Postemanzipation und Gender

Introduction: The historiography of postemancipation and gender

This part does not only introduce the articles of this volume of COMPARATIV, but also gives a short overview of actual trends in postemancipation history concerning Brazil and some regions of the Caribbean and Africa. Reflections about the entanglement of slavery / postemancipation history and gender history, existing research results and open questions in this field follow.

Slavery, Postemancipation and Gender in Cuba. An Overview This article gives an overview on gender aspects of the slavery politics of the Spanish colonial state and of the Cuban masters in the period of the so called “Second Slavery” (Dale Tomich) – the capitalist Massensklaverei of the 19th century. In a second step the paper tries to differentiate the gender­politics of the two opposite sides in the anti­colonial wars of 1868–1898 and their strategies towards abolition. Finally, in a micro­historical approach the article follows the trails of individual ex­slaves after the abolition of slavery in Cuba (1886), like Esteban Montejo, the famous cimarrón, and analyses their gendered responses to the more and more racialized politics and the machismo of the post­emancipation era.

British and Danish West Indies after Slavery.

The article is focussing the major problems of adjustments to emancipation in the British and Danish West Indies. The first chapter stresses the antagonistic conflict between planters and freed slaves over land and labour in terms of „reconstituted peasantry“ (Mintz) versus plantations. The fight over economic resources and new (economic) measures of labour control are major topics of chapter 2. Especially the refusal of women to do field work on the plantations is highlighted. The trend towards racist interpretations of work attitudes is reflected in contemporary Governor‘s reports. The ideological aspects of abolition and the impact of Christian churches to establish a new moral and cultural order is the crucial theme of chapter 3. Especially the ambivalent and controversial attitude of the Moravian Church and its missionaries is been critically discussed. Chapter 4 outlines the economic future of the sugar industry after slavery. The long term development of the rural population and its specific class structure (peasant/labourers) is analysed in chapter 5. The different patterns of adjustments to emancipation in the British and Danish West Indies are summarised in the conclusion.

Historiography and open questions about postemancipation and gender in the French West Indies

This article is dedicated to a region which is often neglected in comparative history of slavery and postemancipation, which moves frequently inside the former colonial empires. It explains how gender history is connected with the historical research about slavery and abolition the French Caribbean, particularly St. Domingue / Haiti, Martinique and Guadeloupe, and resumes some results of this research in respect of gender­specific division of labour, gender roles in slave families and manumissions. With regard to postemancipation studies This article refers to studies about coercive forms of plantation labour after slavery and immigration, comments the still existing shortfalls concerning investigations of family patterns, couple relations and conflicts in gender relations of the Afromartiniquian population and problems of sources to write a postemancipation­gender­history from below.