Women's Work, Men's Work

The Informal Slave Economies of Lowcountry Georgia

Bibliographic Data

ID3416686
AuthorsJoyce E Chaplin (0000-0001-6370-4310, corresponding author), Betty Wood
Year1996
Volume53
Issue2
Pages397
Publication date1996-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe William and Mary Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0043-5597 • E-ISSN: 1933-7698
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2947415
OpenAlexW2145591808
LanguageEN
Citations received14

In Women's Work, Men's Work, Betty Wood examines the struggle of bondpeople to secure and retain for themselves recognized rights as producers and consumers in the context of the brutal, formal slave economy sanctified by law. Wood examines this struggle in the Georgia lowcountry over a period of eighty years, from the 1750s to the 1830s, when, she argues, the evolution of the system of informal slave economies had reached the point that it would henceforth dominate Savannah's political agenda until the Civil War and emancipation. In considering the quasi-autonomous economic activities of bondpeople, Wood outlines the equally significant but quite different, roles of bondwomen and bondmen in organizing these economies. She also analyzes the influence of evangelical Protestant Christianity on bondpeople, and the effects of the fusion of religious and economic morality on their circumstances. For a combination of practical and religious reasons, Wood finds, informal slave economies, with their impact on whites, became the single most important issue in Savannah politics. She contends that, by the 1820s, bondpeople were instrumental in defining the political agenda of a divided city - a significant, if unintentional, achievement

Economics · Economy · Political science · Sociology · Women's work · Work (physics · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Engineering · History · Race, History, and American Society

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