European Immigration, Slavery, and the Experience of Africans in the American Colonies

1. Objectives • Explain how European immigration to the colonies changed between the late 1600s and 1700s. • Analyze the development of slavery in the colonies. • Describe the experience of enslaved Africans in the colonies.

2. Terms and People • indentured servants– poor immigrants who paid for passage to the colonies by agreeing to work for four to seven years • triangular trade – three-part voyage that brought enslaved Africans to America • Middle Passage – enslaved Africans carried across the Atlantic in brutal conditions • Phillis Wheatley – first African American to publish a book of poems

3. Which major groups of immigrants came to Britain’s American colonies in the 1700s? In the 1700s, great numbers of Europeans from Germany and Scotland immigrated to the colonies. These newcomers reshaped American colonial society.

4. Immigrants from many backgrounds brought diversity to the colonies.

5. New groups immigrated in the 1700s. Became the largest immigrant group. Became the second largest immigrant group. Motivated by poverty and easy legal access as part of Great Britain. Motivated by war, taxes and religious persecution. Worked as merchants in the tobacco trade and farmed from Pennsylvania to the Carolinas. Mostly settled in Pennsylvania and farmed.

6. No group was large enough to impose their beliefs on other groups. People realized that when they got along in a diverse society, everyone benefited. Diversity in the colonies meant that:

7. Colonists used slaves as a source of labor. • Farmers, particularly in southern colonies, needed a work force to grow labor-intensive crops of tobacco, rice, and indigo. • Virginia passed a law decreeing that any servant, not a Christian in their native land, was to be enslaved. • Traders began to purchase slaves from African merchants and transport them to the colonies to sell to plantation owners.

8. Africans were taken by force from West African countries to the colonies and Europe.

9. During the Middle Passage, Africans were shackled together into small spaces below a ship’s deck.

10. By the mid-1700s, the triangular trade of goods and slaves was well-established. • Manufactured goods were traded for captured Africans. • Slave traders carried captured Africans to American colonies in the Middle Passage. • Enslaved Africans were sold to colonists for raw materials. • Traders took raw materials to England to be turned into manufactured goods.

11. Slavery in the Southern Colonies was cruel. Most enslaved Africans were given limited clothing and food, and lived in crude huts on plantations. Enslaved Africans were closely supervised by white overseers who often whipped those who resisted being enslaved. Enslaved Africans worked 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, in fields growing labor-intensive crops. Slave labor represented a small minority of the workforce in New England and the Middle Colonies. They worked as farmhands, sailors, dock workers, and house servants.

12. Africans reacted to enslavement by: Rebelling Uprisings of Africans against theirwhite owners often occurred. Running Away Africans ran away and lived in forests and swamps, or fled toSpanish Florida where they were free. Resisting Africans subtly and purposefully worked slowly or feigned illness.

13. Africans blendedtheir variousAfrican traditions into the culture. They modified African instruments and music, and created new musical traditions. The banjo here is a modified African instrument.

14. Freed slaves spoke out against slavery.After he gained his freedom, Olaudah Equiano wrote a widely read book about his enslavement.

15. Phillis Wheatley became the first African American poet to publish a book of poems in America. Her Boston owner allowed her to learn how to read and write. Her poetry could be seen in newspapers, but despite wide praise, colonial publishers refused to publish a bookof her work.