Slave trade and women | 奴隶贸易与女性：被遗忘的历史

35年前，我出版了一部题为《天生的反抗者：巴巴多斯女性黑奴社会史》（Natural Rebels: A Social History of Enslaved Black Women in Barbados）的专著。这本书的灵感源自我在西印度群岛大学上历史研讨课时，学生发起的一项抗议。女学生在课堂上表示，我的授课内容对女性奴隶的关注不够，而女性奴隶在大部分殖民时期都占奴隶人口的大多数。我当时作出承诺，一定会深挖历史档案，纠正这一问题，弥补教学上的过失。

这本书开创了同类著作的先河，革新了加勒比地区的奴役史学，开启了追求在历史叙事中实现性别公正的征程。自那时起，有关女性奴隶经历的研究和出版物如雨后春笋般涌现，文献成果超越了历史课程所教授的学术内容。如今，这些文献成果已成为在奴隶制赔偿主题下开展公共宣传的实证基础。我则再一次被学生们推上了话语运动的前沿。

在我的学生中，活动人士并不全是女性主义者。而这些学生都想要了解为什么历史学界对女性黑奴这个本应成为研究起点的问题保持沉默，留下一片事实的空白。此外，还有人想知道，我是否和前几代学者持同样的偏见和视角，也不反对现有论调。我在加勒比地区档案馆潜心研究了一年，重新开启了对大英帝国文献的盘根究底之旅。

觉醒

在伦敦的“发现”宛如哥伦布（Columbus）发现新大陆。事实一直都摆在那里，只等自欺欺人的冒险家来宣告自己的发现。我也有所发现：在有关种植园奴隶制的资料中，女性被奴役的经历要多于男性。但是，为什么在长达一个世纪对奴隶制的论述中，历史学家却对此只字未提呢？答案似乎很明了，男性思维追求的是寻找奴隶自我能动性的证据，而非进行客观的性别分析。

我们需要对这一群体调查结果进行充分探讨。种植园奴隶主只在种植园基础设施建设的起步阶段需要较多男性劳动力。待树木砍完、水沟挖好之后，女性就会成为种植园后续维护的主力，她们生产力更高、工作也更高效。

到18世纪中叶，女性成为英属加勒比地区殖民地中人口的主要群体，巴巴多斯便是其中的典型代表。从18世纪30年代起，到19世纪30年代奴隶制被废除，女性黑奴始终多于男性黑奴。我的学生可能切身体会到了这一点，也因此想要了解为什么很少有分析提到黑人女性。

洗衣女工、女裁缝和女佣

我们再来谈谈殖民地的城市环境。在大多数城镇，女性奴隶是劳动力的主体，从事洗衣工、裁缝、厨师、佣人、娼妓、流动小贩等各种职业。她们任由主人“出租”，还要上交劳动所得。女奴的角色如此繁多，这就意味着城镇和种植园一样，离开她们的服务就无法运转和发展。她们还代表着一种让白人女性也能有生意可做的经济行业。因为城里的女性奴隶大多为白人女性所有，但在农村种植园中，白人女性的经济利益只占少数。

法属和荷属领地的情况与英属殖民地一样。在所有地区，奴隶制度都建立在这样一个法律前提之下，即只有女性奴隶所生的孩子才能成为奴隶。因此，黑人女性成为了动产的生理和法律载体，是生产力和生育能力的主要来源。凡是她的子女，无论其父是黑人还是白人，都能作为资产记录在账。女性因此成为了一项“完美财产”，既付出劳动，又生育新的劳动力，并服从主人的管制，提供社会性的性愉悦。奴隶制的商业模式就是这样以女性黑奴作为动产的法律、经济和社会基础而建立起来的。

奴隶制的深渊

在这一背景下，女性黑奴受尽剥削，处于奴隶制的深渊之中。殖民体系从女性黑奴身上榨取的财富和服务比从男性黑奴身上榨取的多得多。女性是奴隶制得以延续的主要源泉，在奴隶主心目中，生育能力和劳动能力共同造就了女性这个超级奴隶。然而，也正是由于奴隶制对其生育能力的管理和操纵，女性的身体里都住着一个“天生的反抗者”，从内心深处抵制着奴隶主的奴役。

“殖民体系从女性黑奴身上榨取的财富和服务比从男性黑奴身上榨取的多得多”

因此，若以奴役是一种反人类罪行为前提，开展呼吁赔偿的正义行动，则应以被奴役者之间亦无平等可言这一论断为基础。女性承受了更多的压迫——任何赔偿概念都应以这一认识为出发点和落脚点。

“呼吁赔偿的正义运动应以被奴役者之间亦无平等可言这一论断为基础”

加勒比共同体（CARICOM）赔偿运动在其宣传口径以及货币计量方法中已体现了女性黑奴受尽剥削这一事实。这种历史研究与公共话语的交汇，是迄今为止男性中心主义叙事的一个重要转折点。小问题会从沉默中爆发，演化成为大运动。学者们有责任让课堂上的呼声走出课堂，并为此探寻强有力的解决方案。从性别反思到赔偿对话，女性在发现真理的过程中不断挑战由男性认识筑起的历史高墙，更重要的是，她们一直追求让男性接受性别视角，并以此作为研究的新起点。

Slave trade and women: a forgotten history

Women constituted the demographic majority on colonial plantations from the 18th century onward. The slavery enterprise relied heavily on the labour and fertility of enslaved black women. Yet their place in historical research has long been marginal.

Hilary McD. Beckles 

Thirty five years ago I published a monograph entitled Natural Rebels: A Social History of Enslaved Black Women in Barbados. Its emergence was the result of a student revolt in my history seminar at the University of the West Indies. Female students protested in the classroom that my presentations were insufficiently focused on enslaved women who they knew were the demographic majority in the colony for most of the slavery period. I promised that I would dig deeper into the archives with an intention to rectify the situation, a kind of pedagogical reparations. 

The book was the first of its kind; the historiography of enslavement in the Caribbean was revolutionized. The journey to gender justice in historical discourse had begun. Since then we have had an explosion of research and publications on the experiences of enslaved women. The literary output transcends the academic content of history programs. It is now the empirical basis of public advocacy on the theme of reparations for slavery. Once again, I found myself driven by students upon the vanguard of a discursive movement. 

My activist students were not all feminists. They all needed to know why there was historiographic silence, a void in fact, around what clearly should have been the starting point for research. Some wanted to know, furthermore, if I had inherited biases and perspectives from earlier generations of scholars, and had not resisted the reasoning received. After one year of exhausting research in the Caribbean archives, I re-inserted my now very curious mind into the documents of the British Empire. 

The awakening

The “discovery” in London was Columbus-like. The facts were there all along waiting for some deluded adventurer to speak of their discovery. Here is what I found; there are more references in the plantation slavery data to the experiences of enslaved women than enslaved men. Why, then, did historians not reflect this during a century of writing about slavery? The answer seemed simple enough; the masculine mentality was looking for evidence of self-agency rather than objective gender analysis. 

The demographic findings need to be fully explored. Enslavers on plantations preferred a majority of enslaved male labour only in the formative stages of plantation infrastructure development. With trees removed and ditches in place, they believed that females were more productive and efficient in the subsequent maintenance of the plantations. 

In the English Caribbean by the mid-18th century, the preference was for a female majority and Barbados led the way. From the 1730’s until the end of slavery in the 1830’s, black women had outnumbered black men. My students could experience this at an existential level and needed the narrative that explained why they were an analytical minority. 

Washerwomen, seamstresses and domestics

Then there was the urban context of colonies. In most towns enslaved women were the majority of labourers. They were the washerwomen, seamstresses, cooks, domestic servants, prostitutes and itinerant vendors. They were “rented out” by their owners and expected to hand over the cash earned. These miscellaneous tasks meant that towns, like plantations, could not survive nor thrive without their services. They also represented an economic sector that enabled white women to own businesses. The majority of urban enslaved females were owned by white women who in contrast, had a minority financial stake in the rural plantation sector. 

What was true in the British colonies was also the case in French and Dutch territories. In all places, the slave system was built on the legal premise that only an enslaved woman could give birth to an enslaved child. The black woman, then, was the biological and legal carrier of the chattel status. She was the primary source of productive labour as well as reproductive capacity. Her child, fathered by a black or white male, was accounted for on the business ledger as an asset. She was considered therefore “perfect property”. She was a source of workforce, reproduced herself, and provided socio-sexual pleasures under the constraint of her owner. The business model of slavery, therefore, was based legally, economically and socially on the enslaved black women as chattel. 

The deepest end of the slavery entreprise

Within this context, then, the enslaved black woman was super-exploited and existed in the deepest end of the slavery enterprise. The colonial system extracted more wealth and services from her than from her male counterparts. She was the main source of the sustainability of slavery. Her fertility and maternity, plus arms and legs in the field, combined to create the super-slave in the mind of enslavers. Yet, it was precisely because of the attempted management and manipulation of her fertility that the system created in her a “natural rebel” who sought to protect her inner world from enslavers. 

“The colonial system extracted more wealth and services from enslaved black women than from their male counterparts”

The reparatory justice movement that is built on the premise of enslavement as a crime against humanity should therefore be grounded on the assertion that there was no equality among the enslaved. Women carried the greater share of the burden and any concept of compensation should begin and end with that understanding. 

"The reparatory justice movement should be grounded on the assertion that there was no equality among the enslaved"

The CARICOM reparations movement has come to terms with this truth in its advocacy and methodology of monetary measurement. The convergence of historical research and public discourse in this regard represents an important tipping point in what was hitherto a male centered narrative. Big movements begin with small questions in otherwise quiet spaces. Scholars have a responsibility to transcend calls from classrooms and go in search of seismic solutions to such enquiry. From gender reflections to reparations conversation, women continue to press against historic walls of masculine knowledge in the discovery of truth and critically, to have them accepted as new beginnings.