Abstract

Colonial slavery contained three interrelated aspects of law that transformed with the introduction of African slavery. Firstly, defining enslaved people as property, secondly, establishing forms of control over enslaved people, and thirdly, developing legal definitions of race, which distinguishes African enslaved people and their descendants from the rest of the population. The introduction of Imperial laws and their transplantation within the relevant island colonies had serious consequences on the enslaved persons therein. However, their impact on enslaved women was far reaching and resonated even within post-emancipation societies. Slavery remained an integral aspect of Western society for so long that its dismantling was not an easy feat. After all, it had been vital to European expansion into the Americas and was therefore deeply embedded into all resultant legal, social, political and economic systems. This paper looks at the introduction of the British Parliamentary laws of the Amelioration Acts and the Emancipation Act within the English-Speaking enslaved person holding Caribbean colonies. These laws were initiated to supposedly alleviate the atrocities of enslavement. In reality, the plantocracy used these legislations to create harsher conditions and mask cruelty which enslaved women felt the major brunt of especially as their health was increasingly compromised. Female enslaved persons' stories are often overlooked therefore, this paper also addresses the plight of enslaved women and tactics they used to protect their bodies within colonial enslavement and in the aftermath of its ending. Ultimately, the paper depicts what this signified for scholarship on the role of enslaved women within colonial Caribbean slavery as a whole.

摘要

殖民地奴隶制包含三个相互关联的法律方面，随着非洲奴隶制的引入而发生转变。首先，将被奴役者定义为财产，其次，建立对被奴役者的控制形式，第三，制定种族的法律定义，将非洲被奴役者及其后代与其他人口区分开来。帝国法律的引入及其在相关岛屿殖民地的移植对其中的被奴役者造成了严重后果。然而，它们对被奴役妇女的影响是深远的，甚至在解放后的社会也引起了共鸣。长期以来，奴隶制一直是西方社会不可或缺的一部分，以至于将其拆除并非易事。毕竟，它对欧洲向美洲的扩张至关重要，因此深深植根于由此产生的所有法律、社会、政治和经济体系中。本文着眼于在拥有加勒比殖民地的讲英语的被奴役者中引入英国议会法的《改进法案》和《解放法案》。这些法律旨在减轻奴役的暴行。实际上，植物统治利用这些立法创造了更严酷的条件并掩盖了奴役妇女受到的主要冲击，尤其是在她们的健康日益受到损害的情况下。因此，女性奴隶的故事经常被忽视，本文还讨论了被奴役妇女的困境以及她们在殖民奴役期间和结束后用来保护自己身体的策略。最终，该论文描述了这对于研究被奴役妇女在整个加勒比殖民地奴隶制中的作用的学术意义。