Gender, Mastery and Slavery From European to Atlantic World Frontiers

by Foster, W. H.

• ISBN13: 9781403987075
• ISBN10: 1403987076
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-01-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Gender, family and sexual relations defined human slavery from its classical origins in Europe to the rise and fall of race-based slavery in the Americas. Gender, Mastery and Slavery is one of the first books to explore the importance of men and women to slaveholding across these eras.

Author Biography

WILLIAM FOSTER is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Redlands. He has taught gender and slavery both the UK (Cambridge) and the US (Cornell, Pennsylvania, and Redlands).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. ix
Introduction: The Problem of Gender, Mastery and Slavery	p. 1
Men, women and mastery	p. 1
Purpose and outline of the book	p. 9
The birth of maternalism: Christian, Muslim, and Hebrew traditions	p. 9
Europeans, Native Americans and the Muslim world	p. 10
Empire and white servitude	p. 12
Race and nation	p. 13
Gender, Mastery, and Maternalism: Christian, Muslim and Hebrew Traditions	p. 15
Maternalism	p. 15
Hebrew origins	p. 16
Overcoming the maternal: the birth of Islam	p. 21
Maternalism in Christian European tradition	p. 24
Maternalism and communal female mastery	p. 28
From deviance to paternalism	p. 32
From failed womanhood to redeemed motherhood	p. 38
Conclusion: the emotional worlds of maternalism and paternalism	p. 41
Gender, Mastery and Frontier: Europe, North Africa and Native America	p. 44
Slave frontiers: Christians, Muslims and Native Americans	p. 44
Europeans among Muslims	p. 48
European slaves in the Muslim world	p. 49
Sodomy and sexual danger	p. 49
Muslim female mastery - imagined and real	p. 51
Christian women and redemption	p. 56
Masterless men	p. 60
Europeans among Native Americans	p. 67
The Spanish, sodomy and sexual danger revisited	p. 67
Captivity and the New World woman	p. 72
The English American Exodus	p. 77
Anglo-American manhood redeemed	p. 78
Gender, Mastery and Empire: White Servitude in New Worlds	p. 85
Unfortunate noblemen and vile mistresses: legitimate mastery in Old and New Worlds	p. 85
Topsy-turvy America?	p. 88
Reflected maternalism	p. 98
Resistance and the New World body	p. 103
Introducing race: the birth of Atlantic world communities	p. 107
Gender, Mastery and Nation: Race and Slavery in the United States	p. 115
Antebellum mastery in perspective	p. 115
The cruelty of women and the abolitionist sensibility	p. 117
Maternalism claimed and resisted	p. 125
Paternalism tested	p. 128
Pragmatic maternalism revisited	p. 131
Race and family	p. 135
Legacies for the nation	p. 138
Conclusion	p. 140
Notes	p. 144
Bibliography	p. 164
Index	p. 178
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