Freedom
White Freedom
London
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In London, white freedom was extremely prevalent through the presence of slavery. Slave owners were able to choose where the enslaved worked and what jobs they performed. This demonstrated white people’s freedom to dominate and revoke the freedom of other races. Women were often sent to work in the sugar fields, in London and in other countries, and experienced shorter lifespans as a result. White freedom gave slave owners the ability to dominate and manipulate black freedom. Much of white freedom stemmed from economic prosperity and societal ideals. With most slave owners and wealthy individuals being white, it communicated not only those that could own slaves had to be white but that white people’s freedom and agency ranked above the other races.
White Freedom
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The idea of “White Freedom” was first introduced by Tyler Stovall, in his book “White Freedom: The Racial History of an Idea” depicting that in societies like the United States, “belief in freedom was a key component of white supremacy”. Basically, if one was white, then they were deserving of freedom. White freedom was built under conditions of racial hierarchy, where colonialism and slavery showed who was free and who was not. White freedom enabled white people to control their own destiny, dominate others’ freedoms, and exclude “lesser” races.
Cape Town
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In Cape Town, the 1820 European settlers created a white supremacist colony that was based on the labor of enslaved people. As a large majority of the settlers were white Europeans, their arrival transitioned Cape Town into a more English society as racist European ideas marginalized indigenous people and pushed them out of higher social positions. This revoked any decision-making abilities and participation in society, as the marginalized were often downgraded to lower classwork or enslaved. When it came to white women within Cape Town, they also had a great deal of control over slaves and freedom over other races. This was particularly true in the Cape as married white European women could also control their family's slaves.
Negative and Positive Liberty
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Negative and Positive Liberty
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Through the mind of Isaiah Berlin, the positive and negative liberty concepts were born. These two different perspectives of liberties give off two contrasting ways of thinking of liberty. Negative liberty is known as the absence of obstacles or barriers. A person has negative liberty to the extent that actions are available to one in this negative sense. It is usually attributed to individual agents. On the other hand, positive liberty is the materialization of negative liberty.
Positive liberty includes both physical and social restrictions.
Negative Liberty
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In 1820, as settlers were moving from Europe, negative liberty was extremely expressed when settling in Cape Town and colonizing there. Women were also able to write to family and friends that were overseas in order to express feelings and to keep them up to date on the news and drama within Cape Town. A lot of topics that were not allowed to be publicly spoken on, due to them being women, were expressed through writing so as to not get in trouble. White women/slave owners were also given the ability to control the enslaved. This allowed them to further express their negative liberty and control the liberties of slaves.
In London, negative liberty was seen through the wealthy and the upper class in that they could pretty much exercise their desires. Like Cape Town, white women/slave owners had the ability to control their enslaved people.
Women who were part of the upper class also had negative liberty in their selection to work or to not work.
Positive Liberty
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This lens of liberty can be seen through the indigenous people of Cape town in that people came to their land without a say and had their society completely restructured. Customs and having agency were stricken. When the British settlers of 1820 came to Cape Town, native women’s positive liberties were increased due to the fact that there were more European women taking jobs and increasing their social rank. Amongst white women, free speech was not able to be fully expressed. This can be seen in letters that were sent to family and friends back home. They were not able to speak up against the men in the households or be a part of any political issues in Cape Town so women had to reverted to writing to express their negative liberty.
In London, a major example of positive liberty was seen during the recession when women had to work long hours, work six days a week, and receive much smaller wages. Poor women experienced positive liberty in the sense that they were forced to work. With this, women wanting to pursue higher paying jobs experienced the positive liberties of supplementary wages and social restrictions around education. When London's depression hit at the end of the 18th century, positive liberty forced women out of work and drove them towards different occupations such as prostitution.
Personal, Soverignal, and Civic Freedom
Personal, Soverignal, and Civic Freedom
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Personal, Sovereignal and Civic Freedom spawned from Orlando Patterson, who describes personal freedom as the ability to express one's freedoms in a private setting. Soverignal freedom refers to the privilege of freedom in social contexts. One with
soverignal freedom can express their freedoms without respect to those with less soverignal freedom. Civic freedom depicts how one aligns and belongs to one's community. They are free to operate and participate within their community and government.
London
Through the period of 1740 to 1830, the women in London and Cape Town experienced many levels of civic, soverignal, and personal freedom and restriction of those freedoms. Enslaved women and non enslaved women also retained different experiences of these freedoms.
Enslaved women experienced a complete lack of personal, soveringal, and civic freedom. Their personal freedom was almost completely controlled by their slave masters. Therefore, they found their only source of personal freedom in their homes and with other slaves. The control over personal freedom resided from differences in soverginal freedom. Free women had more soveringal freedom than slaves which enabled them to suppress their freedoms. This was especially true for female slavemasters. In civic freedom, slaves had even less freedom then free women as society saw them as tools rather than members of the community or concerns within government.
Women who were not enslaved experienced a restriction of civic freedom in that they were seen as machines within homes and industry. This was heightened with restrictions of personal freedom as women were limited in job selection and educational opportunities. At home, women's personal freedom was limited by social standards which controlled behaviors such not bathing when another women was present or talking to men alone at night (Barker & Hamlett, 2010). Women did have more soveringal freedom than enslaved women yet did not have more soveringal freedom then men. Therefore, men could suppress women's freedom both publicly and privately. This resonated in civic freedom as women rarely participated in government and were not fully embraced by society as they were not seen as equals to men.
Cape Town
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In Cape Town, women and enslaved women experienced these types of freedoms differently from each other.
Enslaved women had no connection to the government or society. They were forced to manifest civic freedom by creating own social sphere. Without much civic freedom, enslaved women also experienced severely limited personal freedom. They had no control over their lives and were treated and moved as goods. Any semblance of personal freedom existed in their homes as they could more freely express themselves amongst their family. The largest source of unfreedom stemmed from their lack of sovereignal freedom. By socially being seen as objects, they were left vulnerable to the freedoms of other people. This is what socially allowed enslaved women to be sexually harassed, assaulted, or even trafficked by owners and other enslaved men. Sarah Baartman was a great example of how immense the restrictions on civic, personal, and soverigenal freedom was.
Women who were not enslaved were quite opposite of those enslaved unless they were married. Unmarried women had more personal freedom as they were able to move around more freely and make decisions for themselves and choose their jobs. Married women experienced a slight lack of personal freedom because men had soverignal freedom over women. Often men and husbands, wanted to control every part of women's lives. Therefore, they may have been "free" in the sense that they were not slaves, but they still experienced a great deal of unfreedom. Soverignal freedom of women was more greatly expressed in regards to wealth and enslavement. Wealthy women had greater over poor women and women that owned slaves could control the freedoms of their slaves. Yet, women did experienced a lack of civic freedom as they played a small to any role in government and were not fully accepted in society.
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