The Authority of White Landed Caribbean Women on Plantations
- Catherine Williams
- Oct 24
- 9 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
This Colonial Era china cabinet from Barbados, along with the portrait hanging above it, encapsulates a Caribbean history steeped in plantation culture. The only similarity between the Caribbean of today and that of centuries past is the year-round heat. A spirit of resentment plagued white, landed settlers and their descendants. Many dreaded the idea of living in the Caribbean, and for those who did, it often became a nightmare. The inhabitants relied heavily on the Americas and Europe for everything—from furniture to food to patriarchal traditions. White landed settlers clung to Old World heteropatriarchal customs as if they were lifelines to Europe, which imposed barriers on white landed women seeking authority on English and French Caribbean plantations.
The Role of Women in Plantation Authority
White landed Caribbean women occasionally occupied positions of authority as landlords or landladies. Yet, male servants and governors often undermined their authority, creating obstacles for women in these roles. An exchange of letters between Governor Roger Wood of Bermuda and the Countess of Dorset, a landed woman in Bermuda, illustrates this dynamic. In their correspondence from the 1630s, the Governor threatened to deprive the Countess of her indentured servants if she failed to produce enough tobacco. The Countess' indentured servants undermined her authority, leading the Governor to assert, "They should be [paying] the rent they were rated at and afterwards upon halves [as before]…they return no profits [to] your honour nor benefit themselves." If uninterrupted, landed women could control their tenants and earn revenue, allowing them to assert their authority. However, uninterrupted female authority on plantations was a rarity across the English and French Caribbean.
Landed men and women operated under the mentality, as penned by Elizabeth Robbins, that women were "Confined at the home, are so Blown Up and Corrupted, with the flattery of Servants and Tenants." Robbins' The Whole Duty of a Woman provides insight into white Caribbean landed men’s perceptions of their female counterparts. Written for other women, Robbins literally outlines the ideal woman's life cycle through her work, which circulated on both sides of the Atlantic. Consequently, landed white Caribbean men often relegated their female counterparts to mere ornaments. Nonetheless, white landed Caribbean women persisted, finding authority through inheritance, commodification, and participation in the plantation economy.
Understanding Primogeniture
Before I continue, I must explain primogeniture. This legal principle, granting the right of the eldest son to inherit everything, was weaponized against landed women to prevent them from occupying positions of authority. Colonial Caribbean courts sought to uphold primogeniture, clinging to this European heteropatriarchal custom. In response, landed women pursued legal action through requisition trials, attempting to challenge primogeniture in court. These trials often dragged on for years and frequently ruled against women's interests. However, if there was a will, there was a way. To circumvent lengthy courtroom battles, landed men cleverly drafted their wills to allow their wives and daughters to inherit land, slaves, and the corresponding authority. Such strategically written wills often contained clauses that reassured men that a woman’s authority would only be temporary.
For example, a will from Bermuda's infancy stated, "it shall be lawful for the said Neptunia Downham to dispose of or give away three shares of land." Listing a female beneficiary as a creditor was a loophole; men expected generosity from "creditor…Widow HILTON for two shares of land [for] 100 lb Tobacco" instead of outright authority. Allowing women to inherit land bypassed primogeniture and, in doing so, recognised their capacity to occupy and assert positions of authority on plantations. Following or challenging wills in court acknowledged, albeit reluctantly, a woman’s mobility within the systems of plantation patriarchy.
The Intersection of Patriarchy and Plantation Life
White landed Caribbean women faced not only the challenges posed by primogeniture but also the pervasive patriarchy inherent in plantation life. A father was not merely the head of the household; he was also the head of the plantation. Randy M. Browne’s works, Surviving Slavery in the British Caribbean (2017) and The Driver’s Story (2024), along with Paul Cheney’s Cul De Sac (2017), attest to how patriarchy permeated Caribbean plantation systems. Both resident and absent plantation owners relied on male subordinates to sustain their plantations. The European Caribbean colonies were vulnerable to both external and internal threats. It is essential to remember that even landed individuals could not escape the Caribbean’s overall dependency on Europe and the Americas.
Furthermore, demographic imbalances haunted the English and French Caribbean. Enslaved people vastly outnumbered non-enslaved individuals, and men outnumbered women among the landed class. Clinging to European heteronormative patriarchy was not conducive to a plantation economy. Yet, landed plantation women played this game, often rigging it in their favour. The remainder of this article will explore a landed white Caribbean woman’s pathway to authority on plantations, from before her marriage to the crafting of her own will.
Marriage as a Pathway to Authority
Marriage offered a significant pathway for white landed Caribbean women to assert their authority on plantations. The importance of marriage was imported from Europe to Caribbean colonies, where it was believed that "the Marriage state…For here as you marry the person." Entire families invested in their children’s marriages. However, a demographic imbalance between men and women made arranging marriages exceedingly difficult for these white landed families. Women capitalised on their scarcity, leveraging it to negotiate unrealistic provisions in marriage contracts. Given the pervasive debt among landed Caribbean families, requiring both spouses to be debt-free was often unrealistic.
Including a lack of debt in the marriage contract further narrowed the already shallow pool of potential husbands. If this selection pool was not already limited enough, absolving (or being willing to absolve) landed wives of their husbands' past or future debts evaporated this already dry marriage pool. Women created positions of authority from their scarcity. Property, particularly slaves, became a point of negotiation. Future fathers-in-law would be contractually obligated to transfer slaves to their future daughters-in-law. This transfer of property simultaneously conferred the corresponding position of authority as a property owner. White landed men ceded their patriarchal authority to their female counterparts, for "it is necessary for men to multiply; it is no less than a man’s responsibility to marry."
Joint-Mastery Partnerships
Joint-mastery partnerships represented another avenue for white landed Caribbean women to assert authority on plantations. These partnerships were essentially business relationships between a plantation owner husband and his wife. The reasons behind the establishment of joint-mastery partnerships remain complex. However, being in such a partnership enabled landed Caribbean women to participate in the plantation economy with corresponding authority. Theoretically, these partnerships were centred on equality, as husbands and wives conducted plantation business together. In practice, the extent to which wives were genuinely equal in joint-mastery partnerships requires further investigation.
Existing evidence suggests that Caribbean courts provided wives in joint-mastery partnerships a platform to assert their authority in the presence of landed men, often before a male judge. Acknowledging a joint-mastery wife’s authority in court was a significant step. Instead of creating courtroom drama, the legal system took the landed female authority of joint-mastery wives seriously.
The Heights of Authority: Planters
Joint-mastery partnerships were not the pinnacle of authority that a landed white Caribbean woman could achieve on a plantation. Beyond these partnerships, women could hold immense authority as planters, a position typically reserved for men. As planters, they owned entire plantations and tracts of land. Landed white Caribbean women purchased property, such as "belonging to the said Mrs. Agnes Heydon, at 12s for the share of the first payment, and at 13s 14d being for 10 shares" (Using the Bank of England’s Inflation Calculator, 12s is approximately £1,208.20 and 13s 14d is approximately £1,409.57). Having property in a landed woman’s name was a significant achievement. These women could utilise their property as they saw fit, with the option to live on-site near their slaves.
However, many opted for absentee landownership, meaning they did not reside on or near their property. Absentee landowners were not exempt from the responsibilities of land ownership. They had to manage the high turnover of overseers, who were invariably male; there are no records of female overseers in the English and French Caribbean. These overseers directly managed a landed person’s land. With high overseer turnover, landed white women perpetuated a cycle of subordinating plebeian white men to work on land owned by a woman, for a woman. When an overseer was not quitting, they were managing property belonging to a landed female landowner. If a woman owned multiple parcels of land, she required more than one overseer to manage her holdings. Regardless of the number of overseers, the ownership of land in a woman’s name subtly asserted authority in a predominantly male-dominated system of plantation patriarchy.
Wills and Testaments: A Strategic Tool
Finally, following the example set by their male counterparts, landed Caribbean women utilised wills and testaments to their advantage. Crafting a will during a landed Caribbean woman’s lifetime enshrined her authority, allowing her to distribute property posthumously. Slaves and land were commonly bequeathed by white landed Caribbean women to surviving relatives, both male and female. One such will exemplified the routine provisions of bequeathing slaves to children and grandchildren: "[has] given to my grandchild, Paul Vaughan, my … boy Robin to hold for him and his heirs so long as the … liveth."
However, wills and testaments could only go so far in preserving landed female authority, especially in the Caribbean, where such authority was often contested. White landed Caribbean men could challenge a woman’s will, as illustrated by "widow Durham, Henry Durham, who made a request to have the school lands they now held at halves to be let unto them at an annual rent." Ultimately, the ruling on such challenges would largely depend on the discretion of a male judge. Nonetheless, contesting a will acknowledged the authority vested in a white landed Caribbean woman’s testament.
Conclusion: The Legacy of Authority
In conclusion, white landed Caribbean women occupied and asserted positions of authority on plantations. Despite the wealth of primary source evidence supporting the existence of landed female authority in the Caribbean between 1615 and 1776, the historiography remains deficient. Women often appear only tangentially in histories of the Caribbean. Virginia Bernhard’s 1999 book Slaves and Slaveholders in Bermuda 1616-1782 made significant strides in this area over the past 30 years. However, Michael Jarvis’ 2022 book Isle of Devils, Isle of Saints is among many that continue to sideline women.
This article has focused solely on landed white women, as there is no evidence of landed black or indigenous women in the English and French Caribbean during this period. The predominance of absentee plantation ownership—where the owner does not reside on the plantation—fostered the misconception that no landed families existed in the Caribbean, as they lived in the comfort of Britain or France. The final image exemplifies an absentee plantation. Returning to the first and second images, it is clear that white landed families did inhabit the Caribbean.
Obstacles to white landed female authority in the Caribbean between 1630 and 1776 were created by a suffocating spirit of resentment. Some Old World traditions, such as marriage and estate planning, charted paths for these women to assert their authority within the systems of plantation patriarchy. And if the Old World path was closed, a white woman’s scarcity was leveraged, enabling her to be more than just an ornament in a plantation home.
Endnotes
A.C. Hollis-Hatchett, Bermuda Under the Somer Isles Company vol. 3 (Pembroke: Juniper Hill & National Maritime Museum Press, 2005), 71.
Elizabeth Robbins, The Whole Duty of a Woman (London: J. Guiffem, 1701), 91.
A.C. Hollis-Hatchett, Bermuda Under the Somer Isles Company vol. 3 (Pembroke: Juniper Hill & National Maritime Museum Press, 2005), 2.
A.C. Hollis-Hatchett, Bermuda Under the Somer Isles Company vol. 3 (Pembroke: Juniper Hill & National Maritime Museum Press, 2005), 263.
Elizabeth Robbins, The Whole Duty of a Woman (London: J. Guiffem, 1701), 65.
Jacques Chaussé, Traité de L’Excelence du Mariage (Paris: Chez Martin Jovenel, 1690), 131.
A.C. Hollis-Hatchett, Bermuda Under the Somer Isles Company vol. 3 (Pembroke: Juniper Hill & National Maritime Museum Press, 2005), 2.
A.C. Hollis-Hatchett, Bermuda Under the Somer Isles Company vol. 3 (Pembroke: Juniper Hill & National Maritime Museum Press, 2005), 278.
A.C. Hollis-Hatchett, Bermuda Under the Somer Isles Company vol. 3 (Pembroke: Juniper Hill & National Maritime Museum Press, 2005), 312.
Bibliography
Archival Sources from the Schomburg Centre for Research in Black Culture
Sc MG 383
Printed Primary Sources
Chaussé, Jacques. Traité de l’excelence du Marriage (Paris 1690).
Foster, Nicholas. A Briefe Relation of the Late Horrid Rebellion Acted in the Island Barbados (London 1650).
Hollis-Hatchett, A.C., editor. Bermuda Under the Somer Islands Company, vols. 1-3 (Pembroke: Juniper Hill & National Maritime Museum Press, 2005).
Ligon, Richard. A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbados (London 1657).
Robbins, Elizabeth. The Whole Duty of a Woman (London 1701).
Secondary Sources
Bernhard, Virginia. Slaves and Slaveholders in Bermuda 1616-1782 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999).
Brown, Randy M. Surviving Slavery in the British Caribbean (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024).
Brown, Randy M. The Driver’s Story: Labor and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024).
Cheney, Paul. Cul De Sac: Patrimony, Capitalism, and Slavery in French Saint-Domingue (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017).
Jones-Rogers, Stephanie. They Were Her Property, White Women as Slave Owners in the American South (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019).
Higman, B.W. Montpelier Jamaica a Plantation Community in Slavery and Freedom 1739-1912 (Kingston: The Press University of the West Indies, 1998).
O’Day, Rosemary. Agency in Early Modern Britain and the American Colonies (New York: Routledge, 2007).
Ragatz, Lowell Joseph. The Old Plantation System in the British Caribbean (London: The Bryan Edwards Press, 1925).
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