Slave mortgage

Not to be confused with Mortgage slave.

South Carolina slave mortgage agreement between slave trader Ziba B. Oakes and Mrs. Mary Pyne, backed by eight enslaved people including 10-year-old Louisa, an infant, and the future "increase of the females"

A slave mortgage was a financial instrument used by financiers wherein money was lent on the basis of the value of enslaved people. ^[1] There are records of slave mortgages in the United States (Louisiana, South Carolina, and Virginia) ^[1] and in South Africa. ^[2] According to scholar Bonnie Martin, "the time lag between the recording of mortgages and foreclosures, when added to the dispersed nature of the mortgage recording process, made this financial engine relatively invisible, allowing potentially large economic and human consequences to remain unrecognized." ^[1] As historian Calvin Schermerhorn put it, slave mortgages "drew equity out of [slave] bodies to reinvest in [sugar] refinement technology and more enslaved workers". ^[3] Settlers fleeing a slave mortgage crisis was one of the precipitating factors of the American colonization of the Republic of Texas in the 1830s. ^[4]

Slave insurance

Slave insurance in the United States; became an increasingly significant industry after the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves, a federal law which took effect in 1808, prevented any new slaves from being imported to the U.S. ^[5] Existing slaves, especially skilled workers, therefore became more valuable, and were often rented out to businesses; slave owners insured against the death or loss of these rented-out slaves. ^[5] Industries which rented insured skilled slaves from their owners included blacksmithing, carpentry, railroad construction, coal mining, and steamboat operations, ^[5] and insured rented slaves also included firemen and cooks. ^[6] Chinese slaves, called "coolies", were also insured. ^[6]

The subject of slave insurance in the United States has become a matter of historical and legislative interest. In the history of slavery in the United States, a number of insurance companies wrote policies insuring slave owners against the loss, damage, or death of their slaves. The fact that a number of insurers continue the businesses that serviced these policies has brought attention to this history.

Experiences of motherhood in slavery

Enslaved black mothers had unique experiences in regard to maternal practices. Revered and abused for their procreative capacity, enslaved women were seen as a means of increasing the enslaved population. "Once slaveholders realized that the reproductive function of the female slave could yield a profit, the manipulation of procreative sexual relations became an integral part of the sexual exploitation of female slaves."

Additionally, enslaved mothers were often exploited by way of wet-nursing, a practice wherein the enslaved mother would suckle a white slaver's infant. "Enslaved women shared their breast milk when white slaveholders forced them to labor away from their infants, or when they sold mothers away from their suckling babies, or when nursing slaves died." ^[7] Reinforcing the Mammy stereotype, the forced practice of wet-nursing often required enslaved mothers to prioritize their enslavers' infants rather than their own, and in fact could sometimes lead to the enslaved mother's infant dying of malnutrition from being weaned off of breast milk too early. Predating the transatlantic slave trade, European travelers viewed African women as having "superior ability to suckle" because of their long breasts that enabled "women to suckle their infants over their shoulders." These representations also led to "erotic images of enslaved wet nurses, in order for slaveholders to rationalize both the sexual exploitation of enslaved women and the care they provided to white offspring." ^[7]

Because of the demands of enslavement, female slaves tended to rely on "shared and communal forms of mothering." ^[7] Although likely unrealized by enslaved women, this shared form of mothering carried a continuity between Africa, where women typically relied on other women to raise their children with little help from men, and North America. "In all likelihood this helped preserve the part of African culture that put emphasis on motherhood, and the African mother probably passed it on to her daughters."

See also

• Slave insurance in the United States
• Nadir of American race relations
• Abolition of slavery timeline
• American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS)
• Glossary of American slavery
• Colonial history of the United States
• Female slavery in the United States

References

1. Martin, Bonnie (2010). "Slavery's Invisible Engine: Mortgaging Human Property". The Journal of Southern History. 76 (4): 817–866. ISSN   0022-4642.
2. Ekama, Kate (2021-05-04). "Bondsmen: Slave Collateral in the 19th-Century Cape Colony" . Journal of Southern African Studies. 47 (3): 437–453. doi:10.1080/03057070.2021.1900467. ISSN   0305-7070.
3. Schermerhorn, Calvin (2015). The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815-1860. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. p. 94. doi:10.12987/9780300213898. ISBN   978-0-300-19200-1. JSTOR   j.ctt1bh4d2w. LCCN   2014036403. OCLC   890614581.
4. Schermerhorn, Calvin; Online, Pilot (2015-03-18). "Schermerhorn: Intertwined trades in sugar, slavery". The Virginian-Pilot. Retrieved 2023-11-12.
5. Ralph, Michael; Rankin, William (January 2017). "Decoder: The Slave Insurance Market". Foreign Policy . Retrieved June 19, 2020.
6. Morain, Dan (May 2, 2002). "Slave Owners and Their Insurers Are Named". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved June 19, 2020.
7. West, Emily (February 2017). "Mothers' Milk: Slavery, Wet-Nursing, and Black and White Women in the Antebellum South". Journal of Southern History. 83 (1): 37–68 – via Project MUSE.

Further reading

• Kilbourne, Richard Holcombe (1995). Debt, Investment, Slaves: Credit Relations in East Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, 1825–1885. University of Alabama Press. ISBN   9780817307301.