What Life Was Like For. . . .

                                                Enslaved Women On Trinidad

               http://mprobb.wordpress.com/2011/02/09/my-family-and-the-slave-trade/

I cannot even begin to imagine what life would have been like for enslaved people much less an enslaved woman on the Caribbean Islands when they were held by colonial powers, I personally have nothing to compare it to within my own life. The best that I can do to answer the blog prompt for this week is to read about what others have researched and written about enslaved women with the hope that I can even begin to do it justice.

Trinidad was like other Caribbean islands at the height of sugar growing when it came to who worked, women were not excluded from the labor in the fields, quite the opposite. Whoever was able bodied was out in the field doing their part, even " female slaves were to be given 'appropriate' jobs " (1) whether it be out working on the crops or more domestic "chores" in the house.These plantations were run like well oiled machines, everyone had a place, everyone did the work that they were suppose to do, and it didn't matter what your gender. The question that I believe needs to be asked at this point is why were black enslaved women put out into the field? For the time frame women were seen to be not as productive as a man and not as smart, so why were they used in this job? The simple answer to this was that black women were considered "less than", they were not women and according to one Mrs Carmichael (an Englishwoman)" [were] masculine, brutish, and lacking feminine sensitivities. . . [and] outside the pale of feminine identity" (2). Is it any wonder that with this type of idea about enslaved black women, that they would possibly be excluded from field work, I don't think so. Enslaved black women would be used as a means to an end no matter what they did in association with the plantation that they lived on. They were dehumanized, they were looked at by not only white women as "less than" but were also described that way by white men who oversaw them. Hilary Beckles stated that " plantation records prepared by white men. . . speak of black women's apparent ease at dropping children, [their] capacity for arduous physical labor, and general amazonian cast of character " (3) which also points to the idea that they were being defeminized.

                                    http://www.abdn.ac.uk/slavery/banner4.htm

Yet Trinidad was a little different than most Caribbean islands, they had a shorter period of time as a "slave colony" because of the amount of time it took for the Spanish to even pay attention to it in an economic way. Slavery was the labour and social system for only about 50 years which is a very small amount of time when compared to other colonies (4). Even though this is the case, it would still have been a brutal life under the French and then the British regardless of the number of years that it occurred within Trinidad due to the category enslaved blacks were put into. Under Spanish rule there was a Code Noir that dictated how the slaves should be treated, such as " minimum quantities of food and clothing to be given to slaves. . . allowed two hours each day to work for themselves, either in their gardens or for wage. . . a slave could receive no more than 25 light lashes. . . Trinidad's Code Noir was widely hailed as the paradigm of benign slave treatment and Trinidad was regarded as a model slave colony of the Spanish empire " (5). This might have been what life would have been like for enslaved women in Trinidad, yet as we have seen laws might have been good in theory but not necessarily the reality especially when dealing with the French accepting the Spanish law. After the British took over the island these "codes" were modified and " the tone of the slave laws in Trinidad changed from that of safeguarding slaves from the excesses of greedy owners, to that of protecting owners from the spectre of unruly slaves " (6) due to rebellions that had sprung up in other Caribbean colonies.

 http://arcthemagazine.com/arc/2013/07/michel-jean-cabazons-bi-centenary-celebration/

Was slavery different on Trinidad? Maybe, but for the most part we only have the word of white men and women who saw them as different than themselves and treated them as such. If I can, for one moment begin to put myself in a enslaved black woman's shoes, I feel like my hopes would be almost non-existent and my fears would be many. I could hope that one day I would not be used in numerous ways, I could hope that the children I might of had would survive another day, I could hope for a freedom that seems to be a dream, I could hope to get enough food to keep going, yet all of these are just possible hopes. My fears are what would keep me going and motivate me through day after day of uncertainty until possibly my hopes would become my reality. Yet I can only say these things from the comfort of my own home with more than a century between me and those black slave woman. I can empathize, I can be livid at the accounts that I read about these women but I will never be able to truly understand what they went through and for me to even try does them a disservice because I can never know what it was like to be them. 

                                

1) A. Meredith John, " Plantation Slave Mortality in Trinidad." Population Studies,  42:2 (1988): 162.

2) Hilary McD. Beckles, " Historicizing Slavery in West Indian Feminisms." Feminist Review, 59 (1998): 36.

3)  Hilary McD. Beckles, " Historicizing Slavery in West Indian Feminisms." Feminist Review, 59 (1998): 36. 

4)  http://www.trinidadexpress.com/commentaries/Was_slavery_different_in_Trinidad_-129242193.html

5) A. Meredith John, " Plantation Slave Mortality in Trinidad." Population Studies,  42:2 (1988): 162.

6) A. Meredith John, " Plantation Slave Mortality in Trinidad." Population Studies,  42:2 (1988): 162.