Enslaved Women and African Marketing Practices in Antebellum Charleston

During the colonial era, enslaved Africans and their British captors transformed old-world marketing practices into a system of local commerce that was unique to the American South. Both European and African women were expected to participate in small-scale food trade to maintain their households, and the sight of women selling homegrown vegetables, cooked foods, and other perishables throughout the Atlantic World was common. Slave owners in the southern United States utilized these gender constructs to generate extra money by granting bondwomen permission to sell surplus vegetables from their home plantations to the closest towns and cities.

While plantation owners kept their wives in a type of purdah on southern plantations, certain enslaved women with special skills were allowed to enter local markets as competent agents for their masters and for themselves. Like their West African counterparts, these women created economic relationships between different groups of people and were responsible for the flow of surplus foods to the cities. I have used 19th century historical documents, like plat maps, county land grants, and indentures to create a spatial representation of the possible roads and footpaths traveled by enslaved market women to supply city markets. These maps reveal connections between rural and urban locations that have not been apparent in traditional textual data sets.  Enslaved African and African American women benefited from the gendered nature of food sales by incorporating a type of “hidden trade” that was reminiscent of Islamic trading patterns into southern marketplaces to establish networks with other plantations, to collude on prices, and to earn cash for themselves.