Politics of reproduction : race, disease, and fertility in the age of abolition / Katherine Paugh.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Paugh, Katherine, author.

Series:

Past & present book series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women, Black--Caribbean Area--History--18th century.

Women, Black.

Women, Black--Caribbean Area--History--19th century.

Labor demand--Caribbean Area--History.

Labor demand.

Slavery--Caribbean Area--18th century.

Slavery.

Colonies.

Population.

History.

Great Britain--Colonies--Population--History.

Great Britain.

Caribbean Area.

Physical Description:

viii, 263 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford, United Kingdom : Oxford University Press, 2017.

Summary:

The fertility of Afro-Caribbean women's bodies was at the crux of the visions of economic success elaborated by many British planters, politicians, and doctors during the age of abolition. Abolitionist reformers hoped that a homegrown plantation labor force would end the need for the Atlantic slave trade. By establishing the ubiquity of visions of fertility and subsequent economic growth during this time, The Politics of Reproduction sheds fresh light on the oft-debated question of whether abolitionism was understood by contemporaries as economically beneficial to the plantation colonies. Katherine Paugh argues that Britain's Caribbean colonies were a pivotal site for the emergence of human reproduction as a political problem. The need to manipulate the labor market in Britain's Caribbean colonies led to the creation of new governmental strategies for managing sex and childbearing, such as centralized nurseries, discouragement of extended breastfeeding, and financial incentives for childbearing, that have become commonplace in our modern world. While assessing the politics of reproduction in the British Empire and its Caribbean colonies on a broad scale, in relationship to major political events such as the Haitian Revolution, the study also focuses in on the island of Barbados. The remarkable story of an enslaved midwife and her family illustrates how plantation management policies designed to promote fertility affected Afro-Caribbean women during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The Politics of Reproduction draws on a wide variety of sources, including debates in the British Parliament and the Barbados House of Assembly, the records of Barbadian plantations, tracts about plantation management published by doctors and plantation owners, and missionary records related to the island of Barbados. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 "The Old Settlers Have Bred a Great Quantity of Slaves": Slavery, Reproduction, and Revolution, 1763-97 23

2 The Curious Case of Mary Hylas: Wives, Slaves, and the Limits of British Abolitionism 55

3 Conceiving Fertility in the Age of Abolition: Slavery, Sexuality, and the Politics of Medical Knowledge 85

4 A West Indian Midwife's Tale: The Politics of Childbirth on Newton Plantation 122

5 "An Increasing Capital in an Increasing Gang": Governing Reproduction, 1798-1838 154

6 Missionaries, Madams, and Mothers in Barbados 190.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 239-253) and index.

ISBN:

0198789785

9780198789789

OCLC:

959033518