Question and Answer

Question
The role of enslaved women’s as resistors to slavery has largely been underestimated and undocumented.
Assess the impact of resistance by enslaved women on the Emancipation process up to 1838
Answer
Women played a pivotal role in the emancipation process. They resisted against the oppression from their slave masters and to prove to slave owners that they were more than mere objects and property. Slave women resisted in many ways in all areas of the New World. The types and degrees of resistance varied slightly in different parts of the New World, but it is shown through many slave narratives and scholarly essays that slave women, in all areas, resisted and rebelled every day. This is how they survived slavery. Resistance repeatedly brought the slave woman out of objectification and gave the slave woman strength and existence as able subjects.

Figure 1: An enslaved woman

Maroon women showed women were leaders in rebellions and as priestesses who rallied troops in the hopes of obtaining their freedom. The most formidable in Jamaica was the Ashanti Nanny maroon. Being a free woman she never personally experienced slavery, but was painfully aware of the suffering of her fellow enslaved countrymen and women. She led a highly organised community in the Back Rio Grande Valley in resistance. She never partook in the fighting but using the magico-religious tactics she advised on the best time to wage war, gave charms to protect warriors and participated with military commanders in rituals designed to weaken the enemy.

Figure 2: An enslaved woman
Its revolts like these shocked the British government and made them see that the costs and dangers of keeping slavery in the West Indies were too high. In places like Jamaica, many terrified plantation owners were finally ready to accept abolition rather than risk a widespread war. Additionally, The