{"id":56324,"date":"2018-04-29T20:41:03","date_gmt":"2018-04-29T20:41:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=56324"},"modified":"2023-03-13T02:25:33","modified_gmt":"2023-03-13T02:25:33","slug":"enterprising-women-gender-race-and-power-in-the-revolutionary-atlantic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=56324","title":{"rendered":"Enterprising Women: Gender, Race, and Power in the Revolutionary Atlantic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Enterprising Women: Gender, Race, and Power in the Revolutionary Atlantic<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

University of Georgia Press<\/a>
\n2015-01-15
\n240 pages
\nTrim size: 6 x 9
\nHardcover ISBN: 978-0-8203-4455-3
\nPaper ISBN: 978-0-8203-5387-6<\/p>\n

Kit Candlin<\/strong><\/a>, Lecturer
\nSchool of Humanities and Social Science
\nThe University of Newcastle, Australia<\/em><\/p>\n

Cassandra Pybus<\/strong><\/a>, Professor of History
\nUniversity of Sydney<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Recovered histories of entrepreneurial women of color from the Caribbean<\/i><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

In the Caribbean colony of Grenada<\/a> in 1797, Dorothy Thomas signed the manumission<\/a> documents for her elderly slave Betty. Thomas owned dozens of slaves and was well on her way to amassing the fortune that would make her the richest black resident in the nearby colony of Demerara. What made the transaction notable was that Betty was Dorothy Thomas\u2019s mother and that fifteen years earlier Dorothy had purchased her own freedom and that of her children. Although she was just one remove from bondage, Dorothy Thomas managed to become so rich and powerful that she was known as the Queen of Demerara<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Dorothy Thomas\u2019s story is but one of the remarkable acounts of pluck and courage recovered in Enterprising Women<\/em>. As the microbiographies in this book reveal, free women of color in Britain\u2019s Caribbean colonies were not merely the dependent concubines of the white male elite, as is commonly assumed. In the capricious world of the slave colonies during the age of revolutions, some of them were able to rise to dizzying heights of success. These highly entrepreneurial women exercised remarkable mobility and developed extensive commercial and kinship connections in the metropolitan heart of empire while raising well-educated children who were able to penetrate deep into British life.<\/p>\n