Document Type

Research Paper

Publication Date

Spring 2025

First page number:

1

Last page number:

27

Abstract

This study investigates the roles of European, Mulatto, and African women in colonial Barbados and Jamaica from 1750 to 1833, arguing that these women were not passive recipients of colonial structures but active agents in shaping and contesting them. Drawing on a wide array of primary sources including personal journals, legal documents, medical texts, maps, and colonial artwork this paper explores how women negotiated the intersecting hierarchies of race, class, and gender in both rural and urban contexts. In plantation settings, European women exercised informal authority within patriarchal confines, often reinforcing racial and gendered oppression, while enslaved African women navigated brutal labor and reproductive exploitation with resilience and cultural resistance. In urban centers such as Kingston and Bridgetown, free women of color strategically employed cultural emulation and economic participation to assert social mobility and influence. Engaging with the historiography of Hilary Beckles, Rhoda Reddock, Barbara Bush, and Christine Walker, this research repositions women as central figures in the colonial Caribbean, complicating dominant narratives of power and agency within the Atlantic world.

Controlled Subject

Slavery; Barbados; Enslaved women--Social conditions

Disciplines

African History | Women's History

File Format

pdf

File Size

910 KB

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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