Alan Gallay's The Indian Slave Trade

Walter Johnson examines the fluid nature of the domestic slave trade and its role in shaping a culture of slavery. Central to this culture was the fundamental reality that the slave person was a commodity to be bought and sold as the market demanded. Describe the effects of the practice of slave trading on the actors involved. How did the domestic slave trade help create the identities of slave, the slaveholder and the slave trader? How did the activities of the slave pen help “make” race (both white and black) in the antebellum period?

Edmund S. Morgan’s famous novel American Slavery, American Freedom was published by Norton in 1975, and since then has been a compelling scholarship in which he portrays how the first stages of America began to develop and prosper. Within his researched narrative, Morgan displays the question of how society with the influence of the leaders of the American Revolution, could have grown so devoted to human freedom while at the same time conformed to a system of labor that fully revoked human dignity and liberty. Using colonial Virginia, Morgan endeavors how American perceptions of independence gave way to the upswing of slavery. At such a time of underdevelopment and exiguity, cultivation and production of commodities were at a high demand. Resources were of monumental importance not just in Virginia, but all over North America, for they helped immensely in maintaining and enriching individuals and families lives. In different ways, people in colonies like Virginia’s took advantage of these commodities to ultimately establish or reestablish their societies.

In the 1680’s most Africans were working on plantations. As Mintz explains how black slavery become the dominant labor, “ 1680’s that Black slavery became the dominant labor system on plantations ” (2, Mintz). The colonists wanted the africans because they would work the best on plantations. This quote demonstrates the colonists gained power because more slaves were sold and The colonists gained more profit. In the Colonial America the slaves were being carried to the New World. As Olaudah Equiano illustrates how the slaves were brought to the new world, “ These filled me with astonishment which was soon converted into terror ” (1, Equiano). He was scared and like he never experienced slavery in his life. This quote demonstrates that the colonists gained power because the slaves were afraid of them and if they were afraid of them they wouldn’t

The expansion of slavery in the 1800s was a brutal and sad time in our country’s history. Through the readings of Johnson and Rothman, along with other lesson materials, it is apparent that the effects of the Louisiana Purchase, the War of 1812, along with the complicit behavior from the U.S., largely impacted slave trade and lives of many slaves that were forced from the East to the Deep South and Southwest.

Over the years many historians have just glazed over the African’s role in the settlement and shaping of the colonial era of America. The Africans are usually only identified as the primary enslaved labor force used to settle the colonies, but not much more is said about the details of how the Africans shaped the colonies. Many individuals only read or hear about major events such as the Stono Rebellion, when the first slaves arrived, or how slaves were treated. When settlers in Barbados began to move to South Carolina, due to a lack of land available to expand, they brought with them a few slaves. The first years of the new settlement they struggled to survive and produce a cash crop. Eventually, the white settlers began a cattle

There has been many historians and theorists who have tackled colonial slavery. One of them is Ira Berlin whose book Many Thousands Gone is his take on slavery diversity in American history and how slavery is at the epicenter of economic production, amongst other things. He separates the book into three generations: charter, plantation and revolutionary, across four geographic areas: Chesapeake, New England, the Lower country and the lower Mississippi valley. In this paper, I will discuss the differences between the charter and plantation generations, the changes in work and living conditions, resistance, free blacks and changes in manumission.

The Atlantic Slave trade began to pick up speed with the development of colonies by the Spanish and then the English, which were used to expand the mercantilist countries empires and power. African slaves began to be seen as a necessity once the Native American population plummeted and Spanish Creoles refused to do the hard work to supply their home country with the needed raw materials. Europeans were unwilling to provide the heavy menial labor required to successfully build a colony, making it “necessary to acquire negro slaves” (Document 1). Creoles and other European settlers forced slaves to “work too hard” and gave “them too little to eat” which weakened slaves and caused many to die off (Document 1).

The colonists did not choose Africans for slavery simply because they were unease by their alien skin tone or because they belittle the people’s lack of civilized background. In fact, the first Africans to arrive from abroad in 1619 were treated the same as the white indentured servants, who could earn their freedom, even a few acres of land, within agreed years of labor. Since cash crops are the fastest and most stable way to wealth, the demand for

In the 18th century the population of British America skyrocketed from 250,000 to more than two million, a great deal of this population increase was because of the increasing slave population and the slave natural increase (pg 107). As opposed to the century before when slaves were scarce, there was a dramatic fluctuation of slaves in the colonies during the eighteenth century. Slaves made such a huge impact in the population that in some places there were more slaves than white men, such as in South Carolina (pg 117). Slavery had a large influence on southern society and on politics as whites rich and poor now shared so called “supremacy” over slaves which worked to unite the whites in some way (pg 122). Slaves also helped the economy as they worked tirelessly for free and for a lifetime with little hope of ever obtaining freedom unlike their indentured servant counterparts. Slaves in the South made the most noticeable contribution to the flourishing southern colonies, especially in the southern economy (pg 117).

The exploration of the Europeans to the west changed the civilization in the Americas. A main staple in the settling of the newcomers was the relationships that the Europeans had formed with the foreign Native Americans. These would end up turning sour because of expansionism, intolerance for the native culture, and new diseases that the Indians had never been exposed to. The relationships not lasting can be most clearly seen between the Europeans and the Native Americas in New England, and the Spanish southwest.

The earliest signs of human bondage can be found in Ancient Rome where slaves were used for a large array of professions. Likewise, the slavery found in colonial North America had slaves included in every facet of the region’s economy. Colonial North America quickly grew dependent on African race-based slavery as the backbone to its economy. The first African Americans arrived to the New World near the coast of Jamestown in 1619 in the Chesapeake region (Clark-Pujara, 9/19). It was the first region to establish a society with slaves. One could say that African race-based slavery in the Chesapeake region developed because of the region’s economic dependence on tobacco production, scarcity of white indentured servants, increasing longevity for African Americans in the New World, and colonists establishing slave laws and codes.

During the seventeenth century, the growth of tobacco, rice and indigo crops created a high demand for land as well as manual labor; two problems thought to be solved by the introduction of indentured servitude. Throughout the seventeenth century, the majority of Europeans coming to the America’s were Indentured Servants. Incentives were high for both employers and servants and this type of contract slave labor quickly became the method of choice for plantation owners. Increasing manual labor and land was critical to the colonies economic success, however time would eventually uncover the problems indentured servitude would create for the colonies, the land and ultimately farmers would prefer traditional slave labor to indentured servants.

Reflecting on the colonization of North America is an uneasy topic for most Americans. The thought of war between the Indians and the early settlers creates an image of clashing cultures between the well-armed Europeans and the hand-crafted weaponry of the native Indians. We tend to have the perception that the early colonists came and quickly took away the land from the Indians but, in reality, the Europeans did not have this power. Though French explorers and English settlers had a different perception of land ownership than that of the Native Americans, the fate of the Europeans rested in the hands of the Indians. Either from self-preservation, civility or curiosity, various American Indian tribes assisted the early European

The power actually lay between and the slave and the planter whom the owner granted almost all power to. As this new master took place, so did a strong power dynamic. Like a scale, each party was out to attain equality and balance; slaves allowed by the planter the freedom to barter for their wants as planters partially submit to them. The economy of South Carolina depended on the sale of skills and goods that urban black slaves dominated, despite the attempts of passing laws forbidding this behavior from the resentful white population. Even slaves in the lowcountry were able to manipulate this system, managing their own gardens alongside the plantations they worked on daily and bargaining with their personal produce for longer free time on Sundays. Both urban and lowcountry slaves began to develop their own economies as they gained more of their freedoms and independence, soon merging the economies by selling and trading goods between themselves. (Berlin

Slavery in America has always been a widely discussed topic. Many of these discussions have be focus on why slavery grew so rapidly between the late 1700’s and the mid 1800’s just before the Civil War. The number of slaves in the south during the late 1700’s was approximately 500,000, this number grew to almost four million by the 1860’s. There is evidence to support that the perpetuation and expansion of black slavery in the United States between 1776 and 1860 was influenced by greed, a since of white superiority, and legislation. A combination that would lead to an eventual civil war.