Foul Means: The Formation of a Slave Society in Virginia, 1660-1740. By Anthony S. Parent, Jr. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. 291 pp.
Written partially in response to Edmund Morgan’s American Slavery, American Freedom, Anthony S. Parent, professor of History at Wake Forest University, makes the point that the establishment of a slave economy in the South was neither inevitable nor accidental, but, rather, that it was a conscious move of the great planter class to prolong their economic and cultural hegemony. Parent argues that Morgan’s book skips the century from Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676 to the Declaration of Independence in 1776 without examining crucial events in between. Parent’s work looks at the political, economic, and social conditions of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century Virginia that led to the construction of a slave society.
Foul Means illuminates the elite ruling class’ methods of asserting their dominion over early Virginia. First, they participated in the removal of the Powhatan Indians from the arable lands on the coast and close to the rivers. When most of the land had been cleared of Indian influence, these “great” planters participated in a massive land grab, often using fraudulent means. One of the ways in which the large holders amassed great estates was by taking advantage of the headright system which granted them land for each laborer they brought over to work it. The elite manipulated the legal and tax systems to ensure their ability to increase their holdings while making it increasingly difficult for poor planters and freed indentured servants to purchase land. In addition, Parent points out that they also passed laws designed to maintain control over the price of tobacco which further disadvantaged smaller planters.
The inability of freed servants to operate successfully in Virginia combined with economic factors in England led to a decrease in indentured servants after 1676. The elites of Virginia had to find alternative labor sources, and after some experimentation, they began increasingly relying on African slavery. Economics dictated this choice as the planters found they could produce tobacco more cheaply and efficiently with enslaved labor.
Parent, through the use of court records and correspondence, clearly shows how the large land owners, once they realized they could make more profit from slaves, used the legal code to maximize their investments. He points to the conscious decisions of this elite class when he says, “Their decision to enslave blacks involved a choice to establish a coercive state. In doing so, colonists departed from a trend in English law toward greater freedom, their need to secure economic dominion prompting them to initiate discriminatory innovations in the legal code.” (105)
Foul Means also questions the prevailing historical notion that slave rebellions were inconsequential during this time period. Parent shows that blacks consistently fought to ameliorate their status in the slave society, and it was this contest for control that led that elite class to craft increasingly draconian legislation. This fear of resistance and rebellion also lead to the efforts to create a rift between enslaved blacks and white servants. Parent also shows that the elite white also cynically pitted the Indians against the blacks as well, using Indians as bounty hunters to capture escaped slaves.
Not content with control through force and law, in the eighteenth century the elite class justified their enslavement of blacks through the rise of the ideology of patriarchaism which made “gentlemen” out of the slave owners. This ideology “aimed at co-opting the enslaved by making them fictitious members of their families.” (221) The great planters also used religion to cement their social control. While first banning the baptism of slaves, they increasingly saw the act as an “avowal of patriarchal authority.” (253)
Parent’s revisionist look at the early slave economy of Virginia is well-researched and convincing. His use of court and assembly records, planter letters and diaries, as well as shipping records and economic data clearly paint a picture of the elite class he seeks to study. His arguments about the slaves themselves, however, do not have the same exhaustive research backing them up. Despite this, however, the work powerfully counters previous arguments and firmly avows, “The choice of slavery was deliberate, odious, and foul.” (265)
Texas Christian University Amanda Bresie
Foul Means: The Formation of a Slave Society in Virginia, 1660-1740. By Anthony S. Parent, Jr. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. 291 pp.
In his work, Foul Means, Anthony S. Parent, Jr. examines the role of the white planter class of Virginia in establishing the racial paradox of white freedom and black slavery in America. Parent, Jr. challenges the belief that the shift to racial slavery was simply an unthinking response of white planters to the fluctuating tobacco market. He argues that these ‘great planters’ consciously brought about the existence of racial slavery in order to protect their short-term interests (1). By establishing slave statutes and codes, attempting to consolidate upper and lower class white interests, and instituting a patriarchal ideology, the great planters and elite whites purposefully divided the races to defend Virginia’s social order. According to Parent, the enslaved black peoples provided the ideological means, as well as economic, for the possibility of white freedom in 1776.
Often the transition from indentured servants to enslaved laborers is depicted as a rational economic response to supply and demand, but Parent explains that other economic considerations existed as well. He claims that the racial slavery system began with the accumulation of landed estates during the early settlement of Virginia. While the English government attempted to regulate land distribution in America, during the 1690s, a small, but powerful number of white farmers and planter obtained mass amounts of land by largely deceptive means. The elite, ‘great planters’ treated the land as a commodity. The opportunity for land ownership declined after the 1660s, which contributed to a decrease in European immigration. Nevertheless, the planters still needed a constant labor supply and people to claim in the headright system. Enslaved blacks provided the solution, as they constituted a permanent labor force and were fraudulently counted in the headright system. Parent provides additional support to his belief that the Virginia planters’ deliberately established a racial system by explaining that Virginian planters’ recognized the benefit of Africans’ agricultural experience and potential for exploitation.
The opening up of the slave trade caused a rapid growth in the black population in Virginia, and because of the growing numbers, whites remained in constant fear of insurrection and loss of control. The enslaved blacks represented a threat to whites social and economic structure. Bacon’s Rebellion and the Chesapeake Rebellion of 1730 evidenced this belief held by white planters. Parent describes the white planters need for secure economic dominion as the reason for the implementation of black slave statutes and discrimination in the legal codes. With the miscegenation laws, manumission laws, and different forms of punishment for whites and blacks, white planters further attempted to subjugate blacks. By establishing a racialized system of justice, white planters tried to unite the upper and lower class white interests and separate lower class whites and blacks.
According to Parent the slave system shaped ideas about society and culture in Virginia. White planters instituted the idea of patriarchy to justify a social system that ran counter to traditional English beliefs of freedom. White planters used Christian religious ideology to advance the idea of patriarchy. Nevertheless, the institutions of patriarchy and Christianity represented tools for social control rather than beneficent feelings of white owners.
Parent provides an explanation of the role of the white planter class in the rise of racial slavery in early America by looking at economic and social/ideological institutions. The idea that of a deliberate racialized system seems well-evidenced, especially by the laws and codes. Parent contributes further interpretation of the overriding paradox existent in America of black slavery and white freedom.
Joi-lee Beachler