UCL History student Shelby de Rond highly commended entrant to the Global Undergraduate Awards

1. Hi Shelby, thanks so much for talking to us! You were recently selected as a Highly Commended Entrant in the History category of The Global Undergraduate Awards 2021 Programme. This was for your essay ‘Agency Within Motherhood: Exploring how Enslaved Women in the Middle Passage and Colonial Latin America Raised Children and Constructed Avenues to Freedom’ – can you tell us a bit more about this essay?

Of course! This essay explores how enslaved women in colonial Latin America experienced motherhood, raised children, and constructed avenues to freedom. Although historians often consider the lives of enslaved women, few existing studies explore how these women experienced motherhood in colonial Latin America. Despite this, motherhood is a central experience of many women and therefore needs analysis within the context of slavery, particularly since the monopolisation of labour by slavery required negotiations of maternal identity. I decided to write about both the Middle Passage and Latin America because the Middle Passage influenced so much of how enslaved people formed relations in America. The Middle Passage was a useful framing device for this essay, as it is remembered both as a site of death and of the birth of the African diaspora, and so helps to highlight the role of pregnancy in the growth of diasporic populations. The majority of this essay is focussed on a court case in late-seventeenth-century Lima concerning the experiences of María Josefa, an enslaved cuarterona; Juana de Tovar, her biological mother; and doña Beatriz, María Josefa’s owner, to explore contestations of biological and spiritual motherhood, and familial debts of labour. This essay fundamentally re-centres and examines how motherhood was compromised for enslaved women in colonial Latin America, and how these women fought for the freedom of their children despite the centrality of violence to their mothering experience. Without discussions of motherhood, the experience of enslaved women is fundamentally obscured.

2. You wrote the research essay in the Second Year Research Seminar ‘Black Atlantics in the Global South.’ Why (or how) did you decide to write a Research Essay on that topic? 

From the beginning, I knew I wanted to write something that explored the intersections of gender and the enslavement of Black Africans. Of particular interest to me were the competing monopolies of labour—the labour of femininity in caring for the family and home, and the labours required by enslaved women’s owners. I considered looking at one of the key destructions of “femininity” that came with enslavement: the rape of enslaved women by their owners. Lots has been written on the subject of sexual violence against enslaved women in recent years; what has been less discussed are the destructions of motherhood. Many women experience motherhood as a key part of their identity. But in every stage of motherhood, enslaved women experienced a denial of that identity through the thief of their labour and their bodies, making it more difficult to care for a child that she may not have desired in the first place.

Cementing my idea, however, was the revelatory book Fractional Freedoms: Slavery, Intimacy, and Legal Mobilisation in Colonial Lima, 1600-1700 by Michelle McKinley [1].  Embedded within a chapter of this book I discovered the intertwined lives of three women: María Josefa, Juana de Tovar, and doña Beatriz. What immediately struck me was the different ideas about motherhood as espoused by Juana and Beatriz, how Juana was denied the performance of motherhood, and how Beatriz twisted its ideals to serve her owner-slave relationship with María Josefa. I just knew I had to write about them, and their case study forms the largest part of my essay.

3. Can you describe some of the primary sources that you analysed in your essay, and share with us some reflections about your experiences working with these primary sources and / or the challenges that you faced during the research or writing process? 

I based my essay off of three forms of sources: a 1682 annulment petition by a Spaniard, Pedro Ramírez, who argued for annulment of his marriage on the grounds that he had been unaware that his wife, María Josefa, was enslaved [2];  modern artistic interpretations of the Middle Passage, and the very absence of sources themselves. Studying the history of enslaved motherhood in the early Iberian Atlantic presents difficulties when considering the source material available: the archive, as a product of Spanish institutions (which were run by men), discusses little of the domestic or sexual sphere, both considered private and the woman’s domain. What evidence that remains is usually in the form of court documents that transcribed the proceedings of criminal or civil trials — my analysis of María Josefa’s experience was taken from a case in which she was accused of hiding her enslaved status from her husband: not something that immediately suggests a battle over the meaning of motherhood. Despite the fact that most enslaved women in colonial Latin America gave birth (or at least became pregnant), accounts of the lived experiences of pregnancy, birth, and motherhood among enslaved Black women appear infrequently in colonial documents. However, just because those writing historical documents often ignored enslaved motherhood does not mean it was not a fundamental experience. I just had to explore other historical research methods to find the evidence.

The essay by Jennifer L. Morgan, ‘Accounting for “The Most Excruciating Torment”: Gender, Slavery and Trans-Atlantic Passages’, gives the best demonstration of why we need to look at the absence of evidence as evidence itself and as the further violation of enslaved women’s bodies [3].  Ship records rarely catalogued the gender of enslaved Africans because it was unimportant to their sale. This omission is just one more way of revoking personhood—and of obscuring the gendered nature of violence on board these ships. Silences are telling. I used modern artistic interpretations of the Middle Passage—like Kara Walker’s Shell Grotto—to understand what the Middle Passage means to the African diaspora, then and now, and saw in it both death and birth [4].  And who is relied upon for this birth? Enslaved women. They are central to any experience of slavery, and to understand their importance, you have to look beyond traditional source material.

4. How did the process of researching and writing this essay help you to develop as a historian? 

It made me realise that I could write something new and worthy, in whatever small way, joining the vast body of literature that we call historiography. I felt myself engage, more than any other essay I have yet written, with the other historians who write on this subject, taking care to pay homage to them while enacting a dialogue in which I am an active participant. But most of all, beyond all academic development, beyond making sentences work the way I want them to, I learned about our responsibility as historians. It is a lesson that not all historians learn, but when writing about the history of slavery this responsibility is a fundamental reckoning. Historians have more power than most people think. They write history, coalescing thousands of sources into (mostly) readable essays; they determine what the public remembers. With every sentence, I had to make sure that I respected the historical actors I was writing about, and their individuality, even when I made more general conclusions. Most importantly, I found that if I, a white woman, wrote without caution, I could very easily replicate the emotional scars of the African diaspora. It is not enough to be good-natured; you have to be careful, conscientious, and thoughtful. Despite writing about a tragedy in human history (when I do not want to capitalise off of Black pain), I realised that ignorance about this brutal past is just as destructive. I had to write this essay, but most of all I had to write this essay with respect.

5. That sounds really interesting! Why did you decide to submit your essay to the Global Undergraduate Awards on this topic?

It’s the essay I’m proudest of. I really wanted to bring to light the experiences of María Josefa and Juana de Tovar, the two women who were so important to me while writing this essay. To me, becoming a Highly Commended Entrant is an acknowledgement and a validation of their experiences, and the experiences of so many other enslaved women lost to the archive. While writing this essay and searching for hints of motherhood in the historiography, I realised just how important this topic is to the future of studies on slavery, and this competition was my chance to get it out into the world. Dr Chloe Ireton, my lecturer, sent around an email advertising the Global Undergraduate Awards, and I saw it as an opportunity to do just that! 

6. This month is Black History Month, and the history of slavery is obviously central to this. Why do you think Black History Month is so important?

I am a white woman; I have an immense amount of privilege that sometimes requires conscious thought to recognise, but I also know what it is like not to see myself reflected in the history books that for so long have focused on Great White Men™. The omission of Black history from the record doesn’t just leave out the experiences and legacies of millions of Black people around the world; it also obscures the structures and institutions that actively deleted them from the historical canon. As a society, we are a product of such decisions, and without careful, conscious, and active change, we will remain entrenched in systemic racism. Following the ideas of Ibram X Kendi, it is not enough to not be racist; we have to be antiracist [5].  Black History month does just that.

Further, history is what gives us meaning. It explains how we came to be who we are today, and why we experience the world the way we do. Without understanding our history—without creating a place in the record to celebrate the Black past—we cannot understand ourselves. And if we cannot understand ourselves, then how will we ever grow? How will Black acceptance, self-love, economic advancement, and community formation continue without a recognition of them(selves) as central players in the formation of our society? And without Black History Month, how can there ever be a Black future? In the words of N. K. Jemisin’s eponymous short story collection, the question Black History Month builds towards is: How long ‘til Black Future Month? [6]

7. What tips and advice would you pass on to other students about life as a historian at UCL? 

Definitely make the most of your social life, because it all might get taken away from you! On the academic side, history at UCL is very different from A-Levels; you want to forget most of what you learned, because now you can be individualistic and find your own voice. Don’t be afraid if you don’t know what it is yet, or what you want to write about: it will come—almost without realising it, though in fact first year is filled with tutorials on how to actually say what you mean to say and in a professional manner. It will be okay. You don’t have to be brilliant. You just have to be interested in what you are doing.

8. You are now in your final year with us! What are your plans for the future?

Uh oh, no pressure! It’s only recently that I figured out I’d like to do a Master’s in history, preferably in American history. I suspect I will go on at some point to do a PhD in it, though that seems an awfully long way away and I’d like to experience a bit of non-academic life first to reassure myself that that is really what I want to do. I didn’t set out to become an academic, (and who knows where life will take me from here?) but when I was younger I was completely against doing a PhD. All the stress that comes with it didn’t seem worth it to me. But I realise now that I love writing history, creating history, and contributing to the historical field, and I can’t really imagine abandoning it. History needs people who ask the kinds of questions that traditional historians might skip over, like “What did pregnancy mean for enslaved women?” and “Why are people convinced that history is only made up of the sources that remain?”

References:

1. Michelle A. McKinley, Fractional Freedoms: Slavery, Intimacy, and Legal Mobilisation in Colonial Lima, 1600-1700 (Cambridge, 2016).

2. Archbishopric Archive in Lima, Causas de nulidades, leg. 37, año 1683 (Ramírez c. Martínez, 12 de mayo, 1682), transcribed and translated in Michelle A. McKinley, Fractional Freedoms: Slavery, Intimacy, and Legal Mobilisation in Colonial Lima, 1600-1700 (Cambridge, 2016), 119-134.

3. Jennifer L. Morgan, ‘Accounting for “The Most Excruciating Torment”: Gender, Slavery and Trans-Atlantic Passages’, History of the Present: A Journal of Critical History, vol. vi, no. 2 (2016).

4. Kara Walker’s Fons Americanus 2019, Tate, viewed 14 April 2021, <https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/kara-walker-2674/kara-walkers-fons-americanus>.

5. Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist (London, 2019). 

6. N. K. Jemisin, How long ‘til Black Future Month? (New York, 2018).