•  
  •  
 

Class Year

2025

Document Type

Article

Abstract

This article examines how the enslaved constructed their social lives in the low density slave society of colonial New England, with a particular view towards whether those social lives can be classed as resistance. Using Barbados as a comparison point, the article establishes how New England was unique as a New World slave society and examines the impact of those differences on the social lives of the enslaved, including their courtship, marriage, and family formation, their fraternization, and their communal and ritual lives. It takes the view that through selective compliance, the enslaved were able to earn limited respect within white society and build independent social lives outside of it, both of which can be considered forms of resistance to the institution of slavery.

Download

Included in

History Commons

Share

COinS