Policing the Family in British Atlantic Anti-Slavery Narratives from Scott to Wedderburn

Abstract: This essay establishes the centrality of the family form to the social reproduction of plantation slavery. Through studies of Sarah Scott’s novel The History of Sir George Ellison (1766) and the writings of the Black radical abolitionist Robert Wedderburn (1817–31), I explore how the colonial family—considered as an institution dedicated to the preservation of property and the private governance of the slave estate—adapts older models of service, obligation, and domination to the requirements of remaking a captive labor force in the slave economies of the British Caribbean. I argue the sentimental novel of slavery propagates discourses of the “benevolent” plantation through fantasies of private improvement: amelioration conducted through the vocabulary of family. I read Wedderburn, with and against the grain, for early visions of family abolitionism.