Property, Race, and Gender in the Early 18th-Century Caribbean

In 1722, a white widow named Maniel gave permission two free women of color, Nanon and Artois, to cultivate a small plot of land near Guadeloupe’s southeastern coast. They cleared the land, added a small hut and a house for chickens, and began to farm it. Why did the widow allow Nanon and Artois to farm her land, a resource at a premium in the colonial Caribbean? No archival indication suggests that they paid the widow rent, or that they gave her a portion of the crops they grew. What made Nanon and Artois believe that the widow had authority over the land, and that her verbal permission to farm it transferred this authority to them? This transaction hints at an economy of land transfer and ownership that operated among women and existed alongside the formal systems of land concessions and title transfers, an economy with deep roots in personal relationships.

Drawing on the case of Nanon, Artois, and the widow Maniel, this paper examines relationships among two neglected groups in colonial Caribbean historiography: white women and free women of color. Yet examining their interactions demonstrates alternative structures and strategies for land ownership that challenge prevailing assumptions about who could own land and how ownership was established. A capitalist property regime grew alongside modern bureaucratic states in which developing legal practices and procedures reshaped how proprietors established ownership, what they could own, and who was considered capable of owning; ownership became a white patriarchal privilege. However, the relationship among Nanon, Artois, and the widow Maniel demonstrates that this was not an inevitable shift and suggests alternative processes and strategies for establishing ownership, navigated through personal interactions.