ABSTRACT
Coercive sex work is one of the most consistent experiences of enslaved people in the many manifestations of slavery throughout history. Thus, understanding the role of sexuality in the development and practices of slavery has been fundamental to slavery studies. In North America, sexual relations and desires structured the construction of slavery and the way it was maintained from its codification into law to the way that traffickers accessed the trade of Africans, African Americans, and Native Americans. The sexual experiences of enslaved people are essential to understanding slavery and its aftermath. The intimate lives of the enslaved reveal how slavery and the slave trade operated on a daily level. Enslaved persons were bound up in a matrix of control and desire that pitted their aspirations for autonomy against slaveholders’ yearning for wealth and domination. Recent scholarship has revealed how expansive and important sexuality studies are to better understanding and framing the institutions of slavery.1
