The Quarters and the Fields: Slave Families in the Non-Cotton South
Damian Pargas Pargas
Abstract
This book offers a unique approach to the examination of slavery. Rather than focusing on slave work and family life on cotton plantations, the book compares the practice of slavery among the other major agricultural cultures in the nineteenth-century South: tobacco, mixed grain, rice, and sugar cane. It reveals how the demands of different types of masters and crops influenced work patterns and habits, which in turn shaped slaves' family life. By presenting a broader view of the complex forces that shaped enslaved people's family lives, not only from outside but also from within, this book ta ... More
This book offers a unique approach to the examination of slavery. Rather than focusing on slave work and family life on cotton plantations, the book compares the practice of slavery among the other major agricultural cultures in the nineteenth-century South: tobacco, mixed grain, rice, and sugar cane. It reveals how the demands of different types of masters and crops influenced work patterns and habits, which in turn shaped slaves' family life. By presenting a broader view of the complex forces that shaped enslaved people's family lives, not only from outside but also from within, this book takes an inclusive approach to the slave agency debate. A comparative study that examines the importance of time and place for slave families, it provides a means for understanding them as they truly were: dynamic social units that were formed and existed under different circumstances across time and space.
Keywords:
slavery,
slave work,
family life,
agricultural cultures,
nineteenth-century South,
tobacco,
mixed grain,
rice,
sugar cane,
masters,
crops,
work patterns,
habits,
slave agency,
debate
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2010 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780813035147 |
| Published to Florida Scholarship Online: September 2011 |
DOI:10.5744/florida/9780813035147.001.0001 |
