Rape and Sexual Power in Early America
In a comprehensive examination of rape and its prosecution in British America between 1700 and 1820, Sharon Block exposes the dynamics of sexual power on which colonial and early republican Anglo-American society was based.\ Block analyzes the legal, social, and cultural implications of more than nine hundred documented incidents of sexual coercion and hundreds more extralegal commentaries found in almanacs, newspapers, broadsides, and other print and manuscript sources. Highlighting the gap...
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In a comprehensive examination of rape and its prosecution in British America between 1700 and 1820, Block analyzes the legal, social, and cultural implications of more than nine hundred documented incidents of sexual coercion and hundreds more extralegal commentaries found in almanacs, newspapers, broadsides, and other print and manuscript sources. She demonstrates that public definitions of rape were based less on what actually happened than on who was involved. Early Americans' treatment of rape, she argues, both enacted and helped to sustain the social, racial, gender, and political hierarchies of a New World and a new nation.
1Consent and coercion : the continuum of sexual relations162The means of sexual coercion : identity, power, and social consent533After coerced sex : the progression of knowledge884The crime of rape : transatlantic standards, American racialization, and local judgment1265Constructing rape and race at early American courts1636New worlds of rape : masculinity, myth, and revolution210App. ATabulation of known sexual coercion incidentsApp. BLegal records consulted
\ From the Publisher"This book's strength lies in the cultural and intellectual history of gender and race through the analysis of texts; the author parses a host of judicial cases and other recorded incidents of rape and sexual assault. In this respect, the book has no equal for the time and places it considers."\ — Journal of Interdisciplinary History\ "A tour de force of historical research and cultural analysis.\ Norma Basch, Emerita, Rutgers University "\ "In this model integration of social, legal, and cultural history, Block astutely explores the political import of sexual violence.\ Estelle Freedman, Stanford University"\ \ \
