“Dey jus’ puts a man and breedin’ woman together like mules”: family, gender, and forced reproduction in the Antebellum South, 1808-1861

Djelid, A. (2023) “Dey jus’ puts a man and breedin’ woman together like mules”: family, gender, and forced reproduction in the Antebellum South, 1808-1861. PhD thesis, University of Reading. doi: 10.48683/1926.00119022

Abstract/Summary

Forced reproduction, or ‘slave-breeding’, permeated every aspect of an enslaved person’s life. From arranging marriages between enslaved people to forcing enslaved men to rape enslaved women, slaveholders controlled enslaved communities’ intimate and sexual lives. Previously, historians have dismissed forced reproduction as an abolitionist trope – one that sensationalised and exaggerated ‘slave-breeding’ to the point of claiming the existence of ‘stud farms.’ They all concluded that there is no empirical evidence that it existed. This thesis disputes these claims on the basis that they do not approach the topic in a qualitative way, nor do they listen to the voices of enslaved and formerly enslaved people who have been discussing this topic since its conception. It instead argues that enslavers carried out forced reproduction in a day-to-day way along a spectrum of violence: while some slaveholders pursued a ‘paternalistic’ approach to breeding by allowing and encouraging enslaved people to marry and have children, others violently coerced enslaved people into having sex with multiple partners. Though forced reproduction undoubtedly affected enslaved women, it was also a form of sexual exploitation for enslaved men, and by using gender as a tool of analysis, this thesis argues that enslavers attempted to emasculate enslaved men by forcing them to rape and be raped, but also by interfering with masculine ideals such as fatherhood. Forced reproduction infiltrated every aspect of an enslaved person’s life, but this thesis will focus on four key themes: coerced relationships, fatherhood, health and medical care, and finally marketisation. By primarily using sources from enslaved and formerly enslaved people and using these four themes as a lens in which to view sexual violence in the antebellum South, this thesis examines the ways that forced reproduction affected enslaved men, women, and children in different ways, dividing from one another, and leaving emotional and physical scars on enslaved communities throughout the South.

Item Type	Thesis (PhD)
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/119022
Identification Number/DOI	10.48683/1926.00119022
Divisions	Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Humanities > History
Date on Title Page	December 2022
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