Sexual Violence and American Slavery:

The Making of a Rape Culture in the Antebellum South

 Shannon Eaves, University  of North Carolina Press,

242 pp., illustrations. index, bibliography, $27.95  April 2024,  paperback, 2024.

Eaves mimes a wealth of primary sources including autobiographies, diaries, court records and more to show that rape and other forms of sexual; exploitation entangled slaves and and slave owners in battles over power to protect oneself and one's community, power to avenge hurt and humiliation, and power t punish and eliminate future threats.

By placing sexual violence at the center of the systems of power and culture, the author shows how the South's rape culture was revealed in enslaved people's and their enslavers' interactions with one another and with members of their respective communities.