Dr Laura Sandy
ESRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow
My research focuses on plantation overseers who lived and worked on slave plantations in colonial Virginia and South Carolina. Traditional histories of slavery in the eighteenth century have neglected the role of these poor whites in labour management on plantations. As a result interpretations of race, class, and gender in this era remain incomplete. I explore the social, economic and cultural role of plantation overseers. My analysis highlights the pivotal and understudied role of this social stratum in slave labour systems. Furthermore, my research re-examines power relationships on slave plantations and suggests that the structure of society with regards to race, class, and gender could be more easily transcended in the eighteenth than in the nineteenth century. My research presents the first comprehensive history of overseers in the colonial South and enriches the story of slavery at this juncture in American history.