Early Caribbean Society

Dabo Semple and Lookie Allardice were two African-descended women who in their lifetimes were enslaved in the Grenadines by Scottish men and had children with those men. Both were manumitted in the 1790s, and by the early 1800s became property/land owners as well as enslavers. This talk will explore the worlds of these women in relation to their Scottish and African-descended enslaved families. Throughout their lives, the idea of family for Dabo and Lookie became an ongoing negotiation founded through transactional acts of forced sexual coercion and reproduction; then sustained through unfair and unequal legal, religious and domestic aggressions.