They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South - Hardcover

Jones-Rogers, Stephanie E.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300218664 ISBN 13: 9780300218664

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2019

Synopsis

A bold and searing investigation into the role of white women in the American slave economy
 
Bridging women’s history, the history of the South, and African American history, this book makes a bold argument about the role of white women in American slavery. Historian Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers draws on a variety of sources to show that slave-owning women were sophisticated economic actors who directly engaged in and benefited from the South’s slave market. Because women typically inherited more slaves than land, enslaved people were often their primary source of wealth. Not only did white women often refuse to cede ownership of their slaves to their husbands, they employed management techniques that were as effective and brutal as those used by slave-owning men. White women actively participated in the slave market, profited from it, and used it for economic and social empowerment. By examining the economically entangled lives of enslaved people and slave-owning women, Jones-Rogers presents a narrative that forces us to rethink the economics and social conventions of slaveholding America.

About this title

Book Description:

Drawing upon a variety of sources to examine the economically entangled lives of enslaved people and slave-owning women, Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers reveals the key role of white women within the slave market. Full of new insights, this volume sheds important light on both American slavery and women’s history.

About the Author:

Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers is assistant professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the winner of the 2013 Lerner-Scott Prize for best doctoral dissertation in U.S. women's history. 

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 0300218664
• ISBN 13: 9780300218664
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320