Did abolition of the transatlantic
slave trade damage enslaved women's health?
In 1807, the British
parliament voted to abolish the transatlantic slave trade, following a long
campaign led by William
Wilberforce.
While most plantation owners opposed abolition, a few did
not - including Joseph Foster Barham II, who owned Mesopotamia sugar estate in
Jamaica.
Appalled by the suffering caused by the slave trade, Foster Barham
(as MP for Stockbridge) voted with Wilberforce in the House of Commons for
abolition and voluntarily ceased to purchase new African arrivals in 1792, 15
years before legal abolition. Mesopotamia's records are unusually detailed and
record the ages, date of arrival, origin (whether African or born on the
estate), health status, and work duties of 1,099 enslaved individuals on the
estate between 1762 and 1832. These
manuscripts are preserved in the Bodleian
Library, Oxford.
On Mesopotamia, withdrawal from the slave trade led to an
increase in the number of women sent to work in the cane fields, work
considered to be the most arduous and riskiest on a plantation. Survival
analysis suggests there was an accompanying deterioration in their survival chances: estimates
suggest the risk of death was about 55% to 75%higher for women arriving on the estate
after 1792 than before. To test whether exposure to fieldwork accounts for reduced
survival prospects, the actual survival times of slaves (i.e. time to death)
was compared with their counterfactual survival times had they never been
exposed to fieldwork. The technique employed is intended to avoid problems
caused by the ‘healthy worker survival
effect': the tendency for labourers to be withdrawn from a hazardous occupation
as their health failed, and reallocated to lighter duties.
Estimates suggest that continuous exposure to fieldwork on a
sugar estate, relative to never being exposed, reduced survival times by
approximately 30%. Consequently, the dread slaves felt at being sent to the
fields appears well placed, especially for women who were less likely to occupy
supervisory roles in sugar cultivation and, therefore, enjoyed the least amount
of protection.