I will present “Puer Sequitur Parentis and Coniugis Sequitur Coniugis [trans. Child follows Parent and Spouse follows Spouse]?: British Laws of Slave Descent on the Eighteenth-Century Gold Coast,” which is excerpted from a chapter of my forthcoming book, Women of the Trade.

​Abstract

In 1703, forty years after Virginia’s legislators pass​ed an act (Act XII) which made the free or enslaved status of children born to “Englishmen” and “negro” women in the colony contingent upon the free or enslaved status of their mothers, the Governor of Cape Coast Castle,​ who was in the employ of England’s Royal African Company, and indigenous leaders from the town of Cape Coast​ (in modern-day Ghana), implement​ed an entirely new policy governing slave descent. Under this new policy, any children born to enslaved mothers or fathers who the Royal African Company owned were born enslaved. Additionally, any free person, man or woman, who married an enslaved person owned by the Royal African Company would be enslaved to the Company from that point forward. My paper examines this policy and its implications in the broader context of British laws governing slave and free status in places shaped by English settlement.

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