Documented slave tortures exceeded whipping into extreme acts of cruelty

Evidence

Cases of even more extreme torture appear in the documents. One man wrote in the 1730s about the practice of placing gunpowder in the anus of slaves and lighting it. Another wrote of the castration of male slaves. A master brought to court in the 1750s had tied a slave, suspended, above a fire. Moreau documented cases in which slaves were splashed with burning wax and women’s “shameful parts” were burnt with hot coals, and one in which a master attacked some of his slaves and bit off pieces of their flesh. Another late eighteenth-century writer described slaves being doused with boiling cane juice and others being buried alive after having been forced to dig their own graves. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 182

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Slaveholders weaponized biblical texts to justify whipping disabled slaves — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White…, 248; Brazilian slavery was as violent as elsewhere despite more manumission and sexual mixing; Apartheid security forces tortured and destroyed black bodies as ritual sacrifice (+9 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Slaveholders weaponized biblical texts to justify whipping disabled slaves — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White…, 248; Brazilian slavery was as violent as elsewhere despite more manumission and sexual mixing; Apartheid security forces tortured and destroyed black bodies as ritual sacrifice (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• Colonial records document extreme torture methods used on enslaved people #corroborates (0.95) — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 182
• Suriname’s judiciary sanctioned extreme torture of slaves as official colonial practice #corroborates (0.93) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 697
• Torture proved a boomerang weapon that undermined the power using it #complicates (0.80)
• Overwork and undernourishment made slave childbirth dangerous and deadly #complicates (0.72) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 132