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Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History
“Compelling.”—Renee Graham, Boston Globe
“Stunning.”—Rebecca Onion, Slate
“Makes a vital contribution to our understanding of our past and present.”—Parul Sehgal, New York Times
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.
Editorial Reviews
Review
"Jones-Rogers brings an unseen world to life" --Parul Sehgal, International New York Times
"Jones-Rogers has provided a brilliant, innovative analysis of American slavery, one that sets a new standard for scholarship on the subject."--Elizabeth R. Varon, The Washington Post
"Herein lies the greatest innovation of Jones-Rogers's book--to show that the power white women wielded over enslaved people, reflected in horrific violence, extended into the economic structures of slavery. They engaged in brutal acts with the logic of the market in mind. Hers is the first book to isolate white women as economic actors in the slave system, and thus the first to dismantle another long-standing myth about these women--that they simply stood by as men conducted the business of slavery."--Lynne Feeley, The Nation
"The full role of white women in slavery has long been one of the 'slave trade's best-kept secrets.' They Were Her Property, a taut and cogent corrective...examines how historians have misunderstood and misrepresented white women as reluctant actors...They Were Her Property draws on the customary sources--letters and other documents from slave-owning families and the like--but radically centers the testimonies of formerly enslaved people in interviews conducted by the Federal Writers' Project, part of the Works Progress Administration. From these stories, Jones-Rogers brings an unseen world to life...Jones-Rogers is a crisp and focused writer. She trains her gaze on the history and rarely considers slavery's reverberations. They are felt on every page, however. It is impossible to read her on 'maternal violence'--the abuse of black mothers and babies during slavery--without thinking of black maternal mortality rates today. This scrupulous history makes a vital contribution to our understanding of our past and present."--Parul Sehgal, The New York Times
"Compelling...Jones-Rogers captures the echoes of what happens when America's greatest atrocity -- and who participated in it -- is deliberately misunderstood and unchallenged."--Renee Graham, Boston Globe
"Stunning."--Rebecca Onion, Slate
"One of the most significant books on the history of women and slavery."--Edward E. Baptist, author of The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism
"This is a deeply researched and powerfully argued book that completely overturns romanticized notions of the plantation mistresses and resistant southern white women. Stephanie Jones-Rogers reveals how deeply complicit slaveholding white women were in upholding the everyday cruelties and barbarity of racial slavery."--Manisha Sinha, author of The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition
"They Were Her Property casts brilliant, unsparing light on the history of slaveholding women and the terrible oscillation of domination and dependence that defined identities--as wives, as mothers, as mistresses--purchased in the slave market."--Walter Johnson, author of River of Dark Dreams
"Stephanie Jones-Rogers has written a highly original book that will change the way we think about women enslavers in the United States. A must-read for anyone interested in the history of gender, slavery and capitalism."--Daina Ramey Berry, author of The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation
"They Were Her Property is nothing less than phenomenal. It shatters many sacred cows about women's history and legal history and shows how slaveowning women skirted the limitations of gender norms and statutory law in ways that have been previously underestimated. The findings are buttressed by reading anew a rich and prodigious body of primary sources. This is a must read."--Tera W. Hunter, author of Bound in Wedlock: Slave and Free Black Marriage in the Nineteenth Century
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.
Product details
- Hardcover: 320 pages
- Publisher: Yale University Press (February 19, 2019)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0300218664
- ISBN-13: 978-0300218664
- Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
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