Planter writings represent their presumptions about African women and their family life; and whether or not these assumptions had basis in fact, they directed buying preferences.
Not all planters agreed that Ebo women were most suitable for the “purpose of breeding.” Edward Long believed they were the least fertile of all African women because they were most susceptible to disorders of the womb. “Ebo women,” he wrote, “are subject to obstruction of the mestrua-[tion], often attended with sterility, and incurable.”60 It is difficult to assess how many planters shared Long’s views that Ebos were the least prolific among captive women. What we do know, however, is that other planters like Simon Taylor held this view about women he presumed belonged to other ethnic groups. Taylor refused “Angola and Mandingo Negroes,” who, in his view were “soft” and “lazy.”61 But more important, Angolan and Mandingo women had an “abominable custom [of] dirt eating,” which he, along with other planters and medical practitioners like Thomas Roughley and Dr. James Thomson, understood as a significant cause of low fertility among captive women.62 Dirt eating allegedly caused women to fall into “dropsy occasioned by obstructions in their liver, consequently … there is no chance of the women breeding.”63 Clearly, planters developed particular preferences for specific groups of captive Africans, who they thought were the “best breeding people,” and when available they bought women and girls according to such prescriptions. Even as Taylor sought to increase his holdings of females, on more than one occasion he postponed doing so because only Angolan cargoes were available. “For my part,” he protested, “I would not accept a gang of them for nothing.”64
There are competing interpretations of the meaning of “Ebo” (in planter terminology) or “Igbo” (among historians).65 What did planters mean when they asked for Ebo women? Was the Ebo identity linked to Africans coming from particular ports—Bonny and Calabar (New and Old)—or was it linked to wide geographical regions—Bight of Biafra—which encompassed multiple, changing ethnicities? Did planters really understand the identities of captive Africans? How accurate were the claims of planters and traders that ethnicity correlated with higher or lower levels of fertility? The foundation for these debates is the question of accuracy, both in terms of British identification of their captives’ origins and in terms of Africans asserting and claiming particular identities.66 Some historians have dismissed planter-identified African ethnicities as “imposed taxonomies” and sweeping generalizations with neither credible meanings nor accurate reflections of African nations. Others have argued that over time planters learned the various ethnic markers of Africans and correctly deciphered them.67
This study is primarily concerned with what such labels meant when planters used them to refer to captive women and girls, and how such signifiers provide us a window into planter constructions of femininity for the purposes of maintaining slavery. The argument here is that these terminologies of ethnicity were “socially meaningful in the context of enslavement.”68 For the purposes of reproduction, young women identified as Ebo were considered the most fecund, real or imagined. On plantations like Golden Grove, newly purchased Ebo women received special treatment in order to allow them “every chance of breeding.” Even if these markers inaccurately labeled captives, they reveal planter interest in reproduction. Additionally, planter belief that women who were Ebos were the most suited for bearing children created differences in the daily lives of women and girls under slavery.69 The transformations ushered in by pronatalism did not affect all enslaved women evenly, but varied according to perceived ethnic origins of captive women.
Strategies for Breeding: Coerced Sexual Relations
The extent to which planters believed that young women they perceived as Ebo were more fecund than others determined specialized treatment. At Golden Grove estate, Ebo women were forced into unions with enslaved men. The property’s attorney, Simon Taylor, said that he intended “for every man to have his wife” (emphasis added). Thus, as soon as “the first good Eboe ship” docked, he promised to buy as many women as needed to “give each man a wife.”70 It is unknown how extensively Taylor paired Ebo women with men on Golden Grove. We do know, however, of at least one occasion in February 1794, when he carried out his matchmaking plans. The men were reportedly “pleased with the wives [he] sent them.”71 Reports from other properties suggest that at least a few planters paired newly purchased women with men already residing on the plantation. In 1805, Rowland Fearon, attorney for Lord Penrhyn’s properties, announced his plans to have the “New Negro Girls at Coates [estate] intermarried [with the] men at the Penn [Bullard].”72
Several Jamaican planters targeted Ebo in their matchmaking efforts (again bearing in mind the conundrums of this marker). Planters paired Ebo women with Coromantee men. Unlike planters and doctors like Taylor, Phillips, and Collins, who emphasized the reproductive promise of Ebo women as a criterion for specialized treatment, the Ebo women in one historian’s account were singled out because of their presumed disposition. Planters coupled Ebo women with Coromantees because they believed these ethnic groups had opposing temperaments that complemented one another. Ebo women supposedly had more domestic tendencies that would help tame the more unruly, unsettled Coromantee. In return, the more enterprising and mentally resilient Coromantee men would strengthen the suicidal tendencies in Ebo women.73
Planter emphasis on the ethnic origins of African captives they expected to form into intimate unions not only contrasted with the policies abolitionists promoted, reflecting planter determination of the course of reform. By denying enslaved people autonomy over their own sexual partnerships, such coerced unions were also met with resistance. The likelihood of enslaved people rebelling against the arbitrary sexual partnerships prompted Taylor to put a few contingency measures in place. He allocated additional provision grounds and housing spots for the women in the event that they opposed his plans.74 The lack of further mention of his efforts to control enslaved women’s intimate relations suggests that the people at Golden Grove refused to cooperate and forced Taylor to abandon the scheme as quickly as he proposed it. The fact that Taylor and other planters complained about enslaved women’s nocturnal wanderings suggests that the freedom enslaved people claimed over bodily pleasures made it difficult to impose sexual relationships upon them and impossible to police their intimate lives.75 Attorney Fearon attempted similar interventions at Lord Penrhyn’s properties, but he abandoned the schemes because of enslaved people’s resistance. He reported, “I found it a tiresome and arduous task and gave it up as a bad job.”76
Although forced unions victimized both enslaved men and women, the coupling of newly arrived captive women with men already living on the plantation altered the gendered balance of power. Already seasoned into plantation life, enslaved men had the advantage of familiarity with their environment and being less immediately traumatized from the experience of the Middle Passage. It is not coincidental that planters chose recent arrivals to force into sexual unions. Captive women’s weakened state and lack of familiarity with their new surroundings made them most vulnerable to the control and advances of their purchasers and arbitrarily selected husbands. Reports of enslaved men being pleased with their wives raise further difficult questions that are not easy to answer from these sources. To what extent were enslaved men collaborators in the subordination and the sexual abuse of enslaved women? At other times, black men exerted physical and sexual power over black women through rape and domestic violence. At the very least, these records suggest that placing women into men’s households positioned enslaved men as head of household and invoked Europatriarchal standards that granted household heads unrestricted sexual access to their dependents. The occupational hierarchy that privileged men in most status-bearing and leadership roles already promoted black patriarchal power over black women, even though enslaved men were also victims of their masters’ expectations and machinations.77
Although planter assumptions about the reproductive capacities and tendencies of Ebo made these young women more susceptible to interference in their intimate lives, all enslaved women were vulnerable to planters scrutinizing their sexuality. Planters, doctors, and government
