Bowl relics of Buddha, and that they were manumitted after having bestowed many riches.72 Such voluntary ‘slavery’ appears to have been a symbolic venture and the significance lies in the sum of money paid to obtain imme68 Spdika 1001. This passage was translated by SP in EZ 5, ins. no. 4: 60–61. Kurundi was an ancient Sinhalese commentary used by Buddhaghosha the author of Spdika. 69 Mv. 24, 86–89. 70 Mv. 49, 63–64. 71 Sihalavattu 71. 72 EZ 2: 107.

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diate release from token ‘slavery’. The prime motive of such symbolic ‘slavery’ and redemption from that ‘slavery’ may be found in the contemporary belief which considered granting ‘slaves’ to temples73 and also to free slaves (but not necessarily from temples) as meritorious.74 This Buddhist attitude may have induced some people to manumit their ‘slaves’ and is evident from the manumission records of which a fair number end with the phrase ‘pala savasatanata vaya vaya’ (may the fruit [of the action] be to all beings). The expression appears in a number of different forms with minor variations or additions but, essentially, all records carry the same message. The desire to achieve merit and to advertise that merit is a universal feature of Buddhism. This phrase appears in manumission records regardless of the payee, that is, whether it was the ‘slave’ himself, a relative or a non-relative of the ‘slave’ thus freed. Moreover, even if this phrase does not occur in a particular inscription, it was possibly meant to have been included. The main emphasis in the manumission records is on the person who paid the manumission fee (whether it is the ‘slave’ himself or a third party). The ex-‘slave’ is usually not named, unless he was buying his own freedom and then the identity of the owner is omitted. In contrast, when a third person was instrumental in obtaining a ‘slave’s’ freedom he is mentioned in detail: with name, profession, place of birth/residence, and his relation to the ‘slave(s)’ concerned (if there is any relation).75 For instance, the first record from the Vessagiriya inscription introduces the person who caused the manumission with his name (Puyagonula), profession (bricklayer), his place of birth/residence (Latakalatha), and his relationship to the ‘slave’ (wife).76 If the intention of engraving these records were merely to guarantee the freedom of ex-‘slaves’, it would be logical to assume that the name of the ‘slave’ should be given in all appropriate cases. In addition to this, another significant element in these manumission records is the absence of any provision for the protection of

73 Suraveera 1971, 15, reports that ancient Sinhalese believed that giving ‘slaves’ to temples brought great merit to the donor. 74 Anagatavamsadesanava (beginning of the 14th century AD) 43, mentions that liberating ‘slaves’ is important to free oneself from evil tendencies. 75 The details may vary from one record to another. Though some contain all these details, some may only contain few such as profession and place of residence of the person who caused the release of the ‘slave’. 76 Cf. pp. 123 and 124 for full text and translation.

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freed persons. They do not mention witnesses, guarantors, or any security clause to protect the ex-‘slave’ from arbitrary seizure and enslavement. This again focuses our attention on the closing phrase in the documents under study: ‘pala savasatanata.’ Apparently, just as it was considered meritorious to free a ‘slave’, so enslaving or harming a freed man could presumably have been considered a religious offence. The Vimana stories mention that those who commit religious offences may experience horrendous punishments in their next birth.77 The religious backdrop and the general positive attitude towards the freeing of slaves may have reduced the risk to ex-slaves of being seized or re-enslaved. Moreover, ancient sources mention that Sinhalese monarchs rewarded those who performed meritorious deeds,78 and it is possible that these monarchs also punished those who committed religious offences such as enslaving freedmen. Thus, the insertion of this specific clause may signify that freedmen received some religious and political protection. It seems plausible that, irrespective of whether the clause ‘pala savasathanata’ is mentioned or not, the ex‘slaves’ received immunity from any arbitrary re-enslavement. What kind of protection could be expected from non-Buddhists? In the Anuràdhapura period (all available inscriptions come from this period) even the Tamil invaders seem to have favoured Buddhism. For instance, according to Mahàvamsa, the Tamil officer Pottakutta, who served king Aggabhòdhi IV (AD 658–674), donated many villages to temples, and especially the village Nitthilavetthi, and filled it with ‘slaves’.79 Hindu influences appear in the Polonnaruwa period and after.80 Also, later with European contacts and conquests,81 certain parts of the island came under Christian influence. Owing to the lack of evidence, it is hard to check the impact of these foreign religions in recording manumissions of ‘slaves’ and on the security provided to freedmen. The issue of providing a certificate of free-

77

Masfield 1989, 346–7. Sihalavatthu. 33, 35, 45. 79 Mv. 46, 19. 80 This kingdom lasted from ca. AD 1070–1236, but it was conquered by Màga, a South Indian adventurer who seized power and ruled Polonnaruwa from AD 1215–1236. It was a reign of terror, as Màga disregarded the established traditions and Buddhism, cf. Sinnappah 1985, 185. 81 From 1543 onwards Sinhalese kings maintained contact with the Portuguese for political reasons, but it was only after 1597 that the Portuguese took possession of Sri Lanka. This was the beginning of Christian influence in the island. 78

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dom to the ‘slave’ and that of freeing ‘slaves’ in the presence of witnesses, as can be seen in the Niti-Niganduwa,82 could have been a measure taken in the Kandyan period to reduce the possibility of re-enslavement, which could have been unknown in earlier periods when religious immunity protected ex-‘slaves’. In conclusion, the above study shows that ‘slaves’ in ancient Sri Lanka were allowed to accumulate their manumission fee during their term of servitude and were allowed to buy their freedom. All ‘slaves’ who purchased freedom themselves were adult male ‘slaves’, while female ‘slaves’ and child ‘slaves’ obtained freedom with the help of a relative or a third party. The crucial point is the opportunity available to ‘slaves’ to buy their own freedom apparently without any interference from a citizen body. This implies that at least during the period from the fourth to the eighth century AD, a Sri Lankan ‘slave’ enjoyed some recognition as an individual at least in limited affairs such as purchasing one’s own freedom. This feature makes ‘slaves’ of Sri Lanka of this limited period stand out from other servile groups in the rest of the world. However, a word of caution is necessary. Due to the absence of manumission records before the fourth and after the eighth centuries AD and insufficient literary evidence for manumissions, it is hard to establish a regular pattern in the system and conditions of manumissions. Moreover, according to the epigraphic evidence at hand ‘slaves’ apparently acquired full/immediate manumission, and also, at least rarely, conditional manumission. As can be observed from the existing manumission records, the primary motive for engraving these manumission records was not to provide protection to ex-‘slaves’, but to advertise the meritorious deeds of those who freed a ‘slave’ by paying his/her manumission fee. Nevertheless, ex-‘slaves’ seem to have received some indirect protection thanks to the religious atmosphere of the time. As a final remark it should be mentioned that the absence of manumission records after the eighth century AD is surprising because both literary and epigraphic sources reveal that temples, monarchs and private individuals continued to own slaves beyond this period.83 Especially Niti-Niganduwa shows that the practice of manumitting slaves continued into the Kandyan period (1529–1815). Perhaps, then, seen

82 83

NN 10–11. Cf. notes 11 and 12 above.

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in this light, it was the process of recording manumissions that experienced a greater change rather than the intensity and the scale of slavery.

Bibliography Epigraphic publications Epigraphia Zeylanica, vols. I–VII, (1904–1984) edited and translated with notes by a number of scholars such as M. D. de Z Wickramasinghe, S. Paranavitana, H. W. Codrington, B. Ch. Chhabra, C. E. Godakumbura, S. Karunarathne, A. Veluppillai, J. Uduwara, S. Ranawella, Oxford, Colombo.84 Dias, M., 1991. Epigraphical Notes —Nos. 1–18 (EN 1–18), Colombo. —— 2001. (ed.) Epigraphia Zeylanica vol. VIII, Colombo. Paranavitana, S., 1970. Inscriptions of Ceylon, vol. I, Colombo. —— 1983. Inscriptions of Ceylon, vol. II, part. I, Colombo. Wimalakitthi, M., Rev., 1957. Shilalèkhana sangrahaya Pt. I, Moratuwa. Secondary literature Arasaratnam, S., 1958. Dutch Power in Ceylon 1658–1687, Amsterdam. Ariyapala, M. B., 1956. Society in Medieval Ceylon, Colombo. Bradley, K., 1994. Slavery and Society in Rome, Cambridge. Campbell, G., (ed.) 2005. Abolition and its Aftermath in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia, London and Portland. —— and Alpers, E. A., 2004. ‘Introduction: slavery, forced labour and resistance in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia’, Slavery & Abolition 25, IX–XXVII. D’Oyly, J. D., 1929. A Sketch of the Constitution of the Kandyan Kingdom, by Sir John D’Oyly, Colombo. Evers, H. D., 1972. Monks, Priests and Peasants: A Study of Buddhism and Social Structure in Central Ceylon, Leiden. Fisher, N. R. E., (2nd rev. edition) 1995. Slavery in Classical Greece, London. Garlan, Y., 1988. Slavery in Ancient Greece, Ithaca & London. Geiger, W., 1960. Culture of Ceylon in Medieval Times, Wiesbaden. Gunasinghe, P. T. I., 1960. ‘Slavery in Ceylon during the period of the Anuradapura kingdom’, The Ceylon Historical Journal 10, 49–59. Klein, M. A., (ed.) 1993. Breaking the Chains: Slavery, Bondage, and Emancipation in Modern Africa and Asia, Madison, WI. Knox, R., 1911 [1681]. An Historical Relation of Ceylon, Glasgow. Lawrie, A. C., 1896. A Gazetteer of the Central Province of Ceylon (excluding Walapane), Colombo. —— Kandyan Law and History (manuscripts, material collected for two projects by A. C. Lawrie) published later in three vols. and known as Lawrie Mss. 1, 2, 3.

84 This is the series of epigraphic publications for inscriptions found on the island of Sri Lanka. So far eight volumes have appeared. The last volume contains a discussion of new and published Brahmi inscriptions, edited by M. Dias (2001), which have nothing to do with the manumission of slaves.

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Masfield, P. and Jayawickrama, N. A. 1989. Elucidation of the Intrinsic Meaning So Named: The Commentary on the Vimàna Stories, Oxford. Patnaik, U., (ed.) 1985. Chains of Servitude: Bondage and Slavery in India, Madras. Perera, L. S. 2001. The Institutions of Ancient Ceylon from Inscriptions—thesis—edited and published with supplementary notes and bibliography in 2001 by S. Kiribamune and P. Senanayake, Kandy. The work was originally completed in 1949. Pridham, C., 1849. An Historical, Political and Statistical Account of Ceylon 1 & 2, London. Reid, A., (ed.) 1983. Slavery, Bondage, and Dependency in Southeast Asia, New York. Schumacher, L., 2001. Sklaverei in der Antike: Alltag und Schicksal der Unfreien, München. Sinnappah, A., 1985. ‘Sri Lanka’ in Encyclopaedia Brittanica vol. 28. 15th edition. Suraveera, A. V., 1971. Sinhala kathikàvath hà bhikkusamàjaya, Colombo. Thompson, F. H., 2003. The Archaeology of Greek and Roman Slavery, London. Watson, J. L., 1980. Asian and African Systems of Slavery, Oxford. Wickramasinghe, C. S. M., 2004. Slavery in Ancient Greek Poleis and Ancient Sri Lanka: A Comparison, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Nottingham. Wiedemann, T., 1981. Greek and Roman Slavery, London & New York. Wijerathne, D. J., 1952. ‘Interpretation of vaharala etc. in Sinhalese inscriptions’, University of Ceylon Review 10, 103–117. Wijesekara, N., 1974. ‘Slavery in Sri Lanka’, Journal of Sri Lanka Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 18, 1–22. Winius, G. D., 1971. The Fatal History of Portuguese Ceylon: The Transition to Dutch Rule, New Haven.

CHAPTER FIVE

WEALTHY FREE WOMEN OF COLOUR IN CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA, DURING SLAVERY Rita Reynolds

American historians for the past 25 years have done a great deal in bringing the voices of the traditionally unheard to the forefront. AfroAmerican and women’s history are two areas that have benefited greatly from this historigraphical revolution of sorts. U.S. women’s historians such as Gerda Lerner, Barbara Welter, and Nancy Cott have incorporated and integrated the story of American white middleclass northern women into the larger body of American history in an effort to modify past misconceptions that the traditional historical role women played was marginal and invisible. So, too, have scholars of African American history begun to unravel the complexity of the slave community out of past mistaken belief that slaves were contented beings who completely identified with their master and therefore had no community or traditions of their own. Both these re-evaluations have taken place over the past 30 plus years and while these developments are significant in bringing the histories of white women and minorities into the realm of mainstream American history there still remains a great deal of scholarship to be done concerning free black women of all economic groups in the north and south. A number of studies have looked at many aspects of southern and northern women’s lives: middle-class white women in New England, in the south the Southern Belle, slave women and more recently southern yeoman women. Yet, in spite of what has been done there is virtually no comprehensive historical examination of southern free black women in general, and more specifically wealthy free women of colour. This chapter will look at some past historical trends pertaining to the scholarship of women’s history in an effort to understand why the history of wealthy free women of colour has been neglected and to consider what direction new scholarship on this topic should take.

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Scholars such as Barbara Welter and Nancy Cott presented a definitive study of northern middle-class white woman’s separate domestic sphere.1 Their studies illuminate woman’s world as a distinct element apart from men’s world. The ‘cult of domesticity’ and the ‘cult of true womanhood’ defined a woman’s place within the home as mother, wife, daughter and sister. To accept one’s domestic place was an affirmation of purity, piety and most of all submissiveness to male authority. To submit was to gain ‘happiness and power’.2 Any woman who sought to take part in the outside world, the world that was for men alone, invited ruin. She was seen as aggressive, unnatural and most of all ungodly. She was not the ‘right kind of woman’, not a true woman. In much the same manner, Ann Firor Scott (1995) disarmed the myth of the southern belle which portrayed southern wealthy white women as emotionally, sexually and religiously pure. She then considered what life was probably like for women whose identification was completely wrapped up in their role as members of the southern planter class. Her pioneering study was one of the first to trace the origins of women’s place as second-class citizens in the south. Scott’s work on southern ladies dismantled the fable of southern wealthy white women as beautiful fragile objects and instead chronicled the hardships of life for this class of women who in an instant could be, and many times were, transformed from pampered daughters to plantation ladies, a role many of them were unprepared to perform. Catherine Clinton (1982) also studied the drudgery of antebellum life of white mistresses who, Clinton argued, considered themselves slaves to southern patriarchy with little or no opportunity to challenge or change their place in the antebellum south. Welter, Scott, and Clinton’s studies all clearly sought to demonstrate that gender was the primary source of oppression for antebellum women in the U.S., but this notion of a single women’s community grounded in a common oppression, denies the social and material realities of race and class in America. In an effort to fuse southern plantation women’s experiences, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese’s ambitious study (1988) of antebellum plantation life examined the divisions between slave women and their

1 2

See, for example, Welter 1966; 1976; Cott 1977; 1979. Cf. Welter 1966.

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mistresses and argued that black and white women shared in one big family. Her thesis which considered plantation women as either ladies or servants, as Catherine Clinton argued, did more to legitimate the language of the master class than to understand the complexities of race and class that this group of women faced daily on an individual and collective basis. But despite the new understanding these historians have so carefully offered on white women and, to a lesser degree, slave women in the United States, the history of black free women in the South and in the North still remains virtually one-dimensional. In an attempt to grasp what life was like for free black women, Suzanne Lebsock’s study (1984) of women in Petersburg, Virginia tried to examine the complexities of the lives of all women. In her study she included a small minority of poor free black women whose circumstances Lebsock greatly misunderstood. One case in point is the percentage of free women of colour who did not seek matrimony. Lebsock maintained that poor free women of colour sought husbands at lower rates then their white counterparts because, she argues, remaining single guaranteed them greater autonomy. But Lebsock’s analysis did not consider the uneven male-female ratio in Antebellum Virginia. Free women of colour outnumbered men ten to seven, so some undoubtedly chose to enter relationships with slave men or white men whom they could not legally marry. Interestingly enough, with the relative wealth of data of wealthy free women of colour when compared to their less economically advantaged sisters, Lebsock found that there was either not enough evidence on wealthy black women to include in her study or else that they were not compelling enough to write about. Other works, such as Deborah Gray White’s Arn’t I A Woman? (1985; 19992) and Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow (1985), specifically examine the harsh realities of the lives of slave women. They argue that slave women were defined by their colour which presented an entirely distinct set of problems for them to negotiate. These problems ranged from unwanted sexual advances from white men to the insecurity of trying to keep their family together in the face of a master’s sometimes shifting or declining economic interests to the overwhelming labour demands in the fields or in the plantation big house. So considering what has been done in the field of African American women’s history we have yet to experience the historical revolution that white feminist historians were instrumental

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in bringing about in the 1970s, a revolution that re-examined and re-evaluated the historical interpretation of the white women’s world, from the family to the distribution of power within both traditional and industrial societies. Whereas all of these historical studies which have made white and black women central to their scholarship by looking at some abbreviated level of the common ground, black and white women have for the most part failed to consider southern free wealthy black women. Because wealthy free women of colour were literate, owners of slaves and property, there are more primary sources on free blacks than on slaves, but despite this fact the overwhelming majority of historical scholarship is on the white and enslaved population. As noted, past historical scholarship on women has typically concentrated on one group while neglecting all others. Unfortunately, therefore, the study of wealthy free black women has been, for the most part, disregarded by historians of southern women’s history. This neglect presents a distorted impression of the lives of women we do know about in the South. In order to obtain a comprehensive portrait of southern womanhood careful and complex examination of all is necessary. The historical construction of Charleston’s black female community has been characterised by the hardships of bondage, oppression and poverty. But most historical narratives of black women in South Carolina draw few, if any, distinctions between the experiences of slaves and ex-slaves in Charleston regardless of class, education, religious affiliation or social position. We are thus presented with a monolithic image of black womanhood. However, historical evidence does suggest that Afro-American women in Charleston occupied every social and economic class from the Colonial period through to Reconstruction and beyond. The black community in Charleston was diverse; its religious, political and social beliefs varied greatly. The wealthy members of the free black elite, in particular, were significantly distinct from slaves in Charleston. To some extent, they enjoyed the benefits of wealth and freedom in a society that held the vast majority of Afro-Americans as slaves. Not surprisingly, the majority of what we know about the free black community in Charleston concerns men. E. Horace Fitchett and a few others have written detailed sociological and historical studies of the social and economic environment of wealthy free

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mulatto men, but virtually nothing is written about the wives, mothers, sisters and daughters of these men.3 For instance, Johnson and Roark’s edited book of letters between two free black men, James Johnson, a Charleston tailor, and William Ellison, a planter in Statesburg, S.C., written on the eve of the Civil War, reveals a great deal about the importance of gender roles and class distinctions in Charleston’s free black community.4 This set of thirty-four letters is the most complete collection of correspondence between free blacks in the antebellum South. Johnson, a tailor by trade, penned twenty-six of the thirty-four letters in Charleston. The letters addressed the everyday concerns of the free black community with surprisingly little attention paid to the ever tightening legal restrictions placed on the free black community. Johnson and Roark have done a commendable job reassembling the free black community in pre-Civil War Charleston through the eyes of an astute observer. Their introduction and carefully placed footnotes attest to the considerable time and effort put into editing these letters and putting them in historical context. However Johnson and Roark fail to fully analyze or comment upon the many gender issues in their historical commentary on the contents of these letters. For instance, in one of the letters, Anthony Weston a member of one of Charleston’s most wealthy and respected free families of colour, demanded a retraction from a Charleston newspaper that had implied that his daughter was a woman of low moral character when they falsely reported that Weston’s daughter had undergone punishment for insolence to a white lady.5 Weston understood, as did all wealthy free people of colour, that not only was a free coloured lady’s good reputation key to maintaining her coveted place in black and white society alike, but his family was also in danger of losing its respectability, something the Weston family had worked so hard to obtain and maintain in the eyes of white Charlestonians.6 Also in jeopardy was

3

Fitchett 1950. Johnson and Roark 1984. 5 Johnson and Roark 1984, 109. 6 Southern white ‘Ladies’ were expected to conform to masculine ideals of cultural and racial purity. Fathers, brothers, uncles and cousins made sure that female family members virtue remained intact by their obsessive control of the southern women’s world, cf. Clinton 1982. 4

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the expectation that his daughter would marry into one of Charleston’s elitist free families of colour. In Anthony Weston’s eyes his daughter’s life was in danger of being ruined by rumours of unruly behaviour unbecoming to someone of their social class and standing. Weston wanted to ensure that his daughter’s future prospects would not be devastated by mistaken identity on the part of an inaccurate newspaper article. Clearly, southern societal gender roles were as important to wealthy free blacks as they were to whites. In like manner, Ira Berlin’s massive work Slaves without Masters (1975) scrutinises social and political conditions of the free black community throughout the entire South from the Colonial period to the Civil War. He divides the south into two parts, the upper and lower. The population of free blacks in the lower south was small, most of whom could claim mixed African and European heritage and as a result held more wealth when compared to free blacks in the upper south who were manumitted in larger numbers, were not related to their masters, and owned considerably less property and wealth. Berlin points out that free blacks in the lower south, in spite of its repressive proslavery ideology, enjoyed higher rates of literacy, wealth and occupied the skilled professions because they benefited from better relations with southern white aristocrats. Bernard Powers’ book Black Charlestonians (1994) is an examination of Afro-Americans and race relations in Charleston in the 19th century. Powers’ rich study examines the complex social, political and economic dynamics between blacks and whites. He rightfully argues that the large number of blacks in Charleston influenced low country society in a striking manner. Powers astutely points out that the majority presence of slaves was so formidable that whites, whether willingly or not, turned to wealthy free mulattoes as a buffer between themselves and the bondsmen. Black Charlestonians’ importance lies in its ability to incorporate the experience of free blacks into the larger picture of Charleston race and class relations. Larry Koger’s in-depth examination of Afro-American slave-owners in South Carolina (1985) omits any meaningful examination of gender differences in the practice of slave-ownership patterns of free blacks regardless of the fact that his research clearly established that wealthy free women of colour owned slaves who were not merely family members held nominally, but for economic reasons as well. Koger’s desire to disprove the Woodson thesis severely restricts his ability to put his subjects into

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any kind of reasonable historical context.7 Kroger missed a golden opportunity to examine slave holding patterns amongst widowed wealthy free women of colour who were more likely to nominally hold slaves after their husband’s deaths. Koger’s work also overestimates the social and political position of free blacks. Had wealthy free blacks come out against slavery by not taking part in the ‘peculiar institution’, as his conclusion suggests, their actions would have been seen as a challenge to white authority and in all likelihood would have put their own limited freedom in serious jeopardy. This kind of overt behaviour on the part of free blacks was impossible in the antebellum south.8 One of the latest additions to the study of free blacks in Charleston is Douglas Egerton’s biography (2000) of accused slave insurrectionist Denmark Vesey. Egerton’s narrative on antebellum South Carolina’s most notorious free black man does much to explain the reasons why a former slave would plan an enormous slave revolt and put his own position at risk. This study begins by piecing together the life of a man who left behind no personal correspondences of any kind to aid in the telling of his story. But in spite of these difficulties Egerton’s study focuses on all the complexities and paradoxes of life for free blacks. This study does much to advance our understanding of class and internal race conflicts in the free black community.9 Marina Wikramanayake’s study (1973) of free blacks in all of South Carolina does a brilliant job of looking at the social, political and economic position of free people of colour. Her work, written almost 30 years ago, was the first historical study of the free black population in antebellum South Carolina. This work revealed the complexities of life for a group of people who, while legally free, were under constant scrutiny by the white community. While the number of free blacks never totalled more than two percent of the total population, members of this community were heavily taxed, denied 7 Carter G. Woodson argued that the majority of slaves owned by free blacks were friends or family members held nominally, cf. Woodson 1924. See Koger’s chapter ‘The Woodson Thesis: Fact or Fiction?’ in Koger 1985, 80–102. 8 Interestingly enough, a number of wealthy free blacks and former slave owners who left the south in the mid 19th century for the North became supporters of the antislavery movement. 9 Denmark Vesey and his insurrection are a controversial issue. Cf. Johnson 2001 for the argument that the conspiracy is a fabrication. Cf. also the articles by various authors published in the William & Mary Quarterly 58 (2002), 137–203.

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re-entry back into the state after departure for any reason, required by law to have a white guardian to vouch for their good behaviour as well as their family’s, were under the same legal restrictions when it came to due process under the law as were slaves and faced the ever constant threat of enslavement. Free blacks were seen as an ever-present threat in South Carolina because they were black and free. While all of these scholarly additions do a great deal to further the understanding of free blacks in South Carolina they do not consider the contradictions of gender in a male dominated racially conscious society. The origins of the free black community in Charleston date back to the early colonial period, but only represented a small percentage of the black population in South Carolina during the colonial and antebellum period. Slaves were manumitted for numerous reasons. Probably the most common occurrence of manumission, in the period up until 1820, was masters who freed their slaves at their death. Guilt may have motivated some masters and mistresses to free a large percentage of their work force by will. In other instances slaveowners sometimes freed slave women who had engaged in sexual relationships with them. The mulatto children produced from these relationships, in some instances, were also given their freedom and granted a financial share of their father’s wealth. Other owners were undoubtedly moved to emancipate their slaves for religious or republican principles, but this happened in lesser numbers in the South then it did in the North. Freedom was also granted to a favourite slave for meritorious service. A smaller portion of bondsmen and women purchased their own freedom and the freedom of their families after years of saving what little money they were able to earn for themselves. South Carolina records also indicate there were a diminutive number of free black families who traced their linage back to free Moors who were brought to South Carolina as indentured servants in the late colonial period. Children born of white women and black men also contributed to the increase of the free black community. By the 1820s, South Carolina lawmakers heavily restricted manumission in an attempt to slow the growth of the free black population. As a result any slave owner who wanted to free his or her slave could do so only by an act of the state legislature.10 10 See Johnson and Roark 1984 for more information on the origins of free blacks.

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The study of wealthy free women in Charleston, South Carolina, or elsewhere in the antebellum south for that matter, is necessary if we are to have a better understanding of a world that was seemingly distinct from what the majority of African American women endured. This will ultimately help us understand how all black women survived such arduous conditions in the slave south. Because Charleston’s population was diverse and densely concentrated into such a small area, 40,000 residents, free black and slave women were forced to live in close proximity to one another. Unlike wealthy white women, who by and large remained aloof from wealthy free black and mulatto women, black women, free or bond, could not avoid each other since wealthy families in Charleston relied on slave labour, specifically slave women, to keep their homes, help care for their children and represent a symbol of their wealth and position in low country society. Slavery caused their worlds to be closely intertwined whether for good or for ill. Certainly to understand one is to better understand the other. In recent years historians such as Kimberly S. Hanger, Virginia Meacham Gould and Gwendolyn Midlo Hall have all done a number of careful and concise studies of women of colour in New Orleans.11 Their work is groundbreaking because this scholarship examines free and slave women alike in one of the south’s largest urban centres. This is significant in spite of the fact that Louisiana rights pertaining to slaves and free blacks were modelled after French and Spanish laws and customs which allowed substantially more freedom and protection under the law. The rest of the South on the other hand adopted legal statues which were modelled on a more restrictive English legal system which categorised slaves as chattel and not people, thus making the world of free people of colour in these states much more convoluted. But regardless of the variations between these two communities it is nonetheless a welcome and needed addition to the scholarship of free African American women’s history. In an effort to penetrate the everyday world that wealthy free women of colour inhabited, any comprehensive study should begin by examining the origins of the wealthy free black community in Charleston, South Carolina, as well as an investigation of the role free women of colour played in such a male dominated society.

11

Hanger 1997a; Gould 1996; Gould and Nolan 2002; Hall 1992.

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Clearly, community relationships affected black and white women’s worlds. Future studies should analyse the nature of that influence. Other points of interest include the roles of caste, class and ties of race in the free black community. Simply put, what defined them: their race, their class or a combination of the two? Considering the harsh environment of one of the South’s most brutal slave ports, free women of colour, in all probability, faced the same kind of dual discrimination that slave women grappled with. In her book Ar’n’t I a Woman, Debra Gray White argues that slave women “had the least formal power and were perhaps the most vulnerable group of antebellum Americans.”12 I would argue that conceivably free black women were in a position as insecure as slaves. It seems intuitively obvious that the conditions slave women had to endure were worse then that of free women of colour. Slave women faced the harsh realities of not owning themselves, their time, labour or even their own children. They lived lives that virtually held no hope of obtaining their freedom or the freedom of their family. But free women of colour, while not in the same subordinate position, were still forced to contend with the constant threat of enslavement. While it could be argued that slave women, in many instances, had the protection of their masters because they were a considerable financial investment which made some masters more inclined to look out for their property and make sure the bare minimum of care was met. Interestingly enough, the majority of free women of colour had no similar form of protection. Any free black woman, poor free black women more so than their wealthier counterparts, in effect were at the mercy of a slave society that saw them as an anomaly. A free woman of colour, for instance faced the possibility of being kidnapped into slavery. In many cases, those who were abducted could not look to the law for protection. Even a free black husband could not legally protect his wife or family since blacks were forbidden to strike a white person for any reason including kidnapping. They were not allowed to testify against whites in a court of law. Free blacks were also denied the right to a trial by a jury of their peers, since they could not sit on juries, but instead faced the same justice-freeholder courts that slaves did.13 Clearly, South Carolinian 12

White 1999, 15. South Carolina slave courts consisted of two magistrates and three to five freeholders or voters who served with them. In many cases these individuals were com13

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lawmakers classified black slaves as property and enacted laws to reflect this, but while free blacks were not property South Carolina legislators, largely made up of wealthy planters/slaveholders, chose not to legally treat them as free individuals with basic rights. It seems that race, as the main presumption of servitude, was too significant a principle for South Carolina slave law to ignore.14 South Carolina whites categorically understood that free blacks given the same rights and privileges as whites would undermine the contention that blacks, free or not, were inferior to whites, which might ultimately instigate slave unrest and insurrection.15 With no protector, the life of a free woman of colour had the potential to be worse off then that of her slave counterpart. I am not arguing that slavery was more beneficial than freedom. It was not. Free black women had something slave women could not claim to have, their freedom, but, as Ira Berlin points out, free blacks, while owning themselves and their labour, time, and families, etc. were always fearful that their position could be undermined at anytime and their freedom, position and wealth snatched away from them.16 The definition of freedom for blacks and whites was profoundly different. Kimberly Hanger, in her work on free black women in colonial New Orleans, also acknowledges that these women while free faced a greater amount of “discrimination and diminished resources because they lacked the protection of powerful patriarchal allies”.17 Interestingly enough, in South Carolina there was a remarkable number of, presumably improvised, free women of colour who petitioned the state legislature to allow them to be re-enslaved. The reason they cited was to seek the protection of a master.18 pletely ignorant of the law and most likely based their rulings on racist assumptions, cf. Egerton 2000, 178–179. 14 A group of free black men petitioned the General Assembly in 1790 in an effort to persuade the Assembly that their rights should be procured because they were tax paying, law abiding citizens. To their dismay their request was denied, cf. Aptheker 1946. 15 The fear amongst whites that free blacks would lead a slave insurrection was justified because slaves accounted for roughly half of the total population in Charleston. In 1822 just such a slave uprising was discovered in the planning stages. The leader, a free man of color, Denmark Vesey was found guilty of planning a slave insurrection and executed. The person of Denmark Vesey and the insurrection have sparked a heated debate since the publication of Egerton 2000 and the response by Johnson 2001. See note 9. 16 Cf. Berlin 1975. 17 See Hanger 1997b. 18 See Wikramanayake 1973, 182–183.

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Kidnapping of free blacks or challenges as to the legality of a free black person’s status was another great concern since bondage was based on race. Plainly stated, a person of African descent was assumed to be a slave until he or she could prove otherwise. The onus of proof was always their responsibility. As a result of this precarious requirement, free blacks could not stray from their community to a foreign one without the fear that their status might be challenged. For those free blacks that had not documented that they had been manumitted, but instead lived as de facto free people were the most vulnerable and in the most danger of having their status discovered in which case they would have been re-enslaved. One such case involved George Broad, an English born planter on John’s Island, who in his will left his entire estate in trust for his slave concubine, their eleven children and two grandchildren.19 In his lifetime George Broad treated and presented his family as free people of colour when in fact they were his slaves and legally his property. Broad’s actions were not uncommon and understandable, considering that South Carolina law prohibited private manumission after 1820.20 Broad’s mistress and children had been treated, acted and were acknowledged as free people of colour by their community for a considerable period of time, even though Broad had tried but never legally secured their freedom. After Broad’s death in 1837, South Carolina authorities determined that his will, with the designation of a trustee for his family, was an illegal attempt to emancipate them. As a result, a relative of Broad’s deceased wife sought to seize his mistress, children and grandchildren and claim the slave family and the Broad estate as his own. After 1822 this was an acceptable action under the South Carolina slave code. Broad’s neighbour John Dangerfield, who was also the executor of George Broad’s will and trustee of the family and estate hired Charleston lawyer James Louis Petigru to save the family from being re-enslaved by their late master’s wife’s relatives. But while Petigru was successful at saving the family from enslavement by white Broad family members he was unable to stop Broad’s trustee John Dangerfield from taking possession himself and

19 Broad wrote his will in this manner because slaves in South Carolina could not legally own property. Broad wanted to ensure that his family would receive the inheritance intended for them. 20 In 1820 South Carolina law stated that “no slave hereafter be emancipated but by an act of Legislature.”

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selling several of the family members into slavery some years after this incident. Sadly enough, Broad’s family was betrayed by the very man appointed to be their protector.21 Clearly, navigating freedom for Charleston’s two thousand or so members of the free black community was tricky at best. In another instance of the legal limbo in which free black women endured took place in 1857 when Harriet Mason,22 a free woman of colour, was arrested in Charleston for failing to pay a bill for furniture she had ordered. The story she relayed to authorities was that she was the mistress of John Simmons, a prominent gentleman who resided in the city. She claimed that she and Simmons were in a romantic relationship and that he had not only agreed to pay for the items she ordered but suggested she purchase them. Upon delivery of the furniture the bill went unpaid and Mason was put in the city workhouse, a dreadful place which also served as a jail for both free and enslaved blacks. In an effort to secure her own freedom, and in a state of desperation, Mason also sought the help of the law firm of King and Petigru, two leading respected lawyers in the low country. James Petigru was one of the few, perhaps the only lawyer in Charleston, who was willing to take on cases that involved free people of colour. In reviewing the circumstances surrounding this case, Petigru knew that Simmons’s mistress had no legal standing whatsoever since it was a her word as a black woman against an upstanding, respected white man. And because she was not a white woman it seemed very unlikely that she would have her day in court. So, instead of seeking a legal case against Simmons, Petigru sought to appeal to his sense of southern pride as a gentleman, his sense of shame, or perhaps even both. In a letter to Simmons, Petigru made his intentions perfectly clear concerning his course of action on behalf of Harriet Mason. Petigru wrote: We are in possession of several notes written by you to her, and the object of this communication is to inform you that we do not intend to allow any false modesty in conducting her defense to permit her to be imposed upon. It is not our desire to have any exposure in the

21 Ultimately Broad’s black family were awarded their freedom and allowed to immigrate to Liberia. See Petigru and King Letterbooks June, July and August 1854 USC-South Caroliniana Library, Columbia, South Carolina. 22 Harriet Mason also went by the name of Emmeline Cannaday, see King and Petigru Letterbooks August 19, 1857.

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rita reynolds Court House, but unless some arrangement is made to relieve her from this embarrassment. We will procure bail for her and use our best endeavors at the trial of the case to expose what we are forced to look upon as a willful attempt to commit a gross injustice upon a defenseless colored woman, by one on whom she has just claims.23

Clearly, Petigru saw this free woman of colour as powerless and vulnerable regardless of the questionable position she had put herself into. Had it not been for his intervention her ability to seek any kind defence on her own behalf was nonexistent since free people of colour could not testify against whites in a court of law. Since Mason paid Petigru to represent her, it seems logical to assume that, at least in her mind, she could rely on no one else to plead her case and save her from jail and possible enslavement since free people of colour could and were enslaved for any outstanding debt until it was paid in full. Had James Petigru opted to deny her plea for assistance, she would have faced the full brunt of the law which was most likely enslavement. Not surprisingly, the circumstances of this case were not the exception but rather the rule when it came to free black women. These two instances plainly demonstrate that freedom for the free black men and women largely depended on the kindness of white South Carolinians. This became painfully apparent in the aftermath of the Denmark Vesey slave insurrection. Free black men were required by law to have a guardian who was to be a white man who was a ‘respected freeholder’ who would bear witness to the ‘good character and correct habits’ of the free man of colour in question.24 For white South Carolinians this enactment was designed to force free blacks to be accountable to a white authority and in essence have a ‘master’ without actually being enslaved. Those free blacks that did not comply with the law could and were sold into slavery.25 The anxiety brought on by this constant threat was in all likelihood all too real for the small minority of free people of colour in 23

See King and Petigru letter books August 19, 1857. To all intents and purposes, white guardians were accountable for entire families since wives and children were also included in the legal declaration. If a free woman of color’s husband did not comply with the law, her whole family’s position as free people could be legally questioned and without the proper proof her family enslaved. 25 See Johnson and Roark 1984, 87. 24

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the state. From 1822 through to the end of the Civil War there were a considerable number of bills presented in the South Carolina legislature to enslave the state’s free black population regardless of economic standing.26 Fortunately for the free black community none were ever signed into law. In conclusion, I would like to once again point out that the history of wealthy free black women is complex and paradoxical with many questions and no easy answers and will require a multifaceted approach to understand in historical context. While I have presented only a brief examination of this fascinating group, my hope is it will serve as a starting point for other historians.

Bibliography Aptheker, Herbert 1946. ‘Eighteenth century petitions of South Carolina negroes’, Journal of Negro History 31, 98–9. Berlin, Ira 1975. Slaves without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South, New York. Clinton, Catherine 1982. The Plantation Mistress: Woman’s World in the Old South, New York. —— 1991. ‘Southern dishonor: flesh, blood, race, and bondage’, Carol Bleser (ed.), In Joy and in Sorrow: Women, Family, and Marriage in the Victorian South, 1830–1900, Oxford, 52–68. Cott, Nancy F. 1977. The Bonds of Womanhood: “Woman’s Sphere” in New England, 1780 –1835, New Haven. —— (ed.) 1979. A Heritage of Her Own: Toward a New Social History of American Women, New York. Egerton, Douglas R. 2000. He Shall Go Out Free: The Lives of Denmark Vesey, Madison. Fitchett, E. Horace 1950. The Free Negro in Charleston, South Carolina, unpublished dissertation, University of Chicago. Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth 1988. Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South, Chapel Hill. Gould, Virginia Meacham 1996. Chained to the Rock of Adversity: To Be Free, Black and Female in the Old South, Atlanta. —— and Charles E. Nolan (eds.) 2002. No Cross, No Crown: Black Nuns in Nineteenthcentury New Orleans, Bloomington IN. Hall, Gwendolyn Midlo 1992. Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of AfroCreole Culture in the Eighteenth Century, New Orleans. Hanger, Kimberly S. 1997a. Bounded Lives, Bounded Places: Free Black Society in Colonial New Orleans, 1769–1803, Durham. —— 1997b. ‘Coping a complex world: free black women in colonial New Orleans’, Catherine Clinton and Michele Gillespie (eds.), The Devil’s Lane: Sex and Race in the Early South, New York, 218–231.

26

Johnson and Roark 1984, 7.

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Johnson, Michael P. 2001. ‘Denmark Vesey and his co-conspirators’, William & Mary Quarterly 58, 915–77. —— and James L. Roark (eds.) 1984. No Chariot Let Down: Charleston’s Free People of Color on the Eve of the Civil War, Chapel Hill. Jones, Jacqueline 1985. Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present, New York. Koger, Larry 1985. Black Slaveowners: Free Black Slave Masters in South Carolina, 1790–1860 Jefferson, NC. Lebsock, Suzanne 1984. The Free Women of Petersburg: Status and Culture in a Southern Town, 1784–1860, New York. Powers, Bernard E. 1994. Black Charlestonians: A Social History, 1822–1885, Fayetteville. Scott, Anne Firor 1995. The Southern Lady: From Pedestal to Politics, 1830 –1930, Charlottesville, VA. Welter, Barbara 1966. ‘The cult of true womanhood: 1820–1860’, American Quarterly 18, 151–174. —— 1976. Dimity Convictions: The American Woman in the Nineteenth Century, Athens, OH. White, Deborah Gray 1999. Ar’n’t I A Woman: Female Slaves in the Plantation South, 2nd edition, New York. Wikramanayake, Marina 1973. A World in Shadow: The Free Black in Antebellum South Carolina, Columbia. Woodson, Carter G. 1924. ‘Free negro owners of slaves in the United States in 1830’, Journal of Negro History 9, 41–85.

CHAPTER SIX

INHERITANCE PRACTICES AMONG INDIVIDUALS OF AFRICAN ORIGIN AND DESCENT IN EIGHTEENTHCENTURY MINAS GERAIS, BRAZIL* Mariana Dantas

In 1760 Ana Maria Lopes de Brito, an inhabitant of the town of Sabará in Minas Gerais, passed away. According to eighteenth-century Portuguese inheritance laws, within thirty days of Ana Maria’s death all property owned by her had to be inventoried and then divided among her seven children. The orphans’ court, which held jurisdiction over Ana Maria’s case, adopted the usual procedures and within four weeks of her death initiated the process of inheritance. Although the court acted in much the same way it would have for any other deceased person, Ana Maria’s case was far from average. Unlike the great majority of the deceased whose inventories were made during this period, Ana Maria and her husband Jacob Lopes de Brito had been born in Africa. Also, Ana Maria, Jacob, and their older children were not free-born members of that society but were instead forros, that is, they had lived part of their lives as slaves but had obtained their manumission. Finally, Ana Maria’s inventory differed from so many others in that it listed one sole possession: a deed of sale in which she sold her rightful half of the couple’s property to her husband. As a result, all that her children inherited were the annual installments Jacob had agreed to pay over a period of six years.1 Sales of property between wives and husbands were not unheard of in Minas Gerais when Ana Maria and Jacob decided to do the

* I would like to thank CNPq, Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, for financially supporting my research on inheritance practices in Minas Gerais. 1 Inventory of Ana Maria Lopes de Brito, 31 Jan. 1760, Arquivo Casa Borba Gato/Museu do Ouro de Sabará (hence forward ACBG/MOS), doc. CSO (20)10.

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same. According to Portuguese property laws, when a couple got married they became co-owners of all property acquired before the marriage and during their life together. In the event of separation or death, each spouse was entitled to half of the couple’s estate, identified legally as the meação. The meação also represented the portion of the property to which the heirs of the deceased spouse were entitled. The surviving spouse, whether the husband or the wife, was not considered an heir but the owner of the remaining meação.2 After the inventory had been drawn up, it was the responsibility of the court to determine which items appertained to the surviving spouse’s share before the property was divided among the heirs. Thus, the death of a spouse could threaten the integrity of a couple’s property by imposing the need to redistribute it among the surviving spouse and the various heirs. Payment of the deceased’s outstanding debts and court interference in the administration of the inheritance of heirs under the age of twenty-five could also prove disruptive. Some couples, foreseeing that this process of inheritance could seriously damage the economic standing of their families, sought ways to intervene and preserve the integrity of their property. Sales between spouses, vendas de meação as they were called, are one example of a strategy employed for this purpose. Ana Maria’s inventory is not the first in which a sale of meação appears. However, as far as the documentation goes her case represents the first time a couple of freed slaves chose to adopt this strategy to interfere with the process of inheritance in Sabará.3 The fact that Ana Maria and Jacob chose to do so suggests that like so many other parents in this society they too wanted to avoid the potentially devastating effects of the death of a parent on the family’s financial and economic well-being. These preoccupations, however widespread they may have been, seem to take on another dimension in the case of this particular couple. As ex-slaves Ana

2

According to Portuguese law, a spouse could only be considered an heir if the deceased had no living relatives up to the tenth degree. Código Philippino, ou Ordenações e Leis do Reino de Portugal (Rio de Janeiro: Cândido Mendes de Almeida, 1870; reprint, Lisbon: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 1985) Livro 4, título XCIV, pp. 947–948. 3 I am basing myself on the findings of Beatriz R. Magalhães, who has conducted exhaustive research on eighteenth-century wills and inventories in Sabará. I would like to thank her for allowing me to consult her database in order to verify this information.

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Maria and Jacob probably had to struggle to obtain their freedom. Once manumitted, they had to find ways to support themselves and provide for their children’s needs. In the end the couple had managed to secure some property: they had their own house in Sabará and, the owners of two African slave men, had become slaveholders themselves. More importantly, Ana Maria and Jacob had the opportunity to transmit these possessions to their children, providing them with a better start in life. Their decision to interfere with the process of inheritance of their property can be read, therefore, as a clear attempt to ensure that their children would fully benefit from their efforts and hard work. Inheritance practices and forms of transmission of property have frequently received the attention of scholars as a way to better understand the social and economic implications of property holding in a specific society.4 Knowledge of how people chose to pass on their possessions to others, who the beneficiaries of these practices were, and why some people were chosen over others, reveals much about family relations, patterns of land ownership, social differentiation within a society, and strategies for improving economic and social status. This study will examine some of these issues as they impacted the lives of manumitted slaves and their descendants in the town and judicial district of Sabará, Minas Gerais during the second half of the eighteenth century. It is my contention that ownership and inheritance of property played a vital role in the preservation and improvement of these individuals’ economic and social standing in society. Some parents, aware of this fact, did everything in their power to secure their children’s access to their property and to ensure that their death would not reduce their children to a marginal position in society.

The population of free persons of African origin and descent in eighteenth-century Sabará The development of mining activities at the beginning of the eighteenth century in a region of the hinterland of the Portuguese colony

4 Greven, Jr. 1970; Horn 1994; Goody, Thirsk & Thompson 1976; Le Roy Ladurie 1978; Metcalf 1992; Nazarri 1991.

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of Brazil, later named Minas Gerais, created an immediate need for labourers. Because the location of the rich gold mines found by local and Portuguese explorers was for the most part uninhabited, mining entrepreneurs turned to slaves as their main source of labour.5 Slaves were brought to the region in large numbers, supplied by the more heavily populated northern regions of the colony and by slave traders, who regularly made available new cargoes of enslaved Africans.6 This heavy investment in slave labour quickly transformed the demographic profile of the population of Minas Gerais and by the second half of the eighteenth century over half of the population consisted of slaves. In the region of the town of Sabará slaves represented sixty-two percent of the entire population.7 Whereas enslaved persons of African origin and descent were the predominant group in the region of Sabará during most of the eighteenth century, by the later part of that period free persons of African origin and descent slowly became more numerous than slaves. The practice of manumission, which had become widespread in the region already at the beginning of the eighteenth century, contributed significantly to this population turnover.8 Tax records from 1720 indicate that 97 forros were residing in the region of Sabará that year, and this number rose to 576 within the next fifteen years.9 Between 1735 and 1750 the number of manumitted slaves registered

5 Because the size of mining land concessions was determined by the number of workers that were employed, mining entrepreneurs felt pressured to procure as many working hands as possible, usually turning to slaves, cf. Antonil 1922, 215–16. 6 On the slave trade to Minas Gerais, cf. Zemella 1990; Florentino 1997; Bergad 1999. 7 Mapa Geral de Fogos, Filhos, Filhas, Escravos . . ., 1767, Arquivo Público Mineiro, AHU (93)58. In general, slaves in Minas Gerais represented 61% of the region’s total population, almost approaching the proportion found in the sugar producing parishes of Bahia in the earlier part of the eighteenth century (70%), cf. Schwartz 1985, 88. Proportionally, slaves were more numerous in Minas Gerais than in other southern captancies. Slaves represented only 23% of the population of São Paulo at the beginning of the nineteenth century, while persons of African origin and descent, slave and free, represented 35% of the total population of the nothern part of the captancy of Rio de Janeiro, cf. Marcílio 1974, 108; Faria 1998, 128. 8 Fear of the growing number of free people of African origin and descent in Minas Gerais led colonial governors to adopt measures restricting the practice of manumission as early as 1719, cf. Russell-Wood 2002, 44–46, 188. 9 Mapa Geral da Capitação do Governo das Minas Gerais, 1750, Arquivo Público Mineiro, AHU (60)52.

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in tax records varied considerably,10 yet the 752 forros who appear in the population census of 1767 suggest a progressive growth of this population. Evidence from letters of freedom available for the 1770s indicate, furthermore, that on average twenty-nine slaves were manumitted every year, adding to the general population of free persons of African origin and descent.11 By 1776 ex-slaves and their free descendants made up almost one third of the general population of the region of Sabará and by the beginning of the nineteenth century they surpassed the slave population and became the predominant group within this society (table 1). Table 1. Population of the town of Sabará

1776 1810

Portuguese and other free whites____

Free persons of African origin and descent______

Slaves________

Total__

6,596 9,225

11,962 31,307

21,267 20,372

39,825 60,904

17% 15%

30% 51%

53% 34%

Sources: “Mapa de população de 1776 das freguesias da comarca do Rio das Velhas”, Arquivo Público Mineiro, AHU (112)11; “Recenseamento da população de alguns termos da antiga capitania depois província de Minas Gerais—1810”, Arquivo Público Mineiro, ACC pl. 21115.

It is important to keep in mind that the free population of African origin and descent that appears so pre-eminently in census records from the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries comprised individuals of various social backgrounds. As the century progressed, the forros who initially shaped this population were joined by a growing number of freeborn persons of African descent. Because children held the same status as their mothers, the

10 Between 1735 and 1750, Minas Gerais adopted a per capita tax imposed on every slave working in gold extraction. The same tax applied to forros, whether they were miners or not. It is possible, therefore, that the fluctuations observed in the number of forros registered in tax records reflects tax evasion and forros’ refusal to be equalled to slaves. Códice Costa Matoso (Belo Horizonte: Fundação João Pinheiro, Centro de Estudos Históricos e Culturais, 1999): 300–11, 406–13. 11 206 letters of freedom were found for a period of seven years. Livros de Notas, 1772–75 and 1777–79, ACBG/MOS, L 64, L 65, L 67, L 68. Higgins’s study of manumission in Sabará (1999, 220–1) suggests that during the entire eighteenth century on average 10.2 slaves were manumitted every year.

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higher frequency of manumission of women as opposed to men contributed significantly to this tendency. Unions between free white men and slave women, which often led to the manumission of the slave and of the couple’s offspring, also contributed to the diversification of this population by allowing for the formation of a group of persons of mixed origin, commonly referred to as pardos.12 Unfortunately, census records produced after 1767 do not distinguish forros from other members of the free population of African origin and descent. Information on the number of manumitted Africans, who were usually grouped together with Brazilian-born persons of solely African descent (referred to simply as pretos), is also absent from this type of document. It is necessary, therefore, to turn to other sources in order to discuss the composition of the population. Marriage records, which often described the social origins of each spouse, constitute one type of documentation that provides this information (table 2).13 Marriage records available for the second half of the eighteenth century reveal the diverse social origins of the individuals who made up the population of African origin and descent in Sabará. A comparison between the description of spouses in records from the earlier and later parts of that period shows, furthermore, that the composition of this population was undergoing change, suggesting in turn that new patterns of population growth were taking shape. Between

12 Different studies of manumission in Minas Gerais point out a general tendency among manumitters to free their female slaves and pardo children more frequently than their male slaves: Higgins 1999; Paiva 1995; Libby & Paiva 2000. My own research on manumission practices in Sabará indicates, however, that most manumissions were not the product of intimacy between masters and slaves but were obtained through self-purchase: 50% of male slaves manumitted between 1750 and 1808, and 54% of female slaves manumitted in the same period obtained their freedom in this manner. Also, almost half of the pardo slaves who appear in my sample (44%) paid for their freedom. Another 12% were granted conditional manumissions, usually having to serve a term before becoming legally free. Livros de Notas, 1772–75 and 1777–79, ACBG/MOS, L 64, L 65, L 67, L 68. 13 Although not an ideal sample, since marriage records obviously exclude members of society who remained single, the fact that pardos and pretos in Sabará contracted marriage at similar rates suggests that these records do not favor one group over the other. It seems safe to assume, therefore, that they represent a valid sample of the free population of African origin and descent. Information on the marital status of this population is available in: “Recenseamento da população de alguns termos da antiga capitania depois província de Minas Gerais—1810”, Arquivo Público Mineiro, ACC pl. 21115.

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1758 and 1765 the vast majority of members of this population contracting marriage were forros (80%). By the end of the eighteenth century, however, freeborn persons of African origin and descent were more prominent, representing half the spouses found in marriage records available for this period. The proportion of Brazilianborn individuals solely of African descent, referred to as crioulos, to pardos also varied from one period to the other. Whereas the percentages of crioulos and pardos were almost the same during the period between 1758 and 1765, by the end of the century pardos were twice as numerous as crioulos. Finally, manumitted Africans, who represented 27% of the spouses contracting marriage in the first period, are proportionally less numerous in the second period, when they made up 17% of the spouses. The predominance of freeborn persons over forros and the proportional decrease of manumitted Africans by the end of the century suggest that natural reproduction, instead of manumission, became the main factor in population growth during this period. Also, the growing number of pardos indicates that miscegenation continued to be a widespread phenomenon in this society, and one that contributed significantly to the increase of population of African descent.14 Table 2. Social background of spouses in marriage records of Sabará forro 1758–1765 (total: 115) 1780–1800 (total: 159)

African free-born

forro

Crioulo free-born

forro

Pardo free-born

28%

—

30%

5%

22%

15%

19%

—

15%

10%

15%

41%

Sources: Paróquia de Sabará: Livros de Assentos de Casamento, 1758–1800, Arquivo da Cúria Metropolitana de Belo Horizonte. Note: the total number of marriage records consulted for the first period was 115 and for the second period, 159. The chronological division adopted here reflects a discontinuity in the date of the sources available for the second half of the eighteenth century. Crioulo was the term used by contemporaries to refer to Brazilianborn individuals of solely African descent in eighteenth-century Minas Gerais.

14 General demographic studies of the population of Minas Gerais and studies of family life in the region illustrate similar trends: Bergad 1999, 81–122; Iraci del Nero da Costa & Francisco Vidal Luna 1982a, 1–30; 1982b; Ramos 1993; Figueiredo 1997.

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In 1756 Antônia Rangel de Abreu, a parda forra born in the city of Rio de Janeiro, passed away. At some point in her life Antônia decided to try her luck in the mining town of Sabará where, as a widow with one son, she supported herself peddling various goods. In the language of her contemporaries, she was a ‘preta de tabuleiro.’ In fact, her inventory lists the tabuleiro (a type of tray) she probably used to conduct her business. Her inventory also lists a slave woman and her three children and several household and personal items, including a silk cloak, silver shoe buckles and a silver locket. Antônia did not own her own house, though, and possibly had to rent a place to live with her son and slaves. When Antônia died she left an estate worth 225$800. After her debts were paid and her testamentary dispositions taken care of, her son Antônio Ribeiro de Carvalho was entitled to a share of the property, the legítima as it was legally referred to, equal to 113$000 réis.15 Antônia was not wealthy and probably had to work hard to acquire the little property she owned. Her possessions indicate, however, that she invested whatever wealth she managed to accumulate in distinguishing herself from the many slaves and impoverished persons that surrounded her.16 José Borges de Sá, a manumitted African, died a few years after Antônia. José was also a widower and the father of six children. He lived with his five sons in the village of Santa Luzia, near Sabará, where he owned a house. José also owned two adult slaves, a few household items and some mining tools. When Vitória, José’s eldest daughter, got married, he provided her with a dowry consisting of a fifteen-year-old slave and various items of clothing. Like so many

15 Inventário de Antônio Rangel de Abreu, 14 May 1757, ACBG/MOS, doc. CSO (18)07. The real, or réis in the plural form, was the currency used in 18thcentury Minas Gerais. One thousand réis was registered as 1$000, and one million réis (one conto de réis) was registered as 1:000$000. During the second half of the 18th century 1$200 réis, the value of the unitary measure of gold, the oitava, was equivalent to 3.5 grams of gold, cf. Barbosa 1985, 135. Among the inventories of persons of African origin and descent consulted for this study the average value of the estate was 983$000 réis and the average legítima was worth 128$000 réis. 16 In a recent study on cultural aspects of the lives of free persons of African origin and descent in Minas Gerais, Eduardo França Paiva 2001 has pointed out that clothing and jewelry became important tokens of social status for forro women. For the importance of dress, cf. Steeve Buckridge’s chapter in this volume.

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of his contemporaries, José incurred a few debts during his lifetime. His inventory lists different amounts owed for purchases of cloth, shoes, and medicine for himself and his children. It also appears that before he died he sought treatment from a physician: his inventory mentions a debt of $900 réis for medical visits. By the time of his death José led a life much different from other African men who, unlike him, remained in captivity. He had become a property holder and a slave master; he had also managed to secure the means to provide for his family’s material needs and well-being. Finally, when his estate, evaluated at 430$007 réis, was divided among his children each was entitled to a legítima worth 57$334 réis.17 The transition from slavery to freedom was rarely accomplished without effort. The negotiation of one’s manumission, for example, could prove to be a lengthy process and one that demanded much effort on the part of the slaves who were, more commonly than not, asked to provide compensation in the form of money or labour. Moreover, once all social and financial links to the master had been severed (which not all slaves managed to do) manumitted persons had to confront the need to support themselves and their families, a task made more difficult by the fact that most slaves attained their freedom later in their adult lives.18 Given the general circumstances involved in the process of manumission, the ability to count on some form of property, whether owned individually or corporately, increased significantly forros’ chances of succeeding as free persons. Not surprisingly, the type of property forros appear to have invested in more heavily was slaves. According to their inventories forros possessed slaves more frequently than they did real estate: 86% of their inventories list slaves, while 79% list land concessions, lots, houses, or other types of real estate property. Slaves were not only an important source of labour, in some families they represented the main source of income. Thereza Ferreira, for example, a manumitted African who appears as a witness in the inventory of João Francisco Guimarães, was known to have supported herself through her slaves’

17 Inventário de José Borges de Sá, 26 Jan. 1760, ACBG/MOS, doc. CSO (20)09. An amount which at the time approximated in value the price of a young crioulo slave, cf. Bergad 1999, 160–214, 261–273. 18 Julita Scarano (1994) offers a useful overview of the challenges and hardships experienced by persons of African origin and descent in Minas Gerais.

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wages.19 Having secured the livelihood of others through their own work, Thereza along with other manumitted slaves no doubt appreciated the importance of being able to rely on the labour of others in order to prosper. Moreover, the ownership of slaves helped reinforce the fact that these individuals had succeeded in making the transition from property to free property holders.20 Property ownership was important not only to forros themselves but also to their descendants. Living in a society where most darkskinned people were slaves, persons of African descent could not avoid bearing the mark of this social distinction and frequently suffered the consequences of being so closely associated with slavery.21 In this environment the improvement of one’s economic standing, and the general recognition of personal success that often came with it, allowed free persons of African origin and descent to distance themselves more effectively from slaves. Inheritance of property could significantly accelerate this process of social distinction. With the help of their legítimas, children of African descent had a better chance of enhancing their own holdings and of procuring a better economic and social position in society. A good legítima also afforded some persons of African descent the means to acquire a profession, to start a business, or contract a good marriage, all of which could help them to improve their status. It was not uncommon for parents in Sabará to attempt to provide for their children’s future well-being in this manner. Catarina Teixeira da Conceição, for example, a free-born parda, declared in her will that she had given her son Antônio a slave barber and some gold to help him start his business.22 The Portuguese miner Jacinto Vieira da Costa, on the other hand, sent his manumitted pardo son Valentim,

19 Inventário de João Francisco Guimarães, 3 Oct. 1764, ACBG/MOS, doc. CSO (24)08. For a discussion of slaves as ‘wage’ workers, cf. Algranti 1988; Turner 1995. 20 For a more exhaustive treatment of slave ownership by forros, cf. Vidal Luna 1981. 21 Free people of African origin and descent often had to put up with abuse from the white population and were constantly dealing with constraints imposed on their participation in society. Some of the local laws passed with the objective of restricting their activities are discussed in Boxer 1969, 160–203. Luciano Figueredo 1993, 41–71, deals to some extent with the constraining reality experienced by women of African origin and descent in this period. 22 Inventário de Catarina Teixeira da Conceição, 5 May 1788, ACBG/MOS, doc. CSO (62)04.

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born of one of his slave women, to study law in Coimbra, Portugal.23 In the absence of their parents, though, children under the age of 25, legally considered as minors, had to count on guardians to do the same for them. Usually assigned by the orphans’ court, guardians were responsible for the welfare of minors and were in charge of administering their legítimas.24 According to Portuguese law a guardian’s obligations also included completing the orphan’s education and providing men with an occupation and women with a marriage arrangement appropriate to their ‘quality’.25 The idea of ‘quality’ was usually based on an individual’s family background and distinguished persons of noble birth from commoners, farmers from artisans or merchants. However, ownership of property and wealth could elevate one’s quality despite one’s ancestry. Consequently, an heir’s legítima could determine his upbringing as an agricultural labourer, a tradesman, or a future landowner. It could also influence women’s chances of marrying into more distinguished families. The inventory of Luiza Rodrigues da Cruz, a manumitted African, illustrates well how well-off parents could affect their children’s standing in society. The owner of several mining concessions, two houses in the town of Sabará, and seventeen slaves, Luiza’s property was valued at the time of her death in 1779 at 10:562$420 contos de réis.26

23 Inventário de Jacinto Vieira da Costa, 10 Jun. 1760, ACBG/MOS, doc. CSO (21)01. 24 A guardian was appointed only in the event of the death of the father or in cases where the father was absent. Otherwise, fathers were considered to be the legitimate administrators of their children’s property. Some parents determined in their wills who they wished to be appointed guardian of their children. When parents did not take this precaution the court usually assigned a relative or someone considered financially apt for the position. Guardians could not be slaves or persons considered to live in poverty or who were required to invest all their time and labour in supporting themselves. Mothers and grandmothers could become guardians by petitioning the crown and proving that they were morally and financially capable of taking care of their children; however, they usually lost that privilege if they remarried. Other women were not granted this privilege. Código Philippino, Livro 4, título CII, pp. 994–1004. 25 Código Phillipino, Livro 1, título LXXXVIII, § 13–21, pp. 211–213. Similar concerns were also common in early modern Britain. According to “A Plea for the City Orphans, and Prisoners for Debt, humbly offered to this present Parliament”, the city was required to “preserve the orphans Estates, take care of their education, dispose of them to trades and matches suitable to their Qualities and Estates.” Petitions and Addresses to Parliament. II. Single Petitions and Addresses—1690, p. 31. I would like to thank Elizabeth Johnson for bringing this document to my attention. 26 Inventário de Luiza Rodrigues da Cruz, 1 Jan. 1779, ACBG/MOS, doc. CSO (48)06.

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Thanks to her entrepreneurship and good fortune in the gold mining business, Luiza managed to secure a social and economic status that few other persons who shared her social background could hope to achieve. Luiza’s success also benefited her children, born of her long-lasting relationship to Domingos Rodrigues da Cruz, a white man. After her death each of her nine children was entitled to an equal share of the inheritance to the amount of 751$805 réis. Because of the privileged economic situation of their parents, Luiza’s children all became property owners themselves and continued to benefit from the mining concessions they inherited.27 Also, all three of her daughters married Portuguese men, allowing them to improve their social status and that of their offspring.28 Even third-generation members of Luiza’s family seemed to have benefited from her wealth. According to the inventory of Manuel Teixeira de Queiroz, Luiza’s son-in-law, in 1800 his son Antônio was still supervising mining activities on land that had originally been owned by Luiza.29 Obviously, Luiza’s case was fairly atypical. Married to a free white man, Luiza enjoyed the benefits of entering a life of freedom without having to struggle with a lack of property. Given that Domingos and Luiza initiated their relationship while she was still in captivity, their three oldest children being forros and having been born out of wedlock, it is possible that Domingos played a major part in securing their freedom. If this was indeed the case, Luiza would not have had to pay for her and her children’s manumission, as was the case for the majority of slave women freed at the time. Whatever profits she may have reaped from her labour she invested in the well-being of her family instead.30 The fact that Luiza’s children were born 27 Relação dos foros, 1796, Arquivo Público Mineiro, Câmara Municipal de Sabará, códice 94. 28 Muriel Nazarri (1991, 28–34) has shown that in the early stages of São Paulo’s development several parents sought to marry their daughters of mixed blood to new-comers from Portugal, even if they were ‘pennyless’, to ‘whiten’ the family lineage and improve its status. In Minas Gerais parents were driven by similar motivations. In both regions the frequency of mixed-marriages can also be interpreted as a factor of the predominance of white men over white women. Similar arguments appear in Metcalf 1992, 87–119, and Lewkowicz 1993. 29 Inventário de Manuel Teixeira de Queiroz, 15 Jan. 1783, ACBG/MOS, doc. CSO (55)04. 30 From a sample of 303 letters of manumission granted to slave women during the second half of the 18th century, 164 (54%) purchased their freedom. If only African women are taken into consideration that proportion increases to 70%. Livros de Notas, 1772–75 and 1777–79, ACBG/MOS, L 64, L 65, L 67, L 68.

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pardos also distinguished this family from others formed by manumitted slaves. In a society that discriminated heavily against persons of African descent, pardos, due to the lighter colour of their skin, were more likely to be accepted into the higher ranks of the social hierarchy. Descent from a well-established white property holder and a certain amount of wealth also contributed to improve the social standing of these individuals. Luiza no doubt played an important part in improving her family’s living conditions. As the administrator of the couple’s estate after Domingos’s death, Luiza managed to double the value of their property and ensure that her children received a handsome inheritance.31 Still, the specific circumstances by which she and her children obtained their freedom and became property owners definitely had a positive impact on the outcome of their individual stories. Luiza’s case illustrates, therefore, the great level of diversity in the value of property holdings and legítimas, and in the social background of the deceased and their heirs, evident in inventories of persons of African origin and descent. It also points to several important factors that could contribute to the improvement of the economic and social status of a particular individual: birth to free parents, mixed ancestry, the circumstances of one’s manumission, among others. This is not to say that the social and economic reality of persons of African origin and descent in Sabará was solely determined by their social origins. Several individuals within this group displayed a great deal of entrepreneurship and achieved significant success in their economic endeavours, independent of their past histories.32 Their inventories show, furthermore, that through their various activities some of these men and women managed to accumulate considerable property.33 Still, a general overview of the information provided

31 According to Luiza Rodrigues da Cruz’s inventory, her children’s legítima paterna, that is, the inheritance to which they were entitled after their father’s death, was worth 135$340 réis. Based on this information I have calculated that the couple’s estate was worth approximately 4:500$000 réis at the time of Domingos’s death. 32 Papers from the municipal council of Sabará such as land concessions, tax records, and licences for commercial establishments indicate that free persons of African origin and descent were involved in every single branch of Sabará’s economy. Fundo Câmara Municipal de Sabará, Arquivo Público Mineiro (APM). In fact, studies of colonial Minas Gerais emphasise the importance of their activities to the general economic development of the region, cf. Russell-Wood 2002, 50–66, 104–27; Higgins 1999, 43–88; Figueredo 1993, 34–71. 33 One third of the inventories of free persons of African origin or descent available

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by these documents reveals identifiable trends in the pattern of property ownership and inheritance that clearly distinguished certain groups of people from others. A comparison of the holdings described in 348 inventories (table 3) indicates, for example, that while the majority of free white persons within this sample owned property worth more than 1:500$000 contos de réis, the estates of most free persons of African origin and descent were evaluated at less than half of that amount. The fact that Antônio Gonçalves da Cruz, a manumitted African, managed to accumulate 3:072$050 contos de réis during his lifetime through gold mining suggests that such fortunes were not beyond the reach of manumitted slaves and their descendants.34 Thus, it is possible that this discrepancy is related, at least in part, to the way these individuals obtained their freedom (whether through birth or through manumission) and to the possibility of benefiting from the financial well-being of their families. The fact that freeborn persons of African descent managed, to a certain extent, to acquire larger estates than forros seems to reinforce this idea. Because these individuals acquired their freedom through birth and not as a result of manumission and, moreover, were able to count on the help of free parents, they no doubt enjoyed better odds. It is also significant that pardos and crioulos managed to accumulate more property than Africans. Africans, who usually joined the free population of Sabará at a later age and who rarely had better-off free relatives or acquaintances to count on, had to confront a harder path to social and economic well-being. Finally, the larger proportion of pardos with estates worth over 750$000 suggests that children of mixed unions were more likely to prosper in this society than crioulos and Africans, a large number of them because of their connection to members of the white population. The variations observed in property value listed in the inventories were reflected, as could be expected, in the value of heirs’ legítimas. However, because the amount assigned to legítimas depended on other variables such as number of heirs, marital status of the decedent, and the need to pay off outstanding debts, it is difficult to search this data for distinguishable patterns. Yet, one generalization

for the second half of the eighteenth century in Sabará list estates worth more than 1:000$000 réis. 34 Inventário de Antônio Gonçalves da Cruz, 8 Apr. 1756, ACBG/MOS, doc. CSO (18)01.

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appears to hold true for this sample: children fathered by white men were usually entitled to larger legítimas than those who were not. Among the inventories of free white men with children of African descent the average legítima was worth 1:215$536 contos de réis. Children born of two parents or a single mother of African origin or descent could expect instead a legítima that was on average ten times smaller. The fact that the majority of free white men who fathered children of African descent never married (73%), even though some maintained long-term relationships with the mothers of their children, contributed further to this discrepancy. Because they remained single these men did not share their property with a spouse. Consequently, their children inherited almost all of their property instead of only a portion of their meação.35 Whatever the value of a legítima, though, access to an inheritance could significantly improve the lives of some free persons of African origin and descent. In the case of Euzébia Pereira de Guimarães, for example, the parda daughter of Antônio Pereira Guimarães and his slave woman Maria, her legítima of 577$712 réis entitled her to inherit part of her father’s farm. According to her own inventory, by the time of her death Euzébia’s estate was worth 1:056$750 conto de réis. Together with her husband Antônio João de Faria she owned a sugar mill in Sabará where she employed five slaves in the production of sugar and cachaça (sugar-cane brandy.)36 The six children of Antônio Ferreira Carvalho, born of his marriage to Rita Pereira do Lago, a crioula forra, received a smaller legítima than Euzébia and her siblings: 227$714 réis. Still, thanks to their inheritance their legal guardian managed to have them all learn to read and write and two of the sons were given the opportunity to learn a trade. Also, in his accounts of the orphans’ state, the children’s guardian repeatedly mentioned that all three unmarried daughters were kept in the company of their mother with “praiseworthy education and behaviour” 35 Portuguese law guaranteed illegitimate children the same rights of inheritance as children born in wedlock. Restrictions applied only to children born of adulterous unions, legally referred to as spurious. Children born of parents legally capable of getting married were referred to as natural children, cf. Lewin 1992; da Silva 1996. In his study of family life in Minas Gerais Luciano Figueiredo (1997, 157–64) points out that families headed by unmarried parents, which he refers to as ‘fractured families’, were quite common in the region. 36 Inventário de Antônio Pereira Guimarães, 26 Jun. 1755, ACBG/MOS, doc. CSO (17)05; Inventário de Euzébia Pereira Guimarães, 3 Apr. 1784, ACBG/MOS, doc. CSO (55)09.

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Table 3. Distribution of inventories by total property value and social background White 300$000 or less 300$000–750$000 750$000–1:500$000 1:500$000–3:000$000 Over 3:000$000

6% 16% 16% 18% 44%

Pardo Crioulo African Free-born Forros Free-born Forros 24% 24% 24% 12% 16%

34% 17% 33% 16% –

34% 33% 33% – –

33% 39% 28% – –

40% 33% 13% 7% 7%

Sources: Inventários do Cartório do Segundo Ofício de Sabará, 1750–1799, ACBG/MOS.

and with their honour preserved.37 Because of their economic standing Antônio’s daughters were able to await a good marriage instead of having to seek some form of employment or other means to secure their livelihood like so many other women of African descent.38 Even a small legítima could prove providential in some cases. Felix Barbosa de Andrade, for example, the son of Joana de Andrade, a crioula forra, chose to use his inheritance of 36$200 réis to pay off the money he owed to his former owner.39 There is a strong possibility that the amount owed by Felix was part of his coartação, a common form of manumission agreement in colonial Minas Gerais that allowed slaves to pay for their freedom in instalments.40 By paying off his debt to his former master Felix further established his financial and social independence from his master.

The process of inheritance, vendas de meação and other arrangements Families of people of African origin and descent were no doubt aware of the importance of ownership of property to their social and

37 Inventário de Antônio Ferreira de Carvalho, 2 Mar. 1786, ACBG/MOS, doc. CSO (60)01. 38 A growing concern with concubinage and prostitution encouraged local officials to pay special attention to the care provided to female orphans. Still, poverty led many women of African descent to pursue these types of relationships. de Mello e Souza 1990, 153–58, 181–85; Figueredo 1993, 75–140. 39 Inventário de Joana de Andrade, 24 Jan. 1752, doc. CSO (15)01, ACBG/MOS. 40 Cf. Lara 1988, 237–268; de Mello e Souza 1999. This form of manumission was also practiced in other regions of Latin America, cf. Bergad 1995, 122–42.

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economic standing in society. Likewise, parents of children of African descent fully realised the positive effects of inheritance of property on the future social and economic status of their descendants. Still, these individuals were not always able to ensure that after their death their family would gain the usufruct of their property and enjoy the benefits it could afford them. Certain legal procedures, which forcefully preceded the actual transmission of property from one generation to the next, could occasionally create obstacles to a successful succession to property. When José Pinto de Araújo, a white landowner, died in 1758, he declared in his will his desire to have his two illegitimate pardo sons inherit his estate. Because José and Manuel were born out of wedlock, their birth certificate did not mention who their father was. By naming them in his will, though, José Pinto de Araújo ensured that they would be legally recognised as his heirs.41 Despite this precaution and José’s clear intention of leaving his property to his sons, the two young men were never able to secure the ownership of their father’s house in the village of Pompeu, his farm, or his slaves. According to his inventory all of José’s property, valued at 1:881$085l réis, was applied to paying off his creditors. His children, who for a short period of time were presented with the opportunity of becoming landowners and slave-holders, were then guided to occupations better suited to their ‘quality’: José became a farm worker and Manuel was apprenticed to a blacksmith.42 Debts were a common problem among families of eighteenthcentury Sabará. Because most economic transactions in the region were based on credit, few individuals could avoid incurring debts during their lifetime. Metropolitan policies restricting minting in eighteenth-century Minas Gerais made gold dust the main currency, which contributed further to this pattern.43 The difficulty of carrying

41 According to Portuguese inheritance law, children, whether legitimate or ‘natural’, were considered the rightful heirs of their parents’ estate (referred to as ‘necessary heirs’) and were first in the line of succession. Their nomination in parents’ wills was, therefore, redundant. However, men who had not assumed the paternity of their children during their lifetime often resorted to wills to rectify the situation and ensure their children’s heirship, cf. Lewin 1992, 366–73. 42 Inventário de José Pinto de Araújo, 5 Jul. 1758, ACBG/MOS, doc. CSO (19)01. 43 Gold extracted in the region had to be taken over to smelting houses where crown officials separated the fifth part, or the king’s share, and cast gold bars. The

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out transactions in gold, not readily accessible to all inhabitants of the region, forced most people to rely on credit when conducting business. In this environment very few individuals managed to straighten out their finances before passing away, transferring to their heirs the responsibility of paying off their debts. In several cases, though, the deceased’s family had to deal with legal intervention from local courts acting on behalf of creditors who laid claim to part of the estate as compensation for overdue payments. Quite often these interventions resulted in the transfer of ownership or confiscation and sale of property that would have otherwise reverted to the heirs. If the amount owed was too high, heirs could be left with no inheritance at all. One out of three inventories of persons with children of African descent reveal partial loss of property as a result of debt payments; ten percent of the inventories indicate total loss of the inheritance.44 Court participation in the division of property and administration of the inheritance of minors occasionally jeopardised the financial and economic well-being of the family of the deceased person as well. Responsible for enforcing a strict set of rules regulating the process of inheritance, local courts held considerable power over the disposition of the deceased’s property and, in their effort to consummate the transfer of the estate, they often overlooked the interests of the family as a whole.45 Vitória Moreira, a manumitted parda,

smelting houses also exchanged gold dust for coins, thus preventing merchants from leaving the region with untaxed gold dust. However, during the entire eighteenth century Minas Gerais lacked a mint, most of the coins having to come from Rio de Janeiro. By the beginning of the nineteenth century the Prince Regent prohibited the use of gold dust (to prevent smuggling) and ordered the construction of mints in the region, cf. ‘Alvará com força de lei do Príncipe Regente’, 20 Dec. 1799, Arquivo Público Mineiro, doc. AHU (150)89. Cf. also Russell-Wood 1991; Vainfas 2000, 402–405. 44 Among the 112 inventories that listed heirs of African descent consulted for this study 35 mention debts paid off with part of the deceased’s property and 12 reveal cases in which debts exceeded the value of the deceased’s property. The potential negative impact of debt on the process of inheritance is also evident in other regions of colonial Brazil, cf. Faria 1998, 263–265. 45 Portuguese inheritance law was based on two main principles: property belonged to the family to whom it had to be restored after the death of one of its members; and, the heirs had equal rights to the inheritance. This meant, firstly, that individuals had little control over the future ownership of their property, their heirs being determined by law; and, second, that the inheritance had to be divided in equal shares as numerous as the number of heirs. In order to ensure that the law

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for instance was confronted with the possibility of losing control over the family’s estate when, after the death of her husband Antônio de Morais, the orphans’ court ordered the sale of the property to secure the heirs’ legítimas. Because the couple’s two oldest children were no longer minors, they were entitled to receive their share of the inheritance immediately. The rather low value of the legítimas (33$233 réis) made it difficult to translate that amount into property and, in the perspective of the court, created the need to liquidate the estate. What the court did not take into consideration, though, was that Vitória relied on the family’s assets—ten slaves, a house and a store in the village of Pompeu, near Sabará, and a small business of homemade sweets—to support herself and her nine children. Aware that the court’s decision would put at risk her chances of securing their livelihood, Vitória petitioned the court to maintain the integrity of the family’s estate.46 By challenging the court’s decision Vitória managed to regain control over the property she and Antônio had accumulated over the years, allowing her children to continue benefiting from the revenues it generated. The orphans’ court in Sabará commonly resorted to similar sales in order to generate the required funds to effect the division of property among heirs, to satisfy the deceased’s testamentary dispositions, or to pay off outstanding debts. Portuguese law also prescribed such sales as a way of preventing the depreciation of the legítimas of heirs who were still minors. By ordering the liquidation of the property and investing the money in assets that could potentially increase in value over time, the court hoped to preserve or even improve the heirs’ economic situation.47 Although these measures were intended was followed to the letter local courts were responsible for executing the division of the deceased’s property and for surpervising the transmission of its ownership to heirs. Código Filipino, Livro 1, título LXXXVIII, pp. 206–215; Livro 4, Lei de 9 de Setembro de 1769, pp. 1057–1061. For a discussion of the effects of Portuguese inheritance law on property holding in Brazil, cf. Metcalf 1992, 95–100. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie (1976) discusses a similar system of inheritance, which he refers to as egalitarian, found for western France in the early modern period. 46 Inventário de Antônio de Morais, 25 Feb. 1773, ACBG/MOS, doc. CSO (35)07. 47 Sales were considered especially necessary when the bulk of the inheritance comprised slaves, who became less valuable as they aged. Portuguese law recommended investing the heir’s money in real estate. Código Filipino, Livro 1, título LXXXVIII, § 22–30, pp. 213–215. In Sabará, however, the court often authorised lending heirs’ legítimas at interest rates, transforming the orphans’ court coffers into a loan office frequently sought by miners and other entrepreneurs. Although profitable, this option of investment was also risky and some orphans never managed to recover

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to protect the interests of heirs, sales of property could often prove harmful to the family in general, depriving them of their main sources of income. The example of Vitória Moreira suggests that some families managed to avoid such sales by appealing the court’s decision. Other families, however, sought alternative solutions. Juliana Martins and Maria Rodrigues da Cruz, the widows of Antônio Fernandes Silva and Manuel Teixeira Queiroz respectively, resorted to purchasing the various items of property that the court had put up for sale.48 Court-appointed guardians were another common source of problems for the families of deceased persons in Sabará. Responsible for both the upbringing and the administration of the property of orphans (legally defined as minors with no living fathers), guardians exerted considerable influence over the future economic and social status of individuals under their care.49 André, the pardo son of André Diniz Martins, relied on his guardian to successfully make the transition from slavery to freedom. Although he was named in his father’s will, because he was still a slave at the time of his father’s death André was not legally capable of receiving his legítima. Thanks to his guardian who, following his father’s instructions, purchased and manumitted him, he gained his freedom and became eligible to receive a legítima worth 881$932 réis.50 Albano Gonçalves Varella, on the other hand, the manumitted son of Antônio Gonçalves Varella, owed his professional training as a blacksmith to his guardian Veríssimo Pereira. In addition to providing Albano with a trade, Veríssimo also man-

their inheritance. Josefa, the parda daughter of José Francisco Pascoal, for example, had part of her legítima lent to Gonçalo Gomes das Neves. Josefa’s guardian filled several suits against the debtor in an attempt to recover her money but without success. Inventário de José Francisco Pascoal, 7 Oct. 1765, ACBG/MOS, doc. CSO (25)03. 48 In both cases the court ordered the sale of slaves who had been assigned to the heirs’ legítimas. Unable to afford the loss of valuable workers these widows did what they could to reintegrate the slaves to the family’s estate. Inventário de Antônio Fernandes Silva, 31 Jan. 1781, ACBG/MOS, doc. CSO (51)06; Inventário de Manuel Teixeira de Queiroz, 15 Jan. 1783, ACBG/MOS, doc. CSO (55)04. 49 The appointment of a guardian was only necessary in the event of the death of the father or in cases of children born out of wedlock whose fathers were unknown. Otherwise, fathers, considered the legitimate administrators of their children’s legítimas, were automatically given the custody of their offspring. The same did not apply to women who had to present proof that they were morally and financially capable of providing for their children. Código Filipino, Livro 1, título LXXXVIII, § 6, p. 209; and Livro 4, título CII, pp. 994–1004. 50 Inventário de André Diniz Martins, 25 May 1770, ACBG/MOS, doc. CSO (30)02.

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aged to successfully invest the orphan’s legítima, increasing it almost threefold.51 Guardians’ commitment to the well-being of orphans could lead to improvements in their economic and social situation; conversely, indifference or neglect could result in the loss of the orphans’ property and, consequently, bring about a decline in their status. Manuel Martins, for instance, lost his inheritance as a result of his guardian’s misconduct. The grandson of Josefa Martins Penna, a crioula forra, and next in the line of succession after his own mother’s death, Manuel was considered Josefa’s only heir and was entitled to a legítima worth 129$874 réis.52 Six years after the division of the property was completed Manuel expressed to the orphans’ court his fears that his assigned guardian, João Soares Ribeiro, was embezzling his inheritance. The court was quick to remove Manuel from under Ribeiro’s care, yet there is no indication that he was ever able to recover his legítima.53 Like so many other manumitted slaves in Sabará Josefa, who had worked as a market vendor, managed to improve her economic standing in society with some difficulty. Yet circumstances beyond her control prevented future generations of her family from benefiting from her efforts. Knowledge of the difficulties some families faced after the loss of one of its members and of the various circumstances that could prevent heirs from fully enjoying their inheritance led some individuals to seek greater participation in the transmission and administration of the estate after their death. Wills were one way of achieving this objective, providing testators with the power to influence the division of property and the choice of a guardian for their children or

51

Inventário de Antônio Gonçalves Varella, 29 Ago. 1754, ACBG/MOS, doc. CSO (16a)02. Albano was born of the deceased’s relationship with his slave woman Josefa and was manumitted at the time of his christening. Entitled originally to a legítima worth 125$176 réis, Albano received in the end 330$973 réis. 52 According to Portuguese law, the children of the deceased were first in the line of succession. In their absence, other descendants were then entitled to the inheritance. If the deceased had no children or grandchildren, parents or grandparents were then considered as heirs. Siblings were next in the line of succession, followed by collateral relatives. Código Filipino, Livro 4, título XCVI, pp. 954–55. 53 Inventário de Josefa Martins Penna, 14 Jan. 1785, ACBG/MOS, doc. CSO (58)03. João Soares Ribeiro died shortly after Manuel filed a suit against him. When the court ordered the confiscation of his property it was discovered that Ribeiro had nothing to his name, the legal property holder of the ‘couple’ being Teresa Soares de Jesus, Ribeiro’s concubine.

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other descendants.54 Bequests to heirs, spouses or other members of the household could also help to ensure the future financial wellbeing of the deceased’s family. Entitled to dispose of one-third of their estate according to their own designs, testators occasionally applied part of this amount, legally referred to as the deceased’s terça, to increase the legítima of a son, grant daughters larger dowries, or bequeath property to a surviving spouse, concubine or other members of the family.55 Dowries and other donations inter vivos also appear to have been employed as a strategy to guarantee that children or other beneficiaries would succeed to the deceased’s property. José Affonso, a Portuguese man and the father of three pardo children, opted to donate his farm and his cattle to his daughter Maria Affonsa and son José respectively. When he died in 1751, the court was left with little to do except to confirm the children’s ownership of these possessions by assigning them to each heir’s legítima.56 For some parents this practice had the added benefit of encouraging children to look after the family’s estate, dissuading them from leaving the parental household, and of attracting new members to the family unit through marriage.57 54 Joana da Silva Pinta, for example, a manumitted African, recorded in her will her wish that her house in Sabará be allocated to her grandchildren during the division of the property, thus securing them a place to live. Testamento de Joana da Silva Pinta, 4 Dec. 1757, ACBG/MOS, CPO Livro 12(21): 30–33v. 55 Portuguese inheritance law prevented testators from bequeathing their property at will, ensuring instead that the estate would revert to the family. Testators were nonetheless granted the right to dispose of their terça as they saw fit. During the eighteenth-century testators usually applied their terças to cover the costs of funeral arrangements, religious rituals and charity, providing financial support for the various acts that could ensure the salvation of their souls. Código Filipino, Livro 4, título LXXXII, pp. 911–15; Lei de 9 de Setembro de 1769, Código Filipino, pp. 1057–61. For a more detailed study of the possible uses of the terça, cf. Carlos A. P. Bacellar 1997, 147–164. Muriel Nazarri (1991, 21–3) comments on parents’ use of the terça as a means to bequeath larger dowries to their daughters. 56 Inventário de José Affonso, 2 Mar. 1751, ACBG/MOS, doc. CSO (13)06. 57 In fact, in Minas Gerais donations of property seemed to have benefited daughters more often than sons through the system of marriage dowries. Both Muriel Nazarri (1991, 28–39) and Alida Metcalf (1992, 87–119) have pointed out that in seventeenth-century São Paulo the practice of endowing daughters allowed parents to add male members to the family unit who could potentially improve their social and economic status. Moreover, because daughters tended to remain under the control of parents, whereas sons often explored the frontier in search of more rewarding opportunities, the practice of transferring land ownership to daughters could prevent the dissolution of the estate more efficiently. Parents in Minas Gerais who endowed their daughters with real estate property may have acted on a similar reasoning.

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Although José Affonso’s intentions when he donated his property to his children are not made clear in his will and inventory, through this act he managed to keep his family together, ensuring that they would look after his estate and himself in his old age. Josefa de Souza Freire, a manumitted crioula, also opted to transfer ownership of her real estate property, a house in the town of Sabará, to her married daughter Ana Joaquina as part of her dowry. The family continued to reside at the house, however, and after Josefa’s death José de Mello Pimentel, Ana Joaquina’s husband, undertook the responsibility of providing for his brothers and sisters-in-law who were still minors at the time.58 Finally, some parents organised the sale of their estate to members of their family or close acquaintances as a way of safeguarding their descendants’ access to property and the social and economic improvements it could afford them. Antônio Teixeira Cardoso sold his estate to his pardo son and to a partner. Manuel de Oliveira, the father of four pardo children, sold his property to his son-in-law, Francisco da Costa Teixeira. And Custódio Rabelo sold all his possessions to Ana Rabelo, a manumitted crioula and the mother of his nine children.59 Coincidentally, all three men died single leaving behind minor children. Their decision to sell their estate could have been based, therefore, on a desire to hand it over in its entirety to someone who would continue to provide for their family. The sale contracted between Custódio Rabelo and Ana Rabelo had yet another impact on the future of the family. Portuguese law at the time put significant restrictions on women’s rights to apply for the guardianship of orphans. Only mothers and grandmothers were considered acceptable candidates and even they had to prove financial and moral aptness before being allowed to undertake this responsibility.60 An unmarried forra woman with no property to her name, Ana would not have been considered a suitable guardian for her children, she would have had to endure instead the interference of a third party in matters concerning their future. However, as the owner of an 58 Inventário de Josefa de Souza Freire, 10 Jul. 1770, ACBG/MOS, doc. CSO (29)06. 59 Inventário de Antônio Teixeira Cardoso, 27 Ago. 1785, ACBG/MOS, doc. CSO (57)06; Inventário de Manuel de Oliveira, 29 Nov. 1774, ACBG/MOS, doc. CSO (38)07; Inventário de Custódio Rabelo, 23 Mar. 1787, ACBG/MOS, doc. CSO (61)01. 60 Código Filipino, Livro 4, título CII, § 3, 4, pp. 998–1001.

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estate that included a farm, seventeen slaves and a tanning business, Ana gained the financial power that would allow her to exert greater control over her children’s upbringing. Local courts occasionally contested sales of property between parents and their offspring on the grounds that this arrangement could favour certain heirs over others.61 Foreseeing that the sale of her four slaves to her oldest son could generate opposition from the orphans’ court, Thomázia de Souza Telles produced a petition shortly before her death requesting that the terms of the sale be respected and assuring local magistrates that other heirs had not been harmed by the transaction.62 Similarly, Jacinto Vieira da Costa, intent on preventing the orphans’ court from overruling the sale of his entire estate to his oldest son and to his compadre (his son’s godfather), invited the executors of his will to apply as much of his terça as required to legal actions sustaining that sale.63 The precautions these two parents took to enforce such sales testify to the importance they attached to this act. Despite their very distinct backgrounds, Thomázia, a manumitted African and a mother of four children, and Jacinto, a Portuguese mining entrepreneur and the father of eight illegitimate pardo children, shared a similar problem: outstanding debts that put at serious risk their children’s future economic well-being.64 For both parents the sale of property to their sons would have the double advantage of making their estate inaccessible to creditors while keeping it in the possession of the family. The most common sale arrangement found in eighteenth-century inventories was the venda de meação between spouses. Out of the 221 inventories of married persons which I examined for the second half of the eighteenth century, 64, almost 30%, registered such sales. Among the 57 married couples with children of African descent 16, or 28%, engaged in vendas de meação.65 Like other arrangements dis61

Código Filipino, Livro 4, título XII, pp. 791–93. Inventário de Thomázia de Souza Teles, 22 Dec. 1777, ACBG/MOS, doc. CSO (48)01. 63 Inventário de Jacinto Vieira da Costa, 10 Jun. 1760, ACBG/MOS, doc. CSO (21)01. 64 Jacinto owed debts amounting to almost two-thirds of the value of his estate. Thomázia’s debts, on the other hand, surpassed the value of her estate. 65 Sales of the deceased’s estate to family members or close acquaintances, on the other hand, appear in a total of 10 inventories, representing less that 10% of all inventories listing children of African descent (112). Inventários do Cartório do Segundo Ofício, ACBG/MOS, caixas 13–69. 62

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cussed above, these sales allowed individuals to organise themselves the transfer of their property before their death. They also provided the means by which individuals could procure the usufruct of the entire estate for their spouses, enabling them to continue to support the family. Usually contracted within weeks or even days of the sellers’ passing away, sales of meação determined the terms for the future administration of one’s property as wills determined the terms for the posthumous care of one’s body and soul. Manuel Gonçalves Chaves, for instance, recorded that being sick, “not knowing what God’s intentions were”, and wishing to “better secure his property for the use of his wife and children”, he was thereby selling his meação to his wife.66 Caetana Ribeira da Costa, a free parda woman, used the sale of her meação as a substitute for a will. Seriously ill due to complications after childbirth and fearing there was not enough time to summon a notary public to register her will, Caetana decided to sell her meação to her husband. Moreover, Caetana used the deed of sale to make her husband liable for the costs of her funeral and fulfilment of her last wishes.67 Vendas de meação were often arranged by families most vulnerable to court interference in the administration of their property and upbringing of their children. For instance, 88% of the couples who contracted such sales were the parents of underage children, and in more than two-thirds of the cases all children were minors.68 Because the orphans’ court was in charge of supervising orphans’ upbringing and the administration of their legítimas these parents had to abide to court decisions concerning their property more often than the parents of emancipated children. By placing all of the property under the care of the surviving spouse, vendas de meação provided

66 Deed of Sale, Manuel Gonçalves Chaves to Francisca Teixeira dos Santos, 23 Jun. 1768, ACBG/MOS, doc. CPO 6(60), p. 5. 67 Inventário de Caetana Ribeira da Costa, 8 Jun. 1787, ACBG/MOS, doc. CSO (61)05. Because the process of inheritance was guided by a strict body of laws rather than the desires of the deceased changes in the regular procedure had to be strongly supported by legal documentation. Wills, therefore, were only taken into account when considered lawful, meaning they had to be registered by a notary public in the presence of five witnesses. Código Filipino, Livro 4, título LXXX, pp. 900–907. Sales, on the other hand, could be arranged under more flexible terms. Código Filipino, Livro 4, título I, p. 779. 68 Among the 16 couples with children of African descent, 11 were the parents of only minor children, 3 had a majority of underage children, and in 2 cases all children were emancipated at the time of the sale.

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these families with greater autonomy from the court. The fact that husbands sold their meações to their spouses more often than wives is also significant.69 As mentioned before, while fathers were automatically given the responsibility of their children’s upbringing and of the administration of their property, mothers on the other hand rarely enjoyed the same privilege. Thus, a man’s death could greatly undermine his wife’s authority in matters concerning the family’s future. By granting women full control over the family’s estate vendas de meação commonly reversed this scenario. Debts were another strong encouragement for sales of meação between spouses.70 Before Manuel André dos Santos died his pardo wife, Maria Serqueira Aranha, bought his meação to the amount of 149$669 réis, almost equivalent in value to the total sum of the couple’s debts (121$312 réis). Although the couple’s estate did not include many valuable items, the farm house, the five slaves and the few farming tools that they owned allowed them to secure their livelihood and provide for their six children, all under the age of 12. Yet the possibility of losing almost half of the estate to creditors would have jeopardised the family’s chances of surviving on its own after Manuel’s death. By arranging the sale of his meação Manuel ensured that his portion of the estate would not be accessible to litigating creditors while also granting Maria the means to support their children. The benefits of this arrangement were not lost on other members of society. When examining the venda de meação contracted between Clara Eugênia dos Serafins and her husband Pedro Nunes da Silva the orphans’ court requested a third opinion on the consequences of this sale for both orphans and creditors. According to the attorney consulted on this matter, sales between husbands and wives were often of great advantage to orphans: “they promoted the preservation of the estate and enabled families to gradually pay off their debts without compromising the orphans’ inheritance.”71

69 46, or 72% of the 64 vendas de meação found in eighteenth-century inventories record husbands as the seller. 70 20 inventories recording vendas de meação also recorded debts, half of which amounted to more that 75% of the value of the deceased’s property. 71 Inventário de Clara Eugênia dos Serafins, 10 Feb. 1770, doc. CSO (30)03, MOS/ACBG. “A venda entre marido e mulher . . . resulta comumente utilidade grande aos órfãos por se conservar o patrimônio inteiro e ir-se satisfazendo aos credores do casal que por outro modo absorveria e distrairia todos os bens para solução daqueles.”

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Ownership of property had a crucial impact on the lives of persons of African origin and descent by providing them with the means to purchase their freedom and to support their families. Property would also help these individuals to improve their status in society and ensure the well-being of future generations. It was not rare, however, for families to encounter circumstances that threatened their economic and social welfare. The death of a parent or a spouse, for instance, rendering the family vulnerable to the demands of creditors and to the interference of the orphans’ court with the disposition of property, often took its toll on families’ fragile financial stability. Some individuals, however, made sure their families were not left without recourses, providing spouses and heirs with greater authority over the family estate through sales and donations. The various measures parents and spouses adopted to secure their family access to property had both short term and long term consequences. Dowries, donations, sales of the estate, or sales of meação often had the more immediate effect of concentrating large portions of property in the hands of a single member of the family. These practices prevented the dispersion of the estate and allowed the family as a whole to continue to benefit from the income it generated and the social status it bestowed. In the long run, these same practices created the opportunity for further accumulation of property, protecting and occasionally increasing the inheritance of children and other descendants. Studies of inheritance practice in colonial Brazil have often singled out the efforts made by the local elite to protect their property from dispersion and secure an elevated social status for their descendants.72 Both Alida Metcalf and Carlos Bacellar have argued that Portuguese inheritance law, which reserved the right to render property indivisible only to the nobility, was at odds with the interests of the planter elite.73 The constraints of the law consequently

72 Nizza da Silva (1998, 52–67) discusses inheritance practices among the sugar producing elite in the northeast of Brazil. Metcalf (1992, 95–104) and Bacellar (1997, 127–64) discuss similar issues in the context of seventeenth century São Paulo and during the coffee boom later in the nineteenth century respectively. 73 According to Portuguese law nobles were allowed to create morgados or vínculos, entailed estates that were passed on to the eldest son. This law intended, no doubt, to protect the social status of the nobility, ensuring accumulation of property, while the rest of the population was unable to do the same. Código Filipino, Livro 4, título C, pp. 990–993. On the subject of morgados, cf. Silva 1998, 31–36; Magalhães 1995.

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forced these families to seek innovative ways for employing other legal instruments available to them to achieve similar results. Elite families were not the only group of people in colonial Brazil to realise the importance of property and the shortcomings of the inheritance system enforced at the time. Evidence from eighteenth-century Sabará indicates that families of African origin and descent were also aware of all they stood to gain or lose during the process of inheritance. They too learned to explore the legal instruments that were at their disposal to protect their property and to improve their standing in society.

Bibliography Algranti, Leila M. 1988. O feitor ausente: estudos sobre escravidão urbana no Rio de Janeiro— 1808–1822, Petrópolis. Antonil, André João 1922. Cultura e opulência do Brazil por suas drogas e minas, São Paulo. Bacellar, Carlos A. P. 1997. Os senhores da terra: família e sistema sucessório entre os senhores de engenho do Oeste Paulista, 1765–1855, Campinas. Barbosa, Waldemar A. 1985. Dicionário da terra e da gente de Minas, Belo Horizonte. Bergad, Laird W. 1999. Slavery and the Demographic and Economic History of Minas Gerais, Brazil, 1720 –1888, Cambridge. —— et alii 1995. The Cuban Slave Market, 1790–1880, Cambridge. Boxer, Charles R. 1969. The Golden Age of Brazil, 1695–1750, Berkeley. Faria, Sheila de Castro 1998. A colônia em movimento, Rio de Janeiro. Figueredo, Luciano 1993. O avesso da memória: cotidiano e trabalho da mulher em Minas Gerais no século XVIII, Rio de Janeiro. —— 1997. Barrocas famílias: vida familiar em Minas Gerais no século XVIIII, São Paulo. Florentino, Manolo 1997. Em costas negras: uma história do tráfico de escravos entre a África e o Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo. Goody, Jack, Joan Thirsk and E. P. Thompson (eds.) 1976. Family and Inheritance: Rural Society in Western Europe, 1200–1800, Cambrige. Greven, Jr., Philip 1970. Four Generations: Population, Land, and Family in Colonial Andover, Ithaca. Higgins, Kathleen J. 1999. ‘Licentious Liberty’ in a Brazilian Gold-mining Region: Slavery, Gender, and Social Control in Eighteenth-century Sabará, Minas Gerais, University Park, PA. Horn, James 1994. Adapting to a New World: English Society in the Seventeenth-century Chesapeake, Chapel Hill. Ladurie, Emmanuel Le Roy 1976. ‘Family structures and inheritance customs in sixteenth-century France’, Goody, Thirsk and Thompson (eds.), 39–70. —— 1978. Montaillou: The Promissed Land of Error, New York. Lara, Silvia H. 1988. Campos da violência, São Paulo. Lewin, Linda 1992. ‘Natural and spurious children in Brazilian inheritance law from colony to empire: a methodological essay’, The Americas 48, 351–396. Lewkowicz, Ida 1993. ‘As mulheres mineiras e o casamento: estratégias individuais e familiares nos séculos XVIII–XIX’, História 12, 13–28. Libby, Douglas C. & Clotilde A. Paiva 2000. ‘Manumission practices in a late eighteenth-century Brazilian slave parish: São José d’El Rey in 1795’, Slavery and Abolition 21, 96–127.

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Luna, Francisco Vidal 1981. Minas Gerais: escravos e senhore, São Paulo. Magalhães, Beatriz R. 1995. ‘Anotações em torno da propriedade territorial na comarca do Rio das Velhas’, Anais da XIV Reunião da SBPH, 105–15. Marcílio, Maria Luiza 1974. A cidade de São Paulo, São Paulo. de Mello e Souza, Laura 1990. Desclassificados do Ouro: a pobreza Mineira no século XVIII, Rio de Janeiro. —— 1999. ‘Coartação: Problemática e episódios referentes a Minas Gerais no século XVIII’, Maria Beatriz Nizza da Silva (ed.), Brasil: Colonização e Escravidão, Rio de Janeiro, 275–95. Metcalf, Alida C. 1992. Family and Frontier in Colonial Brazil: Santana de Parnaíba, 1580 –1822, Berkeley. Nazarri, Muriel 1991. Disappearance of the Dowry: Women, Families, and Social Change in São Paulo, Brazil, Stanford. del Nero da Costa, Iraci and Francisco Vidal Luna, 1982a. Minas colonial: economia & sociedade, São Paulo. —— 1982b. ‘Devassa nas Minas Gerais e observações sobre casos de concubinato’, Anais do Museu Paulista, 31, 221–33. Paiva, Eduardo França 1995. Escravos e libertos nas Minas Gerais do século XVIII, São Paulo. —— 2001. Escravidão e universo cultural na colonia: Minas Gerais, 1716–1789, Belo Horizonte. Ramos, Donald 1993. ‘From Minho to Minas: the Portuguese roots of the Mineiro family’, Hispanic American Historical Review 73, 639–662. Russell-Wood, A. J. R. 1991. ‘The gold cycle, c. 1690–1750’, Leslie Bethel (ed.), Colonial Brazil, Cambridge, 222–236. —— 2002. Slavery and Freedom in Colonial Brazil, Oxford. Scarano, Julita 1994. Cotidiano e solidariedade: vida diária da gente de cor nas Minas Gerais, século XVIII, São Paulo. Schwartz, Stuart B. 1985. Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society: Bahia, 1550 –1835, Cambridge. da Silva, Maria Beatriz Nizza. 1996. ‘Filhos ilegítimos no Brasil colonial’, Anais da XV Reunião da SBPH, 121–24. —— 1998. História da família no Brasil colonial, Rio de Janeiro. Turner, Mary 1995. From Chattel Slaves to Wage Slaves: The Dynamics of Labour Bargaining in the Americas, Bloomington, IN. Vainfas, Ronaldo (ed.) 2000. Dicionário do Brasil colonial, Rio de Janeiro. Zemella, Mafalda 1990. O abastecimento da capitania de Minas Gerais, São Paulo.

PART III

FREEDPEOPLE AFTER EMANCIPATION

CHAPTER SEVEN

COERCION AND FREEDOM IN THE CAPE COLONY, 1652–1856 Nigel Worden

In the extensive comparative literature on slavery and emancipation the Cape Colony receives little attention. It did not fit the usual models of slave societies: it was not a plantation economy of the kind that dominated the slave systems of the trans-Atlantic world in the early modern era and it used both slave and non-slave coerced labour. However, as in the Americas, the ‘freedom’ that the ending of forced labour brought was of a limited kind. This chapter will explore some of these characteristic features of the labour system of the Cape Colony and outline the debates that have arisen in its recent historiography.

Coercion The Cape Colony was a slave society from the start. Van Riebeeck brought household slaves with him when he claimed Table Bay for the Vereenigde Oostindie Compagnie (VOC or Dutch East India Company) in 1652, and as soon as the Company directors approved the establishment of settler farming in 1658, slaves were imported to ‘place them the sooner on their legs’.1 Here was no gradual transition from immigrant indentured labour to slavery on the Virginian or Caribbean model. This was the deliberate policy of a trading company that wanted quick returns on its release of employees as farmers. Through its network of trade in the Indian Ocean it was able to provide slave labourers with relative ease and cheapness. Imported slaves from the East Indies (and later India, Ceylon, Mozambique and Madagascar) were also more controllable than the

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Van Riebeeck to Heeren XVII, cited in Worden 1985, 6.

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indigenous San hunter-gathers and Khoi pastoralists with whom the Dutch colonists were contesting access to land in the Cape Peninsula and its hinterland. The system of slavery which the VOC had developed in Batavia was thus transferred to its satellite at the Cape.2 The first Cape colonial farmers, by the very nature of their contracts with the Company, were not wage labourers. Moreover, the tenuous nature of early grain production in the late seventeenth century did not enable them to generate sufficient surplus capital to employ a wage labour force. Instead they were dependent on family labour, Company employees who were contracted out for brief periods ‘on loan’ and slaves that were provided initially on credit.3 But by the early eighteenth century, production levels (and geographical dispersion) of both grain and wine had increased, and a less ad hoc labour system was clearly required. In 1717 the Heeren XVII duly considered the replacement of slave labourers with European immigrants. The responses of the Cape Council of Policy were almost unanimous.4 Slavery was to be kept. Not only was it a cheaper system, since white labourers would require more in wages than the purchase price of a slave, but it would be impossible to retain immigrants as labourers in a colony where available land beckoned (as the Khoi and San lands were steadily expropriated), with the allure of becoming landowner rather than worker. For the Cape, the DomarNieboer hypothesis, that slavery thrives where land is plentiful and population is sparse, holds firm.5 Moreover, as one respondent pointed out, the very presence of slaves ensured that ‘no matter how poor [a European immigrant] is, he will not accustom himself to perform the work of slaves, as he thinks in this way to distinguish himself from a slave’.6 Slavery was thus the mainstay of the labour force of the Dutch Cape and slave labourers were found throughout the colony. And yet it is only relatively recently that historians have devoted much attention to them.7 For in comparative terms, the Cape was an

2 For a recent fascinating insight into the inter-relationship of exile and forced labour in the diverse parts of the VOC empire, see Ward 2001. 3 Shell 1994, 5. 4 Reports of De Chavonnes and his Council and of Van Imhoff on the Cape, Van Riebeeck Society, 1st series, Vol. I (Cape Town, 1918). 5 Domar 1970. 6 Reports of De Chavonnes, 121. 7 For overviews of Cape slave historiography, see Southey 1992; Cuthbertson 1992.

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Fig. 2.

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coercion and freedom in the cape colony, 1652–1856 189 unusual colonial slave society. Here slaves were imported to Africa, and from a range of Indian Ocean origins, predominantly Malagasy and Indian (with only a minority from Mozambique and a handful from Angola).8 Supplies came not from a regular slaving trade carried out by the VOC (with the exception of irregular voyages directly from Cape Town to Madagascar) but rather haphazardly from ships primarily transporting other cargos from Batavia and Colombo to Europe and which carried a few slaves for sale on the way. The resulting disparity of origins inhibited a strongly distinctive slave culture of the kind that emerged in North American, Brazilian and Caribbean colonies, although this is not of course to deny that slaves actively forged their own individual identities and resisted their bondage in a variety of ways.9 Manumission was very low, and those slaves who did acquire freedom tended to merge into the ‘free black’ population in Cape Town of Dutch political exiles and convicts from Asia rather than staying in the settler dominated rural hinterland.10 The most striking product of the South-East Asian origins of many slaves was the transmission of Islam; by the early and mid-nineteenth century, when its practice was officially permitted, Muslims predominated in the working class of Cape Town.11 Moreover, the Cape was not a staple plantation economy of the kind which predominated in many colonial slave societies. Slaves were distributed in relatively small numbers (twenty was the average and over fifty the exception) across grain farms, vineyards and pastoral holdings12 as well as providing the mainstay of Cape Town’s labouring class. This is not to claim, as have some earlier historians, that the Dutch Cape’s economy was stagnant and autarkic. Although there has been some controversy as to whether the early

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For analysis of the diverse areas of origin of Cape slaves see Worden 2005. Worden 1985, 93–101; Ross 1983a. 10 Elphick and Shell 1989. 11 Shell 1984; Bradlow and Cairns 1978; da Costa and Davids 1994; Ward 2001, esp. ch. 3. 12 In this it resembled the seventeenth and eighteenth century Chesapeake or New England, (cf. Kulikoff 1986, 398) rather than the large-scale plantation economies of the Caribbean or the nineteenth century Deep South which dominated slave historiography in the 1970s and overly influenced me and other Cape historians at that time; see Cuthbertson 1992 for the dangers of such comparisons. Comparison with other bonded labour systems, such as the Australian convict experience, has been entirely absent. 9

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coercion and freedom in the cape colony, 1652–1856 191 settler rural economy can be described as fully capitalist,13 it is clear that by the eighteenth century it was orientated towards a commercial market, with developed stratification of wealth and differential access to credit. A ‘Cape gentry’, identified by land accumulation, larger slave holdings and political influence dominated the grain and wine economy, supplying the market centre of Cape Town and its shipping consumers.14 Slavery underpinned this economy and it has been estimated that the Cape gentry obtained profits from their slave holdings that in certain circumstances could match those of the Atlantic plantation owners.15 What has recently become more controversial is the ways in which coercion worked in the slave system. Historians in the 1980s firmly rebutted the mythology of earlier works which claimed that Cape slavery was peculiarly ‘mild’ and slaves were contented with their lot,16 by revealing that it was maintained by violent coercion, could be just as brutal as that of Atlantic plantation societies, and that resistance, for reasons of cultural and physical diffusion, took the form of individual action rather than mass rebellion.17 This image has now been challenged by Robert Shell as a ‘naive neo-abolitionist view’.18 In its place Shell stresses the incorporation of slaves—and particularly slave women—into the patriarchal household of the owner. Control was maintained by co-option and dependency rather than by force. Resistance was thus internalised and tamed.

13 Robert Ross (1986) made this claim, based essentially on the commodification of produce, the specialisation of markets and the alienation of labour. Although he has been castigated for using the term in place of commercialisation by Helen Bradford (1990, 81–2), primarily on the grounds that slave labour is not the same as proletarianisation, his argument for a market orientated cash crop settler agriculture holds firm. As Caribbean and North American work has shown, proletarianisation and slavery were not incompatible; see for example Mintz 1978. There was at the Cape no great divide between slavery and post-emancipation proletarianised labour, as this chapter will show. 14 Ross 1983b. 15 Worden 1985, 64–85. With this exception, the economics of Cape slavery has been little examined. Despite the plethora of VOC records of production and consumption, the paucity of individual estate records may explain this gap. 16 For instance, de Kock 1950. Many South African school textbooks, written in the heyday of apartheid, still perpetuate this myth by reassuring their readers that although we had slavery it was a more humane form of slavery than anybody else’s; in particular that of many countries who were criticising apartheid, such as the U.S. 17 Ross 1983a; Worden 1985. 18 Shell 1994, 206. I have to confess to finding myself labelled as an abolitionist not as shaming as Shell clearly intended.

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The debate is far from over. Shell has been criticised for reproducing an image that the masters would like to have believed in, while failing to take heed of the perceptions and words of the slaves themselves.19 Feminist writers have castigated his image of the compliant female household slave and have pointed out that the family was no less (and probably more) violent an arena of social control than any other.20 His characterisation of patriarchy and paternalism have been challenged, and the actions of slaves themselves used as evidence of their lack of incorporation, at any level, into a concept of the household.21 But his work has focussed needy attention to the complexities of coercion and control in a slave society. And most importantly, it has pointed out that slaves were not the only people who were coerced on the farms and households of the early Cape Colony. For Cape slave historiography has been overly compartmentalised. Apart from a few brief allusions, it has ignored the fact that slaves worked alongside other workers who were far from free, and that many Dutch settlers relied not on slaves at all, but on indigenous labourers. This was particularly true for the remoter pastoralist settlers of the interior and eastern districts of the colony. Not only were they further away from the slave port of Cape Town, but many were less integrated into the commercial and cash economy and often lacked sufficient capital to invest in slave labour.22 Slaves thus made up a smaller proportion of the labour force the further away from Cape Town they were located. And even within the heart of the wine and wheat districts of the urban hinterland, indigenous labourers were found on almost half of the farms by 1806.23 The steady encroachment of settler agriculture onto the seasonal grazing lands of Khoi herders began in the first year of Dutch settlement and continued throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth

19 For instance, Pamela Scully’s review in American Historical Review 101 (2), April 1996, 537. 20 van der Spuy 1993, esp. chapter 2. 21 Ross 1995; Mason 2003. 22 The degree of pastoralist frontier commodification has been the subject of much debate which is best summarised in Guelke 1989. Although pastoralist farmers were far from autarkic and were closely linked to the Cape Town market, the levels of liquid capital for slave purchase were considerably lower than that of the western grain and wine producers; Newton-King 1999. 23 Worden 1985, 35.

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centuries.24 The need to maintain a meat trade with the Khoi prevented the East India Company from directly enslaving them, although in the earlier years of the settlement they lacked the means to do so, and would have been entirely unable to control a locally enslaved labour force. But from early on Khoi who were unable or unwilling to retreat into the arid lands beyond the western Cape colonial settlement worked on settler farms, often initially in a clientship relationship in return for the right to keep their cattle and sheep. Indeed the Dutch learnt the techniques of survival in an alien environment from their Khoi employees, most of whom worked alongside slave labourers. Although legally free, as the colonial farming frontier advanced, those Khoi client workers left behind increasingly found themselves subject to many of the same coercive structures as slaves.25 By the mid-late eighteenth century, Cape courts were blurring the distinction in important respects; seizure of Khoi livestock was condoned and Khoi testimony was disregarded unless backed by a settler.26 Increasingly as Khoi lost their stock as well as their land, a common culture of a slave and Khoi proletarianised rural workforce emerged (marked, for instance, by the use of creole Dutch influenced by Khoi and slave syntactic structures and vocabulary which was to become known as Afrikaans).27 While such a process has been long recognised, the more violent destruction of hunter-gatherer (San) societies of the Cape is only beginning to be fully appreciated in South African historiography, let alone in public awareness.28 The attacks of settler commandos on the hunter-gatherering San and dispossessed Khoi which occurred particularly in the northern and eastern regions of the colony in the eighteenth century amounted to genocide and are paralleled by the better-known Aboriginal Australian experience.29 What has also become clear is that much of the impetus behind such raiding was the cap-

24 The major account of this process is Newton-King 1999. See also Elphick and Malherbe 1989, 3–65; Boonzaier and Malherbe et al. 1996. 25 See for instance Viljoen 1993 on the violence endemic in settler farmer-Khoi labour relations. 26 Ross 1993. 27 den Besten 1989. 28 An exhibition (April–September 1996) displaying the genocide of the San at the South African National Gallery evoked heated controversy, outpourings of white guilt and some disbelief; Skotnes 1996. 29 Reynolds 1989.

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ture of labour, particularly of children who were subsequently indentured to settler farmers.30 The system of indenture (inboekstelsel ) formalised clientage in ways which approximated much more closely to coerced labour.31 Calls for formalised indenture first came from Stellenbosch farmers in 1721, demanding the labour of the children of Khoi mothers and slave fathers (contemptuously referred to as ‘Bastard Hottentots’). Since the sexual balance of the slave population at this stage was heavily in favour of males, most children born to farm workers were of Khoi women and therefore technically free. But, the farmers argued, “the costs of the consequent child-rearing have been born by us . . . so that we ask if you could decree that a certain number of years may be stipulated during which these offspring might be bonded to serve their foster bosses, otherwise we would have no further recompense for our trouble and expense.”32 Although no formal system of ‘inbooking’ such children was made until 1775, it has recently been argued that local magistrates approved of the practice long before this date.33 Often loosely (and euphemistically) referred to as ‘apprenticeship’, inboekstelsel contained no provision for training and was direct labour indenture. The 1775 legislation provided for control over male Khoi children until the age of twenty-five, but this effectively also tied parents who wished to stay with their offspring as well, and usually ensured that the inboekselings themselves were parents by the time their indenture came to a formal end. At least one historian has claimed that such practices were tantamount to slavery. There is evidence that inboekseling rights were bought and sold, although to lump all such coercive labour practices under a single category is to oversimplify a rather more complex labour system.34 Certainly, however, settler commando raids by the late eighteenth century were taking children ‘abandoned’ by their parents (often orphaned by commando attacks) and indenturing them under the inboekstelsel system. There

30

Penn 1995; Newton-King 1999 and Newton-King 1994. Malherbe 1991, 15; Giliomee 1981, 85. 32 Cited in Shell 1994, 29. 33 Shell 1994, 30. 34 Morton 1994, 258–9. The editors of this collection claim that all forms of labour incorporation in this period were equivalent to African practices of domestic slavery, but their argument has not found general acceptance; see for instance Keegan 1996, 297. 31

coercion and freedom in the cape colony, 1652–1856 197 was little likelihood that they would ever regain any independence, even after the formal ending of their indenture. If open rebellion did not come from Cape slaves, it did from the Khoi and San. Between 1799 and 1803, hundreds of Khoi and San farm workers abandoned their employers and made joint cause with the Xhosa who were resisting colonial encroachment on their land in the eastern Graaff-Reinet district of the colony.35 Forming themselves into bands with a command structure that closely resembled those of their ancestors, they inflicted severe blows on settler farms as far west as the Swellendam district. The British, who had taken over the Cape in 1795, were alarmed, not least by the rocketing price of meat in Cape Town that resulted from the disruption of the eastern districts. Military forces sent from Cape Town led to the rebellion’s defeat. The uprising had revealed the dangers of uncontrolled settler labour raiding. Yet the abolition of the slave trade throughout the British colonies in 1807 also cut off external supplies of labour to a colony whose slave labour force was not self-reproducing.36 The result was a much more formalised system of Khoi indenture, under the regulation of the new British administration. The Caledon Code of 1809 ‘institutional[ised] the servile status of the colonial Khoi and San, while extending the rule of law at the Cape’.37 It stipulated that every ‘Hottentot’ should henceforth have a specific place of abode which in the context of the completed process of settler land expropriation effectively meant as a farm worker.38 Those found outside farms without a pass signed by an employer were liable to arrest on a charge of vagrancy and could be compelled to enter into a labour contract. At the same time, the Caledon Code demanded that contracts be made between employers and labourers, which could not exceed a year, or a month if orally formulated. It also provided protection against overt maltreatment and child labour raiding although a 1812 codicil extended the inboekstelsel to all children born on farms. Although the coercive features of the Code were more effectively implemented than the protectionist clauses, circuit court judges in

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Newton-King and Malherbe 1981. Armstrong and Worden 1989, 133. 37 Keegan 1996, 35. 38 Contrary to some interpretations of the code, both by contemporaries and by modern historians, Khoi landholding was not legally forbidden. 36

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1812 caused a storm of protest from farmers when they began to hear evidence brought against employers.39 The Caledon Code has been seen as the height of colonial regulated labour coercion over the Khoi and San, effectively reducing them to ‘aliens in their own land’. But at the same time it marked the start of a more active intervention by the state into colonial labour relations. In the circumstances of 1809 this merely codified an existing means of ensuring an immobilised supply of indigenous labour.40 But in the subsequent decades the state was to move in a different direction.

Emancipations At the Cape, there was not one emancipation, but two. In addition to the general ending of slavery in most of the British colonies in 1834,41 the restrictions of the Caledon Code on Khoi and San movement and independence were abolished by the local Ordinance 50 of 1828. Until very recently, few historians have viewed both events together, although they were clearly driven by very similar forces.42 The ideological shift away from coerced to wage labour which accompanied notions of free trade and commercialisation in earlymid nineteenth century Britain is now well documented.43 At the Cape it was given a particular impetus by the arrival of new interest groups in the colony after its capture from the Dutch. A new mercantile class of British origin emerged in Cape Town which promoted the removal of the old mercantilist restrictions and highlighted the economic inefficiencies of a coerced labour force. This is not to argue that labour reforms were a contest of British liberalism versus Dutch obscurantism, as some historians have implied. British immigrants in the early nineteenth century obtained slaves when they could find them and could afford them. Thus the English immigrant hotelier Samuel Hudson squared his conscience on buying his first slave in 1799: 39

Newton-King 1980, 176–7. Elbourne 1994. 41 The Caribbean, the Cape and Mauritius. The newly acquired Indian possessions were not included in the abolition act. 42 Ross 1994 and Keegan 1996, 75–128. 43 For example Walvin 1982; Turley 1991; Holt 1992. 40

coercion and freedom in the cape colony, 1652–1856 199 Reconciled myself to the idea of purchasing a slave, a traffic my whole soul condemned, but when we can rescue a poor wretch from a cruel servitude with a determination to render him those comforts to make slavery bearable it becomes an act of charity and which humanity need not blush at. Such is my intention by this Boy who I hope will feel with gratitude and repay my care with fidelity.44

Moreover the administration of the aristocrat Lord Charles Somerset (1814–20) made common cause with the elite Dutch landowners and slave-owners and had little time for an incipient local commercial bourgeoisie of dubious social origin.45 Somerset suppressed as ‘Jacobin’ the South African Commercial Advertiser, edited by John Fairbairn, whose advocacy of free trade and wage labour was strongly influenced both by his background in the Edinburgh of the Scottish Enlightenment and by his contacts with the English Anti-Slavery movement.46 But the campaign which attracted most attention in the colony was that led by nonconformist missionaries of the London Missionary Society against the restrictions on the Khoi and San. As epitomised by the campaigns of the Scot John Philip, who took over directorship of the Cape L.M.S. in 1819, this was in part a product of the evangelical revivalism of early nineteenth century Britain, which called for equal access to individual salvation and opposition to external coercion that inhibited both spiritual and economic individualism.47 But it also particularly reflected missionary frustration at the lack of access to a tied labour force, especially in the pastoral eastern districts where their work was initially focussed, and the animosity of local farmers to the establishment of mission stations which provided local Khoi with shelter from the implementation of the Caledon Code. The calls of men like Fairbairn and Philip gained impetus from the increasing fervour of abolitionist sentiment in Britain in the mid1820s. But they were also immeasurably aided by events in the Cape itself. Firstly, the oligarchy which Somerset’s administration had represented was drastically reformed on the recommendations of a Commission of Enquiry. The press was unmuzzled, local landowner

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Cited in McKenzie 1993, 57–8. Rayner 1986, esp. chapter 2. 46 Botha 1984 (Cape Town, 1984). Kirsten McKenzie (1993b) has powerfully argued through analysis of the discourse of the Commercial Advertiser that the paper played a major role in the forging of a new commercial middle class in Cape Town. 47 See particularly Elbourne 1992; Andrew Ross 1987; Keegan 1996, 82–92. 45

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administrators were replaced by newly appointed officials, legal and fiscal reforms attempted to control financial and political corruption and the local state began to flex its muscles much more assertively in the affairs of colonists and in labour relations. A stream of interventionist legislation followed, setting minimum levels of slave food and clothing, controlling and recording the amount of domestic physical punishment over labourers, and, most strikingly, removing the mobility controls over Khoi labour.48 Slave emancipation from London was thus the last in a series of legislative reforms which marked the growing powers of the colonial state.49 This caused much local resentment by settler farmers, although the assumption that the ‘Great Trek’ was solely a reaction of embittered slave-owners against abolition has been qualified by analysis of the economic plight of the Dutch emigrants of the 1830s.50 What is striking in comparative terms is the limited nature of settler farmer protests against the emancipations. Here was no threatened colonial revolt along the lines of Jamaican or Mauritian planters. The explanation lies in the fundamental economic shifts that were taking place in the Cape during the 1820s; shifts which favoured the removal of direct coercion of labour. For in contrast to the other slave colonies where profits were high,51 the basis of the Cape’s slave and indentured labour economy was by the late 1820s and 1830s being steadily undermined and replaced by a newly commercialised agricultural sector which required a more mobile labour force. In short, wool replaced wine as the colony’s export staple. This argument was first most convincingly made for the eastern districts of the colony. Here commercialisation of pastoralist farm-

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Wayne Dooling (1992; 1994) has argued that not only did this intervene in the domestic control of master over slave, but it also challenged the ‘moral community’ by which slave-holding local ‘landdrosts’ and ‘heemraden’ exercised law and punishment in Dutch Cape society. 49 For this argument see in particular Crais 1992. Other writers have questioned the hegemony of state control in this period, particularly in the eastern districts of the colony: Keegan 1996, 14. 50 Peires 1989, 499–510. 51 The literature on the economic fortunes of the Caribbean sugar industry in the early nineteenth century is now voluminous and well-known. Yet despite the impact of Eric Williams’s arguments, it is clear that sugar profits were still high by the early 1830s. For a comparison of Mauritius and the Cape which stresses the significance of the boom in the Mauritian slave-based sugar economy and the decline in the Cape’s slave-based wine sector, see Worden 1992.

coercion and freedom in the cape colony, 1652–1856 201 ing resulted from the influx of capital which accompanied the British settlement of the Albany district and the development of commercial wool production, catalysed through the introduction of Merino sheep from New South Wales and funded by the new merchant houses of Cape Town and (increasingly) Port Elizabeth.52 Slave labour was forbidden to these new settlers, not only because of growing abolitionism at home, but also for fear of its disruptive impact. One of the main purposes of the Albany settlement was to provide a buffer against Xhosa expansion in the Fish River region, and the authorities feared a repetition of the 1799 revolt of bonded labourers and Xhosa. And the large majority of Khoi and San workers were already tied to other farmers. Instead the new settlers were expected to farm with the aid of immigrant indentured labourers. But the Cape’s first schemes for migrant white labour were far from successful. Recruitment and transport were left to private speculators, who obtained completely unskilled people, and did little to ensure that they reached the eastern Cape farms; for instance, the main shipments of Irish labourers in 1823 ended up in Cape Town. This situation gave fuel to the missionary campaign against the Caledon Code, for by the late 1820s cries of acute labour shortage were echoing through the newly settled districts. It produced two laws in 1828 which, as Newton-King has argued, demonstrate the uneasy relationship between emancipation and freedom.53 Ordinance 50 removed the restrictions of Khoi residence, and thus enabled their employment on the new wool farms. At the same time Ordinance 49 permitted the employment of Xhosa migrants, but on limited contracts and subject to the very pass controls that Ordinance 50 abolished for the Khoi. The common feature was clearly to increase labour supplies. Where existing controls inhibited this, as in the case of the Khoi and San, they were removed; where fear of social control still predominated, as in the case of the Xhosa, they were still maintained. In the western districts of the colony, the picture was very different. The wine industry of the western Cape was initially boosted by access to a new protected market in Britain when farmers took out mortgages on their land and slaves to extend their vineyards, but it was

52 53

Crais 1986. Newton-King 1980.

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then almost destroyed by the removal of British protective tariffs in 1826.54 The impact of these shifts in the main slave-based sector of the economy was dramatic. In the 1810s slaves were being sold from Cape Town to the expanding vineyards at inflated prices; by the late 1820s indebted farmers were burdened by a labour force they no longer needed. Since slaves could not legally be sold to the Albany settlers, they could not be used in the one area of the colony where labour was in high demand. It is thus scarcely surprising that many Cape slave-owners offered little resistance to slave emancipation in the early 1830s. Their concern, expressed through numerous petitions and vociferous public meetings, was not with the principle of emancipation but with adequate financial compensation to enable them to extricate themselves from debt. In Cape Town the decline of slavery had been evident for several decades before general emancipation, both because some slaves were sold into the rural hinterland during the wine boom and because others were manumitted to work as casual day labourers, although access to piece work of this kind was highly gendered and much less accessible to females.55 A variety of forms of labour existed in the town in the 1810s and 1820s, ranging from formal slavery to indentured Khoi and ‘Prize Negroes’ (slaves landed at the Cape from foreign slavers after the abolition of the slave trade) as well as apprenticed immigrant artisans from Britain.56 Focus on the economic context of the emancipations has thus powerfully qualified the ‘humanitarian’ arguments, but a further area of concern in recent historiography has been the role that the slaves and Khoi themselves played in the process. This of course follows (somewhat belatedly) the emphasis of international slave and subaltern scholarship on the active role played by bonded workers in resisting their condition. Apart from the self-evident Khoi resistance of the 1799 rebellion, there has been much recent focus on two slave uprisings in the western Cape which, although small in scale in comparison with Caribbean revolts of the same period, were motivated by the frustrations slaves felt at the slow pace of amelioration and

54 55 56

Rayner 1986. Bank 1991; 1994. For the gendered critique of this argument, van der Spuy 1992. Saunders 1994; Iannini 1995.

coercion and freedom in the cape colony, 1652–1856 203 emancipation.57 But overt revolt was by no means the only manifestation of resistance. Indentured Khoi labourers regularly brought complaints against their owners to the magistrates, as did slaves under the amelioration legislation of the 1820s and several historians have richly documented the contestations of meanings of freedom that resulted.58 Indeed it is this process of self-assertion and challenge, rather than the actions of anti-slavery activists or missionaries, which dealt the most lethal blow to the paternalist order of the Cape farmsteads.59

Freedom As in the rest of the British colonies, it was not intended that emancipation should lead to economic independence.60 Fairbairn, leading spokesman for abolitionism, stressed in an editorial of 1831 that after emancipation “the great wheel of labour shall not be stopped for a single hour.”61 In many colonies this was not to be. The sugar economies of the Caribbean and Mauritius were severely disrupted by the flight of freed slaves from the estates and only saved by the importation of Indian indentured workers.62 But no such disruptions to production took place at the Cape. Indeed, as Robert Ross has argued, the Cape was probably the only colony where abolitionist visions of a smooth transition from slavery to a rural proletariat actually took place.63

57 Ross 1983a, ch. 8; Warnich 1988, chapters 4 and 5; van der Spuy 1993, paper 5. The 1825 Bokkeveld uprising is a striking indication of the compartmentalisation of slave and Khoi historiography; most slave historians have completely neglected the role played by the Khoi workers who participated in it. 58 Notably, Mason 1990; 1991; 1994. See also Dooling 1992b. 59 This argument is most fully developed in Mason 2003. 60 See especially Eltis 1982; Holt 1992, especially ch. 1. 61 Worden 1994. On the limitations of social reform in Cape abolitionist thinking, see Watson 1990, although one should be wary of his direct linkage of antislavery ideology with the failings of modern South African liberalism. 62 The Caribbean literature is voluminous and well known. The best work on Mauritius is Teelock 1998, which argues that planters discouraged slaves from staying because they obtained indentured Indian immigrants with less bargaining power than freed slaves. 63 Ross 1994.

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Some hint of this was apparent in the transitional period of slave ‘apprenticeship’ which lasted between 1834 and 1838. At the Cape, the notion of ‘apprenticeship’ equalled inboekstelsel indenture, and all employers, and most magistrates, interpreted it in this way. Children born to slave mothers after 1834, who by law should have been free, were indentured until the age of 25. No preparation for freedom was forthcoming: in contrast to the other slave colonies the Cape apprenticeship system made no provision for education (however rudimentary), granted no overtime pay and imposed more severe restrictions on movement and rights of complaint than had existed in the final years of slavery.64 The legacy of the Cape’s body of nonslave coercive legislation was also apparent in the introduction of a Vagrancy Law in 1836, which attempted to extend the enforced residence and pass system of the Caledon Code and Ordinance 49 to all labourers in anticipation of general emancipation in 1838.65 Although this was vetoed by London, the mid-1830s demonstrated all too clearly that the panoply of coercive labour controls which had existed for non-slaves at the Cape could be readily mobilised again once slavery was formally ended. When 1 December 1838 dawned some freed slaves in the western Cape moved away from their owners, in the words of one observer, “as if by arrangement.”66 Others were less ready, or able, to move: parents had to struggle to unite their families often spread across several farms and many women in particular were held back by the indenture of their children.67 But opportunities outside the settler farms were limited. No provision for capital or land was made for the freed slaves.68 This was of course deliberate. A proposal by John Philip to the Colonial Secretary in November 1837 for land to be allocated near Cape Town, “to build a black town or village for the slave apprentices who will be thrown on their own resources 64

Worden 1994. Elbourne 1994. 66 Krauss 1966–7, 42. 67 Scully 1994, Mason 2003, epilogue. Scully (1997) also makes a powerful argument for the reorientation of gendered identities among freed slaves in the postemancipation years. 68 Compensation money was due, of course, to owners, not slaves, although since most of the farmers were indebted much of it ended up in the pockets of Cape Town merchants and mortgagees, and provided the impetus for the emergence of the town’s baning and capital infrastructures in the mid-nineteenth century, Meltzer 1994. 65

coercion and freedom in the cape colony, 1652–1856 205 at the end of next year” was rejected on the grounds that, “the most desirable result would be that they be induced to work for wages as free labourers. Whatever tends to counteract that object seems to me unadvisable.”69 A few freed slaves eked out an existence on marginal land in the arid northern districts of the colony or in the mountain ‘kloofs’ of the interior, but there was no equivalent of the thriving peasant economy that emerged, for instance, in post-emancipation Jamaica.70 Many freed slaves streamed into Cape Town, where wages immediately fell, massive overcrowding in slums emerged and the joint scourge of measles (1839) and smallpox (1840) had a devastating impact.71 Others went to mission stations, although the amount of available land there was limited and obviously this was not an option for Moslems or those who were unwilling to submit to conversion and the regulations that accompanied it (for instance unmarried partners were rejected).72 And few of those that did stay were self-sufficient; by the 1840s most mission station men were working as seasonal harvesters on the surrounding farms. The result in the western Cape was what one historian has described as a ‘bifurcated’ labour force.73 A large number of freed slaves either remained on the same farms or (more often) worked on other farms in full time employment. Although some received wages, many were swiftly reduced to debt bondage by the charges made for rent, food and alcohol (alcohol dependency had been induced from at least the early eighteenth century through the infamous ‘tot’ system whereby five daily provisions of the roughest wine was issued).74 There were a few examples of sharecropping and labour tenancy, but these were the exception in a situation where ex-slaves had few means of bargaining for such arrangements. At the same time, some ex-slaves living on the mission stations, towns or villages formed themselves into seasonal harvesting and pruning gangs which circulated the farms and evaded full proletarianisation.75

69

Cited in Worden 1989, 36. Cf. the contribution by Swithin Wilmot in this volume. 71 Judges 1977; Worden, van Heyningen and Bickford-Smith 1998, 108–9. 72 Ludlow 1992; 1995. 73 Ross 1994, 161–6. 74 Scully 1992. The ‘tot’ system was only made illegal in 1996. 75 Ross 1994, 166. For the continuation of this pattern into the late nineteenth century, see Marinkowitz 1985; Host 1992; Scully 1990. 70

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The result was far from ‘freedom’; indeed even wage labour was an exception. And although vagrancy laws had been suppressed in 1836, soon after emancipation legislation was introduced which drew on the previous traditions of Khoi and San labour control to regulate all farm workers. The Master and Servant Ordinance of 1841 stipulated the need for labour contracts but was heavily weighed in the favour of employers. ‘Misconduct’ by servants, defined as including negligent work, insolence, immorality and absence was made a criminal offence, punishable by fines or withholding of wages. Special magistrates, initially appointed to administer the apprenticeship regulation in the mid-1830s, were retained to deal with the stream of cases that flooded the local courts, the majority bought by farmers against ‘disobedient’ workers.76 This view that emancipation in the western Cape was something of a non-event has recently been challenged by Wayne Dooling.77 He argues that the ending of slavery was indeed a radical break in the rural economy of these regions since, despite the limited opportunities for economic independence, ex-slave farm labourers did possess a degree of labour mobility, wage and contract bargaining powers that were previously denied to them. As a result profit margins fell and many wheat and wine farmers, the ‘Cape gentry’ of the VOC period, became insolvent. The mortgaged land and slaves which had followed the wine slump of the 1820s were not sufficiently redeemed by the slave compensation money that entered the colony. Although a number of western Cape farmers were bailed out by kin and others in the community, by the later decades of the nineteenth century interest rates had risen and capital from British Cape Town-based sources had penetrated the rural economy. Grain farmers began to mechanise production in the 1860s and 1870s. Dooling’s work points to important shifts in the capital base of the western Cape rural economy hitherto neglected by historians. However his arguments do not undermine the fact that ex-slaves in the post-emancipation era were generally unable to escape from proletarianisation and establish themselves as a viable independent class. Geographical mobility did not lead to class mobility. Indeed the

76 77

Ross 1994, 163; Worden 1989, 37–8. Dooling 1996; 1999.

coercion and freedom in the cape colony, 1652–1856 207 depression of the 1860s considerably worsened their situation. Only with the work opportunities offered from the 1870s on the Kimberley diamond mines and in railway and harbour construction that accompanied the mineral revolution were some of the descendants of Cape slaves able to break free from an existence as impoverished farm workers.78 The situation in the eastern Cape differed somewhat, largely because some slaves and Khoi labourers had obtained or retained access to land for their own use.79 In the 1830s many Khoi and slave workers left the settler farms. Some formed armed gangs and wreaked revenge by plunder, but others established themselves in peasant communities either on lands on the margins of settler farms or in areas abandoned by Dutch farmers who had trekked out of the colony. The largest peasant community was established at the Kat River Settlement granted by the government in 1828 on land confiscated from Xhosa farmers in the aftermath of bitter conflict. But such communities were bitterly resented by settler farmers. In the 1840s they increasingly found support from a state which was more interested in supporting commercial wool farming by settlers than peasant production. What has been described as a ‘frontal attack’ on peasant cultivators took place with livestock impoundment, retroactive rate levies, refusal of access to roads and markets and finally a Squatting Bill which forbade occupation of unoccupied crown land.80 The result was a major rebellion in 1850–3 led by, but not confined to, the Kat River Settlement, in which Khoi and ex-slave rebels made common cause with the Xhosa and attacked the colonists. Although it was feared that the rebellion might spread, the western Cape remained unaffected: here there was no recent tradition of independent cultivation to defend.81 But in the eastern Cape the rebellion marked a final onslaught on independent peasant farmers, this time by British troops. The Kat River rebels were dispossessed, and the Squatting Ordinance became law. The rebellion severely

78 79 80 81

Scully 1990, 56–62. Mason 1994b. Crais 1994. Bradlow 1989.

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disillusioned John Philip and others who had campaigned for Khoi freedom in 1828 and there were few colonists who backed the rights of ex-slaves to independence.82 When in 1853 the Cape Colony acquired self-government, a combination of squatting legislation and a new Masters and Servants Act (1856) increased controls over labour and made independent production virtually impossible.

Consequences The influence of the colonial Cape’s system of coerced labour on South Africa as a whole has been the subject of much debate. Contrary to the argument of one eminent comparative slave historian, the Cape emancipations had little to do with the emergence of the African peasant economy of the late nineteenth century.83 The argument that slave raiding in the 1810s, to provide the needs of the Cape, was the real motive behind the upheavals commonly known as the Mfecane has proved to have been something of a historiographical hoax.84 Nonetheless it is clear that the Cape’s practice of raiding and inboekstelsel was transported into the interior with its colonists and that forcible incorporation both of African children and adults was institutionalised in the Transvaal trekker republic.85 A recent collection has argued that such indenture was equivalent to slavery, although this runs the risk of blurring important distinctions both of motivation and labour status.86 A still broader claim is that the Cape’s system of racial slavery and peonage was the bedrock of apartheid.87 Certainly the class structure of the colonial Cape was largely coterminous with race, par-

82 The disillusionment of the humanitarian abolitionists and the growth of racist discourse in the mid-nineteenth century was widespread in Britain and its colonies. For the Cape, see Bank 1995. 83 Foner 1983, 30–3. 84 The ‘Cobbing thesis’ which attributed the Mfecane and the rise of the Zulu state to the activities of Delagoa Bay traders and northern Cape missionaries turns out to have no evidential basis. For the debate see Hamilton 1995, especially the chapter by Eldredge. 85 See especially Boeyens 1991. 86 Eldredge and Morton 1994. 87 See for example Shell 1994, xix–xx, 395–6.

coercion and freedom in the cape colony, 1652–1856 209 ticularly in the wine and wheat hinterland of Cape Town where slavery was most prevalent.88 The emancipations of 1828 and 1834 which led to the labelling of Khoi, San and ex-slaves as a new ‘race’ of ‘coloureds’ did not succeed in changing this situation. Schemes to introduce white indentured workers in the 1810s and 1820s were largely unsuccessful, while, as we have seen, few ex-slave or Khoi and San inhabitants succeeded in obtaining control over land. But this was not a segregated society, nor was it apartheid. Indeed, as Keegan has argued, it was precisely the strength, not the weakness, of African societies in the rest of the sub-continent that led to segregationalist policies and the structures of migrant labour and land division upon which twentieth century apartheid was built.89 But if the Cape’s labour system did not lead directly to the racial capitalism of modern South Africa as a whole, it fundamentally shaped the political economy of the modern Cape provinces, and particularly that of the Western Cape. The proletarianisation of the Cape labour force took place a century before that of the rest of the country, and the existing social and economic disparities of Cape Town’s rural hinterland are a direct product of the failure of freed slaves and bonded workers to achieve access to land or capital. For most of this century that legacy has been buried beneath the broader battles against segregation and apartheid. But now, in the postapartheid political order, it is being resurrected by the descendants of slaves, Khoi and San who claim that their needs are again being ignored.90

88 Worden 1985, chapter 10 and Elphick and Giliomee 1989, which contradict the earlier liberal historians who argued that racial divides originated on the Cape pastoral frontier; see Keegan 1996, chapter 1 for discussion of this historiography. 89 Keegan 1996, 297, n. 30. 90 The issue of slavery and its relation to public memory and identity is complex. See Adhikari 1992 for the nineteenth century. For the contemporary situation, see Ward 1996; Ward and Worden 1997; Worden 2001. Khoi and San descendants in South Africa were acknowledged by the United Nations in 1998 as having First Nation Status akin to that of Native Americans and Australian Aborigines and are making claims for land and compensation on the basis of their dispossession in the VOC era. See for example, Steenkamp 2001.

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Adhikari, M. 1992. ‘The sons of Ham: slavery and the making of coloured identity’, South African Historical Journal 27, 95–112. Armstrong, James and Nigel Worden 1989. ‘The slaves, 1652–1834’, Elphick and Giliomee (eds.), 109–83. Bank, Andrew 1991. The Decline of Urban Slavery at the Cape, 1806 to 1834, Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town, Communications No. 22. —— 1994. ‘The erosion of urban slavery at the Cape’, Worden and Crais (eds.), 79–98. —— 1995. Liberals and their Enemies: Racial Ideology at the Cape of Good Hope, 1820 to 1850, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Cambridge. den Besten, Hans 1989. ‘From Khoekhoe foreignertalk via Hottentot Dutch to Afrikaans: the creation of a novel grammar’, M. Pütz and R. Dirven (eds.), Wheel within Wheels, Frankfurt, 207–54. Boeyens, Jan 1991. ‘“Zwart ivoor”: inboekelinge in Zoutpansberg, 1848–1869’, South African Historical Journal 24, 31–66; republished as ‘“Black ivory”: the indenture system and slavery in Zoutpansberg, 1848–1869’, Eldridge and Morton (eds.), 187–215. Boonzaier, Emile and Candy Malherbe et al. 1996. The Cape Herders: a history of the Khoikhoi of South Africa, Cape Town. Botha, H. C. 1984. John Fairbairn in South Africa, Cape Town. Bradford, Helen 1990. ‘Highways, byways and cul-de-sacs: the transition to agrarian capitalism in revisionist South African history’, Radical History Review 46/7, 59–89. Bradlow, Edna 1989. ‘‘The Great Fear’ at the Cape of Good Hope, 1851–2’, International Journal of African Historical Studies 22, 401–22. Bradlow, Frank and Margaret Cairns 1978. The Early Cape Muslims, Cape Town. da Costa, Yusuf and Achmat Davids 1994. Pages from Cape Muslim History Pietermaritzburg. Crais, Clifton 1986. ‘Gentry and labour in three eastern Cape districts’, South African Historical Journal 18, 143–72. —— 1992. The Making of the Colonial Order, Johannesburg; also published as White Supremacy and Black Resistance in Pre-Industrial South Africa, Cambridge 1992. —— 1994. ‘Slavery and emancipation in the eastern Cape’, Worden and Crais (eds.), 271–87. Cuthbertson, Greg 1992. ‘Cape slave historiography and the question of intellectual dependence’, South African Historical Journal 27, 26–49. Domar, E. D. 1970. ‘The causes of slavery or serfdom: a hypothesis’, Journal of Economic History 30, 18–32. Dooling, Wayne 1992a. Law and Community in a Slave Society: Stellenbosch District, South Africa, c. 1760 –1820, Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town, Communications No. 23. —— 1992b. ‘Slavery and amelioration in the Graaff-Reinet district, 1823–1830’, South African Historical Journal 27, 75–94. —— 1994. ‘The good opinion of others’: law, slavery and community in the Cape Colony, c. 1760–1830’, Worden and Crais (eds.), 25–43. —— 1996. Agrarian Transformations in the Western Districts of the Cape Colony, 1838–c. 1900, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Cambridge. —— 1999. ‘The decline of the Cape gentry, 1838–c. 1900’, Journal of African History 40, 215–42. Elbourne, Elizabeth 1992. “To Colonize the Mind”: Evangelical Missionaries in Britain and the Eastern Cape, 1790–1837, unpublished DPhil, Oxford.

coercion and freedom in the cape colony, 1652–1856 211 —— 1994. ‘Freedom at issue: vagrancy legislation and the meaning of freedom in Britain and the Cape Colony, 1799–1842’, Slavery and Abolition 15, 121–4. Eldredge, Elizabeth and Fred Morton (eds.) 1994. Slavery in South Africa: Captive Labour on the Dutch Frontier, Boulder and Pietermaritzburg. Elphick, Richard and Hermann Giliomee 1989. ‘European dominance at the Cape, 1652–c. 1840’, Elphick and Giliomee (eds.), 521–566. —— and Hermann Giliomee (eds.) 1989. The Shaping of South African Society, 1652–1840, 2nd edn., Cape Town. —— and Candy Malherbe 1989, ‘The Khoisan to 1828’, Elphick and Giliomee (eds.), 3–65. —— and Robert Shell 1989, ‘Intergroup relations: Khoikhoi, settlers, slaves and free blacks, 1652–1795’, Elphick and Giliomee (eds.), 214–24. Eltis, David 1982. ‘Abolitionist perceptions of society after slavery’, Walvin (ed.), 195–213. Foner, Eric 1983. Nothing but Freedom, Baton Rouge and London. Giliomee, Hermann 1981. ‘Processes in the development of the Southern African frontier’, Howard Lamar and Leonard Thompson (eds.), The Frontier in History: North America and Southern Africa Compared, New Haven and London, 76–119. Guelke, Leonard 1989. ‘Freehold farmers and frontier settlers, 1657–1780’, Elphick and Giliomee (eds.), 66–108. Hamilton, Carolyn (ed.) 1995. The Mfecane Aftermath, Johannesburg and Pietermaritzburg. Holt, Thomas 1992. The Problem of Freedom: Race, Labor and Politics in Jamaica and Britain, 1832–1938, Baltimore. Host, Elizabeth 1992. Capitalisation and Proletarianisation on a Western Cape Farm: Klaver Valley, 1812–1898, unpublished MA thesis, University of Cape Town. Iannini, Craig 1995. Contracted Chattel: Indentured and Apprenticed Labour in Cape Town, c. 1808–1840, unpublished MA thesis, University of Cape Town. Judges, S. 1977. Poverty, Living Conditions and Social Relations: Aspects of Life in Cape Town in the 1830s, unpublished MA thesis, University of Cape Town. Keegan, Timothy 1996. Colonial South Africa and the Origins of the Racial Order, Cape Town, Virginia and Leicester. de Kock, Victor 1950. Those in Bondage: An Account of the Life of the Slave at the Cape in the Days of the Dutch East India Company, Port Washington, New York and London. Krauss, Ferdinand 1966–7. ‘A visit to the Cape, 1836–9’, Quarterly Bulletin of the South African Library 21, 2–12; 39–50. Kulikoff, Allan 1986. Tobacco and Slaves, Chapel Hill and London. Ludlow, Helen 1992. Missions and Emancipation in the South-Western Cape, unpublished MA thesis, University of Cape Town. —— 1995. ‘Groenekloof after the emancipation of the slaves’, Henry Bredekamp and Robert Ross (eds.), Missions and Christianity on South African History, Johannesburg, 113–33. Malherbe, Candy 1991. ‘Indentured and unfree labour in South Africa: towards an understanding’, South African Historical Journal 24, 3–30. Marinkowitz, John 1985. Rural Production and Labour in the Western Cape, 1838–1888 with Special Reference to the Wheat Growing Districts, unpublished PhD thesis, London. Mason, John 1990. ‘Hendrik Albertus and his ex-slave Mey’, Journal of African History 31, 423–45. —— 1991. ‘The slaves and their protectors: reforming resistance in a slave society: the Cape colony, 1826–1834’, Journal of Southern African Studies 17, 103–28. —— 1994a. ‘Paternalism under siege: slavery in theory and practice during the era of reform, c. 1825 through emancipation’, Worden and Crais (eds.), 45–77. —— 1994b. ‘Fortunate slaves and artful masters’, Eldredge and Morton (eds.), 67–91. —— 2003. Social Death and Resurrection: Slavery and Emancipation in South Africa, Charlottesville and London.

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McKenzie, Kirsten 1993a. An English Slaveowner at the Cape: Samuel Eusebius Hudson, Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town, Communications No. 24. —— 1993b. The South African Commercial Advertiser and the Making of Middle-Class Identity in Early Nineteenth-Century Cape Town, unpublished MA thesis, University of Cape Town. Meltzer, Lalou 1994. ‘Emancipation, commerce and the role of John Fairbairn’s Advertiser’, Worden and Crais (eds.), 169–99. Mintz, S. 1978. ‘Was the plantation slave a proletarian?’, Review 2, 81–98. Morton, Fred 1994. ‘Slavery in South Africa’, Eldredge and Morton (eds.), 251–71. Newton-King, Susan 1980. ‘The labour market of the Cape Colony, 1807–28’, Shula Marks and Anthony Atmore (eds.), Economy and Society in Pre-Industrial South Africa, London, 171–208. —— 1994. ‘The enemy within’, Worden and Crais (eds.), 225–70. —— 1999. Masters and Servants on the Cape Eastern Frontier, 1760–1803, Cambridge. —— and Candy Malherbe 1981. The Khoikhoi Rebellion in the Eastern Cape (1799–1803), Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town, Communications No. 5. Peires, Jeff 1989. ‘The British and the Cape, 1814–1834’, Elphick and Giliomee (eds.), 499–510. Penn, Nigel 1995. The Northern Cape Frontier Zone, 1700–c. 1815, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Cape Town. Rayner, Mary 1986. Wine and Slaves: The Failure of an Export Economy and the Ending of Slavery in the Cape Colony, 1806–1834, unpublished PhD thesis, Duke University. Reynolds, Henry 1989. Dispossession: Black Australians and White Invaders, Sydney. Ross, Andrew 1987. John Philip, Edinburgh. Ross, Robert 1983a. Cape of Torments: Slavery and Resistance in South Africa, London. —— 1983b. ‘The rise of the Cape gentry’, Journal of Southern African Studies 9, 193–217. —— 1986. ‘The origins of capitalist agriculture in the Cape Colony’, William Beinart, Peter Delius and Stanley Trapido (eds.), Putting a Plough to the Ground: Accumulation and Dispossession in Rural South Africa, Johannesburg, 56–100. —— 1993. ‘The changing legal position of the Khoisan in the Cape Colony, 1652–1795’, idem, Beyond the Pale: Essays in the History of Colonial South Africa, Hanover, London and Johannesburg, 166–80. —— 1994. ‘“Rather mental than physical”: emancipations and the Cape economy’, Worden and Crais (eds.), 145–167. —— 1995. ‘Paternalism, patriarchy and Afrikaans’, South African Historical Journal 32, 34–47. Saunders, Christopher 1994. ‘Free, yet slaves: prize negroes at the Cape revisited’, Worden and Crais (eds.), 99–115. Scully, Pamela 1990. The Bouquet of Freedom: Social and Economic Relations in the Stellenbosch District, South Africa, c. 1870–1900, Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town, Communications No. 17. —— 1992. ‘Liquor and labour in the Western Cape’, Jonathan Crush and Charles Amber (eds.), Liquor and Labour in Southern Africa, Athens, OH, 57–60. —— 1994. ‘Private and public worlds of emancipation in the rural Western Cape, 1830–42’, Worden and Crais (eds.), 201–23. —— 1997. Liberating the Family?: Gender and British Slave Emancipation in the Rural Western Cape, 1823–1853, Portsmouth, NH, Oxford and Cape Town. Shell, Robert 1984. ‘Rites and rebellion: Islamic conversion at the Cape, 1808–1915’, Studies in the History of Cape Town 5, 1–46. —— 1994. Children of Bondage: a Social History of the Slave Society at the Cape of Good Hope, 1652–1838, Hanover and Johannesburg. Skotnes, Pippa 1996. Miscast: Negotiating the Presence of the Bushmen, Cape Town. Southey, Nicholas 1992. ‘From periphery to core: the treatment of Cape slavery in South African historiography’, Historia 37, 13–25.

coercion and freedom in the cape colony, 1652–1856 213 van der Spuy, Patricia 1992. ‘Slave women and the family in nineteenth century Cape Town’, South African Historical Journal 27, 50–74. —— 1993. A Collection of Discrete Essays with the Common Theme of Gender and Slavery at the Cape of Good Hope, unpublished MA thesis, University of Cape Town. Steenkamp, W. 2001. ‘This land is our land: Khoi-San want royalties on valuable Waterfront property’, Saturday Argus, 23–4 June. Teelock, Vijaya 1998. Bitter Sugar: Sugar and Slavery in Nineteenth Century Mauritius, Moka. Turley, David 1991. The Culture of English Antislavery, 1780–1860, London. Viljoen, Russell 1993. Khoisan labour relations in the Overburg districts during the latter half of the eighteenth century, c. 1755–1795, unpublished MA thesis, University of the Western Cape. Walvin, James (ed.) 1982. Slavery and British Society, 1776–1846, London and Basinstoke. Ward, Kerry 1996. ‘“Captive audiences”: remembering and forgetting the history of slavery in Cape Town’, paper presented at the African Studies Association of Australasia and the Pacific Conference, Adelaide, 27–29 September. —— 2001. “The Bounds of Bondage”: Forced Migration from Batavia to the Cape of Good Hope during the Dutch East India Company era, c. 1652–1795, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Michigan. Ward, Kerry and Nigel Worden 1997. ‘Commemorating, suppressing and invoking Cape slavery’, Sarah Nuttall and Carli Coetzee (eds.), Negotiating the Past: The Making of Memory in South Africa, Cape Town, 201–17. Warnich, P. G. 1988. Die toepassing en invloed van slawewetgewing in die landdrosdistrik Tulbagh/Worcester, 1816–1830, unpublished MA thesis, Stellenbosch. Watson, Rick 1990. The Slave Question: Liberty and Property in South Africa, Hanover and Johannesburg. Worden, Nigel 1985. Slavery in Dutch South Africa, Cambridge. —— 1989. ‘Adjusting to emancipation: freed slaves and farmers in the mid nineteenth century south-western Cape’, Wilmot James and Mary Simons (eds.), The Angry Divide: Social and Economic History of the Western Cape, Cape Town and Johannesburg, 31–9. —— 1992. ‘Diverging histories: slavery and its aftermath in the Cape Colony and Mauritius’, South African Historical Journal 27, 3–25. —— 1994. ‘Between slavery and freedom: the apprenticeship period, 1834 to 1838’, Worden and Crais (eds.), 117–44. —— 2001. ‘The forgotten region: commemorations of slavery in Mauritius and South Africa’, Gert Oostindië (ed.), Facing up to the past: Perspectives on the commemoration of slavery from Africa, the Americas and Europe, Kingston, 48–54. —— 2005. ‘Indian Ocean slavery in the Cape Colony and its aftermath’, Gwyn Campbell (ed.), Abolition and its Aftermath in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia, London and Portland. —— and Clifton Crais (eds.) 1994. Breaking the Chains: Slavery and its Legacy in the Nineteenth-Century Cape Colony, Johannesburg. —— and Elizabeth van Heyningen and Vivian Bickford-Smith 1998. Cape Town: The Making of a City, Cape Town.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“WE NOT SLAVE AGAIN”: ENSLAVED JAMAICANS IN EARLY FREEDOM, 1838–1865 Swithin Wilmot

The ending of African slavery in the Caribbean was a process that stretched over almost a century. It began in 1791 with the slave rebellion in Saint Domingue, and after a decade of struggle the former enslaved created in 1804 the new state of Haiti, the first independent Black Republic in the Americas. The emancipation process continued in the British islands in 1834, in the Danish and French West Indies in 1848, in the Dutch Caribbean colonies in 1863, and was completed in Cuba in 1886. The movement to freedom in the British colonies reflected a complex interplay between local and metropolitan factors. First, by the 1830s the message of a strong antislavery lobby, fuelled by religious impulses as well as Enlightenment ideas that argued that free labour was more efficient, received a more sympathetic hearing in the context of important shifts in the British economy whereby the slave trade and the Caribbean sugar trade declined in importance to an industrialising economy that was more interested in global markets beyond the traditional empire, and sugar manufacturers wanted the cheapest raw sugar, regardless of its origins. With these changes, the West India Interest’s political influence declined and the rebellious actions of the enslaved peoples, particularly in Jamaica in 1831, further hastened the abolition agenda. In 1833 the British Parliament adopted the Act of Emancipation that legislated the formal ending of slavery in the British Empire on 1 August 1834.1 As with most of the British Caribbean, the abolition of slavery in Jamaica was accompanied by a transition period called the Apprenticeship which was to last for six years for praedials and four years for non-praedials. While the officials promoted the system as necessary

1

Brereton and Yelvington 1999, 3–6.

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for the smooth implementation of new labour relations, the planters viewed the period as further compensation in kind and they welcomed its ingredients of forced labour for three quarters of the week. Further, since they controlled the institutions of the State, the planters used the workhouses and lockups to impose severe punishment for infringements of the work regime. Generally, the planters’ attitudes and activities made a mockery of any notion that the Apprenticeship was preparing the ex-slaves for “full freedom” and the system was terminated on July 31, 1838.2 Although formal emancipation in Jamaica brought legal equality within prescribed gender and property restrictions, there were strong continuities between the period of slavery and the decades after emancipation. Importantly, the planters continued to monopolise the islands’ major economic resources and dominated the local political arrangements, as well as the deeply ingrained aristocracy of white skin prevailed. Nonetheless, the formal end of slavery was an event of major importance to the enslaved peoples since it removed the most horrendous abuses of slavery and it opened up the possibility that some freed people would be able to construct new lives beyond the boundaries of exploitative plantation labour.3 Emancipation then began the process whereby 311,070 enslaved persons in Jamaica experienced fundamental change in their lives since they were no longer chattels and were entitled to enjoy the same rights as other free people within the island. For the first time in Jamaica’s history, the people of African descent could attempt to direct their own life and to make choices that suited them. How did the freedpeople view this change and how did they respond to this new opening in their lives? This chapter will demonstrate, by way of the freedpeople’s testimonies and discussion of their actions, how the freed slaves in Jamaica utilised various strategies to extract gains from a society in transition from slavery to freedom up to 1865. In that year, confronted by injustice in the courts, exploitative working conditions and the abridgement of their political rights, the freedpeople and their descendants rebelled at Morant Bay. They were brutally suppressed and crown colony government with its authoritarian political arrangements was introduced.4 The new constitution slammed the door shut 2 3 4

Wilmot 1984. Brereton and Yelvington 1999, 6. For a detailed discussion of the Morant Bay rebellion see Heuman 1994.

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on the small openings in representative politics to which the freedpeople had responded after 1838, thereby buttressing the white planters’ traditional social and economic influence against further inroads from the changes that emancipation had wrought.5

New Visions/New Communities Twenty-seven years before the Morant Bay rebellion, there had been an outpouring of joy and celebration in the island when the apprenticeship system ended and “full free” began on August 1, 1838. Thousands assembled in churches and in public squares to celebrate at meetings where the symbols of slavery, chains, handcuffs, iron collars and whips, were buried in ritual ceremonies marking the end of the legalised horrors of slavery. The following extract describes one such gathering at the Salters Hill Baptist Church in the parish of St. James which was in the heartland of the 1831 Jamaica slave rebellion that had hurried the abolition of slavery in 1834. A hymn being sung, preparations were made for the burial of slavery. The whip, the chain, and the shackle, were separately produced, and the question asked, what is to be done with the old slave whip? ‘Cut it up’ was the reply. It was done. What with the chain? ‘Break it’. This was also done. What with the shackle? ‘To be destroyed’. After each was exhibited, three enthusiastic cheers were given, that they were no longer to be liable to the evils of slavery but released from its terrors.6

At a related meeting in Falmouth on 1 August 1838, William Kerr, a black freedman and deacon of the Baptist church spoke movingly and passionately about his new free status: We bless God, we bless the Queen, we bless the Governor, we bless the people of England for the joy we have, Let us remember that we been on Sugar Estate from sunrise a-morning till eight o’clock at night: the rain falling, the sun shining, we was in it all. Many of we colour behind we and many before; we get whip, our wives get beat like a dog, before we face, and if we speak we get the same; they put we in shackle; but thank our heavenly Father we not slave again.7 5

Augier 1966. Wilmot 1984, 9. 7 Falmouth Post, 15 August 1838. I am indebted to William Kerr for the title of this chapter. 6

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Essentially, the Jamaican freedpeople’s vision of freedom was much more than the mere absence of slavery for as elsewhere in the Americas they perceived legal emancipation as an opportunity to gain control over their own lives and to share in the building of their communities beyond the plantation. But they faced severe limitations because whereas the emancipation process provided the Jamaican slave owners with £6,149,939 in compensation for the loss of their property in slaves, on August 1, 1838, there was no reallocation of the island’s social and capital resources, no redistributing of land or housing, no compensation money for the enslaved. Indeed, the shrewd observation of Robert Richardson, a Confederate General, who had noted in 1865 that in the American South, “the emancipated slaves own nothing, because nothing but freedom has been given to them,” was also applicable to Jamaica twenty seven-years before.8 Denied property, the Jamaican freedpeople had each other and their own material, spiritual and intellectual resources that were based on their African traditions and on the experiences accumulated over time during their enslavement. Significantly, as they grasped this new opening in their lives, the ex-slaves generally placed goals of family and community above the assertion of simple individual autonomy.9 This is perhaps the most enduring lesson of the emancipation experience for in the first decade of freedom the Jamaican freedpeople first exhibited the dynamic possibilities of sustained, self-help projects founded on community action. Determined to construct a society beyond the boundaries of the plantations, in partnership with the evangelical missionaries, particularly the Baptists, the freedpeople contributed their labour and invested their material resources in the establishment of “Christian villages” that revolved around the chapel and the school. Generally, the missionaries viewed the free villages as an immediate refuge from the planters’ coercive labour recruitment policies as well as a new beginning for the freedpeople who were now more under their direct influence. Reflecting the accepted gender order, the missionaries anticipated that the male villagers would look to the estates for regular employment, albeit on agreed terms, and the freed women would devote their energies to

8 9

Quoted in Foner 1983, 55. Bolland 1992, 141.

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the family and the growth of provisions, and the children would attend the school. As Catherine Hall has noted, the villages were to be utopias where the missionaries could create “a new moral and material world in which Christianity and freedom reigned” as a new society was constructed on the ruins of slavery.10 In the euphoria of the immediate post-slavery period, the freedpeople embraced the missionaries’ vision. However, although this transformation in the Jamaican countryside was achieved in partnership with the various groups of nonconformist missionaries and their parent societies and friends overseas, these new communities and institutions were primarily constructed with monies raised locally. For example, between 1835 and 1840, in the Baptist Western Union, which covered areas from St. Mary to Westmoreland, the missionaries completed 18 chapels, purchased or built 23 mission houses and built 19 school rooms, all at a cost of £84,571, of which the parent society had contributed only £12,000. The missionaries had to find the remaining £72,082 and by 1842, £60,082 had been raised from their local membership that had doubled to 27,000 persons between 1835 and 1842. The experience of William Knibb, the most renowned of the Baptist missionaries, is particularly instructive for between 1835 and 1842 he received £10,623 from his congregations in Trelawny, compared with only £2,916 from the Baptist Missionary Society.11 These alternative communities and institutions revolved around the freedpeople’s appetite for the acquisition of land which was one of the most important badges of freedom. The land issue was at the heart of their struggle for autonomy of the estates because independent residences meant stronger bargaining power at the work place. Once they were no longer dependent on the planter for housing or provision grounds, the freedpeople could choose wherever they wanted to work, and on what terms. Also land was the basis of social power and influence since the islands politics was governed by a property franchise and the freedmen enthusiastically embraced this privilege. In the pursuit of land, the freedpeople relied on a family network, or linkages between church ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ who pooled their financial resources and invested in “their own piece of ground.” For instance, by 1842 in the parish of Trelawny, freedpeople had spent

10 11

Hall 1992, 264. Hinton 1849, 421 and 426.

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upwards of £20,000 in purchasing land and in erecting homes. In the neighbouring parish of St. Ann, the freedpeople connected with the Baptist church had by 1841 spent £10,000 on purchasing land, some of which formed new free villages in the Dry Harbour Mountains at Buxton, Clarksonville, Stepney, Sturge Town and Wilberforce, all names which testify to their gratitude to abolitionists.12 Generally, whether with the missionary as intermediary or on their own initiative, freedpeople rapidly bought up small freeholds. Whereas there were 883 freeholds of less than 10 acres registered in 1840, by 1845 there were 20,724. By then, around 19,000 freedpeople families, representing about a third of those that were freed in 1834, had relocated from traditional residences on the plantations to the new villages.13 Clearly, rural Jamaica beyond the plantation began to take shape as the freedpeople’s actions based on self-help and community effort reconfigured the Jamaican countryside. Consciously or not, they were building a different Jamaica by utilizing their skills as agriculturists and artisans, they expanded existing internal trading networks and provided the foundation for new interior market towns that flourished around the new settlements.14 One must be careful not to romanticise this process because the freedpeople confronted difficult, and sometimes insurmountable, obstacles. For instance, the planters wanted labourers for the estates and tried to restrict the movement to the independent freeholds, as well as to block alternative occupations to estate labour. By 1840, the Assembly introduced various laws aptly described as ‘class legislation’, that anticipated the black codes in the American south in the 1860s. When the Colonial Office opposed the most extreme of them, the planters increased direct and indirect taxes, introduced restrictive licenses to sell agricultural crops and imposed heavy market fees to obstruct the ex-slaves’ pursuit of independence. Also, nature was unkind as prolonged droughts, followed by floods destroyed provisions and disease ravaged small settlements.15 Nonetheless, the freedpeople were determined to establish a new space for themselves and their families and the expressive names that the first generation of

12 13 14 15

Underhill 1862, 328 and 378. Hall 1970, 160–163; Mintz 1989, 160. Hall 1970, 207–214. Green 1976, 311–313; Foner 1983, 17; 24; 25 and 51.

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freedpeople gave to their new residences underscored how significant it was for them to have their ‘own piece of ground’. Here are a few examples which express their sense of fulfilment: ‘At Last’, ‘Comfort Victoria’, ‘Done at Last’, ‘Fathers Gift’, ‘Happy Freedom’, ‘Happy Land’, ‘Happy Valley’, ‘Littleman Feeling’, ‘Never Expect’ and ‘Try see’.16 A freedman in upper Clarendon, one of the areas where new small farming communities flourished, in an address at a dinner to commemorate the anniversary of freedom at Mount Regale on August 2, 1842, summarised the profound meaning of emancipation for him and his neighbours: My dear brodders and sisters, me head quite full of joy to see you all so free and happy here today. At dis hour in slave time, we all go to de field to dig caneholes or pick coffee and if we sick, Buckra flog we for true, and no hear when we cry for mercy. But now no Overseer can come and drive we off to the field. Now we can work when we like, and stay at home when we sick. We can buy our own land, build we own house, and go to we own church.17

His mention of church is vital, for religion, whether African or European inspired, was at the core of the freedpeople’s communities. As we mentioned above, the ex-slaves initially responded warmly to the Christian missionaries’ initiatives. However, when economic hardships increased the support for the European missionaries declined and local Ministers also broke away and formed their own independent congregations. Further, other forms of religious expression, deeply rooted in the African cultures of the slaves, resurfaced after 1838 and black and white Christian ministers were confronted by elements of African religious traditions that blended with orthodox Christianity. For example, Myal, which was a synthesis of Christian and African religions, and which had persisted despite the controls of the slave system, blossomed after emancipation. While Christianity emphasised knowledge for conversion, Myal placed its emphasis on the experience of the Spirit and spirit possession and it flourished further after the great revival of 1861 and 1862, providing the foundations for other religious expressions such as Zion and Pukumina which along

16 Jamaica Archives ( J.A.) 2/3/3, St James Vestry Minutes, 1852–1859, Tax Relief Lists. 17 Quoted in London Missionary Society correspondence, Edward Holland, 29 January 1843.

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with orthodox Christianity helped to shape the worldview of the freedpeople. In essence, whether European or African, religion cemented a strong sense of brotherhood and sisterhood among the freedpeople and it informed their ideology and day to day actions.18

Emancipation and Labour Relations The majority of the freedpeople lacked the means to buy land and therefore still had to look to the plantations for their livelihood. However, acutely conscious of their new status and their labour power, the freed workers expected qualitative changes in their day to day work lives. In common with their counterparts in the Caribbean, the new class of Jamaican workers expected a new order of labour relations which was characterised by freedom of movement, just and equitable wages and flexible labour arrangements which included undisturbed access to estate cottages and provision grounds that they had used during their enslavement. Importantly, the freedwomen, who at emancipation made up the majority of field labourers in Jamaica, also expected to devote more of their time to their families and to involve themselves in provision growing and marketing, choosing to sell their labour to the plantations only when it suited their families’ interests.19 However, as elsewhere in the Americas, the planters in Jamaica adhered to traditional notions of command and control over labour which conflicted with the freedpeoples’ expectations and the first two years of full freedom was characterised by sustained conflicts over wages and rents for the cottages and provision grounds. Generally, the planters offered wages of between 7d. and 9d. per day, which was half of what the apprentices had earned during the Apprenticeship during their free time. In addition, the planters demanded high rents for the use of the provision ground and cottages, sometimes insisting on per capita rent if the occupants worked elsewhere. When the workers rejected these terms, some planters threatened to evict them, and others unroofed cottages and turned estate cattle through the workers’ provision grounds. Clearly, in the immediate post-slavery

18 19

For a fine study of religion in this period see Stewart 1992. Marshall 1993; Brereton 1999.

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period labour relations were tense and potentially explosive and only eased when the Governor, Stipendiary Magistrates and the Missionaries brokered agreements which provided workers with 1s. per day along with rent-free access to the houses and grounds, and if rent was to be charged, then the wages would be 50 percent higher.20 By early 1839, work on the estates generally resumed, but the workers took militant strike action in 1841 and in 1842 when planters, confronted by a decline in sugar prices, unilaterally reduced wages by 50 percent. The workers resented both the level and the arbitrary manner of the wage cut and they were determined to be treated with respect, as distinct from the ‘bullyism’ that characterised labour relations under the slave regime. For example, at a meeting held at the Salters Hill Baptist Church in St. James, attended by more than 2,000 workers, William Allen, a blacksmith, who had been enslaved on Virgin Valley estate, but who had purchased land in the new village at Latium, addressed the workers and insisted that, although declining sugar prices may well require wage reductions, it was unjust for the workers to bear the brunt of the reduction when the managers’ remunerations were exempted. Allen told the workers: De Busha dem all hab five to six harse; dem lib well, nyam belly full; lib na good house; we lib na hut . . . We pay half a dollar rent (two shillings); den dem want to gib we shilling a day. Tell me know, how much lef fa you when week out? No half a dollar lef fe you? Den wha fe buy fish? Den wha fe gib parson? . . . De Busha get ten shilling a day; dem want to rob we . . . Unoo will take one shilling a day?(Cries of no, no, no, no, from the audience) . . . Well den, tick out fe good pay and see if dem no blige and bound fee gee wha we ax a day.21

Allen’s bold words were a fine example of the strong leadership among the freedpeople whose actions demonstrated to the planters that their intimidatory powers had passed with slavery and that the new era of labour relations required negotiations. The planters reluctantly learnt the lesson and work resumed on the estates when wages were restored. Clearly the labour relations that John Rodrigue has recently written about in the sugar parishes of Louisiana in the postbellum period were equally true for Jamaica. In both places, several freedpeople still worked on the estates but “a seismic shift had . . .

20 21

Wilmot 1996, 48–51. Royal Gazette and Jamaica Standard, 25 September 1841.

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occurred in the way planters and workers related to one another . . . [for] the planters no longer owned their workers . . . [who], familiar with the process of sugar production, and aware of how easily they could disrupt plantation operations . . . converted their skills and knowledge into powerful leverage in disputes with their employers.”22 The Jamaican workers’ militancy encouraged the planters to invest in indentured immigration as the surest means to depress wages and to restore some level of command over labour. Consequently, between 1834 and 1865, up to 24,929 immigrants, Africans (11,380), Chinese (464) Europeans (3,890) and Indians (9,195), were imported. Initially, the planters looked to Europeans to occupy the interior areas of the country so as to deny the freedpeople access to land there. However, plans to build villages in the hilly interior fell on rocky times and European immigration proved a miserable and expensive failure.23 The freedmen appreciated this and Francis Munroe, a carpenter, and a former slave ‘headman’ on Paisley estate, boasted at the Salters Hill workers’ meeting mentioned above that “All the great, lazy, big bellied fools send for Emigrants to do we harm, and now dat we find Emigrants can’t harm we, it is we business to tick out for good wages whatever come.”24 Nevertheless, by the 1850s the arrival of Africans and Indian labourers, bound by contract to the estates, broke the bargaining power of the local labourers and the planters regained the command over labour that had been lost at emancipation. Moses Bravo, a planter and penkeeper, and a sub-agent of immigration, who had under his care 950 Indian immigrants, underscored the value of imported labour to the planter class when in 1863 he described the situation on Bushy Park estate. He informed the Assembly that whereas formerly “this estate never paid because the labourers charged whatever they liked, but now that coolie and African labourers are located there, the proprietor holds the native labourers in his hand, for he can put his mill about without reference to them.”25 In addition, by the 1850s the freedpeople’s standard of living had also declined because drought and soil exhaustion undercut the profitability

22 23 24 25

Rodrigue 2001, 2 and 5. Hall 1970, 21; 22; 54; 55 and 271–274. Royal Gazette and Jamaica Standard, 25 September 1841. Judah and Sinclair 1856–1866, 8: 230–231.

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of provisions-growing as an alternative to regular estate work. Further, the wide scale abandonment of estates after Britain’s adoption of free trade in 1846 narrowed the avenues for estate employment and contributed to further wage reduction. Landless, and dependent on low and irregular wages, the workers’ frustrations soon found outlets in various violent clashes and climaxed at Morant Bay in October 1865.26

Emancipation and Political Rights It is clear that the blacks in Jamaica did not see a future for themselves under public institutions that were exclusively controlled by whites and, in the words of the freedpeople of St. David, the blacks were convinced that emancipation had “invested” them “with the rights of British Freemen.”27 Accordingly, they initiated a long struggle for civil rights and political inclusion after August 1, 1838, despite a restrictive gender and property franchise which barred most freedpeople from formal political activity. The few freedmen who qualified for the franchise participated enthusiastically in the island’s politics since the privilege to vote was an important badge of freedom and the surest way to promote their own interests. From as early as 1841, just three years after emancipation, freedmen influenced the outcome of an Assembly bye election in St. Mary when two candidates, one, a free coloured butcher and harbour master, and the other, a Jewish merchant, with a distinguished record of supporting ‘popular causes’, defeated two white professionals linked to the sugar interests in that parish.28 By 1849, freedmen also ensured that Edward Vickars, a landlord in Kingston and a shopkeeper in St. Andrew, and Charles Price, a master carpenter, had become the only two black men to be elected to the Jamaican Assembly before its abolition in 1865. Both were freeborn and prominent members of the Kingston black community and their electoral success in rural constituencies indicated the significant social changes in the Jamaican countryside where

26

Hall 1970, 165–173 and 248–250; Heuman 1994, 41–42. Colonial Office (C.O.) 137/343, Darling to Lytton, No. 34, 24 February 1859, enclosed Petition from the People of St. David. 28 C.O. 137/261, Metcalfe to Stanley, No. 72, 9 February 1842; Morning Journal, 13 November 1841. 27

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freedmen acquired property that qualified them to vote. Vickars’ victory in St. Catherine in 1847 resulted from the backing he received from the black freedmen settlers in post slavery villages who accounted for at least 70 per cent of his support. These freedmen, who worked occasionally on coffee and pen properties, while cultivating coffee, pimento, ground provisions and fruits for sale in the Spanish Town market, ensured that for the first time all ‘complexional distinctions’ were represented in the Jamaican Assembly.29 Two years later, in 1849, Charles Price built his electoral base on the solid endorsement of the black ‘mountain settlers’ from St. John, who made up at least 79 per cent of his supporters.30 In the same election in which Price was victorious, freedmen also supported free coloureds who defeated planter candidates in traditional planter strongholds in St. James and Westmoreland in the island’s western sugar belt. In 1852, to the further consternation of the planters, George Lyons, a Jewish retailer, handsomely defeated Henry Shirley, who had extensive property in Trelawny, because the free villagers in that parish had voted overwhelmingly for Lyons.31 Although the freedmen influenced the outcome of Assembly elections, none of them qualified for membership of the Assembly since the high property qualifications barred them from its doors. Instead, their ambitions for political office could only be satisfied at the lower level of the vestry, which was the administrative unit of local government, and since any freehold voter qualified for election as a vestryman, the freedmen’s passion for political inclusion found its

29 C.O. 137/322, Barkly to Newcastle, No. 24, 21 February 1854, enclosed report of Richard Hill, 20 January 1854; J.A. 1B/11/23/19, House of Assembly Poll Book, 1844–1866, folios 42 and 43; J.A. 2/2/21, Tax Rolls, St. Catherine, 1846; Land Deeds; Liber 820, folio 30; Liber 825, folios 2 and 3; Liber 829, folios 131 and 202; Liber 831, folio 126; Liber 832, folio 76; Liber 833, folios 33 and 40; Liber 848, folio 19; Liber 849, folio 83; Liber 850, folio 152; Liber 854, folios 152 and 209; Liber 870, folio 102; Liber 872, folio 134; Liber 877, folio 183; Gurney 1840, 115–118. Morning Journal, 31 October, 3 November 1847 and 18 July 1849; Falmouth Post, 14 September 1849. 30 J.A. 1B/11/23/19, House of Assembly Poll Book 1844–1866, folios 92–94; J.A. 2/2/28, Register of Free Persons, St. Catherine, 1789–1826; Land Deeds, Liber 804, folio 205; Jamaica Almanack 1840, 199 and 264; Jamaica Almanack 1845, Returns of Proprietors, 35; Jamaica Gazette, 2 December 1847; Price 1866, 2 and 3; Morning Journal, 30 August 1849. 31 C.O. 137/303, Charles Grey to Earl Grey, No. 94, 8 October 1849; Falmouth Post, 24 July, 3 August 1849, 16 September, 5 and 26 October and 7 December 1852.

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most forceful expression there. As early as 1844, two freedmen, Francis Ranger, a mason, and Benjamin Reid, a carpenter, were elected to the vestry in the parish of Vere, despite some planters’ bribing voters with sugar and rum while others threatened artisans with dismissal if they endorsed the two freedmen.32 In the same year, Henry Davis, another freedman, who owned 10 acres of land in the Above Rocks area which he named ‘Liberty Hall’, defeated Adam Sutherland, a sugar planter, for a seat on St. Thomas-in-the Vale’s vestry. Significantly, in this election, some freedmen had been prevented from voting because they had left their tax receipts at their homes, and several others arrived after the poll had closed early, once the outcome was clear. So, with good reason one of Davis’ freedmen supporters commented that the victory was “the bud, the blossom will yet appear; this is the drop, the shower is yet to come.”33 This was indeed prophetic as by 1865 several other black men, including freedmen, were elected to serve on the island’s vestries, particularly in the eastern parishes where sugar estates and coffee plantations had declined. For instance, by 1857, nine of the ten vestrymen in St. David were black and at least six of them had been skilled slaves, carpenters, masons, blacksmiths and wheelwrights. They were part of a coalition between blacks and coloureds who had mobilised the small settlers from the post slavery villages.34 These developments did not pass unnoticed and the Colonial Office, alarmed by the prospect of black political power in Jamaica being used in black people’s political and economic interests, sought ways to blunt the impact of the freedpeople’s political participation, whether as electors or as office holders. First, Jamaica’s governmental structure in 1854 was changed so as to extend the influence of the Executive over an Assembly whose membership increasingly reflected candidates that had the support of the rural small settlers. Second, in 1859, new franchise regulations were introduced, including a poll tax on voters, that diminished the political influence of the freedmen. Finally, when ‘the danger of a black ascendancy’ was manifested most forcefully in the Morant Bay rebellion in 1865, the British

32

Baptist Herald, 7 February 1844. Falmouth Post, 6 August 1844; Jamaica Almanack 1845, Return of Proprietors. 34 C.O. 137/334, Lt. Governor Bell to Labouchere, No. 24, 24 March 1857, enclosed report of Stipendiary Magistrate David Ewart, 24 February 1857. 33

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government manipulated the panic in the local ruling class who surrendered the limited forms of political representation, making way for the introduction of crown colony government which snuffed out the nascent development of popular politics in Jamaica in the immediate post slavery period.35

Popular Protests Although the vast majority of freed Jamaicans could not vote in the post-slavery period, the more articulate among them voiced their views at public meetings and promoted their interests by direct, popular action. The pattern of public meetings scrutinising the workings of the formal political process was established immediately after 1838 when the Baptist Ministers organised meetings to protest oppressive laws that were designed to restrict mobility and to reassert the control of the planters over labour. The missionaries drafted resolutions that were particularly critical of the Governor, Sir Charles Metcalfe, who in his haste to conciliate the planters, had assented to the partisan legislation. The freedmen who seconded the resolutions sometimes embarrassed their missionary sponsors by the frankness of their speech. For example, one freedman referred to Governor Metcalfe in threatening language: “I will not call him his excellency, but that man, if he no make public apology to We, let him look out, he better leave the island.” At another public meeting of Ministers, Deacons, Leaders and Members of the Baptist churches in Trelawny, three freedmen, one, a ‘black deacon’, and two other artisans, addressed the large gathering. The deacon, reflecting the acrimonious sectarian divide at the time, was extremely critical of the Ministers of the Church of England whom he accused of going “from place to place drinking punch with de Bushas . . . [who] send dem a leg of mutton.” He also dismissed Governor Metcalfe’s criticism of the Baptist Missionaries for having interfered in labour disputes and further suggested that the Governor had “drunk too much of Massa turtle soup”, and proclaimed that “if the Governor is a Church of England man he is no Christian.” When the resolutions were passed rebuk-

35

Holt 2000, 36.

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ing the Governor for his partisan stance, the assembled, mostly freedpeople, shouted, “Yes, Make we send him away.”36 It is clear where the freedpeople stood in 1840 on the political issues and on the legislation that affected the quality of their freedom. Twenty-five years later in the summer months of 1865, several meetings were also held throughout the island to protest the hardships that confronted the population in the period leading up to the Morant Bay rebellion. Prominent among these issues were low and irregular wages, high food prices brought on by excessive taxation and worsened by drought and flood, unemployment and destitution, injustice in the courts, the squandering of public funds on immigration and the restriction of political rights for the people.37 Several black speakers, including freedmen, featured at these meetings. This was a clear statement that they had come of age since they were no longer parroted resolutions that the European missionaries prepared. Instead, they articulated their own views on the island’s deepening social crisis. For example, at a meeting in Montego Bay in June 1865, Samuel Holt a black freedman and a Baptist Minister at Fyfes Pen in the neighbouring parish of St. Elizabeth, articulated the same sort of sentiments that later motivated the men and women who marched into Morant Bay in October 1865. Holt warned prophetically: “We are poor. Have we got the same property, the same quantity of clothing and money as we had in times past? A reduction of taxation must take place. We shall have it made. We won’t submit to be crushed down any longer.”38 The prevailing patriarchal notions that men alone were suited for politics and women’s place was at home meant that only men occupied the platform and addressed such formal gatherings. Nonetheless, the freedwomen never accepted their legal exclusion from the public space and after 1838 they participated in popular protests against official highhandedness and oppressive taxation, as well as mobilised voters and also rioted at elections when they felt that candidates who promoted their interests were cheated by corrupt election officials who favoured the planters. Further, women were also integral to the

36 C.O. 137/248, Metcalfe to Russell, No. 50, 13 April 1840, enclosures; Metcalfe to Russell No. 64, 16 April 1840, enclosures; Falmouth Post, 29 April 1840. 37 Heuman 1994, 44–60. 38 Morning Journal, 28 May 1865.

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organisational network that mobilised the people in St. Thomas-inthe East, and later they participated in the march and confrontation that culminated in the Morant Bay rebellion.39 This chapter has reflected the freedpeople’s expectations and reactions to emancipation by way of their testimonies and actions. Clearly determined to make something out of the so called ‘nothing but freedom’ that they received on August 1, 1838, many contributed their resources to the establishment of new communities and important social institutions beyond the plantations. Those who worked on the estates struggled to reorder labour relations, and the privileged few who qualified for the franchise asserted their new civil rights and enjoyed some degree of political empowerment. Even when gender and property considerations excluded most freedpeople from public debate, they still practiced their politics by way of popular action which opposed coercive labour practices and partisan legislation. Clearly, the freedpeople knew their interests and vigorously defended and promoted them, even in the face of stubborn, sometimes insurmountable odds. Generally, since by the time of the Morant Bay rebellion in 1865, the freedpeople in Jamaica had certainly made their presence felt and their voices heard in ways that were impossible before 1838, so it is fitting to conclude with the affirmation of Thomas Gardner, a freedman, who proclaimed to the assembled multitude of men and women in Falmouth on August 1, 1838, “I rejoice I am slave no more, and you are slaves no more, Jamaica is slave no more. Amen!”40

Bibliography Augier, Roy 1966. ‘Before and after 1865’, New World Quarterly 2, 21–40. Beckles, Hilary McDonald and Verene Shepherd (eds.) 1996. Caribbean Freedom: Economy and Society from Emancipation to the Present, Princeton. Bolland, O. Nigel 1992. ‘The politics of freedom in the British Caribbean’, F. McGlynn and S. Drescher (eds.), The Meaning of Freedom: Economics, Politics and Culture after Slavery, Pittsburgh, 113–47. Brereton, Bridget 1999. ‘Family strategies, gender and the shift to wage labour in the British Caribbean’, Brereton and Yelvington (eds.), 77–107. —— and Kevin A. Yelvington 1999. ‘Introduction: the promise of emancipation’, Brereton and Yelvington (eds.), 1–25.

39 40

Wilmot 1995. Falmouth Post, 15 August 1838.

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—— and Kevin A. Yelvington (eds.) 1999. The Colonial Caribbean in Transition: Essays on Post-Emancipation Social and Cultural History, Kingston. Foner, Eric 1983. Nothing but Freedom: Emancipation and its Legacy, Baton Rouge. Green, William 1976. British Slave Emancipation: The Sugar Colonies and the Great Experiment, 1830 –1865, Oxford. Gurney, J. 1840. A Winter in the West Indies Described in Familiar Letters to Henry Clay of Kentucky, London. Hall, Catherine 1992. ‘Missionary stories: gender and ethnicity in England in the 1830s and 1840s’, Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson and Paula Treichler (eds.), Cultural Studies, London, 240–70. Hall, Douglas 1970. Free Jamaica, 1838–1865: An Economic History, Barbados. Heuman, Gad 1994.‘The Killing Time’: The Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica, London. Hinton, John H. 1849. Memoir of William Knibb, London, 2nd. edition. Holt, Thomas 2000. ‘The essence of the contract’, F. Cooper, T. Holt and R. Scott (eds.), Beyond Slavery: Explorations of Race, Labor and Citizenship in Post-Emancipation Societies, Chapel Hill, 33–61. Judah, Abraham and A. C. Sinclair (comps.) 1856–1866. Debates of the Honourable House of Assembly of Jamaica, Commencing from the Fourth Session of the First General Assembly under the New Constitution, 13 vols., Kingston. Marshall, Woodville 1993. ‘“We be wise to many more tings”: blacks’ hopes and expectations of emancipation’, Beckles and Shepherd (eds.), 12–20. Mintz, Sydney 1989. Caribbean Transformations, New York. Price, George 1866. Jamaica and the Colonial Office: Who Caused the Crisis?, London. Rodrigue, John 2001. Reconstruction in the Cane Fields: From Slavery to Free Labour in Louisiana’s Sugar Parishes, 1862–1880, Baton Rouge. Stewart, Robert 1992. Religion and Society in Post-Emancipation Jamaica, Knoxville. Underhill, Edward B. 1862. The West Indies: Their Social and Religious Condition, London. Wilmot, Swithin 1984. ‘Not “full free”: the ex-slaves and the apprenticeship system in Jamaica, 1834–1838’, Jamaica Journal 17, 2–10. —— 1995. ‘“Females of abandoned character?”: women and protest in Jamaica, 1838–1865’, V. Shepherd, B. Brereton and B. Bailey (eds.), Engendering History: Caribbean Women in Historical Perspective, Kingston, 279–295. —— 1996. ‘Emancipation in action: workers and wage conflicts in Jamaica, 1838–1848’, Beckles and Shepherd (eds.), 48–51.

CHAPTER NINE

DRESS: FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM AMONG JAMAICAN COLONISED WOMEN, 1790–1890 Steeve Buckridge

“The Caribbean is the story of arrivants from across the Atlantic and beyond, each group bringing a cultural equipage . . .”1 – Rex M. Nettleford

Introduction Africans brought aspects of their culture such as folklore, music, language, religion and dress with them to the Americas. These African customs and beliefs or ‘Africanisms’ that were retained in the African Diaspora enabled Africans to maintain a vital link with their ancestral homeland. As slaves in an alien environment, Africans shaped and modified these cultural elements based on their experiences, needs and circumstances. They also nurtured these African characteristics and transmitted them to their descendants. Moreover, ‘Africanisms’ persisted not as archaic retention, but as vibrant cultural features that continued to grow and develop, in a sense, establishing new roots in a new environment. Robert Farris Thompson has argued that this contributed to the enrichment of the Americas with sophisticated and profound knowledge of herbalism, mental healing and funeral customs to name a few.2 African cultural features were retained and nurtured in Jamaica and other areas of the Diaspora because they guaranteed the survival of Africans and their descendants against European attempts at cultural annihilation. Melville J. Herskovits pointed out that cultural retention was useful because it fulfilled functions that were indispensable

1 2

Nettleford 1979, 1. Thompson 1983, xiv.

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to the survival of African people.3 Furthermore, keeping African customs alive fostered a “soul-force” as Leonard E. Barrett stated that fashioned a quality of life for Africans and enabled them to cope with the horrors of enslavement that made European migrants the prescribed superordinate power.4 Cultural expression as survival strategies played an integral role in the daily lives of African slaves. As a consequence, one cannot study Africans in Jamaica or the Diaspora without some appreciation and understanding for the cultural significance of Africa as source and origin. This chapter examines dress as a feature of cultural retention and expression among African slave women and their descendants in Jamaica from slavery to the early emancipation era. Several aspects of African dress were transplanted across the Atlantic. For instance, slave women in Jamaica continued to wear the headwrap and beads. They also dyed fabrics and made bark cloth and bark lace as their ancestors did in West Africa. The first part of this study analyses how African dress was maintained, nurtured and adapted within Jamaican slave culture prior to 1838. The second part of the study explores what happened to much of this rich legacy of African customs in dress after slavery was abolished. Emancipation in 1838 gave rise to a new social order in Jamaica that impacted the lives of all ex-slaves, both men and women. This social structure created new challenges for freedpersons and established its priorities based on white supremacy. The hegemonic dominance of British culture derogated the African heritage, appearance and attributes of Jamaican people. European entitlement spawned racial images that contributed to the subordination of an entire population. As a consequence, large numbers of the colonised in Jamaica realised that the only way to escape their subordinate status was to embrace or accommodate to European culture and standards. Franz Fanon’s infamous title, “Black Skin, White Masks,”5 alludes to this phenomenon of accommodation. Although Fanon universalises his arguments and treats colonised societies as a monolithic group, his work nevertheless provides a useful frame for this discussion on dress as accommodation. He argued that colonised people of African

3 4 5

Herskovits 1958, 292–9. Barrett 1974, 1. See Fanon 1967.

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descent had to wear a ‘white mask’ to survive or to be somebody within the white dominated society. Accommodation occurs once the colonised has been culturally alienated and is forced to confront ‘face to face’ the culture of the colonial power. Fanon stated: Every colonized people-in other words, every people in whose soul an inferiority complex has been created by the death and burial of its local cultural originality finds itself face to face with the language of the civilizing nation; that is, with the culture of the mother country.6

Thus for colonised people, the reality of their lives was a complex one in that, “Not only must the black man [or woman] be black,” Fanon claimed, but “he [or she] must be black in relation to the white man.”7 Furthermore, for many of the colonised, wearing a European mask was a way of ‘whitening’ the African race, making it more Europeanised and simultaneously preventing Africans and their descendants from falling back into the “pit of niggerhood.”8 In every society there are aesthetic patterns that reflect that society’s ideal of beauty. This is based on cultural standards that members of society use to evaluate each other. But as Harry Bredemeier and Jackson Toby explain, the existence of standards also mean that some people are found desirable, while others are rejected by the community for not conforming or not being beautiful enough.9 Dress, as a reflection of cultural standards is important because it signals or communicates identity and differentiation.10 However, Mary Ellen Roach-Higgins and Joanne Eicher state that dress does not always make this distinction. In other words, dress can transcend class boundaries and can be deceptive. They further state that, “Just as verbal language can be deceptive, so can the language of dress. Individuals can assume disguise to deceive the observer.”11 Early post-emancipation Jamaica was a period of transition and Europeanisation that saw the romanticisation of ‘Whiteness’ and the negation of ‘Africanness’. This led large numbers of colonised women of African descent who were freed at the end of slavery to accommodate to British standards in dress. However, not all Afro-Jamaican 6 7 8 9 10 11

Fanon 1967, 18. Fanon 1967, 110. Fanon 1967, 47. Bredemeier and Toby 1965, 34. Lang and Lang 1965, 338–9. Roach and Eicher 1979, 10.

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women accommodated or chose to wear a white mask for the same reasons. Furthermore, the study of dress in this manner cannot be examined based solely on the social changes in Jamaica. Rather, it must also be looked at within the context of Jamaica’s relationship with Britain, and the influences of British cultural and social forces on the lives of Jamaican people throughout the period. In addition, it is important to note that Jamaican women’s dress reflected a synthesis of various styles that combined African and European influences. This synthesis gave rise to a ‘Creole dress’ that was reflective of the process of creolisation and the emergence of a Creole culture among African slaves and their descendants. This dress was distinctly Jamaican. Moreover, dress styles changed over time and fashion trends did overlap and reciprocate between classes and races. Nevertheless my focus is primarily on the African elements of this type of dress and how these elements were maintained during slavery then abandoned by many after emancipation.

The African presence: Slave Dress as a Cultural Link to Africa Slave owners in Jamaica were required by law to provide African slaves and their descendants with sufficient clothing. Many planters resorted to the importation of inexpensive coarse European fabrics and some Indian cotton for slave clothing. Fabric distributions were complemented with fewer ready-made garments, and rations included the tools necessary for slaves to sew their clothes such as needles and thread. The eighteenth century planter, historian and local politician, Edward Long, explained: [Slaves] annually consume a large abundance of chequed linen, striped hollands, sustain blanketing, long ells, and baize, Kendal cottons, Oznaburgs [sic], canvas, coarse hats, woolen caps, cotton and silk handkerchiefs, knives, scissors, razors, buckles, buttons . . . thread, needles, [and] pins . . .12

12 Long 1774, 2: 493. Long lists several types of fabrics that were distributed. A description of some of these fabrics are: perpetuana—a durable wool fabric manufactured in England beginning from the sixteenth century; ells-another type of British cloth manufactured in Somersetshire; Osnaburgh-coarse linen originally made in Osnabruck, Germany. Sometimes calico is woven into it; baize-coarse woolen fabric that has a fine and light texture, used chiefly in lining, coverings and for curtains. In warm climates used for clothes; holland cloth—linen fabric directly from

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Oznaburgh was the most common fabric distributed to slaves. On the Jamaica Windsor Lodge and Paisley estates between 1833 and 1837, for instance, 2,676 yards of flax Oznaburgh were purchased for slaves.13 The Caribbean resident, Mrs. Carmichael, also emphasised that most planters preferred to distribute fabrics. She added, “the estates in some colonies give out the clothing ready made to put on, but others, the more common plan is to distribute cloth with needles, threads, tapes.”14 Most slaves therefore were expected to sew their own clothes. Furthermore, Jamaica had no sumptuary laws that stated exactly what slaves could, and could not wear, as was the case in some Caribbean islands such as the Danish West Indies.15 The Jamaican laws sought only to guarantee the minimum clothing necessary for each slave. Since slaves received the minimum amount of clothing it meant that they had to supplement their yearly rations. The local resident J. Stewart reported that the annual rations for most slaves was, “as much Oznaburgh as will make two frocks, and as much woollen stuff as will make a great coat.”16 Furthermore, the intense seasonal labour in the fields combined with the weathering of garments often rotted or destroyed the meagre clothing rations slaves received.17 Field slaves who did heavy manual labour most likely were in constant need of clothing. Planters expected slaves to obtain any additional clothing on their own. Therefore, slaves who could not supplement their annual rations had to go without sufficient clothing and often wore a loincloth. Others went naked.18 Such shortage of clothing combined with the harsh working conditions that slaves encountered made slaves susceptible to various diseases.19 As a consequence, slaves had to supplement their annual clothing rations by obtaining additional garments by other means. Some slave Holland (the province called Holland), when bleached it is called brown holland and is to be distinguished from the later ‘holland cloth’ or ‘real wax’ Dutch manufactured imitations of Indonesian batiks popular on the West African coast. See Oxford English Dictionary, second edition for further details. 13 Invoices, Accounts, Sale of Sugar etc. Jamaica Windsor Lodge and Paisley Estates (1833–1837) Manuscript Collection, 32. Institute of Jamaica/National Library of Jamaica (hereafter cited as MSS and NLJ). 14 Mrs. Carmichael 1833, vol. 1: 155. 15 Hall 1992, 116; 149. 16 Stewart 1817, 269. 17 Higman 1995, 224–5. 18 Higman 1995, 224–5. 19 Higman 1995, 224–5; 346–7; 376.

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women, for example, received hand-me-downs or second hand clothing from their masters. Additional clothes were also received in exchange for sexual favours with white men. Others were rewarded with clothes for bearing and rearing healthy children. Several slaves were able to purchase extra clothes with money they had saved and earned from selling their produce. The visitor, Cynric Williams in 1823 was surprised to see slaves purchasing ‘finery’ and remarked, “[They were] laying down pieces of money that I had never thought to see in the hands of slaves . . . gold pieces worth here [in Jamaica] five pounds, six shillings and eight pence . . .”20 Theodore Foulks also reported in 1833 that, “A slave in the parish of Clarendon admitted that he made by this means, forty pounds annually.”21 The opportunity for slaves to make their own clothes and to buy dress material to suit their own tastes meant that fashion styles and patterns varied among the slave population. Even more important, the absence of sumptuary laws meant that both slave men and women could be culturally expressive in their dress for aesthetic purposes, religious rituals or even as a symbolic act of defiance. Slaves were able to make their own clothes, and some slaves were accomplished at sewing. Edward Long, for example, complimented the slaves he met by remarking that they were “expert at their needles,”22 while the traveller, Bernard Senior, reported in 1835 that slaves, in particular house slaves were “generally good seamstresses.”23 Although slaves received Oznaburgh fabric by law from their masters, all slaves did not dress alike. In fact, slave dress reflected the diversity of Jamaican slave society. Dress among some slaves, especially elite slaves, varied from plantation to plantation, Great House to Great House, as well as between urban and rural areas. To clarify further, urban slaves were often dressed better and more elaborate in fashion styles than field slaves, and their clothing reflected their status. Moreover, urban slaves often received cast off clothing from their owners and their dress varied according to slave occupation.24 Many urban slave women preferred long brightly coloured skirts made from refined cloth, such as muslin or cotton, instead of

20 21 22 23 24

Williams 1826, 3. Foulks 1833, 107. Long 1774, 2: 280. Senior 1835, 29. Higman 1995, 257.

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Oznaburgh, and often accessorised with beads and even gold jewellery.25 The standard slave dress among rural and field slaves consisted of Oznaburgh or check frock, and a pair of Oznaburgh or sheeting trousers with a coarse hat for men, and an Oznaburgh or coarse linen shift, a petticoat and according to their taste and circumstances, a handkerchief to use as a headwrap for women. On a few occasions slaves were provided with a coat or jacket for both men and women. Shoes were not very common except for those who could afford it; otherwise they were reserved for special occasions such as dances and carnivals.26 An analysis of several illustrations done by artists from the period, such as the works of Belisario, revealed the common plantation dress. On many plantations the women wore their skirts in such a manner that the skirt would be pulled over a cord tied around the hips thus exposing their legs as high as the knee. This provided greater freedom of movement and enabled women to fulfil their daily labour tasks. This outfit, the ‘pullskirt’ was often complemented by a headwrap or sometimes a wide brimmed straw hat placed over the actual headwrap.27 Many enslaved women displayed African cultural characteristics in their dress. These African customs that were brought across the Atlantic to Jamaica reflected both the resourcefulness and the ingenuity of African people. In Jamaica, African slave women utilised the skills they had acquired in West Africa to obtain suitable raw materials for dress from their environment. They looked for plants that could be used to make bark cloth, and dyes to colour the fabrics they received from their masters. This required a process of trial and error, of experimentation until they learned to ‘make fashion’ with what was available and accessible to them. Edward Long revealed that Jamaicans dyed fabrics with juices extracted from various roots and plants just as their African ancestors did.28 Long listed the various dyes and pigments used, some of

25

Williams 1826, 22. Stewart 1817, 268. 27 A series of early illustrations of slave women’s dress depict this style. The ‘pullskirt’ was also popular throughout the British colonies. See for example the following illustration and photograph; ‘St. Vincentian Villagers Merrymaking’ N/11578 (Fig. 3.4) (NLJ), also ‘On The Way to Market’ N/11904, NLJ (Fig. 4.15). Working class women in Europe also wore shorter skirts for ease of movement. 28 Long 1774, 3: 736–858. 26

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which were later adopted by European residents and even used in local manufacturing. There were a few Europeans who also experimented and produced dye solutions. Some of the dyes and pigments used by slaves included the Indigo-Berry, which stained paper or linen with a fine blue colour. There was also the Scarlet-Seed, a shrubby tree found in the Red Hills and Spanish Town areas. The seeds were used to produce a scarlet colour which served for both dyer’s and painter’s use. Other dye solutions were obtained from the anotto tree, logged, prickly pear [cactus], prickly yellow wood and the shrubby goat rue. Juices from the marinade root or yaw-weed were also used to make dye solutions. Meanwhile, lignum vitae leaves were used to refresh faded colours. Long does provide a substantial list of dyes and pigments, but he does not provide detailed information on all the dyes or the process of obtaining the actual dye solutions. Nevertheless, the list of dye sources gives an impression of extensive dye production. Slave men and women also used Jamaican indigenous plants like the smaller mahoe for other purposes such as making ropes.29 One of the most interesting African customs in dress that was maintained and nurtured in Jamaica by African slaves was the production of bark cloth and bark lace. As in West Africa, Jamaican slaves learned to make clothing from various plant fibre and trees. According to Long, clothing was made from coratoe leaf, mahoe bark, date tree, mountain cabbage and the down-tree-down. Long does not elaborate on all the plants and exactly how they were used for clothing, but he does reveal that the most popular form of bark cloth made by slaves came from the laghetto tree and its relative, the bon-ace.30 The laghetto, also known as the lace-bark tree, had laurel-like leaves and was found in the woods of Vere in the parish of Clarendon, and also the parish of St. Elizabeth. The inner bark was of a fine texture, very tough, but could be divided into a number of thin filaments, which after being soaked in water could be drawn out by the fingers. The end product resembled fine lace.31 Edward Long recalled:

29 Long 1774, 3: 731 and 857. In this chapter I have used the ‘common’ or popular names of the Jamaican plants. However, Edward Long included both the botanical names as well as the popular terms. 30 Long 1774, 3: 858. 31 Long 1774, 3: 747–8.

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The ladies [slaves and freed women] of the island are extremely dexterous in making caps, ruffles, and complete suits of lace with it; in order to bleach it, after being drawn out as much as it will bear, they expose it stretched to the sunshine, and sprinkle it frequently with water . . . It bears washing extremely well . . . with common soap . . . and [is] equal to the best artificial lace . . . the wild Negroes [Maroons] have [also] made apparel with it of a very durable nature.32

The bon-ace tree was found near Montego Bay, and it too did spread like the laghetto bark. However, it was not as durable and therefore not used as much in clothing. Edward Long’s detailed account of this type of clothing manufacture and its popularity implies that a cottage industry developed during the eighteenth century by Maroons in Jamaica based on laghetto lace. The fact that Maroons did it is logical; those involved in sugar cane production would have had less time to do it. Sugar cane production did not have the seasonality of other crops and was very labour intensive with a higher mortality rate than most crops. Craft production would therefore have suffered. Clothes made from bark such as the laghetto in eighteenth century Jamaican slave society was also worn in the early nineteenth century. In 1823, the visitor Cynric Williams, described an encounter as follows: I overtook a girl on the road with a veil over her face, which I thought at first to be lace, but found to be made of the bark of a tree; it is drawn out by the hand while the bark is green, and has a very pretty effect. I slackened my pace for the pleasure of conversing with her. She was mounted on an ambling pony, and was attended by a negro boy on foot . . . she was herself free, and the negro boy was her slave.33

Williams’ experience with this veiled girl is very important and leads to several discussions about dress and class within Jamaican colonial society. The girl’s veil was most likely made from the laghetto tree and appears to have been not only pretty but also very thin in texture like regular lace so much so that Williams was deceived at first glance. However, what is most interesting is the fact that the girl was veiled. The evidence of slave women or freed women veiled in

32 33

Long 1774, 3: 747–8. This, unfortunately, is no longer done in Jamaica. Williams 1826, 83.

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the British Caribbean is very rare and therefore deserves in-depth analysis. Williams apparently seemed surprised to see a veiled woman to the extent that he “slackened” his pace for the pleasure of conversing with her. Williams’ curiosity was perhaps awakened because he had not seen a veiled woman before during his tour of the island. This suggests that veiling was not a popular form of dress in Jamaican society. There are several possible explanations for wearing a veil in this context. Perhaps the veil was worn to cover facial scarring or disfigurement. Or, this could have been an adaptation of the mantilla, which was popular among Spanish women and brought in by immigrants from the Spanish colonies. Her veil may also be a reflection of Islamic influence in dress brought over by early Muslim slaves from West Africa and adapted by some Jamaican women over the years. Nevertheless, the girl’s possession of a slave boy reflected some affluence, while her dress, and especially her veil, set her apart and perhaps reaffirmed her social standing as an elite woman. Although this form of dress was not popular, the evidence does suggest that some Jamaican slaves and freedwomen may have veiled themselves as a marker of their elite status and wealth as is customary among some elite Muslim women in West Africa.34 As in Africa, beads were also popular among Jamaican slave women. The planter, Matthew Gregory Lewis, stated that slave women were “decked out with a profusion of beads and corals, and gold ornaments of all descriptions.”35 And another planter, William Beckford also stated that, “They [slave women] are particularly fond of beads, coral, glass and chains with which they adorn their necks and wrists.”36 Slave women in Jamaica gained beads for their dress by various means. Some were obtained by purchase or trading in the local markets. Some were smuggled over on slave ships. While some planters also provided their slave women with manufactured European beads. Long mentioned that slave’s clothing rations also included, “small glass, ribbons, beads, thread . . . all or most of them of British growth or manufacture.”37 Planters realised that slave women were fond of beads and sought to facilitate this aspect of 34 35 36 37

Roach-Higgins and Eicher 1995, 13. Lewis 1834, 74. Beckford 1790, 386. Long 1774, 2: 493.

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slave women’s dress. Planters hoped that this would ‘pacify’ slave women, thus making them better workers and less likely to rebel. Slave women also wore beads for reasons other than personal adornment. Beads were used as part of slaves’ religious practices. Among some slaves beads were worn as a form of protection or to ward off evil spirits. In contemporary Surinam, for example, this custom has been maintained within several communities of Maroon descendants. In Jamaica, red beads were worn as protection against duppies [ghosts], and amber beads, were a common talisman in the AfroJamaican cult, Myalism. Beads were usually strung with strings, cords, thread and even wire. Other types of beads found at Drax Hall plantation included, turquoise gem, and deep blue ‘ultramarine’ beads.38 The African woman’s headwrap was another feature of West African dress that was common among slave women throughout the Diaspora including colonial Jamaica. Edward Long offered his own explanation for this practice: They dread rain upon their bare heads almost as much as the native Africans; perhaps their woolly fleece would absorb it in large quantities and give them cold . . . They are fond of covering this part of their bodies [the head] at all times, twisting one or two handkerchiefs round it, in the turban form which they say keeps them cool in the hottest sunshine.39

The headwrap was so popular that, “even the mulatto women think themselves not completely dressed without this tiara [headdress] and buy the finest cambric or muslin for the purpose . . .”40 Headwraps were of diverse styles, various colours and could be very ornate, thus reflecting the creativity of the wearer. The style of the headwraps depended on the length and availability of fabric. Headwraps among many slave women throughout the Caribbean communicated messages and as in some Africa communities, they reflected the status

38 Beckwith 1929, 144. In the spring of 1998 the author visited a Maroon community in Surinam. Many children were observed wearing waist beads, as a form of protection against evil spirits. In Jamaica the custom of wearing protective beads has survived in some Afro-Jamaican religions such as Obeah. However guard beads are not popular. In contemporary Jamaica beads are worn as personal adornment, and indigenous beads are also produced for the tourist trade. 39 Long 1774, 3: 413. Contemporary wisdom supports the idea of covering one’s head in the hot sun to prevent sunstroke. 40 Long 1774, 3: 413.

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of the slave woman within the servile community. In Surinam, for example, slave women in the market place displayed some of the most ornate headwraps.

Dress as Accommodation after Emancipation Emancipation gave way to major economic changes that rapidly transformed the social fabric of Jamaican society. Large numbers of women evicted from estates migrated to urban centres.41 These centres became a showcase for the middle and lower classes to reveal their social standing, and more specifically their accommodation to British culture. As these urban centres took on a more British character, a wedge developed that divided the classes thus giving rise to two distinct sets of social features—what Philip Curtin has described as the two Jamaicas.42 On one side there existed the small white elite and the ‘brown skinned’ middle class who were considered ‘civilised’, and on the other side, a large labouring class, the ‘uncivilised’, whose universe included a Christian God, that coexisted with African beliefs and practices. The process of adaptation and melding of various African ethnicities went on for hundreds of years and was key to producing a vibrant Jamaican Creole culture which was passed down to each new generation just as it had been passed on to new arrivals from Africa.43 Many Jamaicans, for instance, continued to nurture and maintain African religious concepts such as Obeah or Myalism.44 For many, Afro-Jamaican religions not only provided and maintained a link with the ancestral homeland of Africa, but it also provided some hope while living in a colonised world. Emancipation did not end class conflicts; instead white supremacy was maintained. The ruling oligarchy considered white hegemony to be an integral part of the social order, hence to maintain social stability; whites felt that the freed population needed guidance. Many also believed that progress was linked to race; thus African descendants could not achieve success without the assistance of whites. The

41

Hall 1959, 232–4. Curtin 1968. In this text Curtin gives a detailed analysis of the social groups in Jamaican society. 43 Curtin 1968, 24. 44 Williams 1925, 282. 42

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large exodus of planters from Jamaica after emancipation and the decline of many estates forced the few remaining white elite to concern themselves with the ‘instruction’ of the newly emancipated exslaves. In a letter to Prime Minister Gladstone in 1850, the Hon. E. Stanley stated: Where the white proprietor has failed, the negro will not succeed, more especially if deprived of the instruction and example of Europeans by their gradual abandonment of the island, he is left to retrograde, as there is but little doubt that he will do, into his pristine condition of African barbarism.45

Similar sentiments were also echoed by the local businessman, Herbert George DeLisser, who wrote that, “the negro, if left altogether to himself will make no progress.”46 Emancipated Afro-Jamaicans were now seen as “subject” people to be assisted and civilised, and as Patrick Bryan reveals, “their environment [that of freedpersons’] had become the mission frontier.”47 Britain’s desire to ‘civilise’ the newly emancipated ex-slaves was embedded in the social and intellectual climate of the period, more specifically in the notions of Social Darwinism and Positivism. Social Darwinism was an appropriate companion of Positivism since the former explained white hegemony as a product of physical or biological fitness to survive and to dominate the weak, while the latter justified the given social structure necessary for one to dominate.48 These ideological tools not only justified empire and the civilisation of subject people, but they also reaffirmed and endorsed European hegemony.49 Such values affected all aspects of people’s lives, particularly their appearance and how one dressed. Those who maintained the old plantation styles and African cultural characteristics in their dress were relegated to the realm of the ‘uncivilised’, while those who dressed according to European standards of beauty were seen in some cases as ‘civilised’. The London dresses worn by white women in Jamaica established the acceptable trends in beauty and attractiveness, while colonial newspapers with their European fashion advertisements enticed 45 46 47 48 49

Bigelow 1851, 144. Delisser 1900; NLJ, Jamaica Pamphlets. Bryan 2002, x. Bryan 2002, x. Norris 1962, 9–15.

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the literate members of the servile population to conform. In addition, missionaries developed schools that promoted European concepts of feminine beauty as part of their policy of Europeanisation.50 In 1879, Lady Musgrave, wife of the Governor of Jamaica, established the Women’s Self-Help Society, a leisure activity for elite white women to teach freed women needle work, appropriate dress and decorum, as well as Victorian dressmaking skills. The Self-Help Society both influenced freedwomen’s dress and encouraged them to conform to British cultural standards. The society provided basic skills that enabled some women to gain employment as seamstresses, a skill that was becoming increasingly redundant. Meanwhile, the popularity of the British fashion doll, and the mass production of the fashion magazine, combined with the numerous dress shops, all contributed to new levels of consumption in a growing consumer market.51 The dress styles that emerged in Europe and later adopted in Jamaica throughout the post-emancipation period were diverse, elaborate and they displayed class differences. The disparity in comfort and ornamentation between men’s and women’s clothes is perhaps a reflection of the vast separation in male and female roles of the period. The Industrial Revolution had created the need for a large labour force of men whose clothing was standardised, tailored, and reasonably comfortable as in the case of the business suit or work overalls. On the contrary, the new class of women who were nonworking housewives could wear nonfunctional clothing unsuitable for the servants who performed the household chores. Women’s clothes among the upper and middle classes became display pieces, like furniture, intended to reflect wealth and social standing. Dress became ensembles, increasingly and overwhelmingly ornamental, accessorised, stuffed-looking and very uncomfortable.52 The disappearance of many sugar estates and the introduction of wage labour, plus increased urbanisation in Jamaica, gave rise to a consumer society and a vibrant middle class who demanded more material possessions. This group also wanted greater access to British

50

Norris 1962, 94–5. Norris 1962, 98. 52 Weibel 1977, 176–7. See also Department of Consumer and Textiles 1997, 12–24. Both publication and exhibition provided great insight into the dress styles of the period of this study. 51

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goods such as clothing. The visitor W. P. Livingstone revealed that as a consequence of this demand: There was [sic] now springing up everywhere stores stocked with the common necessaries of life. Many provincial merchants began to import their own goods and to open up small branches wherever the opportunity occurred. This process went on until the entire country was dotted over with sources of supply.53

As occurred in Britain earlier, Jamaica also began to experience its own commercialisation of fashion, and many freed persons, both men and women, regardless of their class, became more fascinated with European dress. For these consumers dress became a major pastime in Jamaican society. Livingstone explained further: These facilities [shops] were leading them [freedpersons] unconsciously into higher habits. Their supreme desire was to appear well in the eyes of their superior classes, and they were thus tempted to spend a large part of their money on dress.54

Livingstone recalled that the emancipated persons were so consumed with buying clothes that, “dress is at present their chief social passion.”55 The commercialisation of fashion provided freedpersons with more access to European clothes, especially ready-made garments as well as more diverse styles. As a result, many urban and middle-class women began to embrace European styles of dressing and the Victorian concept of feminine beauty. Accommodation to European cultural characteristics in dress was not new, this also occurred during slavery. However, what was different after emancipation was the large number of women, far more than before, who chose to accommodate. Livingstone described a “spending spree” by freedpersons aimed at fulfilling “their supreme desire to appear well in the eyes of whites.” The ultimate definition of beauty was based on European values, thus those who accommodated to European dress styles attempted to become ‘presentable’ within colonial society. If land was inaccessible to many, at least clothing served as a tangible asset that could improve status (spending on education, which also became popular had the same effect). 53 54 55

Livingstone 1899, 106. Livingstone 1899, 106. Livingstone 1899, 190.

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By the 1840s many freedpersons in urban areas had abandoned the old plantation ways of dressing. An examination of several illustrations done in 1843 by the missionary, James M. Phillippo, revealed that many women of the period had replaced the Oznaburgh or check linen ‘pullskirt’ and other slave garments. The freedwoman’s dress now featured a full skirt long enough to hide their feet and held out by numerous petticoats. As in Britain, bonnets were now popular which hid the face except from a frontal view while the neck was covered by a veil attached to the bonnet, large shawls covered the shoulders when outdoors, and gloves covered the hands to keep off the sun. By 1860 fashion in Jamaica continued to change with the times and mirrored the summer styles in Britain. Dress styles now included a low cut neckline, very tight corset beneath, wide bell shaped skirt with the collapsible steel-cage hoop underneath. Such a skirt, as was customary in Britain, required several under layers of heavily starched petticoats called crinoline for extra flounce.56 Emancipation had increased Eurocentricism and the new social order incorporated white hegemonic values. The more European one looked, the more ‘civilised’ one became. As Rex Nettleford points out, “Eurocentricism placed everything European in a place of eminence, and things indigenous or of African origin in a lesser place.”57 Therefore, many of these African characteristics in dress such as the African woman’s headwrap, dyed fabrics, and beads or necklaces made from shells and corals were now abandoned. Freedwomen who wanted to be socially acceptable and ‘civilised’ adopted Europeanstyle clothes. A few women even took further measures so they could look as white as possible or ‘pass’ as white by straightening their hair and even bleaching their skin.58 Freedwomen who accommodated to European style clothing were sometimes viewed by whites as ‘improved’ and ‘civilised’. James Phillippo, for example, echoed these sentiments when he described these women as a group during the early emancipation era. He stated:

56

Phillippo 1843, 151. See also Robertson 1995. Phillippo gives a comprehensive analysis of women’s dress of the period based on his own observations. His work also includes sketches of black women’s dress based on his own travels throughout the island. 57 Nettleford 1979, 3. 58 Norris 1962, 10.

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Relieved from those proscriptions by which they had been enthralled and bowed down, they as a body immediately began to advance in the scale of civilization . . . In their houses, dress, personal appearance (complexion excepted), general deportment . . . [they] are on an equality with the most respectable of whites.59

Phillippo not only believed that these women came one step closer to being civilised because of their dress, but he also compared them to his white contemporaries. He suggested that this change was good, and further added: As an evidence of the improvement which has taken place, the decencies of society are no longer outraged by insufficient and filthy apparel . . . in every respect [they are] as good as that worn by persons of the same class during the summer in England.60

The above statements by Phillippo were perhaps meant to be a compliment to those freedwomen who accommodated. However, Phillippo’s views only reflected his own biases. For instance, by using white values or standards to equate and to measure the level of civilisation among freedpersons he basically discredited and dismissed the rich legacy of African culture in Jamaican society. His views illuminate a sad truth for those persons who chose to be part of the new ‘civilised’ Jamaica, that they must reject their past and adopt an alien white culture. However, not all women accommodated for the same reasons. Some wanted to be seen as ‘civilised’ and thus equal to their white colonisers. A few were perhaps lured by the thought of wearing European muslin and silk dresses. Others saw accommodation as a means of ‘uplifting’ themselves within the colonial structure, and in the process creating their own privileged space in a society that had long exploited and denied them basic rights. Whether as slaves or as freed people, Afro-Jamaican women and men were both marginalised in that their ideas, beliefs and culture were dismissed and the values of the privileged white planter class were celebrated. The constant attack on African heritage, beauty and intelligence gave rise to negative self-images. Stereotypes of Afro-Jamaican people included characteristics such as lazy, worthless, unreliable and backward.61 As

59 60 61

Phillippo 1843, 150. Philippo 1843, 230. See Bush 1990, 5; 9; 11–22; 52–3. Bush discusses the stereotypes and negative

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a consequence, many women sought methods to elevate their position in society and in the process receive some type of validation for themselves and their race. This negation of ‘Africanness’ encouraged large numbers of ex-slaves, especially the middle class, to accommodate to British standards and attributes. However, accommodation was not merely an attempt to elevate the freed race out of the ‘pit of niggerhood’, as Fanon implied, but it also provided the opportunity for freedpersons to experience the ‘Other’, a bit of ‘whiteness’, and to show that they too can be beautiful. Furthermore, it could be argued that since expressions of wealth and status like elaborate houses or land were denied to most freedpersons, the more accessible mode of dress became that much more important. For some women dress as accommodation was seen as an act of defiance or resistance. In fact, resistance and accommodation were not separate entities or polar opposites. Rather, they melded into each other in that some women saw accommodation or adaptation of European cultural standards not as a desire to be like whites, but as resistance in itself, because to accommodate was a political act, which marked them as not slaves. Many did not want to be seen as still slaves-a downtrodden, subordinate class. Therefore, some freedpersons sought to rid themselves of all the negative representations associated with them during slavery. They were now free people no longer in chains and wanted to share in the same rights and privileges of their white colonisers. Cornel West summarises this point nicely: Europeanization was their way to resist misrepresentation and caricature of the terms set by uncontested, non-black norms and models, and [to] fight for self-representation and recognition.62

Freedwomen were not the only ones who sought self-representation and recognition. Freedmen also used dress to accommodate to European standards. For example, W. P. Livingstone recalled that, “the men wear ordinary English attire, even sometimes the top hat and frock coat.”63 Meanwhile, further examination of prints and lith-

images long associated with black women in the Caribbean and how it has impacted their lives. 62 West 1990, 27. 63 Livingstone 1899, 190.

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ographs done in 1844 by the artist Adolph Duperly portrayed freedmen in the finest of British attire.64 By the 1850s through the 1880s accommodation was so widespread that it changed the physical appearance of many urban centres in Jamaica. While the middle-class mulatto and elite women’s dresses reflected a lifestyle of leisure and social standing, labouring women such as higglers, traders and domestic servants made a clear distinction between working clothes and Sunday best. Phillippo remarked that the very best clothes among this group of women were worn on “the Sabbath [Sunday], at funerals, as at meetings of friendship and during public holidays.”65 Meanwhile, during the day or work these women: Tie a handkerchief round their hips, and draw their skirts through it thus forming a furbelow round their waists . . . and they step out in a style which would gladden the heart of the most exacting drill sergeant.66

There were also specific uniforms prescribed for servants of particular categories. These uniforms were usually supplied by employers. Coachmen for instance who worked for the elite wore tall boots, white tight breeches, a long black coat, a top hat and gloves. Day labourers however, wore a Jippi-Jappa hat and coarse blue dungarees with large patch pockets called ‘Shall I’ or ‘Old Iron’. Whiskers and beards was also an important feature of men’s appearance; they were heavily groomed and moustaches waxed. Solicitors and tradesmen wore morning coats, waistcoats and derby hats. Even in sports dress played a major role. As in Britain, the game of cricket required white shirt and white pants. Such appropriate dress enhanced the image of the perfect gentleman in Jamaican colonised society.67 The desire of many freedwomen to accommodate to European standards in dress at first led to a surge in the number of seamstresses in urban areas. Seamstresses during slavery were elite slaves who were highly valued for their skills both in the great house and

64 Duperly 1844, 1866 (NLJ) N/16796. Duperly’s collection focuses on urban scenes. His shots were taken on the spot with the daguerreotype and then lithographed under his direction by the most eminent artists in Paris. His collection was then published in Kingston, Jamaica in 1844. 65 Phillippo 1843, 231. 66 Quoted in Bryan 2002, 85. 67 Bryan 2002, 85–6.

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within the slave community.68 The number of seamstresses, for example, had increased from 14,565 in 1871 to 18,966 by 1891.69 However, several factors impacted the lives of seamstresses. The Reverend Edmondson further explained: The importation on a larger scale of readymade clothing, the introduction of the sewing machine, and the contracted income of better circumstanced families militate seriously against the comforts of this class.70

Despite the hardships, plus the introduction of the sewing machine and ready-made clothes, seamstresses continued to produce excellent work and were praised for their sewing skills. Miss B. Pullen-Burry, a resident of Jamaica, remarked that the dressmakers [seamstresses] were very smart and, “excellent copyists and clever machinists.”71

Peasant class and Dress While most middle and working class women in urban areas were busy imitating British culture, the mass of Jamaicans who were peasants (including labourers and road builders) lived in a world of poverty. It was primarily among this class that Afro-Jamaican religions were kept alive and African characteristics in dress were maintained. In the fields and on the few surviving estates, unlike the urban areas, Oznaburgh continued in some places as the popular dress. In other situations it was replaced with cotton, but the ‘pullskirt’ and the headwrap continued as the main dress of the peasant and labouring class women.72 Like some of their urban sisters these women also reserved their best dress, usually a white frock, for Sunday church services and special events. Missionaries often encouraged the members

68 See Hall 1989, 170 for an example of how some slave women contributed to the earnings of their masters by sewing. 69 Quoted in French and Ford-Smith 1986, 145. 70 CO. 137/391 20 April 1865. West Indies Collection, Mona U.W.I. 71 Pullen-Burry 1903, 48. Pullen-Burry who was a famous writer of the period talks about Jamaica in 1903. Although this is beyond the period of this research, in her discussions on seamstresses she implies that the women of this profession have maintained a long tradition of excellence. 72 This early photograph, “On the Way to Market”, (Fig. 4.15) was taken by an unknown photographer. However, it clearly shows the freed women dressed in the “pullskirt”. NLJ Collection, N/11904.

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of their congregation, especially women to avoid bright colours and to wear white clothing to church and religious events as a symbol of their devotion and piety. On the eve of emancipation, for example, at the religious service in Fairfield, the superintendent recalled, “about 1,800 negroes, clad in white, stood in the ranks, in the greatest order and silence imaginable, such a sight I had never before witnessed in the open air.” Livingstone also remarked that, “on Sundays the majority appear in white, relieved by coloured ribbons or sash, or a spray of flowers.”73 Many slaves and freed persons found white appealing because of its close association with African religions. Among the Asante of Ghana white represents innocence and rejoicing. For some colonised women, wearing white dress allowed them to move freely between the established church and the AfroJamaican religions without detection. White clothing continues to be a main feature of religious activities in contemporary Jamaican society. Peasant women who were market traders also wore the ‘pullskirt’ and headwrap. Once crops were harvested, women traveled for miles either by foot or by donkey to the nearest market to sell their produces. Goods for sale were often carried as a headload balanced with the aid of a headwrap and a cotta (a piece of cloth or dried banana leaves rolled into the shape of a donut then placed on the head). The headwrap of the period among lower class women was usually made from red check cotton commonly called a bandanna. This cotton was Madras cloth, an Indian fabric popularised by Indian indentured labourers in Jamaica, and later adopted by many freedwomen. In contemporary Jamaica the bandanna is the national fabric and is used in national costumes and even some people’s dress. Unlike during slavery where headwraps varied in styles, in postemancipation Jamaica bandannas were both common and similar in style especially among peasants or labouring class women.74 In the market place, peasant women who were traders wore in addition to their ‘pullskirt’ and bandanna, a ‘bib’. This was a long apron consisting of two pockets for holding coins during trading, similar to the ‘cover cloths’ worn by East and West African women over their skirts. One pocket was reserved for silver coins and the

73

Livingstone 1899, 190. See also Hastings and Macleavy 1979, 55. Figures 4.15, 4.16 and 4.17 NLJ Collection N/11904, N/6793, and N/16804. A close examination of the women’s headwraps reveal that the styles are all similar. 74

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other for copper coins. Paper money was either placed in the woman’s headwrap or in a small moneybag called a ‘tred bag’ and then tucked into the trader’s bosom.75 Contemporary West African market traders often keep their money secured in a piece of cloth tucked into their bosom. For many of these women, the market place was their world, and like women in West Africa, they dominated the market as traders.76 Although peasants’ style of dressing had not changed drastically since slavery, their physical appearance was considered good. Commenting on the conditions of this class six years after Emancipation, Sir Charles Metcalfe, governor of Jamaica, stated in 1842 that, “their behavior was peaceable and in some respects cheerful. They were found to attend divine services in good clothes . . .”77 This construction of the freedwoman unthreatening to whites included her accommodation to British standards of beauty. Some women who were of ‘humble sphere’ sought to imitate their white ‘superiors’, because they wanted to increase their social standing. Livingstone stated that several “imitated the ladies of the upper classes” and that, “during the Christmas season gay costumes are common,” while “more money is spent on the adornment of the person than in the gratification of the appetite.”78 For these women, accommodation provided the opportunity to escape their poverty and subordinate position temporarily. Mary Ellen Roach-Higgins and Joanne Eicher argue that dress confers identities on individuals as it communicates positions within social structures.79 However, these identities are not always easily recognizable. For instance, if a labouring or peasant class woman should wear a ‘nice’ dress outside her familiar circles, then among strangers she may be perceived as upper class. In this manner, dress functioned as a mask that shields the identity of the wearer and at the same time deceived the observer. Nevertheless, for many people accommodation to British style clothing was restricted by affordability.

75 Interview-Dr. Olive Lewin, 12 August, 1997 (Kingston). Dr. Lewin provided major insight into the role of market women as traders and the folk songs associated with these women. In addition, I observed that these methods of securing money have been maintained and are popular among contemporary market traders. 76 See for example, Robertson 1976; cf. also Katzin 1960. 77 Phillippo 1843, 236. 78 Livingstone 1899, 190–191. 79 Roach-Higgins and Eicher 1995, 13.

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By the 1860s the social conditions of lower class women were worse and their ability to accommodate became increasingly difficult. Jamaica was thrust into a deep economic depression culminating in a major revolt in 1865 called, the Morant Bay Rebellion. The struggling sugar industry was already weakened by the Sugar Duties Act of 1846 and major price falls in Britain. Prices of sugar excluding duty fell from 26/10 per hundred weights in 1860 to 23/5 in 1861 and continued to fall for the next two years.80 Meanwhile, the civil war in the United States of America impacted the textile trade and hampered the flow of supplies within the region. Wages fell while the increased inflow of East Indian indentured labourers led to a reduction in estate jobs offered to local people. The situation worsened when in May and June of 1864, the annual spring rains were heavier than usual, resulting in floods that damaged crops, roads and bridges. This calamity was followed by a severe drought; prices of provisions rose in almost every parish of the island.81 No other group of Jamaicans suffered as much from these catastrophic events as the peasant class did. Their inability to earn good wages or to afford the high prices of goods such as cloth and readymade clothes greatly affected their physical appearance. The situation among the lower class was so bad that several local ministers and magistrates expressed their concern over the plight of these people. In a letter dated 3 March 1865, the Reverend M. Davidson informed his bishop that: Labourers very commonly find great difficulty in providing themselves and their families with clothing . . . Their work-day raiment is often ragged and dirty . . . I am credibly informed that young persons are sometimes kept within doors for the want of clothes fit to appear in. Attendance at church and school has been unfavourably affected by this circumstance . . .82

The Honourable Rich Hall also echoed similar sentiment in his letter to the Colonial Office in 1865: The cost of clothing is enhanced to more than double it was before the American War. . . . Five years ago the Bale now imported at £97 was invoiced at £33. Common cotton prints are nearly trebled in cost

80 81 82

Quoted in Hall 1959, 240. Hall 1959, 239–43. C.O. 137/391 March, 1865. West Indies Collection, Mona, U.W.I.

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steeve buckridge by the yard . . . and Osnaburgh’s, a hempen fabric used [by] the old and the young has been increased in price from 42 to 92.83

So bad had things become for the Jamaican peasants that some people were unable to buy clothes to cover themselves to the point where they went naked. This horrifying situation was expressed by Mr. Justice Kremble who informed the Governor that: [With] The present high prices of cotton goods, it is as far as my observation enables me to judge an exaggeration to say that vast numbers of the people have been reduced to such abject poverty as to become ragged and even naked.84

Despite economic hardships, not all Afro-Jamaican women suffered these extremes. Some women were still able to preserve their fine clothes or ‘Sunday best’, for church, while in urban areas the conditions of the poor may have been masked by the affluence of the elite. More typically, some women who could no longer afford fashionable dresses due to the economic hardships and high prices turned to their churches and the local missionaries for support in obtaining clothes. The Reverend Edward Bean Underhill, a visiting missionary to Jamaica pointed out: Some [women] doubtless join the Church of England for avaricious motives. No contributions are required of them, and there is a frequent distribution of gifts and clothing . . . Many of the youth especially young brown women will not attend church unless they are well dressed. When their clothes are faded or worn out, they absent themselves till again supplied.85

The distribution of clothing to poor freed persons was a charitable and humanitarian activity undertaken by missionaries, as noted by Livingstone: During the years of depression the missionaries instead of receiving offerings are compelled in sheer humanity to distribute money, food and clothing to many of their people.86

However, Livingstone failed to recognise that the distribution of clothing by missionaries was more than an act of charity. It provided the

83 84 85 86

C.O. 137/390 March, 1865. West Indies Collection, Mona, U.W.I. C.O. 137/391 June, 1865. West Indies Collection, Mona, U.W.I. Underhill 1861, 253. Livingstone 1899, 275.

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missionaries with the opportunity to influence the African aesthetics of the peasant woman’s dress and simultaneously pursue Europeanisation of the large peasant class. European missionaries had long considered themselves the bearers of civilisation and sought to spread it by whatever means possible. The period of the 1860s in Jamaica experienced a major surge in the religious movement, Revivalism, that some people had hoped would crush the last remnants of African heritage in Jamaica. The Church of England in Jamaica, especially under the leadership of Bishop Enos Nuttal, revitalised the emphasis on AngloSaxon civilisation and imperial rule as positive elements.87 The distribution of European-style clothes became another vehicle to promote European notions of feminine beauty and British standards in dress. The ‘avaricious motives’ mentioned by Underhill suggest indifference and perhaps unbelief among the recipients of missionary aid. Some may in fact have been greedy and sought to ‘make the best’ of a system that provided those less fortunate with the opportunity to have nice clothes. However, among some freedpersons there was still a mistrust of those churches with a history of alliance with the planter class during slavery, such as the Church of England. The Reverend Underhill also suggested that many freedpersons still remembered the cruel treatment under slavery. Many did not forget that “a minister of one of the leading denominations, now holding an important position in the city, preached at the insurrection [in 1831] a vigorous sermon in defense of the Divine institution of slavery.”88 As bell hooks reminds us, “memory sustains a spirit of resistance”;89 thus many Jamaicans continued to support Afro-Jamaican religions. Missionary activity reflected militancy that failed to conquer the frontiers of Obeah, Kumina and Bedwardism, which remained popular among several sectors of Jamaican society.

Failure of Accommodation as a Strategy for Social Mobility Jamaican women who accommodated because it made them feel good, or desired to uplift themselves in the colonial society, soon 87 Bryan 2002, 60. Bryan examines Bishop Enos Nuttal’s Imperial policies and his notions of Anglo-Saxon civilization. 88 Underhill 1861, 193. 89 Hooks 1992, 136.

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realised that accommodation was problematic, in that accommodation to British cultural traits in dress did not eradicate racial stereotyping of Afro-Jamaican women. This can be seen in Livingstone’s description of women’s dresses in the 1880s. He stated: In the matter of dress considerable progress soon became visible . . . their sense of harmony, however, was in its rudimentary stage, and the result was sometimes sufficiently bizarre. This was particularly the case on Sundays and holidays when they arrayed themselves in costumes which excited the ridicule of the whites, and earned for the fashion, the contemptuous designation of “monkey style.”90

Livingstone revealed that rural Afro-Jamaicans who wore European dress were stigmatised as having an “inclination . . . towards monkey style.”91 However, in the towns things were different. According to Livingstone, “the examples of the whites, many of whom had in selfdefense assumed the quietest of costumes, was making an impression on the more intelligent negroes.”92 This implies that whites who set the styles purposefully differentiated themselves from those they saw as their inferiors. Meanwhile, freedwomen of African descent, by virtue of their race, could never catch up. Freedwomen’s attempt to resist the images connected with slavery, and to uplift themselves by means of dress and education beyond their ‘jungle status’ could not succeed in overcoming the racist and stereotypical ideas long associated with them, and were used against them. It was the ‘rudimentary stage’ and the ‘sufficiently bizarre’ nature of their dress that racialised them as stupid, childish, or even monkey people, who lacked grace and refined taste. African aesthetic use of colour was foreign to European eyes and only the closest conformity to European dress was acceptable. Livingstone acknowledged that women’s dress had changed and apparently for the better, irrespective of its ‘harmony’. However, he credited this development among freed persons to white influences, especially among the ‘intelligent negroes’ in urban areas. Livingstone, like so many of his contemporaries, reiterated the belief that AfroJamaicans cannot advance socially without some white assistance or help from outside their community. Women’s capabilities of adap-

90 91 92

Livingstone 1899, 53. Livingstone 1899, 106. Livingstone 1899, 106.

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tation, innovation and creativity in their dress were neither valued nor encouraged. Nevertheless, perhaps the most striking observation Livingstone made was that some whites, including white women in “self-defense” [against Afro-Jamaicans] assumed the “quietest costume.” Freedwomen who accommodated became a threat to white women because they dressed ‘beyond’ their boundaries. Within the colonial realm an individual’s security was based on conforming and knowing where he or she belonged as well as their distinction from among others in the society. Dress was both a marker of one’s status and reflected one’s social roles and the need for isolation from others. As Kurt and Gladys Lang point out, “where custom rules, and the society is clearly stratified, people learn how to dress, express themselves, behave, and think as befits their station.”93 Therefore, those freedwomen who broke the customary rules in dress disrupted the social balance of society and threatened white privilege. This is important because the preservation of white elitism and cultural dominance was based on the production of racist ideology that freedwomen can never be ‘somebody’. On the other hand, for freedwomen this was not only confusing, but it was a reflection of a schizoid colonial mentality. They lived in a world that promoted Europeanisation and yet they could never fully Europeanise due to the colour of their skin. At the turn of the century, E. A. Hastings, a visitor to Jamaica, described those women who accommodated in the following manner: Next morning everyone turned out in their Sunday best. Big hulking negresses were attired in gorgeous silks and satins, and truly wonderful hats with broad brims and feathers, and ribbon . . . The wooly locks under all this fashionable headgear were pathetically ludicrous.94

Afro-Jamaican women looked silly to him, ‘pathetically ludicrous’, because they were not dressed appropriately for their race. Despite the fashionable headgear, it was their ‘wooly locks’ that made their outfits socially unacceptable. Accommodation to European culture and standards in dress did not always improve race relations. Nor did it guarantee acceptance by the dominant white culture. Instead, the races remained very much divided throughout Jamaican colonised society. 93 94

Lang and Lang 1965, 339. Hastings 1900, 241–2.

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Early post-emancipation Jamaica was a period of transition and Europeanisation. The romanticisation of ‘Whiteness’ and the negation of ‘Africanness’ led large numbers of Afro-Jamaican women to accommodate to British standards in dress. The diverse usage of dress, whether for the purpose of resistance or accommodation, mirrored their ingenuity, creativity and determination to survive in the Diaspora. For some Afro-Jamaicans survival meant accommodation to European culture and the ambition to improve their status, as symbolised by their dress. As slaves, many women had sought to subvert the colonial regime; then as freed women they sought to carve a space for themselves in the new social order. Middle-class women used dress to reflect their degree or level of accommodation, while others used dress to resist misrepresentation and to show that they too could be beautiful as white women. Meanwhile, the peasants despite their limited resources, paraded in their Sunday best and through their appearance at times, were able to transcend the boundaries of class. For instance, on one occasion a street vendor was overheard saying to a friend in 1891 that, “when a lick on me silk frock and fling me parasol over me shoulders and drop into Exhibition Ground, you will know wedder I is a lady or not.”95 Accommodation to European custom in dress did not lead to social acceptance. Nor did European dress, as a white mask, end racial stereotyping of freedwomen. In fact, those who accommodated became a type of ‘racial hybrid’, part African, part white, who were brought to the brink of ‘civilisation’ but never fully inducted.96 Adopting European dress was a way for Afro-Jamaican women to ‘whiten’ the race, to look white or European and in the process avoid what Fanon called the ‘pit of niggerhood’. However, accommodation also revealed a harsh reality—that freedwomen and men could never be European or white no matter how hard they tried to accommodate. As Langston Hughes once stated, “this imitation of whites leads to an imitation life for blacks [African descent], that can only be understood as limitation.”97 This limitation was due to racism. During the post95 96 97

Quoted in Bryan 2002, 85. Quoted in Gubar 1997, 21. Cf. Gubar 1997, 24.

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emancipation era, no matter how respectable in circumstances, character or even in dress, if a freedperson entered the church pew of the lowest whites, he or she could be instantly ordered out.98 While in the hospitals, prisons and in the “grave-yards where it [the dead] sleeps the last sleep,” racial prejudice haunted its victims.99 Racism had survived Emancipation and it continued to impact the lives of all those of African descent. As the abolitionist missionary James Phillippo exclaimed: In whomsoever the least trace of an African origin could be discovered the curse of slavery pursued him [or her], and no advantages either of wealth, talent, virtue, education, or accomplishment, were sufficient to relieve him [or her] from the infamous proscriptions.100

Regardless of their European style dresses or any other British cultural characteristics that freedwomen chose to adopt, they could never transcend the racial boundaries. Instead, they were bound by racial prejudice, which haunted Afro-Jamaican women and men like a curse that continued throughout the colonial period and beyond in Jamaican society. Freedpersons were not the equivalent of free persons, no matter how much they adopted the symbols of equality like dress.

Bibliography Barrett, Leonard E. 1974. Soul Force: African Heritage in Afro-American Religion, New York. Beckford, William 1790. A Descriptive Account of the Island, London. Beckwith, Martha Warren 1929. Black Roadways: A Study of Jamaican Folk Life, New York, reprint 1969. Bigelow, John 1851. Jamaica in 1850, New York. Bredemeier, Harry C. and Jackson Toby 1965. ‘Ideals of beauty’, Roach and Eicher (eds.), 34–45. Bryan, Patrick 2002. The Jamaican People, 1880–1902: Race, Class and Social Control, Norman, OK. Bush, Barbara 1990. Slave Women in Caribbean Society, Kingston and Bloomington, IN. Carmichael, Mrs. 1833. Domestic Manners and Social Conditions of the White, Colored, and Negro Population of the West Indies. 2 vols. London. Curtin, Philip D. 1968. Two Jamaicas: The Role of Ideas in a Tropical Colony, 1830–1865, Cambridge, Mass.

98 99 100

Phillippo 1843, 148. Philippo 1843, 148. Philippo 1843, 148.

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Delisser, Herbert George 1900, ‘White man in the Tropics’, Century Review, February 1900, NLJ. Department of Consumer and Textiles. 1997. Fashioning the Future: Our Future from Our Past, published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name, Snowden Gallery, College of Human Ecology, The Ohio State University. Duperly, Adolphe 1844. Daguerrian Excursions in Jamaica, Kingston. Fanon, Frantz 1967. Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Charles Lam Markmann, New York. Foulks, Theodore 1833. Eighteen Months in Jamaica with Recollections of the Late Rebellion, London. French, Joan and Honor Ford-Smith 1986. Women, Work and Organization in Jamaica, 1900 –1944, Kingston. Gubar, Susan 1997. Race Changes: White Skin, Black Face in American Culture, Oxford. Hall, Douglas 1959. Free Jamaica 1838–1865: An Economic History, New Haven. —— 1989. In Miserable Slavery: Thomas Thistlewood in Jamaica, 1750–86, Kingston. Hall, Neville A. T. 1992. Slave Society in the Danish West: St. Thomas, St. John, and St. Croix, edited by B. W. Higman, Kingston. Hastings, E. A. 1900. A Glimpse of the Tropics, London. Hastings, S. U. and B. L. Macleavy 1979. Seed Time and Harvest: A brief history of the Moravian church in Jamaica, 1754–1979, Barbados. Herskovits, Melville J. 1958. The Myth of the Negro past, Boston. Higman, Barry 1995. Slave Populations of the British Caribbean, 1897–1834, Kingston. hooks, bell 1992. Black Looks: Race and Representation, Boston, MA. Katzin, Margaret 1960. ‘The business of higglering in Jamaica’, Social and Economic Studies 9, 297–331. Lang, Kurt and Gladys Lang 1965. ‘Fashion: Identification and differentiation in the mass society’, Roach and Eicher (eds.), 322–45. Lewis, Matthew Gregory 1834. Journal of a West Indian Proprietor, kept during a Residence in the Island of Jamaica, London. Livingstone, W. P. 1899. Black Jamaica, a Study in Evolution, London. Long, Edward 1774. The History of Jamaica or General Survey of the Ancient and Modern State of the Island: With Reflections on its Situation Settlements, Inhabitants, Climate, Products, Commerce, Laws and Government, 3 vols., London. Nettleford, Rex 1979. Caribbean Cultural Identity: The Case of Jamaica, Los Angeles. Norris, Katrin 1962. Jamaica: The Search for an Identity, London. Phillippo, James Murcel 1843. Jamaica: Its Past and Present State, London. Pullen-Burry, B. 1903. Jamaica as it is, 1903, London. Roach, Mary Ellen and Joanne B. Eicher 1979. ‘The language of personal adornment’, Justine Cordwell and Ronald A. Schwartz (eds.), The Fabrics of Culture: The Anthropology of Clothing and Adornment, Paris, 7–21. Roach-Higgins, Mary Ellen and Joanne Eicher 1995. ‘Dress and identity’, RoachHiggins, Johnson and Eicher (eds.), 7–18. Roach, Mary Ellen and Joanne B. Eicher (eds.) 1965. Dress, Adornment, and the Social Order, New York. Roach-Higgins, Mary Ellen, Kim K. P. Johnson and Joanne B. Eicher (eds.) 1995. Dress and Identity, New York. Robertson, Claire 1976. ‘Ga women and socioeconomic change in Accra, Ghana’, Nancy Hafkin and Edna Bay (eds.), Women in Africa, Stanford, 111–133. Robertson, Glory 1995. ‘Pictorial sources for nineteenth-century women’s history: dress as a mirror of attitudes to women’, Claire C. Robertson and Martin A. Klein (eds.), Engendering History: Caribbean Women in Historical Perspective, Kingston, 111–22. Senior, Bernard Martin 1835. Jamaica, as it was, as it is, and as it may be, London, rprnt. Westport, CT 1969.

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Stewart, J. 1817. View of the Past and Present State of the Island of Jamaica, Edinburgh. Thompson, Robert Farris 1983. Flash of the Spirit, New York. Underhill, Edward Bean 1861. The West Indies: Their Social and Religious Condition, London [facs. edition 1970]. Weibel, Kathryn 1977. Mirror Mirror: Images of Women Reflected in Popular Culture, New York. West, Cornel 1990. ‘The new cultural politics of difference’, Russell Ferguson, Martha Giver, Trinh T. Minh-ha and Cornel West (eds.), Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures, Cambridge, 19–39. Williams, Cynric R. 1826. Tour through the Island of Jamaica from the Western to the Eastern End, in the Year 1823, London. Williams, Joseph (SJ) 1925. Whisperings of the Caribbean: Reflections of a Missionary, New York.

CHAPTER TEN

AFTER SLAVERY IN FRENCH WEST AFRICA: THE PROBLEM OF THE INVISIBLE SLAVE Martin Klein When I first went out to West Africa 40 years ago, it was to write a thesis on the process of colonisation. I was interested in the period after the end of the Atlantic slave trade. Researching a period after the Atlantic slave trade had ended, I did not expect to find many slaves or an active slave trade, but slaves popped up everywhere. When wars were fought, slaves were taken and then sold. The slave trade was active all over. Correspondence from African rulers like Lat Dior, the Damel of Kajoor, often raised issues of slave control.1 It gradually became clear that the French army sometimes distributed slaves after a victory.2 It also became clear that the growth of commodity production for European markets increased the demand for slave labour within Africa.3 When the French finally moved against the continental slave trade, some of their African allies actually took advantage of their alliance with the French to engage in slave raiding and increase the number of their dependents, but many also used the ‘pax colonial’ to track down and redeem relatives in slavery elsewhere.4 And yet there were empty places in the record. Published accounts of Senegalese history tended to ignore questions of slavery. Archival 1 Kajoor straddled the areas where the cultivation of peanuts for French markets was expanding. Lat Dior was disturbed by both the autonomy of his privileged royal slaves and by the flight of slaves imported from the east to work the peanut fields. See Political Reports for 1870s, Archives de la République du Sénégal, 2 B 35 and his letters in 13 G 260. See also Klein 1998; Diouf 1990, 255–86. 2 The distribution of slaves was not as common in Senegal as in the Sudan, but for a case in which a soldier sold a ‘wife’ given to him after a military victory, see Klein 1968. 3 I extended this argument to all areas involved in commodity production in Klein 1971. 4 Klein 1968, 167–68. Questions of slavery became central concerns in African history only with the publication of two major collections during the 1970s: Meillassoux 1975; Miers and Kopytoff 1977.

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records suggested periods when slave questions were a major concern— but there were also long periods for which there was little record of slaving or slavery. Slavery questions were briefly important after the abolition of slavery in 1848, and then in the late 1870s, but in between there were long silences. Commercial reports from the French Sudan suggest that there was a massive movement of slaves into Senegal in the late 1880s, but Senegalese archives say little about this movement.5 Clearly, French authorities in Senegal did not want Paris to know how the rapidly increasing peanut exports were being produced. And oral history offered few solutions. If you asked an old man about the history of his kingdom, he generally told you about the founding hero, his heroism and his power. Only when you asked who came with the founder, were you told it was his slaves and members of the artisan castes, both of them essentially clients. And when you asked why a king or a Muslim military leader was making war in this or that place, you were sometimes told that it was a good place to take slaves. I spent years looking for the tracks left by slaves who were moved into Senegal during the 19th century, and for that matter, earlier groups, who were kept rather than being sold into the Atlantic slave trade. The tracks were there, but they were hard to find, and there were some groups that left no tracks at all.

Slavery in West Africa To understand the process of emancipation, we must first look at the nature of slavery in West Africa.6 Roughly speaking, there were three kinds of slave system. First, there were politically centralised societies with a market economy. Here slaves were usually a majority of the population. I have argued elsewhere that these societies met Moses Finley’s definition of a slave society.7 Slaves did almost all of

5 For many years, the military rulers of the Sudan taxed the slave trade. Few of their commercial reports have been preserved, but for one 12 months period in 1888–1889, there are nine reports, which averaged over 1,000 slaves a month passing from the Sudan into Senegal. See commercial reports, Archives Nationales du Mali, 1 Q 70. On efforts to keep this movement quiet, see Klein 1998, 65–66. 6 The categorisation here is slightly different from that used in Klein 1998, ch. 1 and in Klein and Lovejoy 1979. 7 Klein 1999.

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the productive labour. Early French colonial accounts describe masters in such societies sitting under a tree and reading the Koran while their slaves laboured in the fields. The concentration was especially high around commercial cities, which were generally surrounded by a closely cropped belt of 20 to 50 kilometres worked exclusively by slaves. Manumission was rare in such societies. There was generally a progression of forms of service, from a gang labour situation to one in which second or third generation slaves worked as sharecroppers.8 The vast majority of slaves in these high-slave density societies were agricultural labourers. There were also some states less involved in production for market where slave numbers were lower, where integration was more likely and where masters worked alongside their slaves. By contrast, there were largely decentralised societies where slavery was rare or totally absent.9 Captives taken in fights with neighbours were often ransomed, though women could also be absorbed as wives. Such societies often resisted the Atlantic slave trade very effectively, but usually ended up becoming slavers in order to acquire weapons and better defend themselves. Still, they often depended on egalitarian institutions like age sets. While some chiefs in these decentralised societies kept slaves, most slaves were speedily absorbed and did not become a hereditary and distinctive group. They could not become chiefs or family heads, but they usually did the same kind of work that free persons did. Finally, the slave trade was staffed by slaves. In coastal towns like St. Louis, Cape Coast, Whydah and Lagos, the population was overwhelmingly slave.10 This was largely because of the problem of recruiting people for new communities and new roles in areas where there was no labour market. Such slaves were relatively well off. All artisans were slaves. Slaves manned the boats that worked the coast or went up the rivers and creeks. Similarly, the politically and economically powerful throughout West Africa were generally surrounded by relatively privileged slaves. Most of the great slaving kingdoms depended on slave warriors. Slaves held numerous high offices and proliferated in court positions close to the ruler.11 8 9 10 11

This progression is best described in Meillassoux 1986. Hawthorne 2001; Hubbell 2001, Klein 2001; Baum 1999. Searing 1993; Law and Stickrodt 1999. Roberts 1987, ch. 2; Bazin 1975.

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There were, of course, regional variations. Thus, the Akan in what is now Ghana, though highly centralised, had a tradition that each of the first three generations in slavery was more highly integrated, and after the third generation, slave origins were forgotten.12 There is an Akan proverb that one never asks a person his origins. In fact, origins were not completely forgotten. There are frequent reports, for example, from Akan areas of chiefship succession disputes, in which one candidate is able to convince the electors that his rival was of servile origin. Even where not openly stated, memories of slave origins persist. Second, it is important that we recognise the force of the international slave trade, both Atlantic and Saharan, in structuring this system. Slavery existed before the arrival of Portuguese navigators, as it existed in almost all complex societies, but the Portuguese were only able to buy about a thousand slaves a year in the late 15th century. It is doubtful whether they could have bought very much more than that. By the late 18th century, exports reached over 80,000 a year.13 To produce that number, slave trade networks reached far into the interior, militaristic states efficient in slave production emerged, and even decentralised societies often became efficient slave raiders. Slave production and slave trading became central facts of African economic life. Parallel to the dramatic increase in exports was the increased use of slaves within Africa. I have argued elsewhere that even during the peak years of the slave trade as many slaves were kept within Africa as were sold.14 The majority of the women and almost all of the young children were kept. The slave trade was how slave societies reproduced themselves. Most of the slave raiders were themselves slaves. Slave labour fed the courts, slaves were concubines of those who could afford them, and slaves were used increasingly in commodity production for markets within Africa and then for export markets. The demand for slaves was so great that when the Atlantic slave trade came to an end, there was a brief decline in prices, which soon began rising again.15 Slaves were rapidly put to work produc12

Rattray 1969. In the period 1780–1789 there were 79.386 Africans who were transported across the Atlantic; in the period 1790–1799 this was only slightly lower: 75.924; cf. Klein 1999, 208. 14 Klein 1992; Klein forthcoming. 15 On slave prices, see Lovejoy and Richardson 1995. 13

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ing commodities, primarily palm oil and peanuts, for export to Europe or for exchange with desert nomads. Given conditions of insecurity, free labour migration did not become a serious option to meeting labour demands until the beginnings of colonisation.

Emancipation There was always some manumission, particularly in the coastal slavetrading towns. The number of Europeans resident along the coast was always small, largely because of malaria and other tropical diseases. Europeans along the coast forged liaisons with African women, sometimes the daughters of friendly chiefs, but often slaves—these women generally lasted longer than their husbands. They or their sons often became powerful figures—in Senegal, along the upper Guinea and Gold Coasts. In Senegal, the signares, themselves the product of mariage à la mode du pays, gave rise to a commercial elite.16 Elsewhere, slaves who demonstrated an aptitude for both commerce and war also often became influential. Jaja of Opobu, a former slave, became first a trader and then head of a small, but powerful state in the Niger delta during the 1870s and 1880s.17 It is difficult to know exactly how many early elite families were of slave origins, but they were undoubtedly important in all of the new towns—and most preferred not to remember their origins. When slavery was abolished—1833 for the British and 1848 for the French—the areas controlled by Europeans were infinitesimal.18 Within them, emancipation generally went smoothly. Many of the slaves were already working for wages. Many also remained dependent on their former owners. The nascent colonial regimes were generally anxious to limit the impact of emancipation on relations with neighbouring states in the interest of trade, and when they started to expand, often used protectorates to insulate the colonies from metropolitan law on slavery. The only colony in West Africa

16

On the signares, see Searing 1993; Brooks 1976; on the ‘mammies’ of the upper Guinea Coast, see Brooks 1983; Mouser 1983. 17 Dike 1956. 18 Guèye 1966; Pasquier 1967. Even before 1833, when Britain abolished slavery, it was not recognised in Freetown. Bathurst was the only other place on the West African coast under formal British rule.

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to produce an emancipation statute during the 19th century was the Gold Coast in 1874, and there, the statute was only effective along the coast.19 With beginnings of the conquest, the involvement of the colonial state became more intense. Colonial armies were made up largely of slaves or of men freed on condition of military service. Some, particularly the French, distributed slave women and children after every victory. While civilian administrators usually had female companions, young French officers sometimes maintained small harems, enjoying their liberation from the restraints of Catholic morality. Colonial regimes found themselves caught in a kind of scissors crisis. They were dependent on appropriations from parliaments back home, which could be threatened if slavery questions produced a scandal. Abolitionist groups were influential in both Britain and France. At the same time, colonial regimes were dependent on slaveowning allies and intermediaries, and slaves produced many of the commodities they were exporting from Africa.20 This was a major reason for periods of silence in the archives during the last third of the 19th century. Once the conquest was complete, this situation changed rapidly. All colonial regimes moved rapidly to stop slaving and slave-trading and were willing to brag about it. Some clandestine trading continued to take place. Surprisingly, it was the French who moved most resolutely. This was largely due to two men, William Ponty and Ernest Roume. In 1898, France’s two major enemies in the Sudan, Samori Ture and Ba Bemba of Sikasso, were defeated. A year later, Ponty became the first civilian to command in the Sudan (then called HautSenegal-Niger). In 1902, Roume became Governor-General. He was succeeded in 1908 by Ponty. The mission of these two civilians was to create an efficient colonial state. This involved establishing law, setting up bureaucratic procedures, creating security, and building the framework for economic growth.21 This is the one period when there is a lot of information on slavery, particularly for the French. In the Sudan, Ponty’s approach was to deny slave masters the enforcement powers of the state, in the process denying slavery any legitimacy and allowing slaves who wished to leave the right to do 19

Opare-Akurang 1999. See also MacSheffrey 1983; Dumett and Johnson 1988. This argument is fully made in Klein 1998. See for comparison Lovejoy and Hogendorn 1993 and various studies in Miers and Roberts 1988. 21 Conklin 1997, chs. 2–4. 20

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so. Nevertheless, he was cautious about emancipation and many local administrators were absolutely opposed. In governing their districts, they depended on indigenous elites who were all slave-holders. Their clerks and guards also accumulated slaves. French administrators also assimilated many of the attitudes of their collaborators. As in many emancipation situations, they were contemptuous of slaves. They were convinced that slaves were lazy and had lost all ability to make decisions for themselves, that without coercion, they would not produce. They feared both disorder and famine. They expected that freed slaves would stop working, that men would turn to robbery and women to prostitution. In spite of the hostility of local administrators, small numbers of slaves began heading home or to the cities and railroad camps from about 1896.22 This same fear in Nigeria led Frederick Lugard to limit slave flight and force slaves to purchase their freedom through a process called murgu.23 In 1903, Roume’s government produced a new law code. The law code was distributed to local administrators with a covering letter that told them in language that echoed Ponty’s earlier instructions in the Sudan that they could not receive claims to slaves from their masters. They were to withdraw all state support from slave masters. It is not clear that these instructions had any immediate effect, but the policy was effective in the long-run. Also in 1903, an appeals court held that the law the colonial administration could use to prosecute slave traders only applied to the maritime trade. Roume was forced to move. In 1905, his administration produced a comprehensive anti-slavery ordnance. This law is often interpreted as abolishing slavery, but in effect, it only abolished transactions in persons: sale, exchange, gift, or bequeathal.24 Increasingly, however, slaves took matters into their own hands. The crisis erupted at Banamba, the most important market town in the Western Sudan.25 Banamba was founded only in the 1840s, but it was in the late 19th century a supplier of horses for African military leaders, a supplier of slaves for the peanut fields of Senegal and for the prosperous desert-side cities. It also was surrounded by

22 23 24 25

This is all detailed in Klein 1998, chs. 6 and 7. Lovejoy and Hogendorn 1993, chs. 3 and 4. Klein 1998, ch. 8. Roberts and Klein 1980. See also McDougall 1990.

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a densely populated belt of slave-worked farms, most of them inhabited largely by slaves who remembered earlier homes. In 1905, as the fields were being prepared, large numbers prepared to leave their masters. They were persuaded to stay, but the following year, they prepared to leave again. This time, Ponty told the local administrator to let them go, but to insist that they paid their taxes and sought passes indicating where they were going. In May and June, about 3,000 left. Most had few resources. Masters tried to take away both their children and what few resources they had. And yet, they kept coming. A contemporary account spoke of “the emaciation and misery of these unfortunates deprived for many days of sufficient nourishment, despoiled of their modest savings by shameless masters.”26 Many of them stopped in Bamako, where the demand for labour was easily met that year, but most found their way back to earlier homes. The long lines of slaves heading home had a revolutionary effect. Within a year or two, almost every large slave-holding community in the Sudan was affected by large collective migrations, and the exodus was affecting the highlands of Guinea’s Futa Jallon and most coastal areas. Once they got home, many of the returned slaves faced years of hardship. The colonial administration gave them little help, though some returning slaves used liberty villages as resting places, or simply to house women and children while men returned home first.27 The missions could give little assistance because the churchstate split in France left them with few resources. The slaves really did it by themselves. In 1910, Ponty claimed that about 500,000 slaves had left Haut-Senegal-Niger.28 This may be high, but I would estimate that over a million went home in French West Africa as a whole. By contrast, about 200,000 went home in northern Nigeria before Lugard was able to slow up the flow there.

26

Political report, Bamako, May 1906, Archives Nationales du Mali. Bouche 1968. Bouche does not extensively discuss the use of liberty villages by runaway slaves. 28 Gov. Gen. W. Ponty to Consul General, Great Britain, Dakar, 22 Feb. 1911, Archives of the Republic of Senegal, K 26. On Dahomey, see Manning 1982, 188–93. 27

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Patterns of Emancipation The vast majority of slaves went home. There, they suffered from lack of tools, weapons and seed. Areas ravaged by the slave trade had often reverted to bush. Wild animals posed a danger. Needy as they were, they were expected to pay taxes. The freed slaves thus speedily became a reservoir of labour. Up to 1908, French commercial houses in Guinea depended on administrative assistance to find the porters they needed to carry rubber to market. From 1908, every dry season, there were plenty of young men willing to work as porters at very low wages. Others headed down to the peanut fields of Senegal or to the gold workings of upper Guinea. Ponty realised very quickly that he had created the free labour force the colonies needed and he pointed this out in letter after letter to local administrators. He also realised that returnees were peaceful and determined to work for themselves. He seems to have sent trusted administrators to potential trouble spots. Nevertheless, French encouragement of the slaves consisted only of allowing them to leave. They gave very little assistance and were generally cautious about undercutting the authority of collaborating elites. They also paid little attention to the former slaves once they left their masters. My research on the process of reconstruction depended heavily on oral data and inference from other known data.29 There was a second, but smaller exodus, primarily in Guinea and eastern Senegal, after World War I, when the veterans returned from the battlefields of Europe.30 The African army that fought for the French was about 3/4 slaves.31 Few of them were willing to accept any further servitude, and many led their families out of servitude to new homes, or refused to accept any further obligations to their masters. After 1920, the question of slavery virtually disappears from the archives. The war veterans often took advantages of perquisites allotted to them and took jobs in the administrative centres. They

29 My interviews on reconstruction were done in two areas, the southern Saloum region of Senegal, which was an area of expanding peanut production, and Wasulu in southern Mali, which had been depopulated by raiders of the formidable Mande military leader, Samori. For other perspectives, see Clark 1994; Manchuelle 1997, 130–45; Baldus 1977; Roberts 1988. 30 Clark 1994; Osborn 2000, ch. 4. 31 Echenberg 1991, ch. 2.

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had for a moment provided leadership and once they were gone, isolated hamlets of former slaves no longer attracted much attention.32 Abolition of slavery took place in Sierra Leone in 1928 and in Nigeria in 1936 largely because of pressures from the League of Nations and the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society.33 None of these problems seem to have taken place in decentralised societies. These societies preserve memories of slaving and the socially disruptive effects of the slave trade, but slavery itself seems to have had little effect on social relations in such areas. There are also areas like Wasulu, so completely depopulated by the Mande war leader, Samory, that it was recreated by returned slaves. There, one of my informants said simply that “We are all here because our parents returned from slavery.” Clearly, slave origins have no meaning in an area where almost everyone is a descendant of slaves. Slave status and slave origins, however, have great meaning in all of the more political centralised areas. During the period of the conquest, the slaves left visible tracks, most notably in archives of missionary groups, who got most of their early converts from former slaves. There are silences, for example, on the use of slave labour in the growth of peanut production during the 1880s. Colonial governors were not eager to publicise the importance of slavery. Then, during the exodus, the problem was centre stage, sometimes absorbing almost as much of the administrator’s time as tax collection. Once the exodus was over, the tracks become almost invisible except for the brief period after World War I when the veterans returned. Slave-raiding had ended. No more caravans of children or women wended their way across the dry grasslands of the Sudan. Though the masters often maintained some form of hegemony, that hegemony seemed to administrators like social relations they found acceptable in Europe. They did not want to get involved with what they saw as consensual relationships. Similarly, the missionaries saw their communities decimated during the exodus. The ability of missions to help needy former slaves were much reduced by the disestablishment of the Catholic Church in France.34 At the same time, people brought north from the south-

32 33 34

Echenberg 1991, ch. 5. Lovejoy and Hogendorn 1993, ch. 9; Grace 1975, ch. 6. de Benoist 1987, chs. 3 and 4.

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ern savannah took advantage of increased security to go home. Though the Church sought to follow them there, the issue of slavery was no longer a pressing concern in a society where runaway slaves were no longer common.

Renegotiation The exodus, massive as it was, only involved about a third of those in slavery. Among the others, there was a gradual erosion of the slave population. I have already mentioned the impact of the returned war veterans. Slaves also migrated. In the Futa Jallon, people of slave descent are today less than half what they were at the beginning of colonial rule. If they moved far enough, they could create a new identity and be free of slave origins. But many stayed. For them, there was a complex process of renegotiation. Slaves were always divided between those acquired and those ‘born in the house’. Slaves born in the house were born in the community, spoke its language, had no distinctive facial marks, and were often initiated with their free age-mates. Most important, they were not supposed to be sold and they were usually allowed to farm for themselves. In essence, after the exodus, all slaves received the status of those ‘born in the house’. Slaves also had the right to leave, and masters knew it. Though they tried in early years to block such movements, they could not push too hard because the colonial state would not support them. The result was a rapid reduction in coercion and economic exploitation. Slaves were generally concerned with two things. They wanted to work for themselves. This they managed to do, though subject in most cases to continued payment of certain dues. They also wanted to control their own marital lives, to choose their spouses, to operate like families. This too they seem to have achieved early. Their behaviour resembled in many ways that of American and West Indian slaves described by Eric Foner.35 There were to be sure some very conservative areas where control remained real. This was most true in desert regions, particularly in Mauritania and Niger. Within the savannah regions of French West Africa, the most important variable was possession of land. In

35

Foner 1983.

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Macina, the fertile inner delta of the Niger, even Ponty was reluctant to let slaves leave. Yields on the flood plain of Macina were twice as high as on adjacent rain-fed areas. The slaves, called rimaibe, did all of the farming and were not eager to leave. The French feared that they would leave. With their agricultural surplus essential to feed Bamako, the capital of the colony of the Sudan, the French were afraid they would leave. They were not reluctant to sanction exploitation, only slavery. There was thus a difficult process of negotiation between 1908 and 1914 in which the French tried to persuade the Fulbe masters of Macina that with ownership of the land, they could contract with the rimaibe to work their land. The Fulbe insisted that they owned the land and the rimaibe. The exact process is unclear because the archives became silent after 1914, but the Fulbe eventually accepted that control over land gave them control over those who worked it.36 Control over land was important in other areas. The Futa Jallon was not fertile, but it had a high population density because of its role during the 19th century. The Fulbe elite controlled their slaves because the former slaves depended on land the elite owned. Similarly, the Soninke worked the floodplains in otherwise arid areas. There was lots of land, but the Soninke nobility controlled the arable areas.37 In other areas, former slaves took different options. Thus, in the heart of the peanut basin of Senegal, there was no free land, but many slaves joined Muslim religious fraternities, in particular, the Mourides who relocated them to the so-called Terres Neuves, an agricultural frontier east of the peanut basin. Further south, there was free land available until the 1970s. Some slaves just moved out to the edge of their village or to nearby villages, where they could claim land.38 Though still dependent for taxation and administration on an administratively recognised village, they achieved a limited autonomy. Yet other groups picked up and migrated not just to remembered home areas, but also to areas where they could get new

36 The best description of the resulting exploitation is an unpublished thesis, Cissé 1978. See also Gallais 1967. 37 Clark 1994. See also Pollet and Winter 1971. 38 On the agricultural geography of Senegal, see Pelissier 1966. On the way the geography shaped patterns of emancipation, see Klein 1998, ch. 12.

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or better lands. Richard Roberts describes desert-side slaves in Mali moving further south into better watered lands.39 Their autonomy depended on their possession of lands and their prosperity. Some slaves did reasonably well in the process. Slaves today are not necessarily the poorest members of communities. Savannah society is marked by status groups and questions of honour. I will return to the question of honour, but for the moment, what is important is that for nobles, certain types of labour are considered dishonourable. The nobility among the Tukolor of the Senegal River provided most of the waiters and newspaper vendors in Dakar restaurants. They could do this because it was away from home. People of slave descent were less likely to migrate because they were more willing to do whatever kind of work brought in an income at home.40 In the area of Senegal where I interviewed, people of slave descent were found among the most progressive and most productive farmers. Though they could not hold traditional offices, they could and did serve as officials of the cooperative and the ruling party. In one very eloquent interview in a village within sight of the Trans-Gambian Highway, an old man, when he realised what I was trying to understand said “Yes we are slaves, but let me tell you something. I have only one master, and that is Senghor (President)” and then pointing to the road, then lined with trucks carrying peanuts to market, “You see those trucks. Most of them are owned by slaves.”

Heritage Slaves are rarely physically distinct, though some of the Fulbe nobility are light-skinned. Many freeborn persons claim that they can recognise a slave. If so, it is only in the way the slave sits and his or her bearing—and that measure of distinctiveness is gradually disappearing with education and migration.41 What then remains of slavery? The economic content is limited, but real. In Senegal, I was

39

Roberts 1988. Diop 1965. 41 On the way people of slave descent sit in the presence of nobles, see planche 7 in Pollet and Winter 1971. 40

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told that slaves often paid assaka to their masters. Supposedly a tithe, the assaka seems in most cases to be a fraction of that, but it still represents an acknowledgment of a slave-master relationship. In addition, people of slave descent generally cooked for weddings or naming ceremonies and often can be called on to do repair work on the master’s compound. More important are the status questions. There is a strong taboo against a freeborn person, particularly a woman, marrying either slave or artisan. A slave cannot be an imam, and in the Futa Jallon, is often not allowed to pray with the freeborn. Even during the regime of Sekou Touré, it was difficult for slaves to be accepted inside the mosque.42 A slave seeking to go to Mecca often has to buy his freedom under traditional law. Shortly after independence, Touré proclaimed the definitive suppression of slavery and banned all references to a person’s slave status. The rimaibe were given land, but they are often referred to as “Fulbe of 28 September” (the date of independence), and many continue to give gifts to their former masters. Marriage between male slaves and noble females is very rare. In spite of the hostility of the regime toward Fulbe elites, who had supported the opposition, members of those elites eventually gained control of local branches of the ruling party. Slaves are expected to be deferential, though some refuse to defer. One incident made clear to me the power of these traditions. One of my most interesting interviews in Senegal was with a man who claimed to be 102 years old. In the 1930s, he had moved into a deserted hamlet, several kilometres outside an important village. As he cleared land, he gradually moved his family out to the hamlet. When I interviewed him, he was the elder of a small, fairly prosperous community of about 50 persons. When a bit younger, he had sold seven cows to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. To do so, he had to pay 18,000 CFA francs—about $70—to his master for the liberty he was already exercising. When I interviewed his master, the case came up. The master was angry because the man was not properly deferential. He did not ask for a price to be set. He came in, slapped 18,000 francs on the table and announced that he was going to Mecca. What struck me was both that this proud man felt he had to pay the 18,000 francs and that his master could not accept the absence of deference. Clearly, this man’s prosperity meant that he

42

Botte 1994.

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did not have to be deferential. This came up in other interviews. Masters and members of their family often told me that they paid more to their slaves than they got from them. Slaves have a right to beg and often take advantage of it. In one case, a friend told me that his father had a slave, an old man, who appeared once or twice a year to ask for help. I asked if the man had a son. Yes he did. The son was a school-teacher. Well then, I asked did you ever see the son. No, I was told in a tone of voice that suggested that was a silly question. Why then do slaves remain and why do they continue to accept obligations? I at first thought that coercion was a factor. It certainly was early on, and probably remained important in Macina and Futa Jallon, but coercion by itself could drive the freed slaves to leave. I then looked at the material dimension. I tend to be a materialist. Clearly, slaves and other dependents can count on help from nobles. Peasant life is very insecure. The only really secure persons either hold offices, village chiefs or imams, or have significant outside incomes—taxis, shops or money-lending operations—all modern activities that do not depend on servile followers. People invest in social relationships. Both inherited and achieved social relationships are a source of security because they create networks that can provide assistance.

A question of honour In a certain sense, slave status after emancipation was different from slave status before. After the exodus, there were few slaves left who had been captured during their lifetime. Most were born to their inferior status. They were part of a network of relationships, tied both to their own kin and those of their masters. They were raised to believe in their own inferiority. Whether they successfully internalised that inferiority or not, they participated in a discourse that stressed their inferiority, a discourse that may have developed considerably during the 20th century.43 That discourse stresses religion. A slave cannot be an imam, cannot make the pilgrimage to Mecca,

43 My thinking about honor was very much shaped by the unpublished thesis of Babacar Ly 1966. A summary was published as Ly 1967.

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and in some cases, cannot wear a white boubou or sit in the front of the mosque. Slaves often sought legitimacy by building their own separate mosques and by becoming stricter Muslims. That discourse stresses honour. The noble or freeborn majority are honourable. Honour means having a past. The freeborn have genealogies that tie them to a distant past and to great events. Slaves have thin genealogies: they can rarely go beyond grand-parents and often at best tie themselves to societies that are alien and often looked down upon. Becoming honourable for a slave involves moving from a place where his lack of a past is known and then inventing a past of his or her own. Honour means being brave and generous. Physical courage is not always a possibility today, but generosity is important. For the person of slave descent, particularly the poor one, begging is often important to survival, but begging confirms his lack of honour and is a sign of his inferiority. Begging is linked to a discourse in which the former slaves continue to speak to their masters as children to a father, and conversely are addressed as children or servants. The descendants of masters often claim that they give more to their former slaves than they receive from them. If this is so, it is because that confirms their honour. There is also a sexual subtext, which is particularly important in Muslim societies. Slave women have always been available to their masters. Their bodies are owned and could be used in any way the master wished—though it was not always wise for the master to exercise his rights. There was a tradition in many West African societies of slave women doing lascivious dances. These dances were forbidden by some Muslim rulers in the 19th century and disappeared early in the 20th century, but people of slave descent have a license to be less modest than the freeborn. Thus, chiefs often have a slave spokesman because it is immodest for a noble to shout or use a bull horn. Slaves can be cruder, something the freeborn often enjoy. Paul Riesman talks of Fulbe masters visiting their slave neighbours to enjoy this crudity and openness.44 But dancing remains an important symbol. Traditional dances are no more lascivious than dances done in discos all over the world, probably less so, but they do involve a rhythmic movement of body, are in many societies done only by girls, and are regarded by stricter Muslims as immodest display. As

44

Riesman 1992.

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Islamic commitment deepens, some villages have totally banned traditional dances. Others allow only slaves and members of the artisan castes to dance. Others will come and watch, will enjoy the music and dance, but not dance themselves. The young woman who dances in such a situation is confirming her lack of honour. In the egalitarian United States, people who have achieved wealth or education are often proud of their slave or immigrant origins. We are proud of the hard-working ancestors who created the basis of our well-being. We visit the areas our families came from or the regions where our forbears were slaves. The memory is a source of status because for the successful person, it tells us how far we have come. In much of Africa, the opposite is true. Where honour is important, so are origins. In earlier times, kinship terminology was used in slave-master relationships. The slave addressed his master as a son or daughter would address a father. Today, in many areas it is impolite to confront a person of slave origins with his origins. In much of Senegal and Mali, you can ask the chief of any important village “where the slaves live” and he will name off the villages founded by freed slaves, but when I interviewed in such villages, I often got a clearly fictional village history, which attributed a distant past to the village. In one case, when a young noble attending the interview bluntly asked the informant who his master was, the informant clammed up. He was polite, but his answers to questions were short and not helpful. In another case, a bright Peace Corps volunteer, who had lived in a village for about 18 months, was oblivious to the fact that one ward was made up of people of slave descent. It was not visible, and yet many of those people probably affirmed their inferior status regularly in subtle daily interactions. Slave origins in this village had little economic content—slaves are often as well off as nobles—but slave origins are important in determining social status.

Conclusion When faced with slavery in its most naked form, slaves often show courage and dedication in fleeing or resisting slavery. It is, however, the newly enslaved who are most likely to flee. It is also worth noting that today movements of slaves and freed persons have developed in West Africa only in desert and semi-desert areas of Mauritania

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and Niger, where very real forms of servitude persist. These are also areas where there is leadership from literate freed persons (bella and harratin).45 There are no such movements in Senegal, Guinea, the Ivory Coast, where former slaves preferred more silent forms of struggle. In part, it is that most are free in any way meaningful to the law. In part, it is that the most independent have left, and in part that those former slaves who remain benefit from their dependence. Deep down, too, many probably accept the hegemonic ideology of the masters, perhaps because it is necessary for those who remain. For those who remained in the communities where they had been slaves, there was a struggle for the right to work for themselves, which in densely populated areas meant paying rent, and a struggle for the right to control their family. If remaining where they were gave security, the price they paid was continued existence within a hegemonic discourse based on their social inferiority. Legal emancipation in a slave society is often only the first stage in a larger process. The second liberation is a struggle for slaves to free themselves from the hegemonic ideology of their former masters. This second liberation is difficult to research, particularly with an approach that seeks to understand broad currents of movement over huge areas.46 If I cannot interrogate a former slave or the descendant of a slave about his or her attitudes toward self and domination, it is difficult to plumb. We can, however, treat the silences of many West African societies and the effort of former slaves and slave descendants as evidence that status remains an important variable even after the formal structures of economic exploitation have crumbled. It is perhaps interesting that the most visible battleground is the mosque. Slaves seek equality, respectability, perhaps honour in accepting a religion, which is their masters’, but which also asserts

45 On slavery, see Cheikh 1993; McDougall 1988; Ruf 1999. On contemporary movements of protest, see Alou 2000; Messaoud 2000. Both of these articles are from a special issue edited by Roger Botte entitled L’Ombre portée de l’esclavage: Avatars contemporains de l’oppression sociale, which contains a number of other articles dealing with the heritage of slavery. 46 As I was editing this, an economic anthropologist told me a story that confirmed this analysis. A rich member of the family with which she lodged took a concubine. He already had the four authorised wives. Knowing that concubines were traditionally slaves, she asked if this were true and was told that it was not. Later, as she came to know and be known by the family, family members opening conceded that the woman was of slave origin.

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their equality before God. They can have that as long as they pray by themselves, but the minute they seek religious office, a seat in the front of the mosque or the right to make the pilgrimage to Mecca, they are limited by their status. Slavery is a relationship which degrades and denies the worth of the slave, who is, in Patterson’s words, ‘socially dead’. It works because at some level, the slave accepts it and works within it. But that denial of the slave’s worth cuts so deep that a second liberation, a liberation of the slave’s mind, is necessary. It is a long and hard struggle because the former masters still maintain a cultural hegemony. There are also degrees of liberation. I have met slaves who through Islam and through hard and intelligent labour achieved a great deal. I have met very few educated persons who openly discussed slave origins. For the slave who fled the community in which he was servile, completion of liberation could take place only in the next generation, among the children who did not know their parents’ origin. In other words, silence hides the reality of the former slave’s status while he remains where his parents were slaves, but once the former slave leaves the area where he or she is known, silence frees the former slave to create a new history.

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Clark, Andrew 1994. ‘Slavery and its demise in the Upper Senegal Valley, 1890–1920’, Slavery and Abolition 15, 51–71. Conklin, Alice 1997. A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895–1930, Stanford. Dike, K. O. 1956. Trade and Politics in the Niger Delta, 1830–1885: An Introduction to the Economic and Social History of Nigeria, Oxford. Diouf, Mamadou 1990. Le Kajoor au XIX e siècle, Paris. Diop, Abdoulaye Bara 1965. Société toucouleur et migration, Dakar. Dumett, Raymond and Marion Johnson 1988. ‘Britain and the suppression of slavery in the Gold Coast Colony, Ashanti and the Northern Territories’, Miers and Roberts, 71–116. Echenberg, Myron 1991. Colonial Conscripts: The Tirailleurs Sénégalais in French West Africa, 1857–1960, Portsmouth, NH. Foner, Eric 1983. Nothing but Freedom: Emancipation and its Legacy, Baton Rouge. Gallais, Jean 1967. Le delta Intérieur du Niger. Étude de géographie régionale, Dakar. Grace, John 1975. Domestic Slavery in West Africa with Particular Reference to the Sierra Leone Protectorate, 1896–1927, New York. Guèye, Mbaye 1966. ‘La fin de l’esclavage à St. Louis et à Gorée’, Bulletin de l’Institut Fondamentale d’Afrique Noire, 27, 637–67. Hawthorne, Walter 2001. ‘Nourishing a stateless society during the slave trade: the rise of Balanta Paddy-Rice production in Guinea-Bissau’, Journal of African History 42, 1–24. Hubbell, Andrew 2001. ‘A view of the slave trade from the margin: Souroudougou in the late nineteenth-century slave trade of the Niger Bend’, Journal of African History 42, 25–48. Klein, Herbert 1999. The Atlantic Slave Trade, Cambridge. Klein, Martin A. 1968. Islam and Imperialism in Senegal: Sine-Saloum 1847–1914, Stanford. —— 1971. ‘Slavery, the slave trade and legitimate commerce in late nineteenthcentury Africa,’ Etudes d’histoire africaine 2, 5–28. —— 1992. ‘The Impact of the Atlantic slave trade on the societies of the Western Sudan’, Joseph Inikori and Stanley Engerman (eds.), The Atlantic Slave Trade: Effects on Economies, Societies and Peoples in Africa, the Americas and Europe, Durham, 25–47. —— 1998. Slavery and Colonial Rule in French West Africa, Cambridge. —— 1999. ‘Were there slave societies in Africa?’, Paper presented at conference in honor of Moses Finley, Darwin College, Cambridge University, July 1999. —— 2001. ‘The slave trade and decentralized societies’, Journal of African History 42, 49–66. —— forthcoming. ‘The impact of the slave trade on West Africa’, paper presented to Conference on formes, changements et permanences des rapports de dépendance servile, Paris, 20–22 June 1996. —— and Paul Lovejoy 1979, ‘Slavery in West Africa’, Henry A. Gemery and Jan S. Hogendorn (eds.), The Uncommon Market: Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic Slave Trade, New York, 181–212. Law, Robin and Silke Stickrodt (eds.) 1999. Ports of the Slave Trade (Bights of Benin and Beafra). Occasional Paper # 6, Stirlings. Lovejoy, Paul and Jan Hogendorn 1993. Slow Death for Slavery: The Course of Abolition in Northern Nigeria, 1897–1936, Cambridge. —— and David Richardson 1995. ‘The initial “crisis of adaptation”: the impact of British abolition on the Atlantic slave trade in West Africa, 1808–1820’, in Robin Law (ed.), From Slave Trade to “Legitimate” Commerce, Cambridge, 32–56. Ly, Babacar 1966. L’honneur et les valeurs morales dans les sociétés ouolof et toucouleur du Sénégal, unpublished thèse du 3e cycle, Université de Paris. —— 1967. ‘L’honneur et les valeurs morales dans les sociétés ouolof et toucouleur du Sénégal’, Presence africaine 67, 32–67.

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MacSheffrey, Gerald 1983. ‘Slavery, indentured servitude, legitimate trade and the impact of abolition in the Gold Coast, 1874–1901’, Journal of African History, 24, 39–68. Manchuelle, François 1997. Willing Migrants: Soninke Labor Diasporas, 1848–1960, Athens, OH. Manning, Patrick 1982. Slavery, Colonialism and Economic Growth in Dahomey, 1640–1960, Cambridge. McDougall, E. Ann 1988. ‘A topsy-turvy world: slaves and freed slaves in Mauritanian Adrar’, Miers and Roberts, 362–88. —— 1990. ‘Banamba and the salt trade of the Western Sudan’, in David Henige (ed.), West African Economic and Social History: Studies in Memory of Marion Johnson, Madison, 151–70. Meillassoux, Claude 1986. Anthropologie de l’esclavage: le ventre de fer et d’argent, Paris. —— (ed.) 1975. L’esclavage en Afrique précoloniale, Paris. Messaoud, Babacar 2000. ‘L’esclavage en Mauritanie: de l’idéologie du silence à la mise en question’, Journal des africanistes 70, 291–338. Miers, Suzanne and Igor Kopytoff (eds.) 1977. Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives, Madison. —— and Richard Roberts (eds.) 1988. The End of Slavery in Africa, Madison. Mouser, Bruce 1983. ‘Women slavers of Guinea-Conakry’, Robertson and Klein, 320–339. Opare-Akurang, Kwabena 1999. ‘The administration of the abolition laws, African responses, and post-proclamation slavery in the Gold Coast, 1874–1940’, Suzanne Miers and Martin Klein (eds.), Slavery in Colonial Africa, London, 149–166. Osborn, Emily 2000. Power, Authority and Gender in Kankan-Baté, unpublished PhD thesis, Stanford University. Pasquier, Roger 1967. ‘A propos de l’émancipation des esclaves au Sénégal en 1848’, Revue française de l’histoire d’outre-mer, 54, 188–208. Pelissier, Paul 1966. Les paysans du Sénégal: les civilisations agraires du Cayor à la Casamance, St. Yrieix. Pollet, Eric and Grace Winter 1971. La société Soninke (Dyahunu, Mali), Brussels. Rattray, Robert S. 1969. Ashanti Law and Constitution, Oxford; first published 1929. Riesman, Paul 1992. First Find Your Child a Good Mother. The Construction of Self in Two African Communities, New Brunswick, NJ. Roberts, Richard 1987. Warriors, Merchants, and Slaves: The State and Economy in the Middle Niger Valley, 1700–1914, Stanford. —— 1988. ‘The ending of slavery in the French Soudan, 1905–1914’, in Miers and Roberts, 282–307. —— and Martin Klein 1980. ‘The Banamba slave exodus of 1905 and the decline of slavery in the Western Sudan’, Journal of African History 21, 375–94. Robertson, Claire and Martin A. Klein (eds.) 1983. Women and Slavery in Africa, Madison. Ruf, Urs Peter 1999. Ending Slavery: Hierarchy, Dependency and Gender in Central Mauritania, Bielefeld. Searing, James 1993. West African Slavery and Atlantic Commerce: The Senegal River Valley, Cambridge.

INDEX

Abolitionism 21, 28, 191, 199, 203, 208, 220, 261, 270 Africa slavery in 11, 43, 44, 268 slave trade in 268 Africanisms 233–4 Andreau, Jean 101 Apprenticeship 215, 217, 222 see also ‘inboekstelsel’ Asia slavery in 43, 44, 117 Augustales 91, 105, 107–8, 109 Augustus 90 manumission laws of 27 Baltimore 22, 29, 33 Banquets 105, 109 Barbados 35–6 Benefactions 105–6 Berlin, Ira 39–43, 45, 48, 142 Berlin, Isaiah 81 Bogger, Tommy L. 27, 36 Bradley, Keith 26 Buddhism 131, 132 Caledon code 197, 198, 199, 201, 204 Cape gentry 191, 206 Cape Town 30, 189, 191, 197, 198, 201, 202, 204, 205, 206, 209 Carcopino, Jérôme 23, 24 Charleston, South Carolina 58, 62, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145 Cicero, Marcus Tullius 71, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 83, 94 Clodius 78, 79, 80 Coartación 19, 29, 168 Collegia 102, 103, 105 associations, guilds Compitalia 73 Cornelius 73, 74, 75, 76 Cuba emancipation on 215 manumission on 13, 29, 31 slavery on 29 Darwinism 245 social

Degler, Carl 24 Dispensator slave with financial responsibilities 98–9 Distributions of cash 109–10 Domar-Nieboer hypothesis 186 Dominatio 82 Domitius Ahenobarbus 77 Dowries 96, 174, 178 Elkins, Stanley 13, 17, 44 Emancipation and the labour market 15, 219, 222–225, 226, 251, 273, 275, 277, 282 and proletarianisation 205, 206, 209 as distinct from manumission 6, 13–8, 46 in South Africa 16, 30, 198–203, 204, 206 in West Africa 269–75 on Cuba 215 on Jamaica 5–6, 16, 215, 216, 217–8, 234, 244 reponses to 5–7, 215–222, 269–77 Epictetus 92 Equiano, Olaudah 4, 6 Extortion 73 Fabius Eupor 102–5 princeps libertinorum Fairbairn, John 199, 203 Fanon, Franz 234–5, 250, 260 Finley, Moses I. 39–43, 45, 92, 266 Foner, Eric 275 Freedom definition of 3, 81, 84–5, 185, 203–8, 216, 217, 222 Freedpeople and abuse 58–9, 162 and deference 38, 278 and dress 244–52 and honour 279–81 and inheritance 90, 162, 167, 179 and need for protection 147, 150 and politics 48, 49, 56, 73, 75, 78, 80, 84, 102–5, 225–8

288

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and religion 221–2, 244, 252, 253, 257 and wealth 50–7, 137–52, 163–5 and work 14, 24–5, 40, 58–9, 169, 219, 222–225, 226, 251, 273, 275, 277, 282 as citizens 25, 81 as slave-owners 51, 52–4, 142–3, 160, 161–2, 163, 167, 171, 178 fear of being kidnapped 146, 148 living with their former owners 97 relationship with slaves 12, 59–61, 62, 143 relationship with whites 54–5, 150 restrictions imposed upon 24 Gender 15, 51, 128–9, 137–8 Gender studies 51, 137–8 Ghana 268 Guinea 269, 272, 273, 282 Hermeros 100–1 Higgins, Kathleen 31 Hiring out 36–7 ‘Inboekstelsel’ 196, 204, 206 Indentured labour 15, 185, 196, 200, 202–3, 209, 224, 253, 255 Islam 189, 242, 266, 267, 276, 279–81, 283 Iuvenes 104, 109 Ivory Coast 282 Karasch, Mary C. 26, 32 Khoi 186, 192, 194, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 206, 207, 208, 209 Libertini, associations of freed slaves 102–3 in Brigetio 106–8 in Carsulae 108–110 in Pompeii 102–5 in Praeneste 105–6 Mali 277, 281 Manilius 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78 Manumission accounts of 4–6 and benevolence 17, 20–1, 26, 30, 34 and change of name 58, 60, 93–5 and external labour supply 21, 25, 59

and guilt 144 and marriage 30 and urbanism 28 by testament 28, 34, 144 deeds of 27 fee 37, 121, 123, 125, 126, 128, 129, 131, 133, 164 Greek view of 89 in Africa 267, 269 in Brazil 3, 27, 28–9, 31, 32–3, 49, 168 laws of 18–9, 24–5, 27, 32–3 minimum age for 33, 90 of children 31–2 of women 29–31, 158 of men 29, 33, 158 on Cuba 29, 31, 34 on Sri Lanka 117–135 rate of 9, 17, 22, 29, 30, 89, 189, 267 response to 4–6 through self-purchase 21, 34–7, 271 Mauritania 275, 281 Mauritius 200, 203 McLeod, Cynthia 51–2 Metic 89 Milo, T. Annius 77, 78, 79 Minas Gerais economy of 20, 24, 156, 164, 166, 169 slavery in 156–7 manumission 31, 156–7, 168 Miscegenation 62 Morant Bay rebellion 216, 217, 225, 229, 230, 255 New Orleans 29, 33, 145, 147 Niger, delta of 269, 276 Niger 270, 272, 275, 282 Nigeria 272, 274 Operae obligations of freed slaves to their former owners 39–40, 90–1 Optimates 71, 72, 73, 74, 76, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 86 Patterson, Orlando 25, 283 Petersburg 139 Philadelphia 58 Pompeii campaigning at 102–4 elections at 102–4 Pompey 72, 73, 74

index Ponty, William 270, 271, 272, 273, 276 Populares 73, 77, 78, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86 Race 14, 47, 60, 138, 143, 146, 147, 148, 208–9, 235, 236, 245, 249, 258, 259 Racism 40–1, 208, 260, 261 Restitutio natalium 3 Rio de Janeiro slavery in 26, 32 Rome laws of manumission 27 public funerals 106 self-purchase 37 status of freedpeople in 40–3, 56–7, 71–2 Roume, Ernest 270, 271 Sabará, Minas Gerais 31, 154, 155, 156, 158, 159, 160, 163, 165, 166, 171, 172, 175, 180 Salvador, Bahia 29, 33, 36 Samson, Elisabeth 51–2 San 186, 194, 197, 198, 199, 201, 206, 208, 209 Schwartz, Stuart 27, 28, 33 Scott, Rebecca 15 Senegal 265, 266, 269, 270, 272, 273, 276, 277, 281, 282 Sevius Nicanor 100–1 Sierra Leone 274 Sio, Alfred 48 Skin colour 40–1, 61, 89, 165 Slave narratives 92 Slave-raiding 265, 268, 274 Slave societies definition of 11, 266 open and closed 43–4 rate of cruelty 10, 17, 22, 23, 56, 191 Slave trade Atlantic 267, 268 Saharan 268 Slave women 31, 124, 139–140, 158, 191, 234, 237–8, 239, 240, 241–2, 243 Slavery abolition of 61, 266, 274 and naming 60, 93–95 and honour 277, 279–81 and incorporation 43, 191 chattel 11, 14, 118, 145

289

domestic 11, 30, 120 for debt 11, 118, 119, 124–5, 129 in Africa 11, 43, 44, 268 in Asia 43, 44, 117 in the Cape colony 185–91 in temples 119, 120, 122, 123, 131, 132, 133 of a monk 126 voluntary 3, 130–1 Slaves and accommodation 247, 249, 250, 254, 258, 259, 260 and dress 236–44 and loyalty 34, 97, 99 and political office 267 and resistance 250, 257, 260 and thin genealogies 280 and wages 34, 162, 269 ‘born in the house’ 275 ‘crias de casa’ 32 owned by freedpeople 51, 52–4, 142–3, 160, 161–2, 163, 167, 178 Southern belle 137, 138 Sri Lanka slavery on 118–20 manumission on 121–34 Stoics 84–6 Sudan 266, 270, 271, 272, 274, 276 Sugar 167, 203, 215, 253 Sulla, Lucius Cornelius 73 Sulpicius, Publius 73, 74, 75 Sulpicius Rufus, Servius 76, 77 Surinam 13, 51, 53, 243 Syrus, Publilius 92 Tannenbaum, Frank 10, 13, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 35, 48, 49 Transmission of property 155 in Rome 90–1 in Minas Gerais 153–81 Tribune of the plebs 72, 73, 74, 75, 77 Trimalchio 56–7, 100 Vesey, Denmark 58, 143 Watson, James 43 West, Cornel 250 Women 137–8 in Charleston 148–51 in New Orleans 145, 147 on Jamaica 245 on Sri Lanka 124 Woodson thesis 52–3, 143

THE ATLANTIC WORLD ISSN 1570–0542

1. Postma, J. & V. Enthoven (eds.). Riches from Atlantic Commerce. Dutch Transatlantic Trade and Shipping, 1585-1817. 2003. ISBN 90 04 12562 0 2. Curto, J.C. Enslaving Spirits. The Portuguese-Brazilian Alcohol Trade at Luanda and its Hinterland, c. 1550-1830. 2004. ISBN 90 04 13175 2 3. Jacobs, J. New Netherland. A Dutch Colony in Seventeenth-Century America. 2004. ISBN 90 04 12906 5 4. Goodfriend, J.D. (ed.). Revisiting New Netherland. Perspectives on Early Dutch America. 2005. ISBN 90 04 14507 9 5. Macinnes, A.I. & A.H. Williamson (eds.). Shaping the Stuart World, 16031714. The Atlantic Connection. 2006. ISBN 90 04 14711 X 6. Haggerty, S. The British-Atlantic Trading Community, 1760-1810. Men, Women, and the Distribution of Goods. 2006. ISBN 90 04 15018 8 7. Kleijwegt, M. (ed.). The Faces of Freedom. The Manumission and Emancipation of Slaves in Old World and New World Slavery. 2006. ISBN 90 04 15082 X 8. Emmer, P.C., O. Pétré-Grenouilleau & J. Roitman (eds.). A Deus ex Machina Revisited. Atlantic Colonial Trade and European Economic Development. 2006. ISBN 90 04 15102 8