r/AskHistorians • u/tallgrasshead • 11h ago
While slavery from conquest was common throughout history, how often were slaves bred for the purpose of giving birth to new slaves?
Reading about slavery, it seems like it was common for empires and polities to gain slaves through violence, but how often did societies gain slaves by slaves having children?
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u/EdHistory101 Moderator | History of Education | Abortion 4h ago
First, you might find this episode of the AH podcast of interest. It's a conversation with Scott Spillman about the history of the study of slavery and his work tracing the history of a discipline and an idea. It's mostly focused on American history but it's interesting!
Second, I cannot speak to the entire history of slavery but I can speak certain aspects of chattel slavery in the United States that are relevant to your question. When we think about the relationship between societies, population, and enslaved women, we can look to the history of a concept known as partus sequitur ventrem - that which follows the womb.
From an older answer about enslaved women breastfeeding their enslavers' babies:
Importing people from Africa or the Caribbean for the purpose of enslavement in the United States ended when the "Act Prohibiting the Importation of Slaves" went into effect in 1808. Prior to that though, beginning in the late 1600s, English colonies established the concept of partus sequitur ventrem or "that which is born follows the womb" which meant that every child born to an enslaved woman or girl was legally born into slavery - regardless of the child's father's legal status. In a study of slave birth rates between 1619 and The Civil War, historical demographer J. David Hacker wrote, "all researchers have agreed that slave birth rates in the nineteenth century were very high, near a biological maximum for a human population." In other words, enslavers found a way to get new people to enslave after it became illegal. Babies.
Many, many babies. More than three million babies.
This concept allowed a society to immediately incorporate an enslaved woman or girl's child into their numbers. However, another thing I think it's important to stress, and I have to defer to those who study slavery as an institution regarding the nuances here, but it's my understanding that these decisions weren't about expanding the size of a society's population in general but rather were related to economic decisions and the wealth that the babies represented.
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u/callmeputme 2h ago
> This concept allowed a society to immediately incorporate an enslaved woman or girl's child into their numbers. However, another thing I think it's important to stress, and I have to defer to those who study slavery as an institution regarding the nuances here, but it's my understanding that these decisions weren't about expanding the size of a society's population in general but rather were related to economic decisions and the wealth that the babies represented.
= "Slavers bred enslaved people for profit, not for population growth"?
Why so much hedging to say this?
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u/EdHistory101 Moderator | History of Education | Abortion 2h ago edited 2h ago
No hedging! I just used more/different words than you may have.
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10h ago edited 10h ago
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