Review Of Examining Slavery In The Americas Through The Lens Of The Archives

Examining Slavery in the Americas through the Lens of the Archives By June Meehan Scholars examine archives to understand the impact that each record or account had on slavery in the Americas. Ideas about gender, labor, and race were majorly influenced by the records documented that focus on African and indigenous women and the experiences of slavery. Reports on these topics tended to socially reproduce the ideas of the racial and gender inferiority of enslaved people, specifically women of color. Through assessing the variety of perspectives the record and archive offers regarding slavery and analyzing the archives deficiency on the topic itself, scholars attempt to address the issues brought about before and during slavery that led to a shift in societal archetypes. To write on a topic, scholars need many

Considering how little the archives have on the topic of slavery, Fuentes, Finley and other scholars have to examine every possible source to even discover what the narrative of slavery was. Metcalf utilizes sources in her writing and focuses on how these reports lay a foundation for the rhetoric of slavery. Metcalf notes that there are many accounts of men justifying slavery. She introduces Aristotle’s argument of the slave being a “natural state” and how Prince Henry the Navigator paralleled servitude to stories like the Curse of Ham that led many to believe that blackness equaled impurity and enslavement. The reason Metcalf introduces the beliefs of these men is because through their records she has found their rhetoric that justified slavery. The archives surrounding the topic of slavery contain rhetoric that almost always was used by elites to justify the system of slavery. This reasoning for justification was especially noticeable when records containing the success of plantations were given to elite slave