ABSTRACT

In 1832, an elderly enslaved woman named Rebecca told the Protector of Slaves in Demerara (part of colonial British Guiana) a harrowing story that, she hoped, would secure her freedom and that of her grown children. Decades earlier, barely past childhood, she had been sexually exploited by the captain of the slave ship that carried her across the Atlantic. He promised to free her if she bore his child. Her freedom claim, now in the archives of the British Colonial Office, is an extraordinary example of the countless freedom struggles of enslaved women in the colonial Atlantic world. Rebecca's claim committed to the archival record a rare, firsthand account of sexual exploitation during the Middle Passage from the perspective of an enslaved female survivor. Rebecca's legal strategy suggests that West African understandings and practices about sexual relations, kinship, and slavery shaped experiences during and long after the Middle Passage. Our efforts to piece together fragments of Rebecca's life are necessarily speculative and incomplete, but the result spans a remarkable breadth—from her childhood to her old age. Rebecca's ordeal illuminates some of the long-lasting, gendered effects of the Middle Passage and the continued relevance of African culture in the Americas.

摘要

1832 年，一位名叫丽贝卡的老年奴隶向德梅拉拉（英属圭亚那殖民地的一部分）的奴隶保护者讲述了一个悲惨的故事，她希望这能确保她和成年子女的自由。几十年前，刚刚过了童年，她就被载她横渡大西洋的奴隶船的船长性剥削。他答应如果她生下他的孩子就释放她。她的自由主张，现在保存在英国殖民办公室的档案中，是大西洋殖民地世界无数被奴役妇女自由斗争的非凡例子。丽贝卡声称，档案记录是从一名被奴役的女性幸存者的角度对中间通道期间性剥削的罕见第一手记录。丽贝卡 的法律策略表明，西非对性关系、亲属关系和奴隶制的理解和实践塑造了中间通道期间和之后很长时间的经历。我们拼凑丽贝卡生活片段的努力必然是推测性的和不完整的，但结果跨越了一个惊人的广度——从她的童年到她的老年。丽贝卡的磨难阐明了中间通道的一些长期的性别影响以及非洲文化在美洲的持续相关性。