ABSTRACT
Enmeshed in the exploitative world of racial slavery, overseers were central figures in the management of early American plantation enterprises. All too frequently dismissed as brutal and incompetent, they defy easy categorisation. Some were rogues, yet others were highly skilled professionals, farmers, and artisans. Some were themselves enslaved. They and their wives, with whom they often formed supervisory partnerships, were caught between disdainful planters and defiant enslaved labourers, as they sought to advance their ambitions. Their history, revealed here in unprecedented detail, illuminates the complex power struggles and interplay of class and race in a volatile slave society.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter 1|42 pages
One Plantation World
Overseers and Plantation Management in Eighteenth-Century Virginia and South Carolina
chapter 5|32 pages
“Unmerciful Overseers” and Conflicts of Power
Violence, Defiance, and the Practice of Authority
chapter 6|18 pages
A “Good Overseer” and an “Excellent Leader”
Enslaved Overseers and the Plantation Enterprise
chapter 7|35 pages
“Clever Active” Women and “Mad Bitches”
Overseeing Wives and Female Supervisors of Slavery
chapter 8|23 pages
“The Tyranny and Villainy of Overseers”
Slavery, Overseers, and the American Revolution
chapter 9|41 pages
Professionals, Pragmatists, and “Horrid Hellish Rogues”
Challenges, Opportunities, and Prospects of Overseeing
