Europeans introduced chattel slavery, primarily involving the forced labor of Africans, which had a profound impact on social structures. The transatlantic slave trade depopulated regions of West Africa and resulted in the enslavement of millions of Africans. Slavery replaced or supplemented existing indigenous labor practices, such as tribute systems or coerced labor. For example, in the Caribbean and Brazil, sugarcane plantations relied heavily on enslaved Africans, leading to the establishment of plantation economies and hierarchical social structures based on race. Slavery and the racial caste system that emerged had long-lasting consequences for social hierarchies and economic development in the Western
Thomas Paine was opposed to slavery due to the quote he said. "Slave, who is proper owner of his freedom, has the right to reclaim it, however often sold." He goes on to say the African slaves were forced into the slavery due to the Europeans bring liquor to there land, bribing one against another, and hiring tribes to fight other tribes. Thomas Paine was an original member of the Anti Slavery formed in Philadelphia.
Furthermore, these slaves were transported on a “slave ship” which tightly held 562 slaves and were infiltrated with life-threatening diseases (Document 7). While aboard the ship, the slaves were branded with their owner’s mark and were crammed so tightly into the ship that they couldn’t even slightly change their position (Documents 7 & 8). Since European ports facilitated goods entering by sea, slaves were traded in these crowded ports and were then taken to the New World (Document 6). The slave trade not only had an impact on Africa as it caused small African states to disappear and new powerful kingdoms to arrive, but also affected the economic development of the New World and introduced debilitating diseases there as
Slavery in the North , West , and South Region Can you imagine being separated from your family at a very young age and while being away having to endure hard labor as in picking cotton and harvesting in the field with the fear of being whipped. Slavery was a very difficult time for African Americans. It was very brutal and degrading. In this essay I will compare and contrast Slavery in three different regions and explain why it was such a tough time for African American. Slavery in the Northern Region
During the Reconstruction Era from 1865 to 1877, Southern white people were segregated to a large extent between wealthy plantation owners and poor white farmers. Both E. B. Seabrook and a New York Times’ writer compare poor white farmers’ horrid lifestyles to freed slaves because there was an extreme similarity between the two. Although the slaves were emancipated as a result of the Civil War, they underwent economic hardships similar to poor white farmers in the South. In fact, the New York Times author makes the argument that the poor whites lived in a worse condition than freed blacks. - “The use of slave labor… tended to create a monopoly in the hands of the capitalists, and increased, in an almost insuperable degree, the difficulty of a poor man’s rising, but making nearly impossible the enlarging of his sphere of operations” (Seabrook).
Exploration to the New World led to greedy rulers wanting more. There were many new resources and opportunities to make money; for example tobacco, sugar, and even minerals. Because of the demand for these crops, the Europeans needed someone to do the work. With the Native American population drastically declining, the Europeans had to find another source of labor so they turned to the African Americans. This began the slave trade where millions of slaves were taken from Africa to other areas as a source of income.
Slavery grow rapidly in the southern colonies than the northern colonies for the reason that southern colonies slave work year round to grow crop like rice, they have the ideal season for work year round that the northern colonies didn’t have. For example on page 75 “ Unlike cultivating wheat or corn in the north, growing rice demanded backbreaking year- round labor, slave had to clear the swampy lowlands in winter, build dykes to keep seawater out of the fields, and plant rice in shallow trenches in the spring. In late summer, the harvested the crop. In the fall, they pounded the rice kernels with wooden mortals and pestles. Come wintertime they turned the soil to prepare it for a new round of planting.
The enslavement of Africans and African Americans in Early America created a clear divide between the North and South. The North, primarily opponents of slavery, argued that slavery violated the basic principal of American democracy – respect for fundamental human rights. On the contrary, the South had an aristocratic understanding of democracy. Proponents of slavery also believed that the prosperity, technologies, and innovations that emerged from this institution was essential for American capitalism. Both opponents and proponents of slavery exercised principals of capitalism and democracy to justify their stance.
These exchanges had a drastic effect on the Native Americans in the New world. When the Europeans came to the Americas, many Native Americans were exposed to new diseases, causing many of them to get sick and die. The Europeans brought Africans to the New World to work as slaves because
“Another of my wishes is to depend as little as possible on the labour of slaves,” wrote James Madison in a letter to statesman Richard Henry Lee. Like many other well known founding fathers, James Madison was a slave owner. Another key similarity Madison had with the other slave owning founders was a dislike of the institution of slavery, while still taking part in it. However, the founders’ relationship with slavery was not formed at the time of independence. Indentured Servitude and Slavery was vital to the economic success of the British empire in the Americas, and had become commonplace in the colonies nearly two centuries before the lives of the founders.
The treatment of slaves between the North and the South was drastically different. Slaves in the North typically lived in the same house as their master and worked by themselves, or in small groups (pg. 94). Slaves in the South tended to live in large plantations in which they were housed in plantation outbuildings (pg. 104). The difference between the North and the South in housing and working environment had a direct effect on the integration of African Americans into their new American society. When they were housed in the North with their masters and had limited exposure to other slaves, they tended to adopt the ways of their masters.
Evaluating Cruelty: Sharecropping and Slavery “After the Civil War, former slaves sought jobs, and planters sought laborers. The absence of cash or an independent credit system led to the creation of sharecropping” (Pollard para. 1). Sharecropping is the action of allowing workers, called sharecroppers, to work on someone else’s farm. This let former slaves find jobs; however, farmers found loopholes to exploit the former slaves. Because of this, the workers were rarely paid the amount they needed for their needs.
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
Over the years from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, slaves were not only transported to just the United States, but to all around the world. They were sold and traded to many different countries which meant that their cultures went with them. As they would grow and multiply in an area, they would repopulate in others. Forced labor migrations contributed to globalization because when slaves of different ethnicities were shipped to other parts of the world, they took their culture and history with them. When the term “Slave trade” is used, it has a negative meaning and usually a negative context behind it, but by seeing what the slave trade actually did for not only America, but for the world, the meaning behind it can be viewed from another angle.
The end of the fifteenth century is attributed as the time period in which Christopher Colombus “discovered” the Americas. Although he was allegedly the first European to have reached these unknown lands at the time, many sought to reach the new world, for a variety of reasons. Most of those people could be divided in two: the settlers and the conquerors. In North America, there were more of the former, people looking for a new home where they could rebuild their families and lives. In Meso-America, however, the goal was to exploit the lands in order to produce and extract new goods which they could trade.
