Enslaved Communities

Not all plantation systems are the same

• Within the South and different parts of the Americas there is a tangible link to revolt

• Enslavers in the US tended to live on the plantation but this was much less common in the Caribbean where they used middle men

Surveillance and the Design of the Plantation

• Plantations provided a means of surveillance and management of enslaved people

• Spatial organisation fostered social control - encompassed Black and white landscapes in the same place BUT were experienced differently

Foucault: Disciplinary Power and the Panopticon applied to the plantation

• 18th and 19th C = shift from ‘sovereign power, when people were controlled by displays of fear e.g. public executions, to being controlled by ‘disciplinary power‘, being controlled through SURVEILLANCE - controlling the ‘body’ and ‘mind’

• Foucault gives the Panopticon as an example of disciplinary power

• Panopticon = a prison where the prisoners knew they COULD be watched but couldn’t see who was watching them - controlled through the FEAR of perceived punishment and being watched

• Plantation = a type of panopticon where the enslaved were controlled by the FEAR of being WATCHED and punished by the enslaver

Stephanie Camp: Geographies of Containment and Rival Geographies

GEOGRAPHIES OF CONTAINMENT: The plantation was not only a site of physical and spatial control (the enslaved could not escape) BUT a social construct that shaped the enslaved’s behaviour
RIVAL GEOGRAPHIES: the spaces the enslaved created for themselves and their autonomy e.g. Harriet Jacobs’ grandmother’s attic

Gendered experience

• Men valued more highly (Thisltewood paid £80 for Jack, sold Coobah and Sally for £40)

• Bush - more likely to work on the field

• Women more likely to exit the field through domestic work in the ‘Great House‘ - came with risks

• Men given more opportunities to take up skilled and artisanal work and given administrative roles

• Both forged life for themselves on plantations

WPA Narratives

• Over 2,300 interviews of former enslaved people collected as a part of the New Deal

• Revealed a distinct Black masculinity formed on plantations out of a dehumanising experience

Enslaved Men and Sexual Assault (Thomas Foster)

• Men were also victims of sexual assault in the Antebellum South

• Legal ownership enabled control over the enslaved body

• Took place ‘within a cultural context that fixated on black male bodies with desire and horror‘ as white enslavers demonised and fetishised Black bodies

• Even abolitionist images fixated on the sexual images of Black men, connoting the male body with perfection e.g. American Universal Magazine

Historiography Overview

• Revisionist (John Blassingame) = plantations were NOT a closed system, enslaved people engaged in informal economies and educated themselves

• Post-Revisionist (Peter Kolchin) = criticised ideas unity and harmony on plantations

• Modern (Jeff Forret) = discourse expands - explores ideas of violence and honour in masculinity

Religion

• African people retained culture and religious beliefs in the Americas

• African beliefs practised in the Americas shaped and transformed local experiences

• West African spiritual music = way of coping with enslavement - drumming was banned in many enslaved communities as they were worried it would incite rebellion

• Christianity became a form of solace - ideas of earthly suffering to be rewarded in heaven - Turner establishes a Sunday school

Relationships

Enslaved people formed family units and friend and kinship networks were important

Resistance (David Waldstreicher)

• Identity: Enslaved people chose their own names and what they wanted to wear

• Leisure Activities: Fugitive slave advertisements detail that many enslaved people were skilled e.g. played musical instruments or engaged in sports

• Escape: fugitives, formation of rebel communities e.g. Maroon Communities