Tema 4
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Norman Simms
Waikato University
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Long-Term Traumatic Disorders in Slave Society: The Examples of Sao Tome,
Surinam and Cayenne in the 17th Century.
Normal arguments run that slave-owning societies preferred strong, healthy
young men, rather than children, because of the high mortality rates from
overwork, heat exhaustion in harsh conditions, disease, etc. But for both
slaves and slave-owners the psychological also played a factor: for slaves,
certainly, in terms of uprooting, exile, loss of freedom, separation from
family, beatings, and abuse; so that second and third generation servitude
was marked less by rebellion and longing to return to home than by despair,
listlessness, and internal violence. For slave-owners, not only do we need
to seek reasons for their ability to disassociate or enjoy the pains they
inflict on others, but understandn the consequences on their own children
and granbdchildren. In addition, where children are taken as slaves with
no obvious "use" or financial "gain", other reasons need to be sought, not
least of which sexual and sadistic abuse as an attempt to overcome the need
to confront the moral, social, and domestic consequences of the peculiar
system. In the three colonies mentioned, one of the defining features is
the early relative closure of the societies created; that is, few new
slaves were brought in and few new European migrants arrived, so that the
core of the communities were mixed-race populations, fearful of new-comers,
hostile to metropolitan governments, and suspicious of ecclesiastical
controls.
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