Some have proposed that there was something of a golden age for women in the Colonial America while on the other end of the spectrum many believe that this notion is completely untrue (Norton, 1984). This seems odd to some as women born into slavery were owned and subject to sexual exploitation from their master and their trials published (Jacobs & Child, 2008)
Colonial Women Different Experiences in Colonial America One of the central debates in the lives of early colonial women relates to their quality of life. Some have proposed that there was something of a golden age for women in the Colonial America while on the other end of the spectrum many believe that this notion is completely untrue (Norton, 1984)
One article tells the story of how a court in North Carolina in the eighteenth century allowed some women to do just that. The court records of Albemarle, North Carolina, during the years of proprietorship, from 1663 to 1729, reveal subtle examples of Carolina women's participation in early colonial economic affairs; debt suits and the accompanying surviving accounts show varied economic relationships forged by ordinary keeper and merchant wives in the community and speak to the diversity of experience in colonial women's lives (Rutz-Robbins, 2006)
Still, there were different roles for the various races of women within Colonial society during the 18th century. Creole and other mixed race women often dealt with greater prejudice and injustices during their lives in the period (Berkin 1997)
This role assumed a submissive role to the husband. As one 18th century poem describes, women were "always true to their mate" (Jennings 2003)
Every society is in many ways characterized by its notions of gender roles. A gender system within any given society "is the way in which this differentiation creates expectations for behavior and apportions power between men and women" (Middleton & Lombard 2011 p 158)
Daughters were expected to be submissive to the wishes of her father. Father's would often play a critical role in choosing who their daughter was to marry (Smith 2008)
In other words, when James Oglethorpe was seeking a charter to found Georgia, his vision for the colony had been based on the Greek and Roman colonial tradition of "planting (colonies) on the frontiers of their new empires" that would give a new strength to the whole. Therefore, Oglethorpe conceived Georgia's role to be that of a provider of raw materials, a military buffer, and a population overflow valve (Goon, 2002)
Viewed from such a perspective, it would indeed be possible to call into question Georgia's patriotism and loyalty to the newly formed United States of America. However, as Bertram Wyatt-Brown points out in his 1986 work, Honor and Violence in the Old South, the southern idea of patriotism was vested more in a place, a people, and a past, rather than upon abstract concepts of democracy and freedom (Morris, 2003)
Led by the rebellious young gentleman, Nathaniel Bacon, they overthrew the governor, burned the capital at Williamsburg and then wrote a new constitution that expanded landholding and voting rights for poor white men. Berkeley was well-aware of this problem and attempted to diversify the economy away from dependence on a single export crop, even by reducing or ceasing the eliminating of tobacco, but all such attempts failed (Billings 195)
Breen and S. Innes (1980) report that during the early and middle decades of the century, "Englishmen and Africans could interact with one another on terms of relative equality for two generations," which never happened again in the South after this time (Breen and Innes 72)
From the mid- to the end of the 17th Century on, then, there appears to have been concerted efforts to formalize the respective rights that distinguished whites from blacks in the New World. As Higginbotham points out "despite some limitations on their rights, white servants were never the victims of any legislative plan to deprive them of such basic options as the right to sue one's masters for ill treatment or for one's freedom and white servants were never precluded from owning property" (Higginbotham 38)
These efforts to formally legalize an otherwise inhumane institution were more than just an exercise in economic development they were rather a coordinated effort by whites to define the entire African "race" as being so completely inferior and animal-like as to not deserve the same basic considerations that were afforded their white indentured counterparts irrespective of any realities to the contrary. As Russell Hittinger (1999) points out "the slave codes make sense only on the supposition that the slave is not a man, but a brute, with a brute's propensities, a brute's nature, and a brute's destiny" (Hittinger 67)
While these Africans from the Gold Coast region were not unique in this regard, Smallwood maintains that these experiences provide an authentic example the factors that contributed to their predicament, including the powerful economic forces that were at play during this period in history. For instance, there were even social and cultural among the blacks themselves, with newly arrived African's being referred to as "saltwater Negroes" or "newcomers" who were regarded as inferior by their American-born counterparts because they could not speak English and were unfamiliar with local laws, customs and work routines (Jacobs 2008)
Berkeley was well-aware of this problem and attempted to diversify the economy away from dependence on a single export crop, even by reducing or ceasing the eliminating of tobacco, but all such attempts failed (Billings 195). In the wake of Bacon's Rebellion, the rulers of Virginia decided to solve "the problem of the poor" by importing more African slaves, who would not be armed and have far more difficulty running away than white servants (Morgan 385)
Thomas D. Morris relates the famous story of Anthony Johnson, "a black who acquired property and became the owner of slaves in his own right," which would become almost impossible once slavery became a thoroughly rigid and codified system that applied to all blacks and their children (Morris 41)
In this regard, Sowande Muskateen reports that "despite the efforts used to procure healthy bondpeople, no sea captain or physician could anticipate the diseases capable of wreaking havoc on the bodies and minds of African captives. The intermingling of bondpeople in close confinement in the holds of ships facilitated the exchange of contagious ailments" such as measles, influenza, and smallpox (Mustakeem 475)
Starting in 1672, the Royal African Company had a monopoly on the slave trade, although it was forced to accept competition in the 18th Century. Throughout the period of the slave trade, over 90% of Africans were transported to the sugar-producing islands in the West Indies like Jamaica, Barbados and Santo Domingo, and only a small minority to the English mainland colonies (Smallwood 3)
Not until that decade did the importation of slaves even exceed 1,000, although 7,000 were imported in 1700-10 and 13,500 in the 1730s. By 1700, there were 20,000 slaves in Virginia about 20% of the population (Tomlins 25)
The legislation of that year was essentially a codification of the colony's slave laws since 1662 and thus added little to the existing system. Virginia's code lagged far behind South Carolina's of 1696 and the earlier British island codes" (Vaughn 306)