Nanny sitting in the grass with three children. Jean-Joseph Patu de Rosement. 1818
Departmental Archives of Reunion<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nNo-one was allowed into the camp during the day and the slaves had to wait until all the groups returned before going back into the huts, once each guard, supervisor of commander had transmitted his day\u2019s report to the bailiff.<\/p>\n
Charles Desbassayns\u2019 Instructions also indicate that the slaves\u2019 meals, both for adults and children, lunch and evening meal, were prepared collectively in a slaves\u2019 kitchen located in the yard of the main house on the estate. The adults\u2019 rations were taken out to their place of work, where they were distributed by those in charge of the work groups. \u201cOn Sundays, they were given to the Africans in person<\/em>\u201d <\/span>.<\/p>\nThe only time the slaves were allowed some rest was Sunday afternoon. All morning, until one o\u2019clock, they had to carry out chores consisting in cleaning, mainly the factory, but also the other agricultural buildings. For Charles Desbassayns\u00a0\u201cthis day of scrubbing and cleaning<\/em>\u201d contributed to keeping up their interest, attachment and even passion for their work. On that day, if potatoes had been harvested, they were allowed to go and gather any that had been left behind, leaving the field clean once they finished. Presented as a favour granted to them, this was, in fact, a way of making them clean the fields to prepare them for sowing once again.<\/p>\nThe terms used by Abbot Macquet when describing the slaves departure from the camp in the morning give the impression of them as being a human herd, divided up into groups taken to their place of work each day, under threat of their overseer <\/span>. In fact, more than one third of the slaves living in the camp had a family life. Madame Desbassayns\u2019 will lists fifty or so households, sometimes with several children, representing a total of 25% of the slave population. Men and women of over 16 were greatly in the majority (69%), but with quite a large number being over 60 (9%). If we also count the 28 slaves described as being sick, weak or infirm, that gives a fairly large proportion of totally or partly non-productive workers on the estate. Consequently, each slave was given an occupation adapted to his or her age and physical condition.<\/p>\nSlave couples on the estate were united by religion and the children born were given the sacrament of baptism <\/span>. These marriages became more common after 1843, the year the Chapelle Pointue<\/em> chapel was constructed <\/span>.<\/p>\nDecided and organised by Madame Desbassayns, these religious ceremonies presented her with the opportunity to give her slaves French names. Through her attempts to give them a sense of family and its values, she almost certainly wished to instil in them an attachment to the estate and its masters. In a letter dated 4th October 1821 addressed to her son Charles, she expressed her fear of seeing them mistreated by inexperienced white managers <\/span>. In this respect, she applied the same objectives as her son Charles <\/span>, if less brutally, these being productivity and the cost-effectiveness of the estate, as well as the long-term existence of her business, on the eve of the abolition of the system of slavery.<\/p>\nMadame Desbassayns died in 1846, two years before that event so greatly feared by the masters. Her grandson and successor Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric de Vill\u00e8le seemed to share her concerns: in November 1848, he freed six former slaves trusted by his grandmother, including five overseers, making them his own personal guards <\/span>. Through this double promotion, he undoubtedly wished to build up a personal retinue of reliable and skilled persons to oversee the future free workers, thus guaranteeing a degree of continuity in the workings of the economy of the plantation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":404,"parent":1874,"menu_order":0,"template":"","class_list":["post-1875","documentaire","type-documentaire","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portail-esclavage-reunion.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/documentaire\/1875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portail-esclavage-reunion.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/documentaire"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portail-esclavage-reunion.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/documentaire"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portail-esclavage-reunion.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portail-esclavage-reunion.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/documentaire\/1874"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portail-esclavage-reunion.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portail-esclavage-reunion.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}