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The Hazards of Love: Family Formation Against the Financial Environment of Slavery in Pre-Revolutionary Haiti

2023; Frank Cass & Co.; Volume: 44; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/0144039x.2023.2229319

1743-9523

Gregory Jamian Smaldone,

Caribbean history, culture, and politics

ABSTRACTABSTRACTIn June of 1788, nine enslaved children in French-colonial Haiti identified as 'orphans' were leased by their enslaver alongside enslaved adults. How might these enslaved people have described their relationship to each other? While enslavers found biological families a category of sufficient economic importance to record in words, leasing contracts omit the broader familial connections African diasporans made. Under slavery's logic of human commodification, enslavers used the human beings they enslaved as conduits through which their investment capital could travel to increase in value. Aspects of enslaved African descendants' humanity became relevant to enslavers only inasmuch as those aspects could increase profits. But what if non-biological family connections were important enough to affect the economics of leasing even if enslavers failed to record those relationships in words? Embracing a Black digital humanistic approach, this article uses statistical regression to read 'along the bias grain' of leasing contracts to argue that the so-called 'orphaned' children were, in fact, cared for by the adults in their lease. Engaging with histories of the African diaspora, this article argues that Marguerite and Augustine, the adult women in the lease, may have occupied community positions that incorporated elements of the Yoruba concept of 'Public Mothers'.KEYWORDS: Slaveryfinanceracial capitalismfamily life AcknowledgementsI thank Michael Kwass, Jean Hébrard, Jessica Marie Johnson, Sasha Turner, and Bryce Corrigan for their generous advice, feedback, and support with the project.Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationFundingFunding for this research was provided by the Chateaubriand Fellowship Program and the Charles Singleton Center for the Study of Pre-Modern Europe.Notes on contributorsGregory Jamian SmaldoneGregory Jamian Smaldone is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Johns Hopkins University, 3400 North Charles St, Baltimore, MD, 21218, USA.