The Politics of Childbearing in the British Caribbean and the Atlantic World during the Age of Abolition, 1776--1838 (2013)
In a speech he delivered on the floor of the House of Commons in 1791 in support of his motion for the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade, William Wilberforce predicted that ending the trade would force plantation managers `to make breeding [enslaved Afro-Caribbeans] the prime object of their attention'.1 Instead of importing enslaved African labourers, planters should cultivate a home-grown Afro-Caribbean labour force. In doing so, they could ensure the economic stability of the British West Indies, and of the British empire more generally, despite the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade. The West Indian plantation system had long relied on imported slave labour, particularly in the face of long-standing demographic decline among Afro-Caribbeans, but the American War of Independence had disrupted the Atlantic slave trade and forced British politicians such as Wilberforce to rethink the system. This vision of economic success built on the backs of children born to enslaved women was not unique to Wilberforce. Many British politicians in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, both abolitionists and West Indian planters, shared it. Close examination of the politics of childbearing in the British Caribbean and the Atlantic world during the age of abolition indicates that British politicians viewed the West Indian colonies as an appropriate testing ground for governmental regulation of reproduction. This observation both expands our understanding of the roots of governmental involvement in matters of population, and intervenes in the debate among historians about whether abolitionists viewed their plans for reform as economically rational, or whether they pursued their reform agenda despite the potential economic consequences. An examination of the politics of childbearing during the age of abolition reveals that abolitionists and West Indian planters alike imagined that if they could unleash the full reproductive potential of Afro-Caribbean women's bodies, then the end …
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