Suspect relations : sex, race, and resistance in colonial North Carolina / Kirsten Fischer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Fischer, Kirsten, 1963-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

North Carolina--History--Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775.

North Carolina.

North Carolina--Race relations.

North Carolina--Social conditions--18th century.

Indians of North America--North Carolina--Social conditions--18th century.

Indians of North America.

African Americans--North Carolina--Social conditions--18th century.

African Americans.

Man-woman relationships--North Carolina--History--18th century.

Man-woman relationships.

Sex role--North Carolina--History--18th century.

Sex role.

Social classes--North Carolina--History--18th century.

Social classes.

Government, Resistance to--North Carolina--History--18th century.

Government, Resistance to.

Physical Description:

xii, 265 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2002.

Summary:

Kirsten Fischer has mined unpublished court records and travel literature from colonial North Carolina to reveal how early notions of racial difference were shaped by illicit sexual relationships and the sanctions imposed on those who conducted them. Fischer shows how the personal -- and yet often very public -- sexual lives of Native American, African American, and European American women and men contributed to the new racial order in this developing slave society. The sexual practices of ordinary people vividly bring to light the little-known but significant ways in which notions of racial difference were alternately contested and affirmed before the American Revolution.

"Over the course of the eighteenth century, race came to seem as corporeal as sex. Kirsten Fischer has mined unpublished court records and travel literature from colonial North Carolina to reveal how early notions of racial difference were shaped by illicit sexual relationships and the sanctions imposed on those who conducted them. Fischer shows how the personal--and yet often very public--sexual lives of Native American, African American, and European American women and men contributed to the new racial order in this developing slave society. Liaisons between European men and native women, among white and black servants, and between servants and masters, as well as sexual slander among whites and acts of sexualized violence against slaves, were debated, denied, and recorded in the courtrooms of colonial North Carolina. Indentured servants, slaves, Cherokee and Catawba women, and other members of less privileged groups sometimes resisted colonial norms, making sexual choices that irritated neighbors, juries, and magistrates and resulted in legal penalties and other acts of retribution. The sexual practices of ordinary people vividly bring to light the little-known but significant ways in which notions of racial difference were alternately contested and affirmed before the American Revolution. Fischer makes an innovative contribution to the history of race, class, and gender in early America by uncovering a detailed record of illicit sexual exchanges in colonial North Carolina and showing how acts of resistance to sexual rules complicated ideas about inherent racial difference."--Publisher's description.

Contents:

Introduction: Changing Conceptions of Race 1

1. Disorderly Women and the Struggle for Authority 13

2. Cross-Cultural Sex in Native North Carolina 55

3. The Sexual Regulation of Servant Women and Subcultures of Resistance 98

4. White Reputations "Blacken'd & Made Loose" 131

5. Sexualized Violence and the Embodiment of Race 159

Epilogue: Dangerous Liaisons 191.

Introduction: Changing Conceptions of Race

Disorderly Women and the Struggle for Authority

Cross-Cultural Sex in Native North Carolina

The Sexual Regulation of Servant Women and Subcultures of Resistance

White Reputations "Blacken'd and Made Loose"

Sexualized Violence and the Embodiment of Race

Epilogue: Dangerous Liaisons.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 195-251) and index.

ISBN:

0801486793

9780801486791

0801438225

9780801438226

OCLC:

47120306