Hello and welcome to the History Extra Podcast from BBC History magazine, Britain's

best-selling history magazine. I'm Ellie Korthorn. The guest on today's podcast is the author, historian and activist Stella

Dadsie.

Stella joined me to discuss her latest book, A Kick In the Belli,

Women, Slavery and Resistance, which brings to light

untold stories of enslaved women's experiences in the West Indies.

Thanks very much for joining me. Your new book looks at the experiences of enslaved women in the Western deeds. So how have these

women's experiences been written about previously and why did you think that that

needed amending with this new book?

Okay, well I think as with all women's history, up until quite recently most of what we read was

written by men for men. I think Barbara Bush made that point in her quote

about history being written in such a way as only they wish to see it. And certainly when I started studying this field in

around the mid-80s most of what I had read had been written by white males.

Having said that there was a growing number of

historians, many of them based in the West Indies, who were beginning to look afresh

at this field and in particular to look at the role of women.

And I'm talking about women like Lucille Matur and Mayor, Olive Senior, and also male historians like Hillary Beckles just to name a few. So it was an area

that was beginning to be looked at, but in my experience, much of the

debates around what happened to women through the period of enslavement was happening at a very academic level.

It wasn't being popularized and I can remember in 2007 when they had the

200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery, how frustrated I felt because it was an ideal opportunity

to focus not just on the role of the enslaved themselves in their own emancipation but also in particular the role of women and I felt that was a serious omission.

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