Plenary for the Coordinating Council for Women in History at the virtual meeting of the American Historical Association. February 21, 2022 at 5:00PM EST. This event will be on Zoom. Sessions will be recorded. Recordings will be available on the AHA meeting platform for several months and available for viewing by anyone registered for the AHA meeting.
DESCRIPTION
In December of 1662, Virginia’s legislators passed an act that made the free or enslaved status of a child born in the colony contingent upon the free or enslaved status of their mother. Such a choice was and remains remarkable to scholars because it stood in direct contrast with the paternal descent laws that prevailed in England. In trying to explain Virginia’s decision to implement a maternal rather than paternal descent law, legal historians and slavery scholars have offered several theories. They contend that legislators either codified local custom or that they drew heavily upon Roman slave law, canon law, British laws related to bastardy and animal husbandry, the law of nations, or laws governing other systems of slavery. This paper proposes another possibility.
Rather than approach the questionable origins of British colonial descent laws from a Eurocentric perspective, this paper examines the role that West African customs and laws may have played in shaping them. I take the system of laws and customs that prevailed on the West Coast of Africa during the Atlantic slave trade as my point of departure, and in so doing, I approach the issue of British slave descent laws from an African-Atlantic vantage point. Using an array of sources, I show what the English knew about West African descent laws and customs, chart how this information circulated among and between individuals across three continents, and ultimately, assess the possible impact of this knowledge on British colonial lawmaking and gendered laws pertaining to slave descent.