The Rise of Slavery in the 13 Colonies
Overview:
For a period of time before 1660, poor Americans of African and European descent both worked in hard conditions as unfree laborers in what would become the USA. Members of both groups, however, could gain their freedom and their own land. This changed after 1660, as laws were made for economic reasons that started to confine all African Americans to permanent slavery. Changes in social views and economic factors were important in the rise of slavery, and that the rise was not inevitable. Hereditary slavery of African Americans based on their race was not always a widespread system in the colonies.
Details:
From 1650 to 1700, a gradual decrease in the rights of and a gradual increase in the enslavement of African Americans in the English mainland colonies occurred.
This pattern was not inevitable or natural, and it had causes that can be identified.
By 1650, hereditary racial slavery was common in American colonies ruled by Catholics, as the rule that Christians could not be enslaved was overturned by wealthy planters that needed cheap labor.
Because of the desire of Protestants to convert and not enslave non-Europeans, and because of concerns of cost and practicality, widespread and brutal slavery was not a reality in English colonies in America in 1650.
After learning from experiments in the Caribbean about the great profits that could be made from product produced by slavery, the English set up the Royal African Company in 1660 to compete in the slave trading market.
Some of the first settlers in the new English colony of Carolina were from Barbados, a slaveholding English colony in the Caribbean, and they brought their slaves, brutal social system and racist laws with them.
In the seventeenth century in colonies such as Virginia and Maryland, all unfree workers, black or white, worked together and hoped to someday gain their freedom and their own land.
Some Africans gained hundreds of acres of land in the seventeenth century. However, many disappeared from colonial records. This is a disturbing trend.
English labor became harder to come by as the seventeenth century progressed because of a decreasing English population, a crackdown on kidnapping, and demands for better treatment by English indentured servants.
Native Americans did not make good forced laborers because of the potential for alliances with them, their low numbers, and the fact that it was easy for them to successfully escape.
African Americans made good forced laborers as they could not escape to home and large profits could be made from their sale.
Competition in African slave trading allowed for the cost of slaves to be low, and the growing English colonies on the American mainland were good places to sell them to. By 1700, Africans arrived in these colonies in huge ships and in large numbers.
Colonial leaders saw that unfree workers, both black and white, were cooperating and had similar grudges against them that led to rebellion. The leaders decided to split the poor by cultural and ethnic lines through race-based slavery, so that their control over all the poor could be stronger.
Gradually, social notions of who was of higher status went from higher-status Christians and lower-status non-Christians to higher-status Europeans and lower-status non-Europeans. This allowed for race-based hereditary slavery of African Americans to occur widespread and to be ingrained into colonial law.
Headrights, which were pieces of land given to European settlers who brought family members or European servants, were eventually also given to Europeans who purchased African slaves.
By 1700, many African Americans who were once free became slaves, and the era of widespread racial slavery in what would become the USA had begun.
This information is taken from the article “The Birth of Race-Based Slavery”, by Peter H. Wood.