Were slaves bred?

[Grosshaus]

Especially in Southern US states, but also elsewhere in (semi)modern times, how much was reproduction of slaves controlled by their owners? I've understood children of slaves in most cases became property of the slave owner. Thinking that same plantation owners most likely owned valuable horses, and perhaps cattle or oxen, they more or less carefully bred selecting best available stud, then one would think they chose to do the same with their slaves.

Frankly I don't even know if slave owners chose spouses for their slaves. In case they did, why not choose simply no spouse for a sickly or small slave while mating the strongest. Or even choose some males as studs to mate with many females. Was there a moral objection to such promotion of monogamy? Were there scientists or other specialists who had studied and written how to do this most efficiently?

Sort of a method of breeding was of course slave owners themselves - or people who worked with them - forcing sex with female slaves. I have understood this was mostly due to simple lust, not due to a plan to mix races.

And just to be on the safe side, let's not even think of discussing the morality of such practice or slavery itself. It was and would have been completely immoral and should not have been done. I'm just curious about the mindset of the people at the time.

 

[Amallric]

I never heard about that. One of the factors which may have an impact is the amount of time such breeding would have taken. Most of the animals gain sexual maturity after a few years, while for human slaves one would have to wait 12-15 years between every generation. Not everybody is willing to wait that long for a return on the investment.

Other than that I know that slaves in some cultures were required to ask the permission of their masters to marry, however I do not know whether this was used for breeding. Islamic slave trades are known for having "bred" slaves: they carried them on a desert island from where they could not escape, let them live and breed there, then come every 10 years or so to collect the children that were born. But the main objective there seemed to be the quantity, not the quality of the slaves.

 

[Gordy]

Why would you want to breed a race of "super slaves"? It hardly sounds like a recipe for social stability.

 

[Ming]

You'd breed hard working and servile slaves, of course.

I'm sure this happened, even if by accent. Temperamental, truculent slaves, or those prone to constant injury or sickness probably made it to breeding age less often than their compatriots.

 

[Doukan]

Before the rise of abolitionism and the royal navy playing world police shut down the trans Atlantic slave trade, there wasn't any real need to breed them, afterwards though...
I don't know if its true and I have nothing to back it up, but apparently (what I've been told by teachers/read in various places)plantation owners used to give bonus's to farmhands/overseers/slave drivers (whatever they're called) for successful impregnating, that and I imagine slave barracks owners would encourage procreating for obvious reasons.
Its important to remember that they were seen as human livestock, it'd only be logical to assume they bred them like it to.

 

[gagenater]

The short answer to your question is yes - it was done. It doesn't appear to have been a widespread thing to 'selectively' breed slaves but it did happen. More often it was a matter of adverse conditions creating accelerated artificial natural selection. For what exactly is often unclear, as we are just now unraveling the workings of the human genome enough to figure out about what might have taken place. Most of what I know is folk wisdom, stories, etc. rather than any sort of useful information of the type you seem to seek.

 

[joak]

Not answering the questions asked, but by the late 18th century and definitely after the (official) end of the African slave trade the bigger plantation owners realized that their slaves were a valuable asset not just as capital for production, but that they were able to produce more more slaves that could be sold. There were letters with estimates on how much profit you could expect based on breeding (something like 5% a year, IIRC.) So they thought of them in terms of breeding stock and for sure a healthy female would have had that extra value.

That being said, I've never encountered an account that gets down to selective breeding attempts as you'd do with livestock, or even using a male slave as a 'stud.'

More often it was a matter of adverse conditions creating accelerated artificial natural selection. For what exactly is often unclear, as we are just now unraveling the workings of the human genome enough to figure out about what might have taken place.

In maybe five or six generations, it is very possible the answer is 'nothing.'

 

[SDSkinner]

That depends on how strong the selection pressure is. Blacks in America tend to have higher risks for certain diseases; it is certainly possible the Middle Passage was enough of a selection effect to push for individuals who had the traits needed to survive (for those who don't know, that was the trip across the Atlantic. The mortality rate was supposed to be about 1/3). I'm thinking an increased uptake of salt was selected for (or it could be a founder effect of the tribes the slaves were raided from). I don't know how much slavery had a selection effect, especially given the interbreeding with the white population.

 

[Semper Victor]

As stated before by other members of these forums, slave breeding became suddenly more attractive after the British forbade the slave trade and the Royal Navy started seizing slave ships. Before that, breeding slaves was considered uneconomical. Unlike cattle, horses or other domesticated animals, human children grow up very slowly, a period during which they are not only unproductive, but they also consume resources and demand care from their parents. The greater part of slaves imported to the American continent were young males, at the height of their physical condition and thus able to survive the transatlantic crossing and start working at once after being sold. They were exchangeable items, and planters considered that under normal conditions, a slave would live around eight years, a period during which his work would have covered the costs of his purchase and maintenace and generated a benefit for his owner.

 

[Kovax]

I recall reading about a few southern plantations keeping detailed records, just as they did for livestock. If today's racists want to complain about certain minority groups cornering the modern fields of sports, they have only their own ancestors to blame for it.

 

[jamhaw]

I recall reading about a few southern plantations keeping detailed records, just as they did for livestock. If today's racists want to complain about certain minority groups cornering the modern fields of sports, they have only their own ancestors to blame for it.

Yes, damn those evil racist slavers for breeding Kenyans and Ugandans to run so fast over the course of generations! It is all the Man's fault!

 

[Hibernian]

Yes, damn those evil racist slavers for breeding Kenyans and Ugandans to run so fast over the course of generations! It is all the Man's fault!

Technically I don't think any Kenyans or Ugandans were enslaved in America. Not all Africans are the same you know.

 

[soda7777777]

Technically I don't think any Kenyans or Ugandans were enslaved in America. Not all Africans are the same you know.

There could have been a stray one caught by Muslim slavers...

 

[joak]

That depends on how strong the selection pressure is. Blacks in America tend to have higher risks for certain diseases; it is certainly possible the Middle Passage was enough of a selection effect to push for individuals who had the traits needed to survive (for those who don't know, that was the trip across the Atlantic. The mortality rate was supposed to be about 1/3). I'm thinking an increased uptake of salt was selected for (or it could be a founder effect of the tribes the slaves were raided from). I don't know how much slavery had a selection effect, especially given the interbreeding with the white population.

The diseases I can think of are things like sickle cell anemia (which is inherited from Africa, where being a carrier is beneficial) and diabetes (in which the whites are the outliers due to a bottleneck effect--non-Europeans in general have a much higher incidence of adult-onset diabetes that whites if they eat a high-fat, high-sugar American diet.)

I think this is a case where "it is possible" is true more in the "I personally don't know it's false" rather than it being a theory that is actually in play for those who do research on this.

 

[Grosshaus]

As stated before by other members of these forums, slave breeding became suddenly more attractive after the British forbade the slave trade and the Royal Navy started seizing slave ships. Before that, breeding slaves was considered uneconomical. Unlike cattle, horses or other domesticated animals, human children grow up very slowly, a period during which they are not only unproductive, but they also consume resources and demand care from their parents. The greater part of slaves imported to the American continent were young males, at the height of their physical condition and thus able to survive the transatlantic crossing and start working at once after being sold. They were exchangeable items, and planters considered that under normal conditions, a slave would live around eight years, a period during which his work would have covered the costs of his purchase and maintenace and generated a benefit for his owner.

Kids do take a long time to become productive during which they require much energy and attention from at least their mother. Did some slave owners try to prevent (some) of their female slaves from becoming pregnant at all? Was there organised infanticide?

 

[joak]

Kids do take a long time to become productive during which they require much energy and attention from at least their mother. Did some slave owners try to prevent (some) of their female slaves from becoming pregnant at all? Was there organised infanticide?

Found this: http://www.history.ac.uk/ihr/Focus/Slavery/articles/paton.html

It appears that simply working women hard during pregnancy and indifference to the children managed to keep the population down. Of over 150 (known--there would have been other miscarriages and abortions) pregnancies on one plantation, only 15 children were documented to reach age seven, with over half confirmed not brought to term, or dead as children.

 

[Wagonlitz]

I can only talk about what happened in the Danish colonies, so things might have been different elsewhere. Denmark had some islands called in the Caribbean called Danish West India---it was sold to the US in 1917, so today Danish West India is the US Virgin Islands. Around 1790 liberty ideals were widespread in the Danish government; after 50 years the peasants had just been allowed to freely leave their villages again and there was a very large freedom of the press (around 1800 that was restricted again, since the king didn't like Heiberg writing: 'Decorations are given to idiots, stars and banners only the nobility get; but if one has a brain, one can do without decorations and stars'. In this environment where nobody censored Heiberg (he was exiled later though) it was decided in 1792 that the slave trade had to stop---though the establishment decided among itself that it was best for all, if a ten years notice was given before banning the trade; the passed legislation banned it from 1803. From 1792 to 1803 huge amounts of young healthy females were shipped over, so that the colonies in 1803 were self providing in slaves; from that point until the banning of slavery in 1848 slaves were bred to make sure there always was a huge enough work force for the required work.

Regarding if they used studs to impregnate many females then I don't know it; given that it was mainly females that for obvious reasons were shipped over from 1792 to 1803 it is not impossible though, since there would have been a huge influx of females with no accompanying males. These females needed to breed---that was the reason they were shipped over after all---so it is not unthinkable that since they needed to find males to impregnate these females, they found good studs. But again I don't know this. We certainly did have good experience with selective breeding from our horses though: When horses stopped being used for farm work the Jutlandian work horse had been bred to be really powerful and really large.

Kids do take a long time to become productive during which they require much energy and attention from at least their mother. Did some slave owners try to prevent (some) of their female slaves from becoming pregnant at all? Was there organised infanticide?

Children were certainly welcomed in Danish West India after 1792; they actually wanted the females to get pregnant---at least in the beginning.

 

[Boblof]

Regarding if they used studs to impregnate many females then I don't know it; given that it was mainly females that for obvious reasons were shipped over from 1792 to 1803 it is not impossible though, since there would have been a huge influx of females with no accompanying males. These females needed to breed---that was the reason they were shipped over after all---so it is not unthinkable that since they needed to find males to impregnate these females, they found good studs.

The reason they had to import females was probably more due to the sex ratio of the colonies up to that point. Plantation owners wanted male slaves to work the land and they didn't need for the population to replenish naturally (cheaper to just ship over new slaves) so the number of females on the plantations were most likely insufficient to maintain the population without new shipments.

 

[th3freakie]

Are there any instances of (post-classic) slave economies where the training of the slaves was emphasized?

I mean, while it makes sense that importing more adult slaves was cheaper and faster than breeding them in-house, it also makes sense that having a slave that was raised as a cotton-picker or sugar-cutter would be the most efficient cotton-picker and sugar-cutter in the world. If the efficiency was high enough, it could lead to substantial savings in slave-maintenance, maybe even allow you to sell these highly skilled professionals.

 

[Boblof]

Are there any instances of (post-classic) slave economies where the training of the slaves was emphasized?

I mean, while it makes sense that importing more adult slaves was cheaper and faster than breeding them in-house, it also makes sense that having a slave that was raised as a cotton-picker or sugar-cutter would be the most efficient cotton-picker and sugar-cutter in the world. If the efficiency was high enough, it could lead to substantial savings in slave-maintenance, maybe even allow you to sell these highly skilled professionals.

In the arab and east asian slave economies slaves were trained extensively (eunuchs & slave soldiers) but cotton picking and sugar cutting I doubt there was much sense in training people for ^^