ipl-logo

Slavery And Barbados Similarities

1122 Words5 Pages

American colonial history is a strange period in time. There are main powers that fight for land and there are people that tried to get their land back. There are people that were enslave against their wills and force to do harsh labor until death. Later in American colonial period, beliefs become wild and spread like wildfire. All these events tied up to show that although life in Barbados differ from Massachusetts in term of beliefs, food, and labor, but there are similarities as well. Beliefs are part of someone’s culture, whether it is part or a religion or a tradition or a survival skill that passed down. In Barbados, the beliefs are mostly about the spiritual world. For example, according to Breslaw, Arawak tribe would worship …show more content…

There were two types of labor, indentured servants and slavery. Indentured servants are bound by contract servants that worked two to seven years long in exchange for freedom dues, such as clothes, guns, and possibly land. They are skilled craftsmen, unmarried women, and orphaned children. Slavery is the opposite of indentured servants. The slaves are bound for life unless they escaped or received their freedom. Barbados, according to Breslaw, “the major source of labor in Barbados until the middle of seventeenth century was immigrant indentured servants from the British Isles, particularly England.” The planters did not choose the Native Americans for labor in the plantation because “the Indian death rate was so high following contact with Europeans and their passive resistance to labor demands.” The planters started to choose African slaves when they participated the Atlantic Slave Trade in 1640s. According to Breslaw, “African slaves were more valuable in the sugar fields, but were often suspected of conspiracies against the planters.” In Massachusetts, however, there are also indentured servants and slavery, but they are protected by the laws. According to Breslaw, the servants or slaves were “considered a part of a family and subject to a more general set of laws and obligations to the head of the household and the community.” The servants or slaves are protected under the laws as long as there are no wrong doings. The indentured servants and slaves in Massachusetts were treated as family members, “shared the table with masters and their families.” The similarities between Barbados and Massachusetts are labor in both locations are harsh. Another example is the women are more valued due to their skills and their endurance of the “hazards of disease and accident far better than their male counterparts.” The women servants and slaves were cheaper to purchase and some could adapt to

Show More
Related

  • The Pros And Cons Of Indentured Servants

    255 Words  | 2 Pages

    Indentured servants, were by all accounts, the main source of labor in the seventeenth century. The labor force was mainly needed for the newly discovery of the cash crop that was tobacco. It was a plant that need a lot of man power to be harvested and transported to port to be shipped back to England. “At first they turned to their overpopulated country for labor, but English indentured servants brought with them the same haphazard habits of work as their masters.” Indentured service being described as haphazard is an understatement; uprising.

    Read More

  • Summary Of Give Me Liberty By Eric Foner

    1317 Words  | 6 Pages

    For an example, a slave named Simon Gray, was put him head of a riverboat crew on the Mississippi by his owner to handle the responsibilities of being in charge of selling his lumber at urban markets, be in charge of both white and black workers (bending the law), and handle the large sums of fortune. But Gray’s experience was very typical. According to studies, there was a large majority of slaves, seventy-five percent of them were women and ninety percent were the men that were working in the field. “The largest concentrations of slaves, however, lived and worked on plantations in the Cotton Belt [(South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi)], where men, women, and children labored in gangs, often under the direction, of an overseer and perhaps a

    Read More

  • How Did Slavery Increase In Colonial Virginia

    1027 Words  | 5 Pages

    The weather in the Carolina colonies was better for certain crops and eventually became the better area to farm which led to a rise in slavery in the south. During the early years of the Carolinas slavery was barely existing but since South Carolina had close ties with Barbados many of the settlers were Barbadians, this meant that some of them arrived with African American workers (Brinkley, pg.50). Slavery had taken root in Barbados earlier than the mainland colonies so when the Barbadians came to the mainland they had suggested that the colonists start using African people for their own person use on their plantations (Brinkley, pg. 50). But this caused problems between the original colonists and the rich Barbadians. It was true that the Island of Barbados was one of the colonies major trading partners

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast Jamestown Colonies

    989 Words  | 4 Pages

    They worked as indentured servants at first and later became slaves in the

    Read More

  • How Did The Europeans Contribute To The Economy Of The American's

    655 Words  | 3 Pages

    Plantation owners loved having indentured servants because it really helped them save every bit of money they could. Indentured servants did suffer a lot especially with their working schedules but, with the laws that were later passed in Virginia throughout the years and any few freedoms black had were taken away making them feel hopeless at times because of the racial diversity in the America’s at the time. Servants were being optimistic at the time, they were hoping the laws being passed would not affect their rewards for all the hard work they had endeavored throughout the four to seven year long contracts. There was many uncertainty especially with how society would treat them because of their skin color. With all these new laws being passed, most plantation owners feared for their land, indentured servants were not needed as much anymore, plantation owners turned to slavery were they had more power of the individuals and were guaranteed no profit

    Read More

  • Reasons For Slavery In Jamestown

    391 Words  | 2 Pages

    Basicly, the indentured servants were regularly from England, and did not have money to sail to Virginia. So then they had to become a servant to pay the voyage. The servants worked for a “master” for a period of time under a contract. They usually worked on tobacco. They were given food and a place to live.

    Read More

  • Little Rock Nine Crisis: The Black Civil Rights Movement

    1037 Words  | 5 Pages

    Slavery had begun before Africans and Native Americans had met White colonists, but as a web article titled Slavery; an American History states1, “Many aboriginal societies had practiced different forms of slavery for thousands of years before they had ever seen Europeans. The practice, however, represented a temporary condition and was used more as a badge of status than a money making enterprise.” Their version of slavery, was not hereditary or based on race. The main cause for slavery was the need for more workers to pick tobacco; a thriving industry in the South, with a need for labour intensive workers. By 1787, 40% of slaves worked in tobacco fields 2.

    Read More

  • Slave Labor Force In Colonial America

    522 Words  | 3 Pages

    Throughout the development of the colonies in America, slave trade grew to be a significant source of labor in primarily southern plantations within the late seventeenth to eighteenth centuries. During the era, with slaves being condemned to be considered socially inferior by law, and the increase in demand of goods such as rice and indigo, the slave labor force became a notable source for southern plantations in the eighteenth century. Slaves and people of color had always been considered to be socially inferior even before the colonies existed. With a sense of paternalism in Great Britain, people have always believed that those considered slaves,or servants rather, were second class citizens, and these people needed to be suppressed for their own best interests.

    Read More

  • Examples Of Primary Source Analysis Of Slavery

    822 Words  | 4 Pages

    Primary Source Analysis During the 1600’s, many Africans were being shipped from Africa into the Colonies so that they could be used for the production of difficulty harvested crops like tobacco, sugarcane,and cotton. The use of slaves helped plantation owners become wealthy quickly, and it led to more and more slaves being brought to the colonies until there were more Africans than there were Europeans. This worried many slave owners and led the creation of black codes. The General Assembly in Virginia created “An Act Concerning Servants and Slaves” in October of 1705 to establish new laws regarding slaves and indentured servants.

    Read More

  • Indentured Servitude And Slavery In Colonial America

    1854 Words  | 8 Pages

    The subjugation of indentured servants to their masters was nearly identical to that of slaves under early colonial law, however the rights held by both groups of unfree laborers differs

    Read More

  • Power Structures Of France And England Colonies

    1201 Words  | 5 Pages

    The transatlantic slave trade was a brutal and inhumane enterprise, where millions of Africans were forcibly transported to the Americas under brutal conditions (Bailyn 140). The conditions for enslaved Africans on English sugar plantations were often horrific, with harsh punishments and long working hours in hot and humid conditions (Fisher 47). Nonetheless, it is undeniable that the use of enslaved labor was a crucial factor in the success of the English colonies in the Caribbean. The use of slave labor allowed the English to cultivate crops such as sugar cane at a much lower cost, and thus gain a competitive advantage in the global market (Fisher 34). Without the labor of enslaved Africans, it is unlikely that the English would have been able to establish such profitable and successful sugar

    Read More

  • Chesapeake Bay Area In The 1600s

    1033 Words  | 5 Pages

    In Virginia, the Chesapeake Bay area during the 1600s the slave community evolved over a long period of time. Problems occurred regarding their labor that had an important influence on the switch to a society dominated by slave labor. During the 1600s labor in the Chesapeake shifted to slave society because of a shift in culture, economic issues, and frustrations of the tobacco market boom. Each of these reasons all relate back to the labor problem the colonists were facing in Virginia.

    Read More

  • Indentured Servants In The Sea Runner By Ivan Dog

    1395 Words  | 6 Pages

    Even though they were European, indentured servants were not treated as fellow European workers, but as slaves; these indentured servants weren’t seen by the RAC as people, but as tools. “Any workman within an enterprise such as the Russian-American Company amounted to something like one slat in a water wheel. Laboring in a circle, a damp one at that” (Doig 165, 1982). The working conditions were brutal, according to historians Steven Hahn and S.B. Okun. In Jamestown, indentured servants were viewed as property, and could be bought and sold at a moment’s notice.

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast The New England And Chesapeake Colonies Dbq

    526 Words  | 3 Pages

    The New England and Chesapeake colonies were established during the early 1700s. Despite the population originating from England, the regions had distinct societies. This was due to the fact that many settlers voyaged to the New World in search of riches, to seek new lives, or for religious freedom. They differed socially, politically, economically, and geographically.

    Read More

  • Essay On Meso-American Slavery

    1231 Words  | 5 Pages

    At the beginning, most of the slaves were indentured servants, who chose free labour in the colonies for several years over a death penalty. Those were mostly European, but in the seventeenth century, Africans were sent to Virginia to work as indentured servants. While some were able to gain freedom, others fell into permanent servitude, and by 1661, all black people in Virginia were considered slaves, and their numbers raised significantly. Nonetheless, slavery started as early as the 1530s in Meso-American colonies, as their aims with agriculture were much larger, and they had difficulty employing natives outside the areas where there had been large empires, such as Peru and Mexico. It can be argued that slavery in Latin America was not only more common; but also more brutal.

    Read More

More about Slavery And Barbados Similarities

Open Document