Question Home

Position:Home>Arts & Humanities> Can someone please explain the economic and social origins of slavery in British


Question:

Can someone please explain the economic and social origins of slavery in British north america?

along with the legal and pragmatic means of institutionalization. all answers would be helpful in proving just how much my husband doesn't know.


Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: In 1690, one out of every nine families in Boston owned a slave. In New York City, in 1703, two out of every five families owned a slave. From Newport, Rhode Island to Buenos Aires, black slaves could be found in virtually every New World area colonized by Europeans.

One aspect of the rice-boom slave trade in South Carolina was that masters sought not just African labor but also African knowledge. They drew their slaves from areas that already cultivated rice, in contrast to the deliberate mixing of ethnic and language groups that enslavers practiced elsewhere. Washington demonstrates how aware enslavers were of the complexities of African life and why white Carolinians wanted particular sorts of Africans.
http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/history/...

We may recall learning about the arrival of twenty "Negars" at Jamestown, Virginia in 1619, where they were put to work growing tobacco. . . . Consider just a few points regarding those first twenty arrivals. They were not at all the first black migrants to the Western Hemisphere; by 1619 there were Africans all over the Caribbean and Central and South America......
During the colonial era most North American slaves lived in the Chesapeake and the Carolina/Georgia low country, growing tobacco, rice, indigo, and sea island cotton on lowland plantations. But black people labored on small farms in the southern backcountry and throughout the middle and northern colonies as well. They helped whites build houses and ships, cobble shoes, bake bread, brew beer, make hats, weave cloth, and sew gowns. They cleaned streets and they hauled heavily laden carts through them. They waited on planters in Virginia mansions and on lawyers, merchants, and public officials in northern cities. Black men helped turn ore into metal on the "iron plantations" that dotted the interior landscape from Virginia to New York. They loaded and unloaded vessels in colonial ports and they went to sea before the mast. Black women cooked, washed, tended children, and did scullery work in white households everywhere. They also did heavy labor to which no white woman would be subjected. Whatever free white people were doing to build colonial America, enslaved black people were doing it too.
http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/history/...

Initially, English colonists relied on indentured white servants, but by the late seventeenth century, faced with a shortage of servants, they increasingly resorted to enslaved Africans. Three distinctive systems of slavery emerged in the American colonies. In Maryland and Virginia, slavery was widely used in raising tobacco and corn and worked under the "gang" system. In the South Carolina and Georgia low country, slaves raised rice and indigo, worked under the "task" system, and were able to reconstitute African social patterns and maintain a separate Gullah dialect. In the North, slavery was concentrated on Long Island and in southern Rhode Island and New Jersey, where most slaves were engaged in farming and stock raising for the West Indies or were household servants for the urban elite.
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/modules...

Carolina authorities developed laws to keep the African American population under control. Whipping, branding, dismembering, castrating, or killing a slave were legal under many circumstances. Freedom of movement, to assemble at a funeral, to earn money, even to learn to read and write, became outlawed.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1narr5...
the link above is one of the best for different aspects of slavery.

just a short post script
I read this in some college text I had, when I took womens studies....I can't find or remember the name of the text, but this is what it said...don't know if you'd want to use it because I cant reference it....
"Because the number of immigrants to the new Colonies was controlled by the King, taking a period of time to get permission, added to the cost of sponsoring even a single person to make the dangerous Atlantic crossing, slaves were considered to be a sounder investment. You neither paid them, nor were bound to contract with them. The cost of their travel and upkeep was paid by the merchants who dealt in human cargoes. The greatest expense connected with a slave was the initial purchase price, which was considered a small price to pay for a renewable resource. Once a slave of each sex was purchased, their issue, which was owned by the purchaser, increased the work force without additional purchase, and added to the liquid revenue of a small holder in the selling of such issue for profit." (pretty ugly, isn't it)