Slavery and Empire 1441-1770

1. 4 Slavery and Empire 1441-1770

2. Slavery and Empire1441-1770 • The Beginnings of African Slavery • The African Slave Trade • The Development of North American Slave Societies • African to African American • Slavery and the Economics of Empire • Slavery, Prosperity, and Freedom • Conclusion

4. Chapter Focus Questions • How did the modern system of slavery develop? • What was the history of the slave trade and the Middle Passage? • How did Africans manage to create communities among the brutal slave system?

5. Chapter Focus Questions (cont’d) • What were the connections between the institutions of slavery and the imperial system of the eighteenth century? • How and why did racism develop in America?

6. North America and Stono, SC

7. American Communities:Rebellion in Stono, South Carolina • South Carolina rebellion • Slaves go to Florida where freedom had been promised • Enslaved Africans greatly outnumbered white colonists • Sense of desperation but also of community • History of community: oral accounts of the rebellion persisted into the 1930s

8. The Beginnings of African Slavery

9. A portion of the Catalan Atlas

10. The Beginnings of African Slavery • Moral implications • Muslims and Africans slaves because not Christians • 1441: Portuguese brought slaves to sugar plantations on Madeira

11. African slaves operate a sugar mill

12. Sugar and Slavery • Expansion of sugar production increased demand for slaves. • Portugal created brutal but profitable slave labor in Brazil • Dutch merchants • financed and directed the sugar trade • France and later Britain developed own Caribbean sugar plantations

13. Sugar and Slavery (cont'd) • Caribbean sugar and slaves • core of the European colonial system.

14. West Africans • Slaves from well-established societies and local communities of West Africa • More than 100 societies on West African coast • Sophisticated systems of farming • Extensive trade networks • Household slavery an established institution

15. West Africans (cont'd) • Slaves treated more as family than as possessions • Children born free • American slavery transformed, brutalized the African institution

16. The African Slave Trade

17. The Demography of Slave Trade • Most slaves were transported to the Caribbean or South America. • One in 20 were delivered to North America (600,000). • Men generally outnumbered women two to one.

18. MAP 4.1 The African Slave Trade

19. FIGURE 4.1 Africans Imported to Mainland British North America, 1626–1800

20. A Global Enterprise • All Western European nations participated in the African slave trade. • The slave trade was dominated by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century, the Dutch in the sugar boom of the seventeenth century, and the English who entered the trade in the seventeenth century.

21. A Global Enterprise (cont'd) • New England slavers entered the trade in the eighteenth century. • Of 10.5 million Africans who arrived in the Americas, 90% went to the sugar colonies.

22. MAP 4.2 Slave Colonies of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

23. The Shock of Enslavement • Enslavement was an unparalleled shock. • African raiders or armies often violently attacked villages to take captives. • The captives were marched to the coast, many dying along the way. • On the coast, the slaves were kept in barracoons where they were separated from their families, branded, and dehumanized.

24. The Middle Passage • Middle Passage • Middle portion of the triangle trade • Shelves 6 feet long and 30 inches high • Crowded together spoon fashion • Little or no sanitation, food was poor • Dysentery and disease. • Slaves resistance: • jumping overboard, refusing to eat, revolting • One in six slaves died during this voyage.

25. Portrait of Olaudah Equiano

26. Slaves below deck on the Portugese vessel Albaroz

27. Political and Economic Effects on Africa • Slavery enriched a few in Africa, but slave wars ravaged populations, spreading death and destruction far inland. • Loss of population and access to cheap European goods led to economic stagnation and prepared the way for direct European colonization in the nineteenth century.

28. The Development of North American Slave Societies

29. Africans herded from a slave ship

30. FIGURE 4.2 Africans as a Percentage of Total Population of the British Colonies, 1650–1770

31. The Development of North American Slave Societies • By 1770, Africans and African Americans numbered 460,000 in British North America–comprising over 20% of the colonial population.

32. Slavery Comes to North America • 1619: first Africans in Virginia • From a society with slaves to a slave society • Decline in servant immigration • Better opportunities for English servants • The Royal English African Company • labor shortage was filled with slaves. • Virginia: comprehensive slave code

33. Slavery Comes to North America (cont'd) • 1700–1710: More Africans imported than in the entire previous century

34. The Tobacco Colonies • Tobacco: 25% of the value of all colonial exports • Slavery allowed expansion of tobacco production • Using slave labor, tobacco grown on large plantations and small farms

35. The Tobacco Colonies (cont'd) • Natural increase of slave population in Chesapeake • 1750s: 80% of Chesapeake slaves were “country born,” adding to planters’ capital.

36. The Lower South • South Carolina: slave society from its founding • Indian slave trade. • Rice and indigo • Large plantations—slaves dominated. • Georgia prohibited slavery

37. The Lower South (cont'd) • 1770: About 80% of the coastal population of South Carolina and Georgia was African American.

38. image of Mulberry Plantation, near Charleston, South Carolina, about 1800.

39. Slavery in the Spanish Colonies • Papacy denouncement, but basic part of the Spanish colonial labor system • Varied by region • Cuba sugar plantations: brutal • Florida: Household slavery as in Mediterranean and African communities • New Mexico: Mine labor, house servants, fieldworkers

40. Slavery in the Spanish Colonies (cont'd) • Spain declared Florida a haven for runaway slaves from the British colonies and offered land to those who would help defend the colony.

41. Slavery in French Louisiana • Natchez Rebellion 1629 • The Natchez Indians and the slaves of Louisiana joined together in an armed uprising killing 10% of the colonial population, but were crushed • French Louisiana became a society with slaves. • Slaves made up only about 1/3 of population

42. Slavery in French Louisiana (cont'd) • Louisiana did not become an important North American slave society until the end of the eighteenth century.

43. Slavery in the North • Slavery was legal and part of the labor system in some northern commercial farming areas but only made up ten percent of the rural population in these regions. • In port cities, slavery was common.

44. Slavery in the North (cont'd) • By 1750, the slave and free African populations made up 15 to 20% of the residents of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. • Antislavery sentiment first arose among the Quakers of New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

45. African to African American

46. A Musical Celebration in the Slave Quarters

47. The Daily Lives of Slaves • Africans were majority of plantation labor force • As agricultural peoples, Africans were used to rural routines and most slaves worked in the fields. • Slaves were supplied rude clothes and hand-me-downs from the master’s family. • Small plantations / farms • Africans worked along side masters

48. The Daily Lives of Slaves (cont'd) • Large plantations • Population necessary for the development of an African American culture.

49. Families and Communities • In the development of African American community and culture, the family was the most important institution. • Families were often separated by sale or bequest. • Slaves created family structures developing marriage customs, naming practices, and a system of kinship.

50. Families and Communities (cont'd) • Fictive kinship was used by slaves to humanize the world of slavery.