Mixed-Race Children of the Atlantic World

ENDNOTES

One of the most unique aspects of the Atlantic world was the intimate relationships forged between individuals from opposite ends of the earth. These connections would have been virtually impossible without the seventeenth century’s advances in maritime travel. Yet, children born from these unions posed an even greater challenge than their parents as a new generation’s acceptance into society would force Europeans to rethink their definitions of political and kinship networks. Consequently, a child of mixed heritage who was neither fully European, African, or Indigenous found themselves caught between two worlds and left struggling to find their place within communities which worked hard to exclude them. However, with the Atlantic world being a space of opportunity, one which allowed society’s peripheral figures to become central ones, some children took advantage of the fleeting moments of possibility and climbed the social ladder. Still, many mixed-race children were ceaselessly confronted by significant amounts of discrimination by Europeans justifying their harmful actions using theories of race and cultural superiority to keep their kinship ties pure.

Nevertheless, the existence of bi-racial children within the historical narrative serves as a testament to the agency individuals could wield despite facing tremendous amounts of racism. Thus, this article offers insights into how individuals in interracial relationships and the mixed-race children who were a product of those relationships navigated the harsh realities of the Atlantic world and its mounting racism. More importantly, this article highlights the ways these individuals’ autonomy and resilience called for the reconsideration of the racial ideals and legal policies which sought to restrict their inclusion into society.

beth David Martin, Portrait of Dido Elizabeth Belle Lindsay and Lady Eliza Murray. 1778. Painting. Scone Palace, Scotland, Wikimedia Commons.

Interracial Relationships

To understand the impact mixed-race children had on society, it is important to understand Europe's attitude towards their interracial parents. Port cities provided a particularly active space for mixed-race relationships as people and goods from all over the Atlantic world were constantly moving through them.1 Within these centres of commerce situated along coastlines, like Jamaica or New England, people from all walks of life and nationalities perpetually interacted with one another. As Atlantic historians Ida Altman and David Wheat argued, port cities were “the crucible[s] in which the modern world was formed.”2 Furthermore, because these dense urban settlements were governed by colonial authorities located far across the ocean, making it difficult to enforce institutional structures, there were immense possibilities for individuals to reinvent themselves. For those reasons, it was inevitable that European men alongside African and Indigenous women would enter into relationships which offered both parties access to resources and opportunities.3 However, simply because the eighteenth-century Atlantic world provided the ideal environment for creating interracial relationships, did not mean that these connections were widely accepted throughout the Atlantic world.

From the Christian standpoint at the time, interracial relationships represented an attack on what they considered their society’s upstanding virtue. For instance, outside the boundaries of marriage, many white men participated in the practice of concubinage when they lived across the Atlantic Ocean within imperial colonies. However, this activity was seen as a great sin to Christians because it was a union unsanctioned by the Church.4 As well, through their companionship to French men, mulatto5 women could, at times, use prostitution as a way to free their mixed-race children.6 Therefore, to combat what was considered as the immorality of concubinage and the potential increase in a free mulatto population, metropole governments often encouraged single European women to voyage across the Atlantic Ocean and legally marry single European men.7

Cabrerra, Miguel. Pintura de Casta, 5. De español y mulata - morisca. 1763. https://alcolonial.wordpress. com/2012/12/09/pintura-de-castas-miguel-cabrera-imagenes/. Fair use.

From a political perspective, many colonial policymakers feared that too much interaction between races would give rise to a larger and stronger free black and mulatto population. A population which could one day rise up and overpower colonial European authorities. Most significantly, free blacks and mulattos could challenge the established racial order Europeans had placed on the Atlantic world.8 This issue, especially, created confusion regarding the treatment of this new demographic of individuals,9 and the children produced by these relationships. Consequently, some colonial governments responded by strictly forbidding mixed-race relationships, including the rare case of an African or mulatto man engaging in a relationship with a European woman; these unions were met with resistance as a nonwhite man should not “meddle with any white women.”10 Therefore, using the biblical Old Testament as justification, in the words of a French chronicler, “it was forbidden to yoke to the plough two animals of different species.”11 This was the case in French Louisiana12 and the southern British colonies of North America13 where colonial authorities legitimized their rejection of interracial relationships.

Nonetheless, in some cases, interracial relationships were permitted. For example, through their assimilative approach to colonization, the French empire understood the practical benefits to having settlers form connections with Indigenous women. An early example can be found in 1627 when Cardinal Richelieu allowed members of the Company of New France to engage in unions he believed would lead the “Savages” to Catholicism, allow them to “be considered natural Frenchmen,” and live in France when they wished. As well, the Indigenous people would be allowed to “acquire property, with the rights of inheritance and bequests, just as if they had been born Frenchmen, without being required to make any declaration or to become naturalized.”14 Furthermore, through the instruction of French missionaries and nuns, Indigenous women would in turn be able to offer social stability to French settlers living far away from their homeland15 as they could “easily adopt” French manners, language, and religion.16 Thus, such relationships were reciprocal in nature as both sides offered one another assistance.

Similarly, in the British colony of Bermuda in 1660, a European sailor named John Davis was allowed to marry a coloured slave named Penelope Strange and later secure her freedom after settling the contractual terms of their relationship with her slave owner in Bermuda. Likewise in Maryland, during the 1740s, a European woman named Elizabeth Graves was called to court on account of her marriage to a mulatto named Daniel Pearl. After fighting with the authorities, the couple was able to secure their freedom and live undisturbed within the British colony.17

Thus, interracial relationships did exist even where they were ostensibly forbidden; however, because many of their narratives went undocumented, their existence has been difficult to trace.18 Nevertheless, the increase in the mulatto population during the middle of the eighteenth century19 serves as an indicator to historians that such relationships were ongoing, and that there was plenty of mixed-race children within the Atlantic world. Moreover, with intimacy being an essential aspect of humanity, when racial boundaries were crossed during these personal moments of human contact, participants understood that at times race was a fluid category with limits which could be adapted or supplanted.20 Even so, laws in European colonies in the Atlantic world often defined a person’s worth, status, and legal rights by their race, leaving mixed-race children, like their parents, vulnerable to society’s judgement and legal policies. In particular, colonial laws based on race dictated the status of mixed-race children.21

Mixed-Race Children

In the words of Atlantic historian, Joyce Chaplin, “perhaps more than any other set of ideas, race was Atlantic.”22 Thus, like their interracial parents, mixed-race children were greeted by with mixed feelings of acceptance and rejection by Europeans as well as their own. Those who viewed interracial relationships as immoral accused these children of being a result of an “unfortunate commerce of impurity” between white men and black women, or as the “criminal coupling of men and women” which produced a “different species,” one that posed a more significant threat to the colonies, as they represented “a fruit… of Nature’s monsters,...a third species of men called mulattoes, who [were] neither whites nor Negroes but retain[ed] all the…worst in the ones and the other.” These moralists feared that if nothing was done to stop the growth of this population, this “third species of men” would soon become more numerous than the whites and “in the course of time attempt to overthrow the colonies and be the cause of their total ruin.”23 Such were the opinions of authors like Françoise de L’Alouëte who complained that such a “strange and unbalanced conjunction [of] troubles and soils…[produced] a vile and obscure generation…of no use” to the French empire.24 However, it was not only Europeans who expressed concern about mixed-race children in an attempt to reinforce the notion that these children did not have a place in society. In 1735, South Carolina Gazette, a newspaper run by a British white colonist named Thomas Whitemarsh reported that mixed-race children were not always accepted by Africans as their partial “whiteness” did not make them better or merit a higher social standing within Western colonies than them.25

For that reason, mixed-race children did not have many opportunities beyond their slave status. As British will executor Joseph Clay lamented, in American colonies, “these young Folks are… unfortunately situated in [a] Country [where] their descent places them in the most disadvantageous situation, as… they gain no rank.” Moreover, “White Persons do not commonly associate with them on a footing of equality.” Thus, many “of their own Colour…being Slaves,...naturally, fall in with them…[and] future Prospects [are]...neglected by the most respectable Class of Society.” Consequently, Clay advised that mixed-race children should “be sent to Europe” to be cared for by relatives or wards so that they might “be made useful Members of Society” as America was most certainly not going to offer these children a better future.26 For example, in Guadeloupe, a 1680 edict stipulated that mulattoes would inherit their mother’s status and be kept in bondage for the rest of their lives thereby indefinitely linking them to their African heritage.27 In other words, a mixedrace child’s enslavement meant that they were eternally trapped within the requirements of human commodification which saw a person’s body as an object created purposely to generate capital for the slave trade.28 Hence, mulattoes commonly performed manual labour in the fields or served as house servants and concubines29 because within the West Indies, these children represented a labour force to be exploited because of their race. Also, as the products of publicly condemned illegal relationships, this further gave cause for their oppression.30

Through extensive primary source research, historians have discovered that it was quite common for mulatto children to travel back to Europe in the hopes of attaining an education and a better future. Records show that the number of migrating children reached the thousands as they sought a more productive future with assistance from familial connections living, for instance, in Britain.31 This migration from the margins of empire to its centres affected colonial governments as large numbers of mulattoes arriving in Europe necessitated laws dealing with a mixed-race individual’s social status.32 For example, to legitimize placing a mulatto’s status at the same level as an African’s, British governments needed to create a clear demarcation between whites and mulattoes.33 As well, new migrants had to reckon with a much more aggressive public who felt strongly against their existence within the metropoles than they would have experienced in the Americas.34 For example, mixed-race children often relied on private education from a small number of teachers who did not discriminate against race because majority of schools prohibited students of colour from attending.35 Thus, mulatto children were extremely vulnerable to the harsh realities of unjust racial ideologies in Europe. Another important issue was a mixed-race child’s inheritance. In eighty percent of the cases, European fathers were unwilling to support their children’s endeavours out of fear of the potential financial disaster associated with such a risky investment since supporting a mixedrace child could financially draining and threaten to bring down the entire family network.36 However, evidence shows that some children did receive a portion of their family’s wealth. For instance, within Jamaica’s probate records which contain over 2,000 wills written between the years of 1773 and 1815, 122 bequests were written to mixed-race children either already living in Britain or soon-to-be living in Britain.37 As well, for those children accepted into the family network,38 the relatives who took them in were typically tremendously wealthy and politically well-connected. Hence, they were able to offer the children a more promising future39 through their links to high society, into which some mixed-race children were able to integrate themselves. For example, Stephen Lushington, a member of Parliament for Canterbury, commended Britain’s racial tolerance in his proclamation to England’s Parliament that “a gentleman of colour had held a high civil office; and another [had] enjoyed military rank, and become connected, by marriage, with the family of a member of the [House of Lords].”40 However, observations like Lushington’s caused two opposite reactions. The first was the realization that these individuals were capable of contributing significantly to the political and social changes of the nation. Second, it sparked a fear within Europe’s upper classes as elites began to believe that mixed-race populations were threatening their rightful claims of authority41 as well as the general public who were threatened by the mulattoes’ presence Thus, by the early nineteenth century, mixed-race children had entered the aristocracy leveraging their kinship connections and their British education, transforming themselves into a demographic capable of achieving what had previously been impossible given their lives’ origins.

Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz, From Spaniard and Return Backwards, Hold Yourself Suspended in Midair. 1760. Oil on canvas. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Wikimedia Commons.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Atlantic racial ideals were pushed to their limits as interracial couples and their mixed-race children fundamentally destabilized imperial frameworks. As the presence of these bi-racial families increased in number and became further established within American and European society, colonial authorities felt pressured to address this growing population. Consequently, historians have come to understand that the impact mixed-race individuals had on the Atlantic world was complex. By acknowledging interracial families, European governments were forced to reevaluate their interpretations of kinship and race which were constantly being subverted by the existence of the interracial demographic. Most frequently, interracial relationships and mixed-race children were cast in a negative light. Despite the prevalence of laws and social practices throughout the Atlantic world intended to restrict mixed-race children, they asserted their agency. Whether it be African and Indigenous women marrying white men, or their children migrating to Europe for a better education, the narratives of mixed-race people living within the Atlantic bears witness to their bravery and resilience in the face of severe discrimination. On the larger scale, their stories serve as a reminder that the invisible boundaries of Atlantic world were continually being crossed and rewritten by figures moving from the peripheries of the society to the centres of it by advocating for their rights as human beings.

Heather Lam

MAIH (History stream)