Editing Concubinage (section)

==New World==
[[File:Free Woman of Color with daughter NOLA Collage.jpg|thumb|[[Free people of color|Free woman of color]] with her [[quadroon]] daughter; late 18th century collage painting, [[New Orleans]]]]

When [[Slavery in the colonial United States|slavery]] became institutionalized in [[Colonial history of the United States|Colonial America]], white men, whether or not they were married, sometimes took enslaved women as concubines; children of such unions remained slaves.<ref name=Matthaei>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PQzmjgSObrEC&q=u.s.+slavery+concubine&pg=PA147 |title=Race, Gender, and Work: A Multi-cultural Economic History of Women in the United States|last1=Amott |first1=Teresa L.|last2=Matthaei|first2=Julie A. |date=1996 |publisher=South End Press |isbn=9780896085374}}</ref>

In the various [[European colonization of the Americas|European colonies in the Caribbean]], white [[Planter class|planters]] took black and [[mulatto]] concubines,<ref name=Jamaica>{{cite book |title=Sex and Sexuality in Early America |first1=Merril D. |last1=Smith |publisher=[[NYU Press]] |page=173|quote= The dramatic growth of a free colored class from the first third of the eighteenth century onward is tangible proof of the extensiveness of the sexual links between white men and their black concubines.}}</ref> owing to the shortage of white women.<ref name=Orlando3>{{cite book |title=Slavery and Social Death |first1=Orlando |last1=Peterson |page=146 |publisher=[[Harvard University Press]]}}</ref> The children of such unions were sometimes freed from slavery<ref name=Jamaica/> and even inherited from their father, though this was not the case for the majority of children born of such unions.<ref name=Orlando3/> These relationships appeared to have been socially accepted in the [[colony of Jamaica]] and even attracted European emigrants to the island.<ref name=Jamaica/>

=== Brazil ===
In [[colonial Brazil]], men were expected to marry women who were equal to them in status and wealth. Alternatively, some men practiced concubinage, an extra-marital sexual relationship.<ref name=Higgins1>{{cite book |title="Licentious Liberty" in a Brazilian Gold-Mining Region: Slavery, Gender, and Social Control in Eighteenth-Century Sabara, Minas Gerais |first1=Kathleen J. |last1=Higgins |pages=108–09}}</ref> This sort of relationship was condemned by the [[Catholic Church]] and the [[Council of Trent]] threatened those who engaged in it with [[excommunication]].<ref name=Higgins1/> Concubines constituted both female slaves and former slaves.<ref name=Higgins2>{{cite book |title="Licentious Liberty" in a Brazilian Gold-Mining Region: Slavery, Gender, and Social Control in Eighteenth-Century Sabara, Minas Gerais |first1=Kathleen J. |last1=Higgins |pages=117–18}}</ref> One reason for taking non-white women as concubines was that free white men outnumbered free white women, although marriage between races was not illegal.<ref name=Higgins2/>

=== New France ===
{{main|Concubinage in Canada|Métis|Libertine}}

Some French settlers in [[New France]] were recorded to keep native women as "concubines," sometimes while being married to a white woman. This was particularly common in [[French Louisiana|Louisiana]], but was discouraged by the clergy.<ref>{{Cite thesis |last=Karahasan |first=Devrim |title=Métissage in New France and Canada, 1508 to 1886 |date=July 2008 |publisher=[[European University Institute]] |url=https://cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/7765/2008_Karahasan.pdf |doi=10.2870/11337}}</ref>

=== United States ===
Relationships with slaves in the United States and the Confederacy were sometimes euphemistically referred to as concubinary.{{citation needed|date=May 2023}} From lifelong to single or serial sexual visitations, these relationships with enslaved people illustrate a radical power imbalance between a human owned as [[Personal property|chattel]], and the legal owner of same. When personal ownership of slaves was enshrined in the law, an enslaved person had no legal power over their own [[Legal person|legal]] [[personhood]], the legal control to which was held by another entity; therefore, a slave could never give real and legal [[consent]] in any aspect of their life. The inability to give any kind of consent when enslaved is in part due to the ability of a slave master to legally coerce acts and declarations including those of affection, attraction, and consent through rewards and punishments. Legally however, the concept of chattel slavery in the United States and Confederate States defined and enforced in the law owning the legal personhood of a slave; meaning that the proxy for legal consent was found with the slave's master, who was the sole source of consent in the law to the bodily integrity and all efforts of that slave except as regulated or limited by law. With slavery being recognized as a [[Crimes against humanity|crime against humanity]] in the United States law, as well as in [[Customary international law|international customary law]], the legal basis of slavery is repudiated for all time, as are any rights which owner-rapists had had to exercise any proxy consent, sexual or otherwise for their slaves.<ref>"Sexual Relations Between Elite White Women and Enslaved Men in the Antebellum South: A Socio-Historical Analysis", J. M. Allain, Inquiries Journal, 2013, Vol. 5 No. 08, p. 1</ref><ref>Foster, Thomas A. "Sexual Abuse of Black Men Under American Slavery". Journal of History and Sexuality 20, 3 (2011): 445–64.</ref><ref>Susan Bordo, "Are Mothers Persons?", Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body, Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2003, 71–97.</ref><ref>Rule 93. Rape and other forms of sexual violence are prohibited., 161 rules of customary international humanitarian law identified in volume I (rules) of the International Committee of the Red Cross's study on customary IHL, Cambridge University Press 2005.</ref>

Free men in the United States sometimes took female slaves in relationships which they referred to as concubinage,<ref name=Matthaei/> although marriage between the races was prohibited by law in the colonies and the later United States. Many colonies and states also had laws against [[miscegenation]] or any interracial relations. From 1662 the Colony of Virginia, followed by others, incorporated into law the principle that children took their mother's status, i.e., the principle of ''[[partus sequitur ventrem]]''.<ref name="Kolchin17">[[Peter Kolchin]], ''American Slavery, 1619–1877'', New York: Hill and Wang, 1993, p. 17</ref> This led to generations of [[multiracial]] slaves, some of whom were otherwise considered legally white (one-eighth or less African, equivalent to a great-grandparent) before the [[American Civil War]].

In some cases, men had long-term relationships with enslaved women, giving them and their mixed-race children freedom and providing their children with apprenticeships, education and transfer of capital. A [[Jefferson–Hemings controversy|relationship]] between [[Thomas Jefferson]] and [[Sally Hemings]] is an example of this.<ref name="Hemings">[http://www.monticello.org/plantation/hemingscontro/hemings-jefferson_contro.html "Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: A Brief Account"] {{Webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100430175449/http://www.monticello.org/plantation/hemingscontro/hemings-jefferson_contro.html |date=30 April 2010 }}, Monticello Website, [[Thomas Jefferson Foundation]]. Retrieved 22 June 2011. Quote: "Ten years later [referring to its 2000 report], TJF and most historians now believe that, years after his wife's death, Thomas Jefferson was the father of the six children of Sally Hemings mentioned in Jefferson's records, including Beverly, [[Harriet Hemings|Harriet]], [[Madison Hemings|Madison]] and [[Eston Hemings]]...Since then, a committee commissioned by the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society, after reviewing essentially the same material, reached different conclusions, namely that Sally Hemings was only a minor figure in Thomas Jefferson's life and that it is very unlikely he fathered any of her children. This committee also suggested in its report, issued in April 2001 and revised in 2011, that Jefferson's younger brother Randolph (1755–1815) was more likely the father of at least some of Sally Hemings's children."</ref> Such arrangements were more prevalent in the [[Southern United States|American South]] during the [[Antebellum South|antebellum period]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Antebellum slavery |url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2956.html |access-date=2022-11-21 |publisher=PBS}}</ref>

=== Plaçage ===
{{main|Plaçage}}
In [[Louisiana (New France)|Louisiana]] and former French territories, a formalized system of concubinage called ''plaçage'' developed. European men took enslaved or [[free people of color|free women of color]] as mistresses after making arrangements to give them a dowry, house or other transfer of property, and sometimes, if they were enslaved, offering freedom and education for their children.<ref name="everyculture.com">[http://www.everyculture.com/multi/Bu-Dr/Creoles.html Helen Bush Caver and Mary T. Williams, "Creoles"] {{Webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110813013942/http://www.everyculture.com/multi/Bu-Dr/Creoles.html |date=13 August 2011 }}, ''Multicultural America'', Countries and Their Cultures Website. Retrieved 3 February 2009</ref> A third class of [[free people of color]] developed, especially in [[New Orleans]].<ref name="everyculture.com"/><ref>Peter Kolchin, ''American Slavery, 1619–1865'', New York: Hill and Wang, 1993, pp. 82–83</ref> Many became educated, artisans and property owners. French-speaking and practicing [[Catholicism]], these women combined French and African-American culture and created an elite between those of European descent and the slaves.<ref name="everyculture.com"/> Today, descendants of the free people of color are generally called [[Louisiana Creole people]].<ref name="everyculture.com"/>